For our big day kicking ass all around Kagoshima, mom and I got a great start by pretending to be dead on the floor of our room. Japanese futons, even the ones you get at a cheap hotel, are damn comfortable – something that my parents will willingly attest to methinks.

The most famous geographic landmark of Kagoshima is the island in the harbor – Sakurajima, or “Cherry-blossom Island.” The island itself is solely composed of a volcano, the last eruption of which a few decades ago actually created a small lava landbridge to shore… so if you want to be picky Sakurajima is no longer a jima! Whether the cherry blossoms in the name are literal, or a metaphor for the fiery heart of the island I don’t know, but mom and I duly commemorated our visit in any case.

We began the day by walking out of Kagoshima along the waterfront to the east with the goal of reaching the palace garden of a daimyo who ruled over the area around 400 years ago. The road we walked along was quite gorgeous, tightly clinging to the plunging hills as it wended its way along the harbor.

After perhaps a 90 minute walk, which would have been much shorter for any normal group but we dillied and dallied along the way with quite a bit of impromptu birdwatching, we arrived at the garden. My parents and I found ourselves strolling through a beautiful classic Japanese estate garden, replete with delicately sculpted trees, exquisite ponds, and the always awesome one piece quarried stone bridges. The ponds were actually a series of resting pools for a small creek that had been diverted from a nearby stream and cascaded beautifully down into the grounds.

We were having a lovely time walking around the grounds, we even took a tour of the daimyo’s old residence (sorry, no photos please!), but before long the weather forecast caught up with us, and boy oh boy did it rain.

Not bad timing though, we simply bolted for the garden restaurant and kicked back in front of the bay windows overlooking the garden and Sakurajima across the harbor while we enjoyed a succulent repast.

After lunch and the downpour, we headed up into the steep hills behind the garden to find a waterfall that fed the ponds below.

The path was steep and muddy, but if old dudes in kimono and tabi could haul their regal butts up there we sure as hell could!

The path was pretty awesome, really added to the mystique, and just before the top we found this totally awesome chiseled slab. My father posed for two pictures in front of it, one facing the camera and one reading the slab. I took both, and blurred the hell out of the first one and slightly blurred the second one, which you can see here.

I apologize dad. My photographic competence leaves something to be desired. On a related note, any picture in which you don’t expressly see my father, especially if its well-composed and clear, you can safely assume he took it… because it sure as hell wasn’t me.

Eventually we did make it to the viewing area and got a lovely look at the waterfall, and looking back out to the harbor showed us the gardens far, far below and Sakurajima beyond.

Seeing the gardens so far away was actually a bit of a shock as the path up had been so overgrown and winding that we weren’t really aware of how much elevation we had gained. All in all it was pretty awesome.

The pictures end here I’m afraid, inclement weather the rest of the day forced us to keep the camera locked up tight, but it certainly wasn’t the end of the adventure. After coming back down from the waterfall we caught the next bus back into town and visited a legendary cake shop that had been featured in my parents’ guidebook. This place apparently had been in business for nearly a century selling a local type of white sponge cake with more class than Buckingham Palace. Seriously, you walk in and you feel like you’re in some 5th Avenue jeweler’s, not what is essentially a cake shop. Perhaps a 20 meter long glass display case full of pastries awaits your inspection, and behind the country a small army of beautiful young (and stately old) ladies wait in trim suits and white gloves to take your order. We bought a few small pieces of the most famous product and moved on. How was it? I inhaled mine while waiting for the train – tasted like white sponge cake, duh 😉

The next and what would ultimately prove to be the last stop of the day was a sake distillery on the outskirts of town. When we left Beppu for Kagoshima we entered what was basically Phase 2 of the trip – in Phase 1, the 2 days in Beppu, I had just about everything planned out and ready to go. Phase 2, all stops outside of Beppu, were only as specific as “we’ll sleep in this city on this day.” As for things to do once we were there, it was all to be decided on the fly. Visiting the sake distillery was one such decision. I had two maps that the Kagoshima train station had provided me with, neither showed much outside of downtown. All we really knew was that if we got off at such and such station we could walk towards the water (~3km away) and there would be a distillery down there somewhere.

The train station turned out to be a dilapidated, tiny affair lacking even a toilet. Furthermore, as I soon discovered there wasn’t actually any *road* in that direction, everything ran parallel to the shoreline, not down towards it. Things weren’t looking good. Never to be found lacking in confidence, I arbitrarily but firmly decided we would go “this way” and began leading the 3 of us down the road to nowhere. Eventually, again deciding arbitrarily but firmly that I had found a good thoroughfare, I turned us left and we began heading down towards the water. I’d estimate we had walked about half the distance towards the harbor we needed to go, nearly all of it winding through houses on tiny streets, before we ended up next to a barn, some guys loading a truck, and basically at the end of the road in the middle of a field.

