Friday March 18th, 2016 Kagoshima, Japan

Today is our second stop in Japan and we are visiting the city of Kagoshima.

The weather has changed dramatically from yesterday; it’s raining and overcast - the forecast has it remaining this way for the whole day overcast. Kagoshima is situated on a wide bay facing a small island that is dominated by the volcano Sakurajima. Looking out from our balcony the volcano should have filled the view, however today I could not even see the island!

No formal shore excursion today for us, we are self-guiding. Our plan is to try and make it to the estate of the last Shogun to rule in this region, the place is called Sengen-En.

The terminal in Kagoshima was a lot smaller than Nagasaki, however the welcome of the people was just as warm – they could not have been more helpful. We learned that Sengen-En was actually a little ways outside of town, but that the hop-on hop-off tour bus made a stop there – so we purchased a pass for 600Y each. The tourist busses run mainly in the city area and so we had to get the Cunard shuttle from the port to the city.

Armed with two maps and an i-phone GPS we found our way to the nearest tourist bus stop, only to see it disappearing into the distance. Faced with a 30 minute wait and the prospect of traipsing round the gardens at Sengen-En in the increasingly heavy rain we actually contemplated just having a quick look round the shops and heading back to the ship – we’ve become such whimps!

On our way to the bus stop we had noticed a large shopping area; a combination of covered alleys and a department store – so we decided to check it out and maybe get a cup of coffee while we dried out. The shopping alleys offered a strange mix of almost market-like stalls juxtaposed with high-end shops. The department store was called Yamakataya and we headed inside in search of a coffee. 

We knew from prior Japanese visits that these large department stores often have extensive food markets in their basements, so we headed downstairs and were not surprised to find beautiful displays of fresh fruit, fish, meat, baked goods – think Lewis’s food hall in Glasgow (sadly now long gone), or Harrods in London. The problem is these places cater to the locals, in other words they sell food to take home – walking around gawking at the delicious wares just made us hungrier. Finally we found a place called Afternoon Tea in an alcove off the food hall and managed to get coffee and a selection of great pastries.

Sufficiently fortified we decided to battle the weather and go back to our original plan. The City View tour bus is a great way to hit all of the main tourist attractions in and around Kagoshima, about 15 stops in all – although we only planned to use it to get out to Sengen-En and back. The atmosphere on board the bus is quite hectic with passengers getting on and off, jockeying for the limited seats and trying to listen to the recorded announcements about the upcoming stop – there is also a tv screen showing the next stop. Just push the bell to tell the driver you want to get off; there’s even Wi-Fi on board though it did not work on the first bus we used.

The trip out to Sengen-En took about 15 minutes and we got off the bus into quite heavy rain. We ran in the direction of the crowd and under a wooden archway – immediately an assistant approached and in perfect English helped us through the ticket purchasing process. We were informed that there were three price levels, the highest of which allowed access to the interior of the residence. The price difference was not that big, and looking out at the increasingly heavy rain we figured that going indoors might be a good idea. The kind lady showed me how to put the correct money into the ticket machine and we were soon on our way. At the time of purchase we did not realize that the interior tour included a guide – and that we had to scurry along to make the set start time for the tour.

The Sengen-En site includes the residence, gardens, history factory, restaurant and shops – it’s quite extensive. The Shimadzu family rules over this region for a period of almost 700 years from 1185 to the end of the samurai class in 1869. Towards the end of the period the Shimadzu were instrumental in the modernization of Japan; sending out young men to Europe to be educated and initiating industrialization – one of the museums here shows how machinery was imported from England for metal and glass production. 

The residence was constructed in 1658 as a second home for the Shimadzu family. Between 1888 and 1897 the house was used as a full time residence by the last lord of Satsuma, Tadayoshi Shimadzu. 

The guided tour of the Sengen-En residence was outstanding, we felt so lucky to have chosen this option. It turned out that there was only one other couple on the tour so the four of us got an almost personalized tour. The residence was classic 19th century Japanese construction; a series of interconnected rooms constructed of wooden frames and paper-thin walls, many of them built to slide open. No shoes are allowed inside and so, shoeless, we walked the red carpets over bamboo floors from room to room. The guide explained each room in Japanese and normally we would have had to follow along with a written hand out - however, because there are only 4 of us on the tour the guide was kind enough to repeat everything on English just for us. 

The final event of the tour was a surprise, largely because we had rushed into the tour without reading much about it. We entered a large room and noticed 4 small plates resting on the floor, each plate held a small Japanese cake. There were no chairs in sight. We were invited to sit on the floor while the guide explained the ritual of the cake and the subsequent “tea” that was served. I don’t think I’ve sat cross-legged on the floor since infants school, and the ability of my legs and muscles to get into that position deserted my a very long time ago. Sandra was in similar distress. So I tried kneeling but that didn’t work and in the end we sort of slumped on the floor, wondering how we were ever going to get up again. At this point I was glad that photography was not allowed inside the residence! Presently the “Matcha tea” arrived, a bright green viscous liquid that included ground mushrooms – it tasted very savory and bitter, it was awful. I won’t describe our attempts to regain vertical, other than to say they were eventually successful. 

Following the house tour the weather was still awful, but with aid of umbrellas we managed to get some pictures of the gardens, then we had a quick look around the shops and museums before jumping on the bus back to town.