The Nichinan Coast: Aoshima, the Cliff-Cave Shrine & Wild Horses — 2 Days

Aoshima is a tiny subtropical island, barely a kilometre around, joined to the Miyazaki shore by a low causeway and crowded with some five thousand betel-palms and tropical plants so that it feels like a piece of the South Seas set down off the coast. At its heart stands Aoshima Shrine, a bright vermilion shrine wrapped in jungle green, dedicated to the myth of Yamasachihiko, the mountain-luck brother who in the old story journeyed to the palace of the sea god and married his daughter — the same cycle of sea-and-mountain gods that runs all along this coast. The walk out across the causeway, the loop of the island through the palms, and the shrine in its grove make a perfect first hour, with the strange ribbed rock of the Devil's Washboard visible all around the shore. It is the natural symbol of the Miyazaki coast and the right place to begin.

Grounds free; the charm office is roughly 8:00-17:00. A short walk from JR Aoshima station across the causeway; no parking on the island itself. Allow about 75 minutes.

Around the whole shore of Aoshima and for kilometres along this coast the sea has cut the tilted beds of sandstone and mudstone into long parallel ridges and troughs, a vast ribbed rock platform exposed at low tide that looks exactly like an old-fashioned scrubbing board laid out for a giant — hence the name, the Devil's Washboard. It is a National Natural Monument, the result of millions of years of soft-and-hard layers worn unevenly by the waves, and at low water you can walk out onto the ledges among the tide pools right below the shrine. There is nothing to pay and nothing built; it is simply one of the strangest and most photographed natural surfaces in Japan, and the perfect short walk straight on from the island shrine while the tide is out.

Free; an open natural feature, best explored at low tide. Around the shore of Aoshima. Allow about 45 minutes.

South of Aoshima the coast road climbs to Horikiri Pass, the famous viewpoint of the Nichinan shore, where the highway runs through an avenue of Phoenix palms — the canary date-palms that gave this stretch its name, the Phoenix Road — and opens to the blue Pacific with the ribbed Devil's Washboard rock running on below the cliff. A few hundred metres on, the Michi-no-Eki Phoenix roadhouse sits right at the cliff edge with the same wide view, a good place to stop for lunch and to taste the local mango soft-serve and Miyazaki produce. Eating with the palms and the open sea in front of you, the whole curve of the coast laid out, is one of the simple pleasures of a Miyazaki drive and the natural midday break between the island and the shrines further south.

Free to stop; the roadhouse keeps daytime hours. On Route 220 just south of Horikiri Pass. Allow about 75 minutes for lunch and the view.

On a green hillside above the sea south of Horikiri stand seven moai, full-size replicas of the great stone figures of Easter Island and the only such statues in the world built with the formal permission of the island's elders — granted in thanks after a Japanese team helped restore the toppled originals. The seven stand in a row with their backs to the Pacific, and the hilltop park around them gives one of the best sea views on the whole coast, with flower terraces, a small farm and viewpoints running down to the water. It is a slightly surreal, very photogenic stop — Polynesian giants gazing out over a Japanese coast — and children love it. The hill is steep; a shuttle runs up from the car park for those who want it.

Adult about ¥1,000, child ¥500 (approx., 2026); roughly 9:30-17:00, closed Wednesdays. South of Horikiri Pass on the coast. Allow about 90 minutes.

Udo Jingu is one of the most dramatic shrines in Japan: the main hall stands not on a hilltop but inside a great sea-cave hollowed into the cliff face, reached by a vermilion stairway and a path that winds down the rock above the crashing Pacific. The shrine is tied to the birth of the father of Japan's first emperor — the myth says the sea god's daughter gave birth here in a cave by the shore — and the cave still drips with water said to have nourished the infant. Down on the rocks below the hall is the famous lucky-ball test: you buy five small clay balls called undama and throw them, men with the left hand and women with the right, at a shallow basin worn into a turtle-shaped rock in the surf, and a ball that lands inside is said to grant a wish. Between the painted hall in its cave, the throwing rock and the sea booming below, it is the most memorable shrine on the coast and a fine place to end the day.

Free; roughly 6:00-19:00 in summer, shorter in winter. Undama lucky-balls about ¥200 for five (approx., 2026). On the cliff coast south of Sun Messe. Allow about 75 minutes.

Obi was the seat of the Ito clan for nearly three centuries, and its old castle town — laid out below the hill with stone walls, samurai residences and merchant streets — is so well kept that it is called the Little Kyoto of Kyushu. The castle itself is now mostly walls, gates and grounds, with a reconstructed lord's hall and an old school for samurai sons, the Shintoku-do, still standing among the cedars; below it the grid of streets keeps its low tile-roofed houses, stone-walled lanes, garden walls and a couple of fine samurai homes you can enter. It is a quiet, green, walkable place, completely different from the bright coast of day one, and a single combination ticket gets you into the main paid buildings. A slow morning wandering the lanes and the castle grounds is the heart of the day.

Castle grounds free to walk; combination ticket for the paid halls about ¥800 (approx., 2026), roughly 9:30-17:00. In central Obi, about 90 minutes by car from Aoshima. Allow about 90 minutes.

The town's signature food is obiten, a sweet, deep-fried fishcake made by pounding local fish with tofu, miso and brown sugar and frying the paste into soft golden cakes, eaten warm as a snack or with rice. Shops along the old streets near the castle make and sell it fresh, and a sit-down meal of obiten with rice, pickles and the local greens is the right lunch after a morning in the castle town — sweet, savoury and unlike the fishcake of anywhere else in Japan. Eating it where it is made, on the merchant street it comes from, is part of the pleasure of Obi, and it sets you up for the long afternoon drive south to the cape.

An obiten set about ¥1,000-1,500 (approx., 2026); daytime hours. On the old merchant street by Obi Castle. Allow about 60 minutes.

At the very southern tip of Miyazaki, where the prefecture runs out into the sea toward the Osumi peninsula, Cape Toi is a wild grassy headland where a herd of small native horses has lived untended for centuries. The Misaki horses are descended from animals kept here by the Akizuki clan from the late 1600s and now roam free over the open downs as a protected National Natural Monument — perhaps a hundred of them, grazing the headland with foals at their side, the sea on three horizons. A road loops out to the white lighthouse of 1929, the only one in Kyushu you can climb, and the views from the cape over the Pacific are vast and empty. It is a long drive from Obi, but the wild horses on the open headland are like nowhere else in Japan and a fitting, lonely end to the two days. The horses are wild — watch them from a distance and never feed them.

Vehicle conservation fee about ¥400-500 (approx., 2026; confirm with Kushima tourism). Lighthouse about ¥300. In Kushima, roughly 90 minutes by car from Obi. Allow about 105 minutes.