Hmm…

Naturally, one must ask directions in this situation, so I approached the wizened old fellows loading the truck – who had now of course stopped to gawk at the giant foreigners standing aimlessly in the middle of their field in what was officially Nowhere, Japan – and explained that we were seeking a distillery in the the general direction of the water, and how can we get there? Their reply, as irony would dictate in a situation such as this, was simply to keep walking off into the field down the grassy footpath – the grassy footpath that to any sane person seemed to go exactly nowhere.

Well, we followed it, and wouldn’t you know it but after about 200 faith-testing meters of high grass on either side we popped out into a small park and there, right across the street, was the damn sake distillery! Pretty cool!

By this time it was about 5:55pm, and fearing that the sake place would close at 6 if it hadn’t already closed, we hustled across the road under a light sprinkle of rain. The place did indeed close at six, but the sight of three slightly wet giant white people proved too interesting to ignore, and the kind owners gave us a tour of the facilities. While other employees locked up doors behind and around us, we even were able to loiter in the gift shop and taste test different kinds of sake. Ultimately, we left with two bottles – one for host father in Kanazawa and one to drink on the way there!

Memories of the successful navigation from train station to sake distillery were about to be dashed. Not particularly wanting to head back up the park, through the field, and wander the neighborhood again with the imminent threat of a downpour, we began walking down the main road the distillery was on, ostensibly to go down to the next station on the rail line.

Travel Recommendation #182 – do not attempt to navigate shortcuts, longcuts, or any cuts with a shitty map that you *know* doesn’t show all the roads.

We walked and walked and walked, looking for some correlation between what we were passing and this grubby POS map I had from the station. Eventually we decided to turn left and head inland, thinking that the road we had chosen would lead us to a station several stops down the line from where we had initially disembarked. After 15 minutes or so of walking up this road it was quite evident that this wasn’t the same road we thought it was on the map, that this road wasn’t even on the map, and that – son of a BITCH – it is now pouring down rain and we have no umbrellas and no idea of where the hell we are. And the day had started so promising with the trip to the garden…

Seizing the initiative, I ducked into a bistro we were passing and, after shaking off as much of the water as I could, politely as possible explained that we were lost and asked the proprietors to please point out our location on the map I had. The kindly old lady took one look at my shitty map, which was now a quite soggy and a little dirty, and called her husband out of the kitchen and up to the bar. They asked me where we were headed, by this time my parents had caught up and were waiting out on the porch out of the rain, I said the nearest train station, and they told us to please wait while they got the car!

Well, not quite, more conferring between the kindly old husband and wife and they decided the 3 of us wouldn’t fit in their normal car, so husband quickly drove home to get “the big car.” I’ve never bowed and said thank you so much in my entire life. When I explained to my parents that these kind people were going to drive us to the nearest station out of the kindness of their hearts, they just stood there in disbelief.

Sure enough, after a few minutes up came a small four-door van-looking thing, and in we went with 3 umbrellas from the old woman for good measure. The driver and I made idly chit-chat in the front about this and that and before five minutes had passed we were back at the train station we had originally gotten off at. It is fair to say that we had been totally fucking lost.

My parents piled out of the car while I bowed and thank you’d and bowed again, and even dad was able to conjure up an adequate “arigato gozaimas” to add to the 100 or so I had already amassed. Satisfied we were now safe and located, the old man smiled and drove away with a wave.

Let it be known that we are truly indebted to the good people of Kagoshima, who saved 3 completely lost and soggy travelers out of the kindness of their hearts.

Once safely back at the hotel we showered up and changed into dry clothes, then headed out for our big Kagoshima dinner. It wasn’t until I was looking through the photos from this part of the trip in preparation for writing this journal that I realized we took ZERO photos during dinner. That, my dear reader, is a crime.

We had the nationally famous Kagoshima Black Pig Shabu-Shabu, a dish that consists of boiling your own strips of the local black pig delicacy along with vegetables and such in a pot at your own table. To say it was delicious would be a shameful understatement. It was so good, so incredibly good, that my otherwise chopstick-handicapped mother suddenly became as proficient as a heron in a goldfish pond – darting into that pot and snagging the choicest strips of pork before dad and I ever had a chance to react. It was a hilarious sight to behold, I assure you!

Our long, long day finally at an end, we settled back into our futon and got some much needed rest before another big travel day that held one very nice surprise…

How’s that for foreshadowing? haha…