Sakurajima and Sengan-en
Today I did both of the main tourist things to do in Kagoshima in a single day.
I took too many photos, mainly of a mountain from afar but the light was good.
Given the number of photos taken, I will do most of the explaining below, but spoiler alert, I was a bit disappointed with Sengan-en!
I do not consider the Sakurajima hiking loop a hike, but since it seems to be a popular hike, I will put the stats anyway...
So here are the stats -
15.51km, all on roads or footpaths (sidewalks)
3 hours 29 minutes
441m vertical ascent
746 calories burned
20,480 steps, but be aware I am on 32k steps total for the day
First I walked from my hotel to the ferry terminal in Kagoshima, about 4,500 steps. Great light!
Here is the ferry terminal, and one of the ferries, they run every 20 minutes.
I was at the ferry terminal at 8am, every shop was closed. But do not worry, you can buy stuff once you arrive at Sakurajima. It is worth noting this is not just a holiday island, people live there, there are schools, and it is a highway to the other side of Kyushu. The ferries run all night.
Since I was quite early, I had the entire top deck of the ferry to myself. Although that could also be because it was quite windy today, I am a bit wind burnt now I think.
Nice view, nice light.
One level down and there were a few people, but in one area of the ferry there were a lot of people...
It may be 8am, it may be a 15 minute $2 ride, but there is a noodle restaurant, and it was very popular.
Let's head to Sakurajima.
Nearly there, I already took too many photos of a mountain from afar.
There are a few shops right by the ferry terminal, but they are probably not useful at this time of day.
If you walk the anti clockwise route, as recommended, you will soon pass both a lawson and a family mart, there is a special reason why they are both brown coloured, but I forget what it is.
This is the hiking 'trail' for the day. Enjoy. This is also the highway to the other side of Kyushu, but it was very quiet, maybe 1 car every 5 minutes.
Every few hundred metres there is a shelter in case of eruption. I have my doubts it would save you.
Hmm, perhaps a canal to safely direct lava out to sea.
There are a few towns around what was once an island but is now connected to Kyushu since the 1914 mega eruption. They are not really touristy towns at all.
After walking around the coast for a while, it was time to turn back towards the mountain and start the minor ascent. I used that vending machine on the right.
There are a couple of shrines, somewhere there is a half buried in formerly molten rock torii gate, but I did not see it. The shrines are very basic.
I started to get a bit of a view of the coast, and a lot more wind.
Reality check, here is the hiking trail.
Now I am really starting to think these might be canals for lava.
About 2/3 of the way around the hiking loop, you will get to the main observation spot. It is over 3km to the crater, it is as close as you can get these days. I did not see any smoke or sparks, but people regularly do, there are numerous live streams on youtube.
View from the observation area.
And looking back to Kagoshima, I will now walk back to the ferry terminal.
OK one more. I did no photo of myself because it was too windy.
There are at least 10 very friendly cats hanging around, they were each being live streamed by someone.
Here is the view on the way down, more of the same.
I arrived back at 'the beach', and it was indeed now very windy. Despite that, the ferry rides were completely smooth.
Typical street scene in this area.
The ferry terminal on this side does not have as many shops, but the cafe was open. Why bother when there is a noodle shop onboard?
I again had the top deck to myself, vomit trough on the right.
Now for the much hyped Sengan-en garden. It was $16 to get in, which in my opinion is a rip off, and easily the most expensive garden I know of anywhere in Japan. It starts with some rocks.
Then there are just a very large number of gift shops and cafes.
Ancient rotting chip board?
A lot of the place is under re-construction and closed off.
More things covered in plastic sheeting.
OK, I made it to a rock garden. There were a lot of people hanging around at the top.
I made my way up a mossy path.
The reason there were a lot of people at the top, a traditional poetry reading was just finishing. Everyone fled immediately.
More moss.
More Sakurajima, those houses are quite modern, with air conditioners and car parking. I must be missing something.
Just outside the exit, there is a Starbucks (not pictured, and I believe they sponsor the garden in some way!), but there is also this building which may have been a canon factory, and the guy that built the canons originally built the garden.
