Kagoshima & Yakushima

[Sakurajima]

Loads of posts today, my snow hike was cancelled because of the snow in Tokyo, so I thought I'd use the free time to catch up on the blog.

About this time two months ago, I was on a one week trip in Kagoshima. I spent the first three days in Kagoshima City, and stayed on Sakurajima at a hippy-run guesthouse. The landlady is a marvellous cook and coffee maker; the landlord is a shamisen player/guitarist who is quite the handyman; and Pochi is a clever pooch who likes his left armpit scratched.

On the first day, I dropped my luggage at the guesthouse and took a bike across the sea on the ferry to do a little cycling around. Old, spacious, historical, the city has a similar feel to Nagasaki City but smaller. There's not very much to see, but it was a nice cycle. The annoying thing about cycling here though, is the fact that you can't just park anywhere. You have to take your bike to designated parking areas.

The next day, I did a loop around Sakurajima by bike, the west side of the island is easy enough, but to the east, I had to get off my mamachari (city bike) and walk it up the hills. There's some good views to be had of the active volcano, and it's not necessary to do the whole circuit to see it. Actually, I'd suggest just cycling along the west coast and skipping the east, because there's nothing much there except a good workout.

[View of Kaimondake from Cape Nagasakibana]

After the nice weather of the first two days, cloudy weather was beginning to set in come the morning of my third day. I bought a one day bus pass and took the bus to Cape Nagasakibana, Mt. Kaimon, then to Ibusuki Hot Springs to freshen up.

I hiked up Mt. Kaimon (924m) in about 2 hours, but didn't stay too long at the summit because of the wind. It was probably the second time that I hiked on volcanic rock, the first time being on Mt. Mihara on Izu Oshima Island. After the hike, a bath was in order, a nice sandy one on the beach! Having people shovel sand on me felt a little surreal, but laying in my sand cocoon and listening to the sound of the waves was surprisingly comfortable.

On my last morning at the guesthouse, the landlady made me breakfast which included eggs from their home-reared chickens fried in hand-pressed camellia oil accompanied with a cup of her home-roasted coffee. Great stuff. I really admire their self-reliance, and their resourcefulness and ingenuity of living off the land. Their cafe is built from driftwood that was washed up onto the beach by their house. The camellia oil was pressed from seeds that the landlady had picked up around the island. The landlord made his own electric shamisen, and their coffee roaster was made from bits and pieces that had been picked up on the beach. I was given a pack of koji starter to make my own miso, because I was going on about how great her miso was. I plan to go back to that part of Japan to do some hiking in Kirishima, and when I do, I'll definitely stop by again.

On arriving at Kagoshima Bay, I met up with my hiking companions to take the ferry across to Yakushima, where we stayed at mountain huts, admired and hugged trees, hiked up snowy mountains, and saw live and half-eaten deer. And with the island being the wettest place in Japan and the locals saying that it rains "35 days a month", we'd expected to spend most of the trip hiking in rain, but we were lucky, we only had rain on the last day. The cedar trees and the nature here are really something. I was really disappointed when we had to see Jomon Sugi and Wilson's Stump before sunrise, because it just was too dark to see anything, but time didn't allow it any other way.

[Flying fish]

After a mad dash for it from mountain to bath house to bath house halfway to bath house to supermarket to port, we managed to make it in time to get our typhoon-molested ferry back to Kagoshima.

[Mt. Miyanoura-dake (1936m)]

[Accommodation for the last day]