Kagoshima is often referred to as the Naples of Japan - balmy and semi-tropical, it is the southernmost major city. It is old and steeped in its own distinct culture, and its dialect is said to be the most difficult to understand, as even other Japanese find it unintelligible. Perhaps the strangest thing about Kagoshima is its geography: the city itself is located next to a smoking active volcano, Sakurajima, which turned itself from an island into a peninsula with an eruption in the past century. Culturally and visually, it is a unique location within Japan.
I took the opportunity to use the newly-constructed Kyushu Shinkansen (bullet train) to travel to Kagoshima in the spring, when much of the rest of Kyushu was swept with chilling rain and brisk winds. The city's mild climate lived up to its reputation - warm and hazy, with sweet-smelling flowers everywhere and willow trees drooping over the brick avenues.
I went to Kagoshima without much prior planning, and found to my dismay that the travel information center in the main station did nothing in the way of assisting with hotel reservations. Travel guide in hand, I started down the row of hotels that lined the front of the station to ask about vacancies. The first one I came to was a tall, worn-looking building; much like the rest of Kagoshima, it was concrete that looked as though it had not been washed since it was constructed. I checked my guidebook - yes, this was the one that was listed as the cheapest hotel in the entire city. At $75 per night it was still no bargain, but it was Japan after all; thinking that at the worst it would simply be dingy and outdated, I decided to give it a shot anyway.
I opened the door onto a tiny, seemingly-empty lobby, and looked around for another person. I jumped a little as I suddenly noticed her - a diminutive woman at least 90 years old, completely hunched over. She sat motionless, like a heap of rags buried beneath several bulky sweaters. I hesitated, not wanting to startle her, but I need not have bothered. She turned slowly to look at me.
"Yes?" Her voice, just as I had imagined, was little more than a croak. I prayed she would be kind enough to refrain from using Kagoshima dialect; her speech was barely understandable as it was. Thankfully, she was too occupied with trying to stab the cash register key into its slot (it took at least 5 tries) to torment me consciously. My fears quickly became not her choice of slang words, but the real possibility of her keeling over dead before I could rent a room. I settled for the Western-style one she offered me, and accepted the enormous key that was thrust into my face.
"Whenever you go out, leave the key with me," she instructed me sternly. Whatever, old woman; any time I came out of my room, she was either napping or completely absent. I could take the oversized key and its oversized key ring wherever I wanted, as long as I brought my oversized traveling bag to keep it in.
The room itself was interesting, and nowhere I wanted to spend any great length of time. It was small and faded, and the furnishings couldn't have been newer than 1965. It reminded me of my great-grandmother's house, only everything was plastic and none of it seemed particularly clean. Imagine what a room would look like if it were only dusted and wiped down with water for 50 years, instead of cleaned with soap, or god forbid had its furnishings replaced periodically to keep up with advances in technology. Next to the orange rotary phone was a little card: Massages, $35 per half hour. I wondered if the old woman administered them personally (who else was there to do it?) and if she could sustain that much movement without keeling over dead. (Then I reminded myself that I was surely going to hell for being so mean to old people, but the woman was such a character that I simply couldn't help myself.)
The next day involved Kagoshima's major attraction: the smoldering Sakurajima, "Island of the Cherry Blossoms." This is a complete misnomer as it is neither covered in cherry blossoms, nor it is it an island; an eruption in 1914 turned it into a peninsula of hardened lava. You can imagine my incredulity as I spoke to some locals on the ferry to the "island," with their assurances that living near the volcano wasn't worrisome in the least as it "doesn't erupt anymore." Picture them saying this with a huge smoking volcano in the background and ash sprinkling down on our heads. This is the city where residents carry umbrellas not for rain, but for showers of volcanic debris. Indeed, Sakurajima has been erupting continuously since the 1950s. But according to the locals of Kagoshima and the village of Sakurajima, it is completely safe and is just having its last sputters of smoke before going extinct.
Before making my way to the volcano itself, I spent a relaxing morning at the gardens of the old Shimadzu estate, Senganen. These carefully-kept grounds are famous as an example of gardens that integrate features of the surrounding landscape into their composition; in this case, the designers took every opportunity to showcase Sakurajima in the background. At every turn, behind every tree, was a spectacular view of the volcano.
The most outstanding feature of Senganen, however, was not the volcano and the picturesque ponds and benches; it was the little shrine hidden near some souvenir shops toward the back. This was no ordinary Shinto shrine - it was a cat shrine. Apparently, one of the Shimadzu clan journeyed to Korea with some loyal cats and was able to tell time at sea by examining the shape of their pupils. Not content to honor them only in life, he built the shrine to commemorate their usefulness and introduce others to the merits of keeping time with cats. Of course, I took a stack of the pamphlets illustrating the correlation of cats' eyes to times of day to distribute to friends back home, so they could practice on their own pets.
After the brief break for insanity in the cat shrine, I downed a quick lunch of Kagoshima ramen (motto: the only ramen greasier than Fukuoka's), and boarded a large ferry to Sakurajima. Surprisingly, the ferry terminal on the volcano side was deserted; one would think that there might be tourist information, at the very least, but I could find little more than a cartoonish map of the island.
Determined to see as much of the volcano as I could anyway, I set out along the road to a little visitor's center only about half a kilometer away. There, I took a quick tour through the volcano museum that detailed the turbulent history of Kagoshima and its unpredictable neighbor, before inspecting the trails that went along the coast next to the nondescript building. These proved to be a good deal more interesting than the CG videos and dioramas of Sakurajima; they were well-marked and well-maintained walks through boulders of lava, burnt trees, and rocky coast, with the mountain at one's shoulder at all times. The landscape was positively eerie; despite the young trees clinging to life among the charred rocks, there was an overwhelming sense that the volcano could and would destroy it again at random intervals. I wondered aloud why the prefectural government had bothered to spend the money to beautify the island - only kilometers away from the volcano itself, they were planting rows upon rows of cherry trees next to the newly-developed roads. It seemed strange, as Sakurajima is infamous for its unpredictability, but I suppose it was consistent with the amazing, sometimes blind optimism that I encountered everywhere in that city.
Kagoshima, however, was not quite what I had expected. The landscape itself was beautiful, but this Naples of Japan was considerably less attractive than anticipated. Everywhere, I was faced with dirty, decrepit buildings, and despite the brand-new central train station, the city simply seemed old and run-down. Then, I suppose it was hardly different from the gritty eyesore that is urban Japan; perhaps I had been dazzled by its nickname and hoped for something different in the balmy south.
As soon as I stepped off the train, too, I knew I was no longer in northern Kyushu. I was being gawked at by people of all ages, high school students and shopkeepers and old men on their evening strolls. There was considerably more pointing than I was used to, and old women on the bus talked loudly about me, peppering their conversation with many colorful epithets for foreigners. Despite the friendliness of the people I did have conversations with in Kagoshima - in coffee shops, on the ferry, in the hot spring bath near Sakurajima, I was ready to get back on the bullet train and head toward civilization again.