Volcano

Wow, I'm tired today - been a good day but a long one!  Anyhow, I have my red wine, rice and black bean cracker at the ready and will attempt to write this before I fall asleep.

Sakurajima ferry

Today we went to Kagoshima for the day.  We had done some research and come up with a plan of attack, as the ferry over to Sakarajima (the volcano) is only 160 Yen each, we decided we would have to go.

We arrived into the city at 11.30 on the Sakura Shinkansen, and then dashed into the shopping centre in the station to grab some lunch (takoyaki) and got the express 17 minutes later to Kagoshima Station - a rather run down affair.  We sat on the platform and ate our takoyaki which by then had cooled down to about 100 degrees from about 1000 degrees (still managed to burn my tongue on them though).  We then walked through the ash covered streets to the ferry port.  It was very humid and very hot - the hottest day by far.

Volcanic ash writing

There we got a rather large boat (I was expecting a touristy tug like you get in Devon but these were proper big car ferries that departed every 15 minutes) for the 10 minute voyage to Sakarajima.  Sakarajima is a magnificent site, it is a classic volcano shape rising out of the ocean about 1.5 miles from Kagoshima waterfront.

Goofy dinosaur

On arrival, we got a map and directed ourselves to the Dinosaur park.  We found out about this quite by accident last night when Matt was looking up good cherry tree viewing spots.  We walked up and up a hill to the top and were greeted by a plethora of goofy dinosaurs - none of them were fierce, all of them were covered in volcanic ash and some of them had slides, tunnels etc built into them.  They were fun.  There was also a massive kids roller slide in the park which took some getting used to.  You have to come down it crouched on your feet - we had to watch the local children do it to get the technique right, but once we did it was great fun - although it had your feet vibrating for a good 10 minutes afterwards.

Hot, hot, hot!

English man abroad!

We walked all around the park, taking in all the view points and then headed back down in search of a free foot bath we had heard about.  We found it - it was full of volcanic ash (everything is covered in the grey powder here) and very very very very hot!  It took quite a few attempts to get our legs in, but once we did it was heaven.  When Matt took his legs out, he had a rather comical red tide mark on them (his legs are quite white, so show off the red really quite well).  The tide mark stayed with him for a good half an hour.  Funny, neither Tom nor I got one and we kept our legs in for about the same length of time too!

We then had a quick look around the visitor's centre - quite interesting, even though it was all in Japanese.  We got to see footage of proper lava erupting out of the top.  Sakarajima is one of Japan's most active volcanoes, it went 'off' 737 times last year, but only 32 times this year - we wondered if it was storing itself up for a big one.  We walked back to the ferry terminal and headed back to Kagoshima, where on arrival we were treated to a dolphin display at the aquarium which takes place in a public space.   Fantastic, the dolphins leaped, dived and splashed around.  Tom was mesmerised by it - and didn't move from the front even though he was getting wet and all around him people were squealing and running away from the splashes.

Sakurajima going off

We then headed to Dolphin Port - a collection of shops and restaurants aimed at tourists.  We looked round but didn't buy anything, generally, what a Japanese person considers a souvenir, we don't (e.g. their edible omiyage - most of which is just not to our taste.) We came out of one shop to be greeted with the incredible sight of a massive plume of ash erupting out of the top of Sakurajima - wow!!!!!  We were all excited.  Tom was shouting, "Call Ms Middleton NOW!!!!!!!".  I guess the number of eruptions will be increased to 33 times this year after today.  Well done Sakarajima, we really enjoyed seeing you like that!

Looking down on Kagoshima

By now we were getting quite weary, so decided to get the tram back to Kagoshima Chuo, where we went to Krispy Kreme for our 4pm doughnut to try to revive ourselves.  We then did a spot of shopping in Uniqlo and Muji, printed some pics out at Bic Camera (Tom is making a scrapbook of his trip for school).  Next stop was the ferris wheel on the top of the shopping centre.  We didn't think Tom would be up for it, but he was, as it was pretty cheap, we decided to do it.  Unfortunately by now it was raining, so Sakarajima was almost hidden in the clouds, but we promised him so we did it and to be fair to Tom, he loved it.  Didn't show any fear at all!  It was a good view, but it would have been better without the rain and clouds.  Next stop was back downstairs to the supermarket to choose bentos for our train trip home. Always a fun thing to do.

The train trip home flew by, then it was straight back home to bed.  It was a busy busy day and we were all very tired.