Sakurajima Active Volcano — Living with Daily Eruptions

Sakurajima is one of the world's most active volcanoes, erupting thousands of times per year — smoke plumes and ash fall are daily facts of life for Kagoshima City residents across the bay. The volcano dominates the skyline, a perfectly conical peak 1,117 meters tall that was originally an island but joined the mainland by lava flow in 1914.

Visitors can drive or bus to observation points on the volcano's flanks, walk lava fields frozen mid-flow, soak in hot spring foot baths with the crater smoking overhead, and visit the buried torii gate — a Shinto shrine gate half-submerged by volcanic ash, left in place as a monument to the 1914 eruption's power.