Then it was time to take the train just 2 stops back to my hotel, with everyone else. You can see a beach with actual sand in the background. There was windsurfing going on, great day for it.
So it is relatively easy to walk a loop of Sakurajima and visit Sengan-en in a day.
Shiroyama park observation deck
42k step day.
After a brief sit down from the earlier double activity, where I never sat down even once, including standing up on the train, I headed back out into the late still not raining afternoon and spotted a hill behind the shopping area.
A quick google suggested I needed to go around and up a road to get up there, but I did not really believe that, and so I just headed straight for it and found a stair case.
The view from the top was great, and obviously featured a volcano, still not erupting. There were also cats.
Anyway, it is a 5:15am wake up call tomorrow to get the first train out of town to a hike in the far south, so just a few pics and an early night.
Most people find vending machines with used schoolgirl under garments to put on the internet. I find vending machines with assorted purple sweet potato snacks.
Here is the aforementioned staircase.
Behold, once more, Sakurajima. I plan for this to be the last such photo.
Some more of Kagoshima as seen from the observatory.
Of course if you feel like getting conjunctivitis, you can.
And then for dinner, vegetable soup curry. My second time having this so far on this trip, although the last time was in Hong Kong. Neither of them were in Hokkaido where it comes from, they have big bears there.
Kaimondake from Kaimon station
That was a long day.
Today I went and climbed the southern most of the famous 100 mountains of Japan, that list is a big deal, trust me.
Getting there was ok, getting back took forever. I will explain below.
I expected it to rain, and it did, but never enough to cause concern, but I did not expect a 3 hour thunderstorm with the occasional hail. It made it interesting. There were also probably 20 or so other people on the trail, in full wet weather gear. I was wearing shorts and a t-shirt.
Super tired so lets go straight to the stats -
11.68km but this hike is harder than that distance suggests
928m vertical ascent
1,665 calories burned
4 hours 58 minutes
18,136 steps
Now for a few moist pics, I will explain the train situation below.
Here is my train after I got off of it at Kaimon station. You need to buy a paper ticket at Kagoshima Chuo station, no IC card, no credit card tap (they have that at some stations now). You have to change trains from a 2 carriage to this one carriage train at Yamakawa, but everyone else will do the same thing so it is easy enough. BTW, both the one carriage and 2 carriage trains have toilets on board, the cool school boys hang out by the toilet.
Kaimon is a small place, but a lot of people travel here to take photos of the mountain with sunflowers in front of it, hence there is a Family Mart.
It is only a short walk up the road to the start of the proper trail. This mountain is sometimes referred to as Satsuma Fuji, as any time a local authority can stick Fuji in their marketing, they feel obliged to do so.
The start of its trail, and all it's many warnings. You are supposed to scan a QR code and fill out a form, I did not.
The trail was immediately excellent, and remained excellent for the whole clockwise rotation up and around the back of the mountain to the top, there is no respite, it is constantly uphill.
The soil was very volcanic, broken bits of brown rock, but soon it will be boulders.
At times the trail ravine was deep.
First view. Clouds are coming, they are coming from the direction behind me.
Progress was slowed by a lot of rocks, for kilometres.
There is a cave system under this bit, I could not see the bottom of the hole behind these warning signs.
Next view point, along the coast, there was now thunder. There were really only 3 or 4 view points along the trail before the summit, the forest was quite thick, which would be a good thing once it started hailing.
There is a volcanic lake. Nice how the sun is shining on that one bit of farmland.
The upper parts of the trail were hard going, ropes and ladders.
Right before the summit is a mini shrine, newly painted red.
And here is the summit, first drops of rain right as I got to it.
It was really getting dark.
The summit view is not 360 degrees, at least I could not find a way to see it all. Rather than hang around and look for a view, I thought I better head down.
Does not look steep, but was, also slippery. I took it slow and stayed upright the whole way down.
It is me. It had not really rained by this point, but I was sweating and it was very windy.
One of the aforementioned ladders, about this time it started hailing, so the camera went away for a while.
The passing storm, a lot more thunder than there was lightning that I could see.
It was slow going, with intermittent hail, but my main judge of uncomfortably wet was never breached, my feet stayed dry.
This spot is a marked as a helicopter rescue point. Too windy for that today.
