This is the post about my visit to Kagoshima in southern Japan. I am really pushing out these articles at the breakneck speed of a limping three-legged turtle, considering that I was in Japan in early April and so far have written on barely two places. At this rate I should be done around the time I graduate from college.

The central train station

Kagoshima is not a super hot travel destination for foreign tourists, but I really loved it. It used to be rather inaccessible as you had to take a slow-ass 7-hour multiple-transfer train ride from Hakata, Fukuoka unless you take a direct domestic flight there, but now it’s a short 1.5-hour ride on the new Kyushu Shinkansen’s Sakura service.

Trams

Kagoshima prefecture is rather rural and the popular tourist locations (mostly natural sceneries) are spread quite far apart. You really need a rental car or a cab to access many of them, both of which are terribly expensive.

Fortunately, most of the places of interest (mostly historical sites) are located in Kagoshima City itself between the main Kagoshima-chuo station and the old Kagoshima station. There are multiple bus and tram lines serving all the tourist sites in the city, including the aquarium, the Tenmonkan shopping arcade, the Museum of Meiji Restoration and the ferry terminal to Sakurajima.

Kagoshima is similar to Nagasaki in that they both played incredibly huge roles at certain pivotal points of Japanese history and served as vital gateways to foreign influences, but are today rather small and laid-back cities that are not particularly well-known outside of Japan.

Kagoshima was once part of Satsuma-han, one of the many fiefdoms Japan was divided into before it was properly united. Satsuma-han led the Meiji Restoration in overthrowing the Tokugawa shogunate, restoring power to the emperor and uniting the Japan under a modern (for its time) constitutional monarchy modelled after Prussia, the first of its kind in Asia. As a result of Satsuma’s success, a disproportionate number of the important figures of government in the young Meiji government came from Satsuma, despite its relatively small size and its location far from the capital.

Saigo Takamori, one of the leading figures of Satsuma and the Meiji Restoration, and his dog. A statue of this can be found in Ueno Park

Satsuma-han was also the reason why modern Japan had a close relationship to the United Kingdoms up till WW2. During the reign of Tokugawa, Satsuma had a rather nationalist anti-foreigner streak and its members once assaulted and killed a British nobleman in Kanagawa (Namamugi Incident) for blocking the way of a feudal lord’s path. The British demanded compensation, but the Tokugawa shogunate was powerless to compel Satsuma to do anything. The Brits took things into their own hands and sailed from Yokohama to Kagoshima and bombarded the crap out of Satsuma’s technologically inferior coastal defences. After this large-scale equivalent of a drunken bar brawl (Anglo-Satsuma War), the obvious outcome was that Satsuma and the UK became Best Friends Forever.

Pew pew

After the battle, the UK saw in Satsuma a strong political faction that might grow to overthrow the corrupted and faltering Tokugawa government, while Satsuma realized that foreign barbarians had some good ideas after all, such as the technology to make cannons that could actually hit anything farther away than a fat guy standing in front of the barrel.

Statue outside Kagoshima-chuo station commemorating the 17 Satsuma scholars who studied overseas

This begrudging mutual acknowledge soon blossomed into a beautiful full-blown bromance. In a time when travelling to foreign countries was still forbidden by the Tokugawa shogunate, Satsuma secretly sneaked its people out to study at top universities in the UK, hence giving it a virtual monopoly of Western educated elites ready to run the government after the Meiji Restoration.

Interestingly, the Japanese national anthem “Kimigayo” was composed by a British military band officer who was helping Satsuma-han to train its own military band.

Gravestones of loyal Satsuma retainers

Okay this is turning into more of a history post than a trip report, but really the history is what makes Kagoshima so awesome in my opinion. There’s just something magical about how a bunch of people from a small geographically insignificant corner of Japan left such a great mark on the country’s history. And there are many historical and memorial sites scattered across Kagoshima City related to these figures. In particular, the Museum of Meiji Restoration is definitely worth a visit. It’s a rather small museum but its displays are all very informative. Of course, the English descriptions tend to be rather incomplete and you need to read Japanese to get the full details.

The Kagoshima aquarium was actually rather disappointing. I expected better given the city’s proximity to the sea and its location closer to the tropics, but Osaka’s Kaiyukan is many times better. Still, it’s worth a visit if you are into such things. There’s a regular dolphin show.

Similarly, the Tenmonkan shopping arcade is nothing to write home about. It’s a typical cluster of Japanese shopping arcades whose claim to fame is being situated on the ruins of an old 18th-century observatory, hence its name Tenmonkan (literally “Observatory”). Well, there’s an Animate located there too.

Animate is everywhere

Outside of the city, the only place that is really accessible without a car is Ibusuki, a small coastal onsen town about an hour by train away from Kagoshima-chuo. It feels basically like Hakone but next to the sea instead of mountains. Although you get to try sunamushi onsen, which is basically getting your whole body buried in hot volcanic soil for 15 minutes. It’s like onsen without the water. I tried it and it’s not nearly as exotic an experience as it looks.

My room in Ibusuki

A park outside the inn at Ibusuki

Many people can’t figure out what this picture is showing

Awesome dinner

And of course, there is Japan’s southernmost JR train station for those who are as dorky as me.

