{"id":1524,"date":"2011-05-03T17:28:39","date_gmt":"2011-05-03T09:28:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.darkmirage.com\/?p=1524"},"modified":"2011-05-03T18:55:20","modified_gmt":"2011-05-03T10:55:20","slug":"japans-southernmost-train-station","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.darkmirage.com\/2011\/05\/03\/japans-southernmost-train-station\/","title":{"rendered":"Japan’s Southernmost Train Station"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Kagoshima\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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

Kagoshima is also the location of Nishi-oyama Station<\/a>, Japan Railways’ (JR) southernmost train station.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"Kagoshima\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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

\"Kagoshima\"<\/a>
\nSome JR maintenance people were there doing some work<\/p>\n

\"Kagoshima\"<\/a>
\n8 train services per day in one direction. Woot<\/p>\n

Facing west at the station gives one a pretty grand view of Mt. Kaimon<\/a>, 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.)<\/p>\n

\"Kagoshima\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\"Kagoshima\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\"Kagoshima\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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

\"Kagoshima\"<\/a>
\nA farm right next to the station<\/p>\n

\"Kagoshima\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Kagoshima\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The southern part of Kagoshima<\/a> 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<\/strong> (\u00e8\u2013\u00a9\u00e6\u2018\u00a9\u00e5\u008d\u0160\u00e5\u00b3\u00b6) and the right side is known as the Osumi Peninsula<\/strong> (\u00e5\u00a4\u00a7\u00e9\u0161\u2026\u00e5\u008d\u0160\u00e5\u00b3\u00b6).<\/p>\n

Most of the tourist stuff, including Kagoshima City, Sakurajima<\/a> (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.<\/p>\n

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

But I digress.<\/p>\n

\"Kagoshima\"<\/a>
\nScenic spots on the Satsuma Peninsula<\/p>\n

Much of Satsuma Peninsula<\/strong> 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.<\/p>\n

And when I say “train”, I am not talking about JR Yamanote<\/a> or even your typical subway train. The local Ibusuki-Makurazaki line<\/a> is served by tiny two-carriage trains that are operated by a single person. JR call these trains \u00e3\u0192\u00af\u00e3\u0192\u00b3\u00e3\u0192\u017e\u00e3\u0192\u00b3, literally “one-man”<\/a>. There are usually two trains per hour.<\/p>\n

\"Kagoshima\"<\/a>
\nThe white one-man train on the local lines. That’s basically half the train right there<\/p>\n

The tourists who take this line are generally headed for Ibusuki<\/strong> (\u00e6\u0152\u2021\u00e5\u00ae\u00bf), 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.<\/p>\n

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<\/a>, which I feel doesn’t do the prefecture\/city justice.<\/p>\n

But I digress again.<\/p>\n

\"Kagoshima\"<\/a>
\nYamakawa bills itself as “JR’s Southernmost Manned Station”<\/p>\n

\"Kagoshima\"<\/a>
\nScenic spots along the Ibusuki-Makurazaki line between Yamakawa and Nishi-oyama stations<\/p>\n

The regular trains on the Ibusuki Makurazaki<\/a> line terminate at either Kiire<\/strong> (\u00e5\u2013\u0153\u00e5\u2026\u00a5) or Yamakawa<\/strong> (\u00e5\u00b1\u00b1\u00e5\u00b7\u009d). 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.<\/p>\n

I want to say that I was hardcore enough to navigate 6km<\/a> 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).<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\"Kagoshima\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

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

\"Kagoshima\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Apparently, JR originally changed the sign to “Mainland’s<\/strong> 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<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

I really loved Kagoshima. Will blog more about it in a future post.<\/p>\n

The section of the Kyushu Shinkansen<\/a> 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>\n

P.S. This JR Kyushu commercial<\/a> 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<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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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 … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[51,1032,1031,1001,58,708],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.darkmirage.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1524"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.darkmirage.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.darkmirage.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.darkmirage.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.darkmirage.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1524"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.darkmirage.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1524\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.darkmirage.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1524"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.darkmirage.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1524"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.darkmirage.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1524"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}