Kushimoto & Around

Kushimoto is where Honshu runs out of land. The lighthouse at Cape Shionomisaki marks the main island's southernmost point, and the warm Kuroshio Current keeps coral gardens thriving offshore — this is one of Japan's most accessible dive coasts. The Hashigui-iwa rocks, a 850-metre procession of sea-worn pillars, look like the ruined piers of a giant's bridge and are at their best at dawn. Across the strait, the island of Kii-Oshima tells the story of the Ottoman frigate Ertugrul, whose wreck here in 1890 forged an enduring friendship between Japan and Turkey. Around the cape, the section takes in Susami, a fishing coast beloved of divers, and the Kozagawa valley, where a limpid river slides beneath the vast single sheet of rock called Ichimai-iwa — Honshu's far south at its wildest.