Iki

Iki is about 134 square kilometers of low hills and rice fields, 17 km from north to south, and the jetfoil from Hakata gets there in about an hour and ten minutes. Which port you land at, Gonoura or Ashibe (or Indoji if you come from Karatsu), depends on the sailing, and the boat home may leave from a different one, so arrange the rental car around that. On the tip of the Kurosaki peninsula in the west, Saruiwa is a 45 m basalt stack that, from the viewpoint, looks like a monkey looking out to sea. The ruins of the Kurosaki gun battery, finished in 1933 to cover the strait and never fired in war, are next to it. Harunotsuji in the southeast was a large moated settlement that lasted about 600 years from the 2nd century BC. It is identified as the capital of the Iki kingdom described in the Chinese Wei Zhi, and the remains of what is called Japan's oldest boat landing were found there; the city's Ikikoku Museum covers it. Kojima Shrine stands on an islet in Uchime Bay that you can walk to only for a few hours around low tide. Iki shochu, made from barley, has protected regional status, and Iki beef is the other local name to look for.