The storm cleared for a while, and I was beyond the boulder field, making good progress again.
And then before too long I was back at the bottom. That is the real sky, I have not replaced it with photoshop.
Now getting back to Kagoshima from Kaimon station was always going to take a long time, but today it took even longer. I was about an hour early for the train, so I spent time in the Family Mart and a local supermarket before just hanging out at the Kaimon station seen in the first pic. The first train came right on time, it comes once every 4 hours so do not miss it! You have to take a number when you board and then pay cash when you get off.
Anyway, the little train terminates at this station, Ibusuki, which is a tourist town where you get buried in sand for fun. I planned to change trains here to a limited express back to Kagoshima, but it was sold out! German cruise ship passengers had spent the day buried in sand and bought all the tickets.
So I had to wait around here for 50 minutes for the next slow all stations train, which added even more time onto an already long day.
Tonight's outing will likely be short.
Kagoshima Nishiginza
Just North of the main station there are a few streets labelled Nishiginza, I decided to go and take a few photos of interesting lit up store fronts and restaurants. Most were bars but there were a couple of suitable solo diner places.
Before settling on eating in that street, I thought I would head into a different side of the station and check out the eating floor there, where I found out that most places were closing at 7:30pm, it was currently 7:28pm and they were not letting me in! So this became a food emergency, and thankfully the ramen 'street' in the basement delivered an option that was staying open until 11pm.
I warned that tonight's outing would be short and it was, but I do have an amusing story.
On my way back to my hotel I stopped at the convenience store to get a drink, and wander around as I do, and a young Australian couple were doing the same. They decided on a few things, including what appeared to be a bag of flavoured rice crackers, near the register on special (they were in front of me and discussing their choices). They go to pay and thankfully for them, the cashier was an Indian girl, who informs them in English that they were cat treats, and pointed to the cat on the packaging.
Tomorrow is city change day, I am going to Kumamoto, I have not been there before. It will not take long to get there but I will make that take all day, as I am due a rest day.
After thunder, rain and hail, I wondered what the weather would be like when I stepped outside. Clear blue sky of course. Kagoshima, the Melbourne of Japan.
It may be Monday night, but the PACHINKO & SLOT places are all full of people losing whatever money they earned today on their way home from work.
A dumpling shop. The little store was a building on it's own in a parking lot.
Not even sure what this was, but they have flowers and an outline of Sakurajima.
And on a night when there were never going to be many photo's here is my ramen, from the only place not closing at 7:30pm. It claims to be Kagoshima style, which seems to mean many vegetables. This particular store has a local Sakurajima special, which I think means they charge $2 extra for the same thing.
Now I will go to bed!
There are currently 2 comments - click to add
mother on 2025-04-14 said:
the little shop says black pork shabu shabu - cooking everything together in the one pot
山雪 on 2025-04-14 said:
爬 到 山顶 很 艰难， 但 景色 很 好
Kagoshima to Kumamoto on the Shinkansen
Now I am in Kumamoto. I have not been here before. It is about an hour away from Kagoshima on the bullet train.
Before I left Kagoshima this morning, it was windier than any recent windy memory I have available to me right now that is wind related. That's a lot of wind.
Once inside the station, I watched delivery drivers unloading goods below a well placed wind enclosed overpass have full boxes of goods blow down the street. Trolleys for transporting boxes were going everywhere and traffic cones were blowing down the street. This kept me entertained for about 30 minutes before it was time to board my train, which went on time despite the wind.
I arrived in Kumamoto about an hour too early to check in, but first I had to go on a small tram ride from the station to my hotel, they take IC card and credit card, convenience, it ended there.
The other day I described scanning a credit card to get a ticket to exchange for a qr code to scan to get into a garden. Today I did the hotel version.
So far I have been able to check in via machine, which is very convenient, however today I go to check in at the machine and there is a sign attached, please go to counter. OK.
