Kagoshima City
This is the fourth of four posts profiling the places we visited during Japan’s “Golden Week” in Spring 2007. The first is Yakushima, the second is Tanegashima, and third is the Fukiage Beach Sand Festival. We also had a couple of misadventures on the trip which I wrote about here and here.
Kagoshima City, with a population of approximately 600,000, is the fourth largest city in Kyushu, the largest southern island of Japan. “It has been nicknamed the ‘Naples of the Eastern world’, for its bay location (Aira Caldera), hot climate and impressive stratovolcano, Sakurajima.” The city is best known for its history in the period surrounding the start of the Meiji Restoration. In violation of the isolation laws preceding the Restoration, 17 students were secretly sent from Kagoshima (known at the time as Satsuma) to study Western technology in Europe and the US (the students are commemorated in the statue above). As a result, many of Japan’s early industrialization efforts were centered in Satsuma. It is also known as the home of the samurai Saigo Takamori, a legendary figure in Japanese history, who led the Satsuma rebellion against the Meiji government. He’s roughly analogous to General Lee in US history, minus the animus of slavery. His last stand was depicted – with great hyperbole – in the movie The Last Samurai.
The city is now known for its shopping districts, local cuisine, tourist attractions, and, of course, the simmering, occasionally ash spewing volcano that dominates the eastern skyline. The outdoor Tenmonkan shopping district has a series of long, translucent roofs, which are there so shoppers can go about their business without worrying about ash getting in their clothes and hair. For the rest of the city, there are ash collection points every few blocks, where residents and shopowners are expected to deposit the ash they sweep up and bag.
The central area of the city is dominated by a modern aquarium, the Tenmonkan, the Dolphin Port outdoor mall, and a number of museums, ancient ruins, temples, and statues celebrating the area’s history. The Dolphin Port mall sports a hot spring-fed footbath, which Kai and Maria thoroughly enjoyed. Unfortunately, you don’t see things like this in the US – only in Japan is there complete, mutual trust that everyone will clean their feet properly before using the footbath.
All the food we ate in Kagoshima City was delicious. I remember the night we had sushi especially well, because it was the freshest sushi I’ve ever eaten, and because just a few hours later, I threw out my back.
For our last night in Kagoshima City, I took Kai to see Spider Man 3 at the enormous, modern Amu Plaza, which is probably the only place within a 100 miles where you can really immerse yourself in Japan’s consumer culture (which, believe it or not, surpasses the US’). We were staying across town from the plaza, so we rode on the trams. They aren’t too hard to figure out once you get to know the main roads, even if you don’t speak Japanese. Fortunately, in Japan they show most American movies in English, with Japanese subtitles. Unfortunately, Kai got scared towards the end of the movie when Venom was on the loose, so we had to leave before the movie was over – I still don’t know how it ends 
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The only part of our visit that didn’t work out was our last half day. It was raining so we decided to cancel our plan to take the ferry over to see the historical sites surrounding the volcano. Instead, Maria and I cobbled together the last of our yen coins so I could take the boys into the aquarium while she tried to figure out where to get some more cash. It was a holiday, and the post office ATMs were unexpectedly closed (I wrote about how all that turned out in this post).
I should re-iterate from my previous post that we enjoyed staying at the Nakazono Ryokan. It’s inexpensive, it has a central location (it’s within walking distance of the Yamakataya bus terminal and the main port), and the man who runs it is very attentive. He even helped us buy our ferry tickets and gave us a ride to the port after I hurt my back. And he speaks English 
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On the trip home Maria and I had idle conversation about someday retiring somewhere on Kyushu. It’s a place of stunning natural beauty, but with a few cities big enough that you can enjoy what civilization has to offer too.
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