Thanks Don, long time no see. I thought about you on this trip when we were in Tokyo and walked by a katsu restaurant......chuckled.

Aloha!

ok, no need to go to japan... i've been reading this report

rhkkmk, yes you have to go to Japan with us and pay for half the rooms in Kyoto.

Hi hawaiiantraveler! Just found your Kyushu trip report. I'm again following your footsteps, this time to Kyushu. You helped me a lot with planning for the Hokkaido trip 2 years ago. I'm starting to plan for a Japan trip that includes Kyushu this March. Will peruse your trip report to get ideas and will ask you further questions. I'm thinking of renting a car and dropping it off in Kumamoto like you did. Thanks in advance.

HT (or other Fodorites), do you still have your list of phone #'s for entering in the GPS for places you drove to Kyushu? We're planning to do similar route as yours the last week of March:

Kumamoto --> Takachiho Gorge (this is a difficult one to get phone # for) --> Mt Aso --> Kurokawa

Thanks!

For Takachiho Gorge, we did a Google Map search, used the street view to make sure we were focused in on the right place, near the car park, then clicked on the various entries in Google Maps until we found one that had a phone number attached, and used that. It seemed to work. Sadly, we didn't do this until we arrived in Japan and I no longer have the piece of paper that has the number attached.

For most of the places, we just used the phone number of our hotel, which is also what we did for Kurokawa Onsen.

kavey, that's a great suggestion to get phone #'s from Google Map. OK, found the # of the Takachiho Shrine so we can use that. Thanks again!

No I do not have the phone numbers but I would just ask the hotel or ryokan I was staying at to look them up for me if I did not have them and they did gladly.

For Takachiho Gorge I had a brochure with the phone number of a hotel in Takachiho which I plugged in which got me to the area and from there followed the English/Japanese signs to the Gorge. For Mt Aso I googled before I left home and took the phone number of the website. In fact I usually do that for all sites I want to see before I leave. The ones I cant find I let the hotel/ryokan find for me. works for me, have fun!

Aloha!

Great, glad it worked!

Great report. Thanks for sharing. It helps a first-time Japan trip planner like me greatly!

Glad it helped you. Enjoy Japan!

Aloha!