I’ve got lots of catching up to do! Last week, we were on the move. We loaded up our tiny car, headed south to Kagoshima Prefecture to see Sakurajima, then northwest to the islands of Amakusa, then to Kumamoto City, east to Takachiho Gorge in Miyazaki Prefecture, north to Aso back in Kumamoto Prefecture, and finally back to sleepy ole Yunomae. Whew! We’ve kept that road HOT!
Our adventure started on Friday August 10th. I took off four days from work so that we could take a road trip with Mommy. That day we took a day trip and went south to Kagoshima to see Sakurajima, an active volcanic island just across the bay from Kagoshima City. Even though it’s an active volcano, something like 40,000 residents still live on Sakurajima. Most of them live near the water, and it’s even illegal to go too far up the volcano. Past a certain point, there are no roads. From Yunomae, it took us a little over two hours to get there. We took the quick fifteen minute ferry from Kagoshima City to Sakurajima. The volcano constantly erupts, and even as we were leaving, a huge plume of ash shot into the air. The island is covered in ash….literally. Since the volcano constantly erupts, there’s ash on the cars, sidewalks, the ground, and even the green plant life has a gray coating. The ash got in our mouths, and no matter how much water we drank, that grit was still there. Yuck! Ian kept saying how cool it would be to live there, but I disagree! 
No thanks! Mommy made the mistake of wearing white capri pants that day, and even though she was extremely careful about where she sat down, by the end of the day, there was still a gray hue in the creases of her pants. 
We started off the adventure with a picnic lunch in the dinosaur park. The last time Ian and I were at Sakurajima, the cherry blossoms were blooming, and not all of the trees had sprouted, so there was a beautiful view of the bay. However, we didn’t have the luxury of such a beautiful view this time, but since it was a weekday, we did pretty much have the park to ourselves! After lunch, we climbed on and got a few pictures with the random selection of dinosaur and animal statues the park offers (below). Ian and I went down the big three story tall slide, but Mommy decided not to. I was surprised that she gave the zip line a try! It was a simple zip line that’s no more than two feet off the ground at its highest point, but still! 
After the park, we went to the Sakurajima Visitor Center, which turned out to be more like a museum than anything. There was a short ten minute movie about the creation and sequential eruptions of the volcano, and the rest of the museum was about the same things….volcanic eruptions, how residents deal with it, etc. It was pretty cool for a free visitor center! We took the “Lava Road” (a road with hardened jagged lava rock on either side of the road) to the Yunohiro Observatory, which is the furthest point that you can drive up the mountain. There are no roads further north, and it is ILLEGAL to climb any higher on the mountain. The observatory was beautiful from all sides. On the back side of it, we had the closest view possible of the crater and its hot ash-spewing mouth (below, left). The other side of the observatory was a gorgeous view of the island below, bay, and Kagoshima City across the bay (below, right). It was a beautifully clear day, and we could see well into the mainland.
Once we were finished at the observatory, we drove back down to the one road that circles the island, making our way to the backside of the island to the buried torii. (A torii denotes the entrance to a shrine and is kind of like an arch.) When the volcano erupted in the earlier 20th century, it buried several villages along the backside of the island, and a remnant of that is the top of a torii sticking up out of the ground (below, left). Two meters below the current ground is the base of the torii (below, right). Although it was cool to see, it wasn’t much to see, and we were finished with viewing it within five minutes.
Our next planned stop was the onsen, but we got sidetracked and stopped at a hardened lava flow along the side of the road. The ground was covered with the powdery black ash, and we ended up writing our names in it. 
Our very last stop in Sakurajima was the onsen, a place that Mommy was terrified to go. An onsen is a public bath house with hot volcanic water pools to soak in. In order to enjoy this, one must strip down to his or her birthday suit and shower before entering the water. Most onsens are segregated by sex so that men and women never encounter one another. (It’s a completely normal thing to do in Japan, and they think nothing of it. Being naked in the onsen is just as normal as being naked in the shower.) Mommy SWORE that she would NOT go to an onsen like that, so we thought we’d start her onsen experience off a little more gently. At the onsen we went to, we were given white yakata robes to wear in the water so that we weren’t naked at any point in time. Ian and I went to this one back in April, and it’s the most beautiful one I’ve been to. It sits right on the sea, and we even climbed down the walkway and sat in the ocean for a little while before soaking in the onsen (below). Despite the scenery, Mommy HATED the experience. She just felt very uncomfortable the whole time and insisted on pronouncing onsen as on-SIN (emphasis on that last syllable) because she just thought it was wrong for everyone to be sitting together nearly naked in the water. (Honestly, I’ve seen more skin at a pool or beach than I did sitting in the onsen that day.)
As we were wrapping up our Sakurajima trip and waiting for the ferry, the volcano erupted, sending a huge ash cloud into the air (below, left). What a way to end our trip! Despite how daunting it looks, no one was running for their lives. On Sakurajima, this is completely normal, and the islanders don’t even FLINCH at this sight. Ha! Instead of heading right back to Yunomae, we stopped in Kagoshima City for some dinner at a delicious restaurant, following it up with Kagoshima’s specialty dessert, skirokuma (below, right). It is deliciously refreshing after spending a hot day outside and tastes a lot like snow cream. Yum!
By the time we made it back to Yunomae, it was nearly 11PM, and we were all exhausted. After getting ready for bed, we all fell soundly asleep.
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