Under the volcano...

I left the ferry somewhat weak in the knees. As Kagoshima welcomed me with bright weather, and unuasual high temperatueres, i went straight over to Sakura-Jima, on the other side of Satsuma bay.


Once having been an island, sakurajima now is a peninsula, as major eruptions connected it with the main island. Smoke is raising from the Crater top just all day long, bringing ash-rain from time to time. In fact Sakura-jima is a construction sight on its own. There are artifical hills meant to protect the port form downpouring lava, and they built giant drains to draw possible lava flows into the southern part of the bay. Around the mountain top, which is off limits vor all visitors there is one construction sight next to the other. You don't see much of that, as it's rather distant. The view is great anyway.

Kagoshima itself has some mediterranean flair, people are very stylish again, but not so uniformed like in Tokyo. And having left Okinawa, thinking, my Japanese became good enough, i had a very hard time getting the Satsuman dialect at all. It's very differentfrom anything I've heard in Japan so far, the sound of it is very light, and there seem to be many As and Es.

Kagoshima is more over full of history, as it's omnipresent hero Saigo Takamori coinitiated the Meiji Restoration, leading the opposition to it afterwards. Moreover, Kagoshima has been the landing site for Francisco Xavier, the first Catholic missionary entering Japan. So i just needed to go to one of the few catholic churches in japan and was warmly welcomend by the people there, hearing i come from catholicistic Austria ;-)
I stayed at the nice but somewhat old Busines Hotel Suzuya, the newer and cheaper option would have been one of the hotels just right when leaving the station.

Kagoshima Fotos.