Kyushu is the best roadtrip, a dramatic wide open low-density country with colours and cragginess reminiscent of the US. We took the train past the Mazda factory to Fukuoka and drove through Beppu, with its steaming hillside sulphuric aquifers, pausing in the charming Diagon Alley-like gourmand town of Yafuin and the narrow and expensive ryokan-strewn cobblestones of Kurakawa Onsen;