Saga

The lord's Honmaru palace, reconstructed in wood in 2004 and among the largest such rebuilds in Japan. The original Shachinomon gate still standing beside it carries bullet marks from the Saga Rebellion of 1874.

A large Yayoi settlement ringed by a double moat, with its watchtowers, pit houses and raised storehouses rebuilt. The park is so big that walking it takes half a day, and the bicycles lent at the entrance make it far easier.

As host of Asia's biggest hot-air balloon meet, the city opened a museum just for balloons in its centre in 2016. In fiesta week a temporary JR station, Balloon Saga, opens beside the riverside launch field, and trains call there only on those few days a year.

A vermilion tower gate built in 1915 by Tatsuno Kingo, architect of Tokyo Station, fitted together without a single nail. Moto-yu, the public bath through the gate, still uses its old wooden bathhouse, and locals come and go from early morning.

Its silky water ranks this onsen town among Japan's top three for beautiful skin, with a Nishi-Kyushu shinkansen station since 2022. The riverside bath Siebold-no-Yu copies its old Western-style bathhouse, and tea from the hills around comes with it.

Japanese porcelain began here in 1616, when the Korean potter Yi Sam-pyeong found kaolin at Izumiyama. The ceramics fair from 29 April to 5 May draws around a million people each year, and Tozan Shrine has a torii made of porcelain.

The secret kiln village where the Nabeshima domain hid its kilns in a ravine to keep the techniques from leaking, its old checkpoint rebuilt at the entrance. Some 30 kilns still line the stone-walled slopes, and even the bridge railings wear porcelain.

Ranked with two others as Japan's great Inari shrines, its vermilion main hall sits on a stilted stage against the cliff, like Kiyomizu-dera. The path behind climbs through rows of small red torii to the Okunoin, which looks out to the Ariake Sea.

A garden finished in 1845 by the lord of Takeo, with hundreds of thousands of azaleas round a pond beneath the sheer cliff of Mount Mifune. April azaleas are its fame, and each year a teamLab show takes over the whole garden at night through summer and autumn.

An Ariake Sea mudflat with tides that swing up to 6m, registered under the Ramsar Convention in 2015. Between May and September mudskippers hop over the mud at low tide, and in October and November the salt plant shichimenso turns the flat crimson.

A public library remodelled in 2013 under a bookstore chain, walls lined with wooden shelves to the ceiling and a cafe and bookshop inside. Coffee with library books draws tourists; the shot everyone takes is from the upper walkway over the reading room.

A castle on a hill jutting into Karatsu Bay, also called Maizuru, the dancing crane, for its spread-wing outline. The keep was rebuilt in 1966, the top looks along the bowed pine shore of Nijinomatsubara, and an inclined lift climbs the hill from below.

Black pines curving about 4.5km along Karatsu Bay, planted some 400 years ago against sea winds and now counted in the trio of the nation's finest pine groves. A road cuts through for an easy drive, while seaward paths carpeted in needles stay quiet.

Seven sea caves cut by waves into basalt cliffs north of Karatsu, a national natural monument. A squid-shaped tour boat leaves Yobuko harbour and on calm days noses inside the largest cave; in rough water it turns back at the mouth.

An old Kashima post town where white-plastered sake breweries line some 400m of street, protected as a national heritage district. Several pour tastings at the counter, and on the spring day they all open together, crowds walk in from the station.

A market filling some 200m of harbour lane in Yobuko each morning, ranked with Wajima and Katsuura as the country's top three morning markets. Grandmothers lay out dried squid, fish and vegetables to haggle over, and by noon the lane is bare.