About This Site

Tanegashima is a small but incredibly beautiful island located just south of Kyushu and mainland Japan. The island is blessed with beautiful beaches, a warm ocean current, great surfing, and fantastic fishing. Yet with all this, Tanegashima actually gets very few foreign tourists which was quite evident once we moved to the island. I could not understand why we had these wide, wonderful, white sand beaches all to ourselves even on weekends and during holidays. Then I began to realize the answer might be Yakushima, our island neighbor to the west.

Picture - Hamada Beach, arguably the nicest beach on the island.

Yakushima was designated both a "UNESCO Man and the Biosphere Reserve" and a natural "World Heritage Site", and as such, receives a lot more attention than Tanegashima. Because of these designations, a plethora of Yakushima sites can be found online, both in English and in Japanese.

On the other hand, online information about Tanegashima in English is almost nonexistent. You can, of course, find numerous blog posts from previous visitors to the island, in particular, NASA folks who periodically came to the Tanegashima Space Center to assist in rocket launches. There is, however, no website, in English, dedicated to this gem of Japan.

This was my motivation for making TanegashimaJapan.com.

Hopefully you can find the Tanegashima information you need on this site, whether you plan on vacationing here, or possibly even moving to this wonderful place. Either way, if the information you want is not here, please consider visiting my personal blog for a more detailed look at the island along with lots of pictures.

My Personal Blog - meet the family and see more of the island

If you still want more information, please feel free to contact me via my Facebook page or messenger.

Facebook - add friend or message me

Thank you for coming to TanegashimaJapan.com.

Howie Hayman