Small in size and cosmopolitan in its outlook, Kobe is a thoroughly pleasant city with a long and distinguished history as one of Japan’s main trading ports. Kobe’s past as a commercial hub is reflected in its architecture, with a number of unusually European-looking houses, as well as a charming, if slightly touristy, Chinatown.

On 6 August 1945 the world witnessed the terrifying power of nuclear weapons for the first time, unleashed on the unsuspecting Japanese city of Hiroshima. The modern city's sobering Peace Memorial Park commemorates that fateful day, which left more than 140,000 dead.

Fukuoka is the largest city on the southern island of Kyushu, and has long been an important centre for trade due to its proximity to the Asian mainland, closer to Seoul than it is to Tokyo. It’s a friendly, sunny place, and the city was created by a merger of two towns: Fukuoka, the old castle town, and Hakata, the former merchant district.

Three days after Hiroshima was flattened by an atomic bomb, Nagasaki suffered the same horrifying fate. The reconstruction of both cities has been quite extraordinary; Nagasaki today is a vibrant, cosmopolitan place, with a fascinating history that goes back a lot further than 1945.

The friendly southern Japanese city of Kagoshima enjoys a balmy climate, and sits just across the bay from the very active Sakurajima volcano, which erupts so regularly that an ‘ash forecast’ is included in local weather reports.

Steam rises over the spa town of Beppu, home to numerous onsen (hot springs) and the surreal red waters of the macabre-sounding ‘blood pond hell’. Beppu is also close to Mount Aso, the largest active volcano in Japan, and the ancient temples of the Kunisaki Peninsula.