Kagoshima, Japan

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Geo: 31.59, 130.56

Today started with breakfast delivered to our room--croissant, fruit and tea for me, and breakfast sandwich, juice and coffee for Philip. Ordering breakfast to the room is the easiest thing to do on days with early shore excursions. It was good and easy and perfectly on time. The breakfast sandwich wasn't that great, but everything else was nice.

Phil decided to skip the shore excursion to Kagoshima. I guess the jet lag finally got to him. He planned a spa day and felt much better by the time I returned from my tour.

I went on a half-day tour that included only two destinations. First we went to the Iso Garden, a Japanese style landscape garden that features beautiful ponds, shrines and bamboo growing on the coast with a view of Kagoshima Bay and Sakurajima in the distance. Just lovely. There are also homes and other buildings on the grounds that were constructed during the feudal age by the Shimazu Clan which controlled all the land in the area.

While we were walking through the garden, a brief rain hit. It fell fairly hard for a few minutes, but then stopped quickly. The tour director and the group huddled under one of the gates on the property and waited for it to clear before moving on through the area. How nice it is to see and feel real rain.

After leaving the garden, we got on the ferry to go to Sakurajima. It is an active volcano just off the coast. The cloudy day made it impossible to see the top of the mountain. It seems that it rarely is visible because of cloud cover. We walked up the path toward the lava observatory but were not able to see the trail of lava moving down the mountain. Our guide assured us that it was there, but just not the right conditions to see it.

There was a coating of fine gray ash on most everything in the area, which included us by the time we were ready to leave. We were there just after the 437th eruption of the year--yes, I said it was active. Mostly the eruptions just spray a bit of dust up, but the real eruptions happen often enough for the locals to have built volcano shelters on the road. They are simply concrete buildings about the size of one-car garages, closed on all but one side that faces away from the volcano.

UPDATE: The 500th eruption of the year was bigger than usual and left the city of Kagoshima across the bay covered with ash. Glad we were not on the island when that happened.

After a nice dinner with our very friendly and easy-to-talk-to tablemates, we enjoyed watching the Movie Under the Stars on the pool deck. It was nice to relax in a lounge chair and feel the ocean breezes while watching the movie.

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Photos

Squatty Potty
Mostly these have been replaced with Western-style now. However, they are still an option at some places. At the Iso Garden, one Western-style potty had a line of women waiting to use it while the five or six squatty potties were ignored.

Time for a Snack
Pineapple ice cream from the snack shop at the Iso Garden.

Coins in the Rock
It is believed that leaving coins in the lava rock at the base of Sakurajima will bring good luck. There were several rock formations with many coins from different countries stuck in them.

Market at the Base of Sakurajima
This market had a usual assortment of souvenirs, but they also sold tiny oranges and huge onions that grow on the island.

Chandelier in the Tour Bus
The buses in Japan have been great--wonderful air conditioning and spotlessly clean. They all have white lace slipcovers completely covering the entire front and back of the seats. This was the only bus that had a chandelier though.

Baskin Robbins
I don't remember ever seeing a BR in a foreign country. There are many other American chains though, so why not ice cream, too?