鹿児島県 · Kyushu Region

Kagoshima Hidden Gems

Kagoshima lives with an active volcano across the water from its main street. Sakurajima erupts in small quantities most weeks, ash falls on the city often enough that residents carry designated bags for it and the forecast includes wind direction for it, and the ferry runs 24 hours a day to an island that was joined to the mainland by the 1914 eruption. The Satsuma domain that ruled here was distant enough from Edo to trade semi-independently with the Ryukyus and, later, to import Western industry ahead of everyone else — Sengan-en has a reverberatory furnace in its garden. Satsuma also supplied, with Choshu, most of the leadership that overthrew the shogunate. Offshore, Yakushima rises to nearly 2,000 metres within a small island, which gives it rainfall measured in metres and cedar trees that are thousands of years old in a forest that is wet, mossy and steep enough that the main trail follows an abandoned logging railway for the first two hours.

3 spots

Climate & Best Season

Subtropical, hot and very wet, with typhoons in late summer and ashfall from Sakurajima. Mild winters; spring and autumn are easiest.

Famous For (Food)

Kurobuta pork
Satsuma-age
Shochu
Kibinago

Signature Sights

Sakurajima volcano
Ibusuki sand baths
Sengan-en garden
Yakushima cedar forest (UNESCO)

When to Go

This is the subtropical end of the main islands: January highs near 13°C, no snow at sea level, and long hot summers above 32°C. Rain is heavy in the June rainy season, and typhoons arrive from August into September — Yakushima in particular is famous for rain and it is said to rain there thirty-five days a month. Yakushima's Jomon Sugi trail is a ten-hour round trip and is best from April to June or in October. Ash from Sakurajima drifts according to the wind, so check which side of the bay it is falling on. Ibusuki's sand baths work year-round.

Getting Around

The Kyushu Shinkansen runs from Hakata to Kagoshima-Chuo in about an hour and a half. Kagoshima Airport is 40 minutes north of the city by bus and is the hub for the island routes. Sakurajima is a 15-minute ferry from the city that runs around the clock, with buses on the island. Ibusuki is about an hour south by the Ibusuki no Tamatebako train. Yakushima is either a two-hour jetfoil or a short flight, and once there the bus service is minimal and trailhead access is restricted in peak season, so most visitors use a rental car or a guided transfer. The Amami islands are a separate flight.

Local Food

Kurobuta, Berkshire pork, is the prefecture's meat and is served as tonkatsu, shabu-shabu or in a black-vinegar braise; Kagoshima raises more pigs than anywhere else in Japan. Satsuma-age are fried fish cakes, sweeter here than elsewhere because of the local liking for sugar. The prefecture makes more shochu than any other, distilled from sweet potatoes grown in the volcanic soil, and it is drunk cut with hot water. Kibinago, tiny silver sprats, are opened by hand and eaten raw with vinegared miso from spring to early summer.