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We had a great trip to Japan in 2010, made even better because all our accommodation and travel was arranged and well documented for us. The main destination was to the south, the islands of Kyushu and Yakushima, but with the plane landing at Narita it was natural for us to start with a few days in Tokyo, or more precisely in the district of Asakusa. From there we travelled by train, plane, bus, car and ferry, finishing up in the island of Yakushima before flying off to Taipei. That was well before ferryman.ca was conceived, so the photos and notes here reflect that.

Asakusa was a good place for a first time visitor to Japan; close to the Ueno train station, and walking distance to Sensō-ji, the ancient Buddist temple, and also to the ferry pier on the Sumida River, where we headed on our second day. The boat service could be called a cruise or a river bus, but we used it as a ferry to travel downstream deeper into downtown Tokyo. As we waited for our boat we noted how our fellow travellers seemed to be either elderly Japanese or school children.

In many ways it reminded me of the Thames River Bus, as we passed under many elegant low bridges and the shoreline alternated between industrial and high-rise residential and offices.

We disembarked at the Hama-rikyū Gardens pier, access to the gardens being included in the ferry ticket. The gardens form an oasis of tranquility, surrounded on three sides by the intensity of downtown Tokyo and on the fourth by the Sumida River. In one corner is a traditional tea house, where we knelt on the tatami mats to be served matcha.

The gardens made a great start to checking out the sights of downtown Tokyo on foot. We headed first to Ginza—to say we'd been there, not to buy anything—and ended up wandering around the Kokyo Gaien National Garden by the Imperial Palace before returning to Asakusa on the metro.

After staying in Nagasaki for a few days our travels took us to an onsen on the edge of Mount Unzen. This very much remains an active volcano, having had a fatal eruption less than 20 years prior to our visit. Our next destination was near Mount Aso, but to get there we needed to take the ferry from Shimabara across the Ariake Sea to Kumamoto where we would pick up a small local train. It was a beautiful, calm, sunny day, and we spent most of the trip looking back where we had come from, watching Mount Unzen dominate the skyline.

We had time before our train in Kumamoto to have a good tour of the magnificent castle. Although some parts are a relatively modern reconstruction many of the old wooden structures are original. Since we visited there was a major earthquake that caused significant damage, repairs to which are estimated to take until 2052 to complete. We very much enjoyed our visit and were glad to have made the extra effort to fit it in before we had to catch our train to Akamizu, and hence by rented car to spend a couple of nights on the edge of Mount Aso, the largest active volcano in Japan.

Our third active volcano in Japan (notice a trend here?) was Mount Sakurajima, the most active in Japan. We first it saw from the train as we approached the city of Kagoshima, looking like a classic conical volcano, surrounded by the sea-water filled Aira caldera.

We were in Kagoshima to take the ferry to Yakushima, but we used part of our stay there to take a ferry and bus trip to Mount Sakurajima. The ferries are very frequent and easily accessible by public transport from the city centre. We took an all-in bus tour which combined the ferry crossing with a tour of the main sights of Sakurajima, which included the Yunohira Observatory from where we had great views back across to Kagoshima—and would have had similarly impressive views of the mountain top if it had not been covered in cloud. It was a very wet day, so the bus made a useful shelter!

Kagoshima is very much under the influence of Sakurajima. There are times when the ash from the volcano leaves deposits on the city streets and there are public shelters to protect people from major eruptions. Even for us as we walked around the city we noticed the crunch of the gritty ash underfoot at times. Sakurajima translates as Cherry Blossom Island; it was still an island until the lava flows of the 1914 eruption connected it with the Ōsumi Peninsula on its east side. Several days later when we left Yakushima we flew to Kagoshima Airport for our connecting flight, and had great views down on Sakurajima, with the vent clearly issuing ash.

Our travel organiser set us up with a couple of days on the island of Yakushima at the end of our trip. It seemed that although very few Japanese had ever visited Yakushima, everyone was in awe of the island, probably because the forests inspired the settings in Miyazaki's film Princess Mononoke. Our pre-trip research told us it was famous for its Yakusugi trees, an indigenous Japanese cedar some of which are several thousand years old. But as we crossed in the ferry from Kagoshima it did not seemed too inviting, being covered in low cloud and rain.

Our boat was a Boeing 929 Jetfoil – one of a small number of hydrofoils designed by Boeing and built by them or by Kawasaki under licence. The good part about travelling on one of these was the smoothness and the speed; it would have taken us over 6 hours on one of the conventional ferries, instead of the 2 hours the hydrofoil took for the trip. But the downside was that we had to strap ourselves in to the seats like an aeroplane and could not walk outside to enjoy the trip with the salt spray on our faces like we normally would. What amused us was that the TVs on the boat were showing the live transmission of the England vs. USA game at the soccer world cup—alas that resulted in 1-1 tie, which pretty much summed up England’s performance that year.

On the island we had a rental car and started our visit with a casual drive around the circumference. The rain did not help the view, but that did not stop us meeting the plentiful monkeys and deer. The next day was time for us to hike in slightly better conditions up into the interior to experience the ancient forests. There are just a few roads leading to the interior, all narrow, winding and in places steep. And all well worth driving to get you to the trail heads. We loved our day of hiking, but judging by the of moss and the many rushing streams, plentiful rain is the norm.

It’s not a very developed island, and many of the small businesses existed to make and sell furniture and artifacts made from the ancient wood, which these days should only come from naturally fallen trees. We stopped and bought a couple of very small token items, but that allowed us to wonder at the enormous tables and carvings with price tags of many thousands. But our real souvenirs were the memories of the lush forest and wildlife.