Ian Rambles
Our guest house in Kagoshima turned out to be a gem - Fi waxes lyrical about it below.

The area is highly volcanic - with classic cones visible in all directions and hot springs everywhere - including one just round the corner from the guesthouse in the middle of the city feeding a traditional bathhouse.

Fiona's Journal
Friday August 1st
We left Miyajima this morning and then took three trains (including a high speed one) and 5 hours to reach Kagoshima at the Southern tip of whichever Island this is. The weather is still hot and very humid but we have somewhat lighter bags now and also have got much better at managing them. When we arrive at a station we immediately find a corner to pile them all up in a heap, which someone guards, while the rest of us find out where we need to go next and buys the cold drinks!

So this a pretty stress-free journey and gives me time to gaze out the window and realise just what a crowded country Japan is. It seems that it would be impossible to pack the housing any more densely, A large proportion of it is high rise blocks of flats and between them and the multi-storey blocks of commercial buildings and the narrow roads, every remaining square foot of land seems to be used for cultivation, much of it little rice paddies squeezed into every nook and cranny. There is no such thing as wasteland, to get strewn with rubbish and burnt out vehicles.

I was not surprised to find that the main island, especially round Tokyo, was so densely packed but it just seems to continue for ever. The only odd thing is that they seem to build almost exclusively on the flat coastal land. The central mountain territory is densely forested and with very little building at all on them. I'm sure a race as inventive as the Japanese could build on this land, however difficult, if they really wanted to but they don't. They do bore very long tunnels through them though, through which to run the railway lines, so for about a quarter of our journey it is pitch black outside!

Arriving at Kagoshima Chuo Station we are, once again, rescued by a kindly stranger as we try to decipher the website directions to our hostel. He is an older Japanese man, his name is George (oddly) and he is a retired English teacher so he speaks English pretty well and he walks us the quarter of a mile to “Little Asia” and acts as interpreter as we check in. When it transpires that we cannot pay by card and don't have enough cash, he kindly escorts me to the nearest ATM and waits to make sure it obliges before heading on his way, with our gratitude.

Little Asia has an immediately friendly and rather hippie feel about it. It appears to be run, and I suppose owned, by a woman of about my age and a young woman and young man who we presume to be her daughter and son. The daughter speaks a fair bit of English and has a lovely smile and she shows us our room and the three bunks in the male dormitory that we have booked for the boys. There is a little kitchen we can use. It is wonderfully cluttered and the fridge is bulging with items all labelled with their owners names plus a big bottle each of iced green tea and of iced barley tea which are free for all to drink. There is also a coffee maker with free ground coffee provided.

The kitchen leads off a larger common room with several computers which the boys can use (at floor level of course, as we are becoming used to) and a long low level table where all lodgers are invited to eat supper with the family for just 280 Yen a head. The washing machine and the washing powder are free to use, there are drying racks up on the concrete roof area above the 6th floor, there is an excellently powerful shower with free soap and shampoo provided.

Our bedroom is tiny with just a bunk bed and a ceiling platform above and standing space along one side and one end of the bed. It is air-conditioned however and the communal spaces are so congenial that we shall not feel the need to skulk in there. It reminds me of so many student houses of my youth apart from all the freebees!

We really enjoyed our home-cooked supper, eaten with a dozen or more of the other lodgers and the family, seated cross legged on the floor around the table. The food was much simpler than the hotel food and hence more recognisable and included prawns in batter, and chicken and potato salad and green salad and of course sticky rice and a bean curd soup with green tea to drink. It was delicious and we all ate well.

It was “Mum's” birthday so after we had eaten she was presented with a few gifts and a cake with candles and I wondered if we should introduce the custom of singing “Happy Birthday To You” but didn't.

Harry and George have decided they would rather share a mat up on the ceiling platform above our bunks than sleep in the dormitory but Arthur is quite happy to sleep there. And so to bed.

Saturday August 2nd
Today we mastered the tram system of Kagoshima by the simple ruse of standing at the the tram stop and watching what other people do. It is an admirably simple system with a flat rate fare of 160 Yen (or 80 for children) regardless of how far you go. Everyone piles on through double doors in the middle of the tram and gets off at the front, paying the driver on the way out. Best of all, there is a machine at the front of the bus so change notes into the most helpful selection of coins so every one can give the right fare very speedily. Surely we could manage that in English buses, in place of that snotty notice saying “exact fares only” which stops me ever using a bus since I never know what the fare is going to be and I am very unlikely to have the right change on me anyway.

