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Kagoshima sits at the southern tip of Kyushu, looking across a bay at an active volcano that erupts most days. Sakurajima drops ash on the city regularly enough that residents carry umbrellas for it and the local forecast includes an ash direction. It gives the place an atmosphere no other Japanese city has.
The climate is subtropical, the food is distinctive, and the city played an outsized role in ending the shogunate and building modern Japan.
The volcano was an island until a 1914 eruption produced enough lava to join it to the peninsula. It is one of the most active in the world, with minor eruptions on most days and larger ones several times a year.
A ferry crosses from the city in fifteen minutes and runs around the clock. On the island there are observation points at safe distances, lava field walking trails, and a free foot bath fed by hot springs, over a hundred metres long, looking back at the city.
You cannot climb it. The summit has been closed for decades for obvious reasons.
Kagoshima was the seat of the Shimazu clan, who ran the Satsuma domain and were central to the Meiji Restoration that ended the shogunate in 1868. Sengan-en, the Shimazu villa and garden, uses Sakurajima as borrowed scenery across the bay, which is one of the more audacious garden compositions anywhere.
The Museum of the Meiji Restoration covers the period well, and Saigo Takamori, the samurai leader who turned against the new government and died on a hillside above the city, is commemorated in several places. He is the figure the film The Last Samurai was loosely based on.
Kagoshima punches far above its weight historically, and knowing why makes the museums land better.
The Satsuma domain, run by the Shimazu clan from here, was among the wealthiest and most independent in Japan. It traded with the Ryukyu Kingdom and, through it, with China, in defiance of the shogunate’s closed country policy. That gave it money and outside knowledge.
When Britain shelled the city in 1863 over the killing of an English merchant, Satsuma responded not by digging in but by sending students secretly to London to learn industrial technology. Within a few years the domain was building Japan’s first Western style factories at Shuseikan, now part of the Sengan-en site and a UNESCO listed piece of the Meiji industrial revolution.
Satsuma then led the alliance that overthrew the shogunate in 1868. Saigo Takamori, its most famous son, helped install the new government and then rebelled against it in 1877 when it dismantled the samurai class, dying on Shiroyama hill above the city. You can walk up to the cave where he spent his last days, and the view over the bay from the top is the best in Kagoshima.
Kurobuta, Berkshire black pork, is the prefecture’s pride, raised on sweet potato feed and served as tonkatsu, shabu-shabu or in a rich miso stew. Satsuma-age are deep fried fish cakes, often with vegetables mixed through, and are eaten everywhere.
Kibinago, silver stripe round herring, are a local sashimi served fanned out with vinegar miso. Torisashi, raw chicken, is a regional speciality that visitors can take or leave.
Shochu matters more than sake here. Kagoshima is the centre of sweet potato shochu production with over a hundred distilleries, and it is drunk with hot water rather than neat. Shirokuma, the shaved ice dessert piled with condensed milk and fruit, was invented in Tenmonkan and is worth having at the original shop.
Kagoshima prefecture has more hot springs than almost anywhere in Japan. Ibusuki, an hour south, is known for sand baths, where you are buried up to the neck in naturally heated volcanic sand on the beach. It is stranger and more pleasant than it sounds.
Yakushima, a ferry or short flight away, is a UNESCO-listed island of ancient cedar forest, some trees thousands of years old, and the landscape that inspired Princess Mononoke. It rains a great deal.
Kurobuta, Berkshire black pork, is the local pride, served as tonkatsu or shabu-shabu. Satsuma-age are fried fish cakes, and shochu, the distilled spirit, is taken more seriously here than sake, usually made from sweet potato.
Shirokuma is the local shaved ice dessert, piled with condensed milk and fruit, and named for its resemblance to a polar bear.
Kagoshima-Chuo station is where the Shinkansen arrives and has the largest hotel supply. Tenmonkan, the covered arcade district a few tram stops east, is the eating and drinking centre and closer to the ferry terminal.
Several city hotels have hot spring baths, since Kagoshima sits on so much geothermal water that even ordinary business hotels can tap it. Rooms facing east give you Sakurajima across the bay, which is worth asking for.
Kagoshima prefecture has more hot springs than almost anywhere in Japan, and they come in unusual forms.
Ibusuki is known for its sand baths, where attendants bury you up to the neck in volcanically heated black sand on the beach for around ten minutes. The heat is even and surprisingly heavy, and you emerge scarlet and extremely relaxed.
Kirishima, inland to the north, is a cluster of hot spring resorts in a national park of volcanic peaks and crater lakes, with good hiking between them. Sakurajima itself has the free foot bath and several day-use baths on the island.
The island deserves its own section because it deserves its own trip. A UNESCO World Heritage site two and a half hours by hydrofoil or thirty minutes by air, Yakushima is a mountainous granite island covered in ancient cedar forest.
The yakusugi, cedars over a thousand years old, are the draw. Jomon Sugi, the largest, is estimated at anywhere between two and seven thousand years and takes a demanding ten hour return hike to reach. Shiratani Unsuikyo is the accessible alternative, a moss covered ravine that inspired the forest in Princess Mononoke, with trails from one to five hours.
It rains here more than almost anywhere in Japan, famously thirty five days a month in the local saying. Waterproofs are not optional. Three or four days is the realistic minimum.
Kagoshima is subtropical, warm year round and humid in summer, with a rainy season through June and a genuine typhoon risk from August to September. Spring and autumn are the comfortable windows.
Ash from Sakurajima falls on the city regularly, and the direction depends on the wind. It is a nuisance rather than a hazard, but you will see residents with umbrellas on clear days and yellow ash collection bags on street corners, which is one of the more memorable everyday details in Japan.
The Kyushu Shinkansen runs from Hakata in Fukuoka to Kagoshima-Chuo in around 90 minutes. From Osaka the full journey is around four hours with a change.
The city has trams covering the centre, and the Sakurajima ferry leaves from a terminal a short bus ride from the station.
Two days covers the city, Sengan-en and Sakurajima. Add a day for Ibusuki, or three or four for Yakushima, which deserves its own trip rather than a rushed visit.
Yes. It erupts frequently but at a small scale, and visitor areas are kept at safe distances with monitored exclusion zones. The summit is permanently closed.
A fifteen minute ferry from Kagoshima city, running around the clock.
You are buried up to the neck in volcanically heated beach sand for around ten minutes. An hour south of the city and unlike any other onsen experience in Japan.
About 90 minutes on the Kyushu Shinkansen.
If you have three or four days and like hiking, yes. The ancient cedar forest is extraordinary. It is not a day trip.
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