At the counter they photocopied my passport and made me fill out name, address, phone and secret pin, on a paper form, which they then photocopied and had me sign both copies. I got to keep one! A 'room key' was issued. But no, we are not done yet, now you take your 'room key' to the check in machine. The check in counter guy ran over to the machine and took off the sign that said 'please go to counter'. I inserted my room key into the machine, filled out details, scanned passport, signed on the screen, and then it printed me 5 receipts, one of which contained my room number. The room key did not come back out of the machine. So it was then time to go back to the check in counter, show them my receipt with the room number, and receive a replacement room key, and some additional paper work explaining the do not disturb / please clean my room sign. Extra convenience, what a concept.
Please accept my usual apology about travelling day lack of photos. Here is Kagoshima Chuo station. This photo does not do it justice as there are big shopping centres on both sides and behind.
To mix it up a bit, crooked photos to fit in the train. Today's train is probably the exact same one I got here on, in light blue livery.
Let's stick with slightly crooked photos for the fetching brown interior.
Here is Kumamoto station, there is not too much in the area, hence I did not stay by the station, I am staying about 2km away in the main city area.
I got here early enough for a rare thing, an actual lunch. Cheap coffee shop pasta with eggplant. I managed to get some on my pants in the most hilarious location.
And now, what you have all been waiting for, the inside of the Daiwa Roynet Kumamoto Hotel. Here is my room. $100 a night. It is quite nice, I especially appreciate the excellent quality chair.
Bathroom pic... hard to capture it in all it's splendour, toilet out of view on the left, and separate shower / bath inside a sealed off aluminium doored cubicle on the right.
Now I need to work out how to get to where I want to go to tomorrow, which will determine my bed time.
Kumamoto Shotengai walk
Tonight I walked around most of the central area of Kumamoto being blinded by the sun, before eventually eating a bowl of tomato soup.
The Shotengai here is quite long, goes around a corner and over a road or 2, is very wide, quite busy, but a bit shabby (bits of bitumen replacing the tiled floor). I estimate it to be similar in length to Matsuyama.
Kumamoto is a bigger city than Kagoshima, but less touristy, I think this means a lot more bars, because I saw hundreds, more photos of those on another night.
My walk eventually went beyond the covered shopping streets and arrived at a lantern and tree lined road that directed me to a strangely closed shrine. The photo into the sun was great.
Then, on day 18 of this trip, it was finally time to walk along a drain, and follow up the drain excitement with tomato soup.
Here is the street outside of my hotel. Kumamoto also has grass lined tram tracks. The trams themselves are an eclectic collection of every era of tram.
The start of the Shotengai, a grand entrance.
I like photos taken looking into the sun.
After turning the corner, it was time for section 2 of 3.
Now I need to form a gang immediately so that this cat teddy wizard creature is forced to try and stop us.
There is the castle, and some trams. I suspect I will see the castle the day after tomorrow.
The department stores are not as nice looking as the ones in Kagoshima, at least externally.
Final part of the 3 part Shotengai has a nice wooden decking floor.
Now I am beyond the relative safety of the covered shopping street gang exclusion zone.
Approaching the shrine... look how tall I am!
On the outer door of the shrine there was a big note about it being shut, so a photo into the sun through the gate is the best I can do.
Time to head down into the drain.
I did not follow the drain for too long, there were more trams to gawk at.
On the other side of the road from the main city area is this new looking quite large mall. I will go in and investigate for my dinner.
The basement did not disappoint, but I actually did not eat here even though I am well known for my love of food courts.
Instead, tomato soup based ramen with mystery meat took my fancy. With added oil. Not bad, meat might have been frog or rabbit.
Tomorrow I will complete a minor traverse, it is easy to get to so I do not have to get up ridiculously early.
There are currently 2 comments - click to add
山雪 on 2025-04-15 said:
我 很 高兴 日本 很多 城市 仍然 有 电车
adriana on 2025-04-15 said:
I think I recognise the carpet in
your hotel. must be a Daiwa Roynet feature.
There are currently 3 comments - click to add
David on 2025-04-14 said:
yes, I often have it, sapporo soup curry always has the 10 vegetable option, I had it in Hong Kong as mentioned, but even in Busan at the same place on 2 different trips
adriana on 2025-04-13 said:
was the vege soup curry good?
mother on 2025-04-13 said:
It looked pretty good to me. The building at the end of the garden is a museum all about Saigo Takamori who led the revolt against the Meiji restoration.