Kagoshima, Japan
Sailing all night from Kochi, the MS Riviera reached the port city of Kagoshima just after breakfast on the 22nd of March. Kagoshima is situated on Kyushu, the southernmost of Japan's largest islands. About 600,000 people live here and gain employment from the automobile, semi-conductor and ceramics industries.
The thing that Gym noticed right away, as he stood on the docks in Kagoshima, was Mt. Sakurajiwa. It sits in the bay, just 3 kilometres across from the city. Mt. Sakurajiwa is this very active stratovolcano. It has several small eruptions every day and once a year or so, there is a major event. On February 14, 2024, it had a major eruption sending a plume 5 kilometres into the sky and blowing rocks into an area up to 1.5 kilometers from the mountain. So it just seems the people of Kagoshima are living just a little too close to the volcano. Even crazier though, there are about 3000 people living on the slopes of the mountain. The children that attend the elementary school on the mountain, are issued helmets to wear to and from school.
Thankfully, Gym and his dear wife had a tour several kilometers away from the volcano that day. They visited the beautiful little village of Chiran. Chiran is just 40 kilometres down the road from Kagoshima. On the way there you drive up through lush cedar-lined hills and then closer to the village productive-looking tea and rice farms. After the scenic drive, the tour bus parked just off main street of Chiran, where the sidewalk is separated from the road by a deep gutter. The gutter is filled with clear running water and enormous colourful Koi.
Gym et al started the day in Chiran with a stroll through a 250-year old neighbourhood just adjacent to the main thoroughfare. This first highlight of Chiran involved a walking tour of seven very old and very beautiful homes built by seven samurais all those years ago. Many of the properties are still owned by family of the original samurai that built them. What stood out was their gardens. Mrs. G was in heaven. She revelled at the sight of these well manicured gardens, chock full of sculptured pines and banzai trees and neatly trimmed hedges. She felt a kinship with the gardeners who probably also used the Ryobi hedge trimmers. But it was. more than just the shrubbery, each yard was landscaped with greenery and stones to create 3-D landscape masterpieces. After viewing these incredible yards, the family of one of the original samurais served everyone some green tea, in the Japanese style.
The second stop in Chiran was a visit to the Chiran Peace Museum. This part of town was where Kamikaze pilots trained and then took off on their last missions. They were training to inflict as much damage as they could to the U.S. Navy during the Okinawa Campaign. Everything is written in Japanese inside the museum but all you have to do is see the pictures on the walls of the 1036 kamikaze pilots that took off from the Chiran airstrips, to understand what the museum is all about. It moves you when you take it all in. As you leave the area you drive past 1036 stone street lanterns, one for each Chiran pilot that died.
When Gym and his fetching sidekick returned to the Riveria, they were relieved that it wasn't covered in a layer of volcanic ash. They left that evening for Nagasaki.
Cherry Blossom Report
Pics to follow .... when the internet gets better
No comments:
Post a Comment