See all of our photos from Kagoshima.
This is our second port of nine in Japan. Our plan is to be our own – Taxis to Sengan-en Garden, Tenmonkan Shopping Arcade, and back to the ship.
While there was a ship shuttle from the port to downtown Kagoshima, it cost $25 per person and didn’t go where we wanted to go. In the end, we spent about $62 for point to point taxis, totally worth it.
Our first stop was Sengan-en. Sengan-en is a 12-acre Japanese landscape garden and historic villa built in 1658 by the powerful Shimadzu clan. Famous for using the active Sakurajima volcano and Kagoshima Bay as dramatic borrowed scenery, Sengan-en is UNESCO World Heritage site offers refined samurai-era architecture, bamboo groves, and industrial, tech-focused museums. We started our visit with the villa.
Inside, there was the van that four men would carry the lady of the house in.
And this was the bathing room.
The gardens were quite beautiful.
There was even a Cat Shrine.
Just across from the house is the bay and volcano. It was smoking when we arrived and later in the day, erupted twice. Once while we were in a shop and again as we were sailing away. This is the veiw from Sengan-en.
This picture was posted on FB by a fellow traveler of the first eruption of the day with our ship in the foreground.
These are from the sail-away, a smaller eruption’s smoke is starting rise just as we pulled out.
We hailed a cab and went to the Tenmonken shopping streets. It was interesting but not really tourist shopping, more for locals. But we DID stop at MacDonalds. Yummy!
Tomorrow we visit Kochi.