The names of the stops come up on a screen within the tram, in both English and Japanese script and are also written very clearly above every bus shelter which is really helpful to anyone who doesn't know the town let alone foreigners.

We got off at the ferry port to Sakarajima and took the short ferry ride across to this Island with its smoking volcano and extensive lava fields. Even this island, which had major eruptions in 1905 and 1946 involving wholesale destruction and significant loss of life and could have another at any time, is quite densely populated and built upon. They are either eternally optimistic, the Japa nese, or just fatalistic!

We visited the museum and walked on some of the lava field but opted out of the steep 5km climb to the viewing platform at the volcano's rim. It was just too hot and steamy and also very misty so we thought we wouldn't see much. We also declined the rather pricey two hour coach tour of the Island, which would have included a stop at this viewing platform, and took the ferry back to Kagoshima.

Of course, no sooner had we stepped onto the ferry then the mist began to clear and we wondered if maybe we should have taken the chance to look into a volcano's mouth after all!

We went to the aquarium instead and I have to say, it was pretty stunning. As you enter the first huge, and dimly lit, hall you are confronted by a massive wall of glass through which you can see a whole marine world displayed before you. I could have just stood and watched this all day to be honest.

There was a great variety of fish from an enormous whale shark, that cruised slowly round his domain like an unveiled threat, to a perpetually whirling spherical shoal of sardines which split and recombined as other fish impacted on it but never lost the perfect co-ordination of its clockwise, close formation swimming.

There were many other good things but the other thing that will stick in my memory is a tiny tank near the exit which was full of tiny loach-like fish and had holes in the lid for children (and me) to put their fingers through. The fish would immediately flock to a new finger and busily clean it, of what I'm not sure (salt? oils? skinflakes?) which gave a funny rasping, ticklish sensation and made us all giggle.

We hopped on a tram back to the railway station and walked the short distance, via the ATM, home to Little Asia. Incidentally the finding of ATMs that will work with our British cards has become something of an obsession. Canada was pretty difficult but Japan is worse. Although the Post Office ones seem reliable they will not give more than 10, 000 Yen at one time which is only £50 and does not go far amongst the five of us. We often visit the machines twice in a day and use two different cards on each visit.

I have not had to devote so much time and thought to the acquisition of cash since our most impecunious days of 12% mortgage interest rates and negative equity in the 80's.

We had another excellent evening meal and a pleasant evening in the back porch of the hostel and, for a while, the company of a backpacking Frenchman. I got all our dirty washing done and hung out on the roof and watched the busy city night life from there for a while. I am sorry to be leaving Little Asia tomorrow and would recommend it to any lone backpacker as a great place to meet people and feel at home. It is also very good value for money in a generally quite expensive land.

Sunday August 3rd
Our ferry to Okinawa was not due to depart until 6.00pm so, although we had to be packed and out of our rooms by midday, we were allowed to leave our considerable mound of baggage stacked against the wall in the common room while we made the most of our last few hours in Kagoshima. First we went to the ATM, of course! Then we went present hunting as we really wanted to give the hostel owners a small gift in thanks for their hospitality. Then I left Ian and Arthur to return to the hostel to get some more work/ diary done (we are also permitted to use the communal facilities for the rest of the day which is really very generous) while I took Harry and George swimming at the sports centre just out of town.

Arthur's Log:
1st
Again, bused into town, got molested by deer, crossed on the ferry, got the train.

A Japanese English teacher helped us find our hostel and a very good hostel it is too. I'm staying in the mens dorm wile h,g,m,d are staying in a private room. For almost no money at all you can eat with the hostel owners and it was probably the best meal I have had on this trip, that might be because all I have eaten over the last 3 days its fish heads, squid and everything else that involves sea life. But just rice and and some home style chicken was so much more real. The food in the hotel was overkill, its not what Japanese people really eat its just for show.

We took a tram to the ferry port and took a ferry to the volcano and didn't really do much, the place is only really accessible by car and at 30$ per person for the bus we gave it a miss. There was some stuff, like a dried lava beach and a little info center but not much in all.

When we got back across on the ferry George wanted to do the aquarium so we did. I recognized half the stuff there from the last one but they did have a whale shark, which was pretty tiny considering a full sized whale shark could fit a medium sized elephant in his mouth.

We got back and ate another awesome meal at the hostel.