Kyushu is the most southern of Japan's four main islands, and the third largest. Fukuoka is the big modern city in the north of the island; Nagasaki is the famous port in the west. It is warmer than much of Japan, volcanic, and green. English just borrows the Japanese name. In Japanese it is 九州, literally “nine provinces” — an old way of counting the districts on that island. Students who already know Chinese will recognise the characters, though actually Chinese 九州 is also an old name for China itself, so the same writing can point at two different maps. In English, Kyushu means the Japanese island.