Miyazaki

A small island about 1.5km round, reached by a bridge, with Aoshima Shrine in its subtropical forest. The washboard rocks around it, the Devil's Washboard, stand out most sharply at low tide, so check the tide table first.

A shrine whose vermilion hall sits inside a cave in the sea cliff. Throwing clay luck balls into the hollow on the turtle-shaped rock below is said to grant wishes, with men throwing left-handed and women right-handed.

A gorge where Manai Falls drops between columnar cliffs left by cooled Aso lava, and you row a hired boat yourself right under the spray. Sitting at the prefecture's northern edge, it is a drive of over 2.5 hours, and in peak season boats mean a long wait.

Every night at 8pm the kagura hall at Takachiho Shrine stages 1 hour of myth turned into dance. The village rite proper runs 33 dances through the night, and the visitor performance picks just 4 of them.

Seven moai, reproduced with the permission of Easter Island's council of elders, stand on a slope overlooking the Pacific. It is midway down the Nichinan coast road, about 30 minutes by car from Aoshima, and the morning light behind them suits photos.

The Ito clan's old castle town, whose stone walls and samurai houses earn it the name Little Kyoto of Kyushu. A snack-walk map from the information office trades for treats at a handful of shops, and past the Otemon gate it is uphill to the castle site.

The shrine of Jimmu, the first emperor of Japanese myth, set in woods in the city's north. The main hall is plain, roofed in cedar bark, and at the grand festival in late October a procession bearing the deity passes along the main avenue.

A park crowning a hill north of downtown, centred on a huge stone tower raised in 1940. Clap beneath the tower and the sound rings back at you, and in the woods of the Haniwa Garden hundreds of copies of kofun-era clay figures stand scattered.

More than 300 burial mounds scattered over the fields of Saito, linked by footpaths between the tombs. Between late March and early April rapeseed and cherry blossom open together, turning the mounds yellow and pink, and the drive takes roughly 1 hour.

On the grassland of a cape at the prefecture's southern tip live the wild Misaki horses, a national Natural Monument. They live outdoors all year with no one tending them, and driving onto the cape means paying a conservation fee.

A Takachiho shrine to the cave where sun goddess Amaterasu hid; you may view the cave only from a spot across the stream, guided by a priest. Ten minutes along the brook lies Amano-Yasugawara, the grotto where the gods met, crowded with stacked stones.

A 513m hill west of the Takachiho basin; on many autumn mornings the basin floor fills with a sea of cloud. It lasts only an hour or two around sunrise, so people drive up in the dark, and it forms best after a cloudless night when the temperature plunges.

On the Hyuga coast, columnar-basalt cliffs some 70m high stand opposite one another over a slim inlet, and from the lookout at the end you watch waves surge in below. Nearby, from the Cross Hill, the rocky shore looks cut into a cross.

A footbridge 250m long and 142m high over a valley of evergreen laurel forest in Aya. You see the canyon between the deck boards, so when it sways people slow right down; across it a forest trail loops back. Driving from Miyazaki takes about an hour.

A small island off Kushima where, in 1953, wild monkeys were seen washing sweet potatoes in seawater, making it famous among researchers. A small boat crosses from Ishinami beach; the monkeys are bold, so keep any food out of sight.

A volcanic plateau at 1,200m on the west of the Kirishima range, trailhead for Mount Karakuni, the range's highest peak. Pampas grass and red leaves cover it in autumn, and trails sometimes close when nearby Mount Io stirs, so check the alerts first.