Kagoshima

Sakurajima sits a few kilometres across the bay from central Kagoshima and erupts routinely rather than exceptionally. What that means day to day is ash: local forecasts include the direction it will drift, cars carry a brush, and the city hands out sacks for householders to sweep it into. When the plume comes your way the sky goes brown, the pavement grits underfoot, and outdoor plans need an alternative.

None of this is dangerous at city distance, and the ferry across runs continuously, day and night, as an ordinary commuter service. What it does change is packing and expectations. Bring something to cover a camera, do not plan the one clear photograph of the cone on the one afternoon you have, and check the eruption level before driving the island's road, since the exclusion zone around the summit moves with it. People here treat the mountain as a neighbour with moods, not as a landmark, and a visit goes better if you do the same.

Three days for the mainland, six if Yakushima is in the plan, and it should be. Kagoshima City sits across a bay from an active volcano that drops ash on it regularly, which is the most striking thing about arriving here.

The mainland: the city and Sakurajima, reachable by a fifteen-minute ferry that runs around the clock, is one day. The Satsuma peninsula south of the city, with the sand baths at Ibusuki where you are buried in naturally heated black sand, and the crater lake and shrine at the tip, is another. The Kirishima mountains north-east are a third.

Yakushima is a separate trip: a two-and-a-half-hour jetfoil or a short flight, and a minimum of two nights on an island of ancient cedar forest and extreme rainfall. It is the best thing in the prefecture and it cannot be done as a day trip.

Kagoshima administers a chain running hundreds of kilometres into the East China Sea, and a prefecture map flattens that into something that looks like a day out. It is not. Yakushima, the nearest of the well-known ones, is a couple of hours by jetfoil or a short flight, and once you land the bus service is thin and the trailheads are controlled in the busy months — so the island itself is another logistical layer rather than a destination you simply arrive at.

Further south the distances stop being comparable to anything else in Japan: the Amami group is closer to Okinawa than to the prefectural capital, has its own subtropical climate and its own dialect and textile traditions, and is reached by air or by an overnight ferry. Treat any island as its own trip with its own nights booked. Bolting one onto a mainland itinerary is the single most common way people end up spending their holiday in transit.

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.

Typhoon season, late summer into autumn, which hits this far south hard and cancels the ferries and flights to Yakushima specifically. Building an itinerary around the island in September without spare days is asking for trouble.

Yakushima's rainfall is legendary — the local saying is that it rains thirty-five days a month — so there is no dry season so much as a less wet one, roughly late spring. The mainland is mild year-round and genuinely pleasant in winter. The other constraint is the volcano: alert levels change and close the upper roads on Sakurajima at short notice.

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.

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.

The shinkansen reaches Kagoshima from Fukuoka in about ninety minutes and the local line runs down the peninsula to Ibusuki. The Sakurajima ferry is constant and takes vehicles.

A car is what makes the peninsulas and the mountains work — Sakurajima's own circuit road, the Satsuma coast, the Kirishima range, and the Osumi peninsula across the bay. On Yakushima a rental is close to essential: the island's ring road is the only road, the trailheads are spread along it, and the buses are few. Note that Sakurajima's ash falls unpredictably and the volcanic alert level restricts how close you can drive.

A first visit is the city, the volcano and the sand baths. Taking a ferry to an erupting volcano and driving round it, then being buried up to the neck in hot black sand on a beach an hour south, is a very good two days and unlike anywhere else in the country. Add the Satsuma history — this domain effectively drove the Meiji Restoration — which the city museums explain well.

A second visit is Yakushima, for at least three nights. Cedar trees thousands of years old, a mountainous interior that generates its own weather, and a level of rainfall that makes the forest floor entirely green. The famous ancient cedar is a long day's walk in and out. Bring waterproofs that actually work and expect to use them.