Come to think of it, Kagoshima is the perfect location for an anime. It has the small-town feel, plenty of scenic spots, electric trams, an aquarium and that huge ass volcanic Sakurajima in the background. Wonder why it doesn’t show up more often…

So not too long ago, I was in Kagoshima, the southernmost prefecture on Japan’s four main islands. It is a rather backwater place despite the abnormally large role it played in Japan’s contemporary history, but it is very beautiful.

Kagoshima is also the location of Nishi-oyama Station, Japan Railways’ (JR) southernmost train station.

Located in the southern part of Kagoshima with a latitude of 31.11 degrees north, Nishi-oyama Station is not much more than an sheltered slab of concrete with a single wooden bench.

Some JR maintenance people were there doing some work

8 train services per day in one direction. Woot

Facing west at the station gives one a pretty grand view of Mt. Kaimon, a perfectly conical dormant volcano that apparently has the exact same silhouette no matter which direction you view it from. (Taxi drivers are pretty helpful when it comes to sightseeing.)

JR also placed a helpful signboard that indicates the location of its easternmost, westernmost and northernmost train stations. There were actually two Japanese tourists taking photos at Nishi-oyama when I was there. Being a train otaku in Japan is serious business.

There is also a yellow post box that lets you send letters and postcards to your friends and families with a special postmark indicating that it was sent from Nishi-oyama. You can probably send one to yourself and win the race home.

The surrounding area is nothing but farms and hills. Presumably many of the farms grow a variant of sweet potato known as satsumaimo, a speciality of Kagoshima. I bought some satsumaimo-flavoured Kit Kats at the central train station.

A farm right next to the station

The southern part of Kagoshima is divided into two areas by a deep inlet forming the Kagoshima Bay and is hence shaped like a crescent. The left side is known as the Satsuma Peninsula (薩摩半島) and the right side is known as the Osumi Peninsula (大隅半島).

Most of the tourist stuff, including Kagoshima City, Sakurajima (the volcanic island) and the onsen town Ibusuki, is on the Satsuma side, while Osumi is mostly an inaccessible jungle of weird boars and demons. At least that’s what I think it’s like, considering there are basically zero train lines running through it.

But Osumi does play host to Cape Sata (Japan mainland’s southernmost point) and JAXA’s Uchinoura Space Center, which would probably be cool to visit if they were ever made reasonably accessible. Woot.

But I digress.

Scenic spots on the Satsuma Peninsula

Much of Satsuma Peninsula itself is also rather inaccessible and rural, but it does have a single JR train line serving its southern parts. So I guess that is something.

And when I say “train”, I am not talking about JR Yamanote or even your typical subway train. The local Ibusuki-Makurazaki line is served by tiny two-carriage trains that are operated by a single person. JR call these trains ワンマン, literally “one-man”. There are usually two trains per hour.

The white one-man train on the local lines. That’s basically half the train right there

The tourists who take this line are generally headed for Ibusuki (指宿), a small onsen town by the sea more than an hour away from Kagoshima-chou Station. And by “tourists”, I mean old Japanese couples from other parts of Japan.

I could not identify a single foreign tourist during my stay at Ibusuki and my train rides there and back, although I did spot a few in Kagoshima City itself. This can also be observed from Japan Guide’s wholly inadequate section on Kagoshima, which I feel doesn’t do the prefecture/city justice.

But I digress again.

Yamakawa bills itself as “JR’s Southernmost Manned Station”

Scenic spots along the Ibusuki-Makurazaki line between Yamakawa and Nishi-oyama stations

The regular trains on the Ibusuki Makurazaki line terminate at either Kiire (喜入) or Yamakawa (山川). Unforunately, Nishi-Oyama, the southernmost station, is located father down the line and is served by just two direct trains a day from the central station. Due to a lack of prior planning, I did not have time to actually take a train there, sadly.

I want to say that I was hardcore enough to navigate 6km over mountainous terrain to get from Yamakawa to Nishi-oyama (which I almost did because I thought it was at most 2km away in a straight line) armed with only my Android smartphone’s Compass app and no data access, but I was a pussy and took a cab instead (which in retrospect was not such a bad idea).

It turned out to be impossible to follow the track on foot as I had originally planned because it is fenced off and goes into tunnels.

All the stations on the line passed Yamakawa are unmanned, so the train driver has to also act as the conductor at every stop. It’s pretty cool.

The title of this post is kind of a lie because Nishi-oyama is no longer Japan’s southernmost station after Okinawa prefecture built a local monorail line in Naha due to what I presume to be immense spite for JR that I am sure has nothing to do with making life more convenient for its residents.

Hence, Nishi-oyama is now “Japan’s Southernmost JR Station”. You can see the faint red “JR” spray-painted onto the top of the landmark.

Apparently, JR originally changed the sign to “Mainland’s Southernmost Station” in response to the construction of the monorail, which incurred Okinawa’s wrath because it implies that Okinawa isn’t part of Japan mainland. (And I thought the Ryukyu separatists would be happy about that…) JR then changed it back to the original sign with the red word “JR” appended to the front. People fight over everything.

I really loved Kagoshima. Will blog more about it in a future post.

The section of the Kyushu Shinkansen that extents to Kagoshima-chuo Station only came online less than two weeks before my trip to Japan, so it was really lucky that I got to visit Kagoshima with my JR Pass.

P.S. This JR Kyushu commercial celebrating the full opening of the Kyushu Shinkansen is really awesome. Brings a tear to my eyes. Pity they had to stop airing it and tone down the celebrations after the Tohoku quake.