Onsen (hot springs). Beppu city, Oita prefecture

Beppu city is situated at the foot of slope, covered with pieces of volcanic rock, extruded from one or several nearby volcanoes in the recent past. 3500 fumaroles (crack that exhale gases), hot springs and geysers are estimated in vicinity of Beppu. This makes Beppu one of the biggest districts in the world by thermal springs. Boiling lakes that are called "zigoku" show a great variety of sizes and colouring, where tourists take medicinal bath, rich with mineral salts.

Island Amakusagoke. Prefecture Kumamoto

District Amakusa consits of 120 islands, washed by warm pools of Ariyake and Yashiro seas. Due to the warm climate, animal and vegetal life of Amakusa is extremely diversified and welth.
The best laminaria is cultivated here and is used for preparing sushi.
When it was issued a decree on prohibition the Christian religion in 1611-1614, Christians were banished here.

Local dishes :

• Tikuzen ni - different vegetables, boiled in soy sauce
• Hiyazen - cold soup with vegetables
• Karukan
• Siratsu-no hama nomi - young fish iwashi dipped in a bowl with soy sauce
• Basashi - fresh horseflesh
• Fugu nabe - pottage with fugue
• Takama tsukemono - pickled morass

Such seafood as fugu (swell-fish), saba (mackerel), sirauo (flake fish) are the local dishes of Fukuoka prefecture that is washed by waters of Genkai-nada (blue water Genkai). One of the most famous dishes of Fukuoki is tikuzen ni, which is prepared on New Year.

Prefecture Saga is full with such seafood from Genkai-nada and Ariake-kai as uni (sea-urchin), ebi (shrimps) and scallops. The prefecture used to be a whale industry base, thus a lot of dishes made of whale meat remained in local diet.

Local population of Nagasaki prefecture, west Kyusyu, has been trading with China, Portugal, Netherlands and Spain for ages. Thus an original cuisine was developing here, where local and foreign types of preparing food mixed (e.g. tyanpon and sara-udon became local dishes after some time).

Kumamoto prefecture is famous for its wealthy nature. And local dishes here are kurumaebi (tiger shrimps), tai (crap), iwashi, ayu and other products. And the most famous dishes are karashi-renkon (lotus rootstock with mustards) and sashimi from horseflesh.

People usually use flour and satsumaimo (batata) for preparing food in Oita prefecture. Each Oita's district has such original dishes as inoshishi-nabe (nabemono made of boar) etc.

Such soups with vegetable as hiyajiru, kentyanjiru and other are prepared in Miyazaki. People usually use shiitake (mushrooms), kabocha (pumpkin) and other vegetables cultivated here for making local dishes.

Prefecture Kagoshima had trading relations with China and Ryukyu (now Okinawa) from the ancient times, thus it is famous for it's dishes made of pork. They say that the way of preparing satsumaage was borrowed from Ryukyu.

One more feature of the district is that people at Kyushyu use wheat miso instead of soy one. It is explained by that it was rather difficult to cultivate soy in local warm climate and people used to preparing dishes from wheat.

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