Departures: Japan 1991-92: Kagoshima

I'd been staying in Kyoto for quite a while, alternating between taking day trips and relaxing in town. This was winter. It was cold. It was really cold. Kyoto reminded me of Chicago--cold and windy. I was starting to get pretty tired of it.

By this time, I'd figured out that cold was embarassing. When my hands get cold, I can't work my fingers so well. So after a few hours of wandering in the snow, I'd stumble into a restaurant, but wouldn't be able to use chopsticks. I'd sit on my hands, staring at my food. Restauranteurs would look on uneasily. Oh no! The foreigner doesn't know how to eat! Now he'll never leave! Eventually my fingers would thaw out a bit. Still, I was tired of the cold.

One evening I stumbled into my hotel room. I couldn't take it any more. So I turned on the TV. When the news came on, I kept watching. Normally I didn't try to follow the news. Newsanchors speak quickly, and often on topics whose vocabulary I never studied. But tonight I watched. I watched until the weather came on. I didn't understand what the weather reporter was saying, but I understood the map of Japan, and the numbers representing temperature. I looked for the highest temperature I could find. The map's cities were labeled in kanji; I looked up the name of the warm place in my electronic dictionary: Kagoshima.

The next day, I caught a train to Kagoshima, arrived, checked into a hotel. I soon collapsed under the influence of a cold. The next morning, still sick, I wandered downstairs to the little hotel restaurant--which had fresh-squeezed orange juice. I drank a lot of orange juice. Within hours I was all better.

I really liked Kagoshima. Not just because it was warm; though that was very nice. There was a university, bookstores, music stores. According to my guide book, it was a sort of international center, and it did seem kind of sophisticated compared to Kyoto. I even saw some people who were non-Asians. I hadn't had that happen in a while.

Kagoshima's across a bay from an active volcano. Looking at a map, you get the impression that the bay used to be bigger before the volcano started dumping lava into it. A haze of ash hangs over the city, providing a pleasant reminder of the lovely fog of my native San Francisco. Blowing my nose at the end of the day, I'd find ash in the kleenex. It sounds filthy, doesn't it? Don't knock it; it was better than Kyoto.

You can take a ferry ride to the volcano, then take a bus tour around its sides. I decided to take a ferry ride then a hike. There were farms, shrines. There was a massive earth-moving project to channel later lava flows away from civilization. I took a photo of this project. Then I put a couple of circles on the photo. See the teeny-tiny stuff inside that first circle? That's a big old shovel and a big old dump truck. In the other circle is a pickup truck. The stuff in the circle is for scale. If you look around the picture, you'll get the idea that this is a big project. Even the yellow construction equipment is huge.

| comment? | | home |