Place names in English

English spellings of Japanese place names vary from source to source. The same island may appear as “Fukuejima”, “Fukuejima Island” or “Fukue Island” on road signs, maps and booking sites, and long vowels may be written “Gotō” or “Goto”. None of these is wrong; they are different conventions. When you ask locals for directions, the Japanese reading (for example “Fukuejima”) is understood everywhere.

How this site writes names

• Ports, airports and operators use the official English name where the operator or municipality publishes one (for example “Goto Tsubaki Airport”, whose Japanese name is 五島つばき空港; it is also called Fukue Airport).
• Islands replace the Japanese word for island (島, -jima or -shima) with “Island”: 福江島 Fukuejima becomes “Fukue Island”, 久賀島 Hisakajima becomes “Hisaka Island”. Where that would leave a single syllable, the Japanese reading is kept: 大島 and 黄島 are both “Oshima Island”, 納島 Noshima is “Noshima Island”.
• Romanization follows the Hepburn system without macrons: “Goto”, not “Gotō”.
• Two islands share the English name Oshima Island; lists and menus add the municipality: “Oshima Island (Goto City)” and “Oshima Island (Ojika)”. Nakadori Island is shown as “Nakadori Island (Kamigoto)”, because the island is widely known as Kamigoto (“upper Goto”).
• Other spellings you may meet (for example “Fukue Airport”) are listed below and also work in the search boxes on this site.

About the name “Goto”

Goto (五島, Gotō) literally means “five islands”, a traditional count of the main islands of the group; the archipelago is also called Goto Retto (五島列島). It is pronounced roughly “go-toh”, with the second vowel held long. The name of this site, “Go to GOTO!”, is a play on that pronunciation. In running text this site writes “Goto” and the “Goto Islands”.

Islands

Ports and airports