Kagoshima is a small town on the south coast of Japan. It was lovely, particularly after grim and gloomy Nagasaki! The rather lovely, but ever so slightly odd, Mr. Nakazono made us feel very welcome. We mainly went to Kagoshima because it's got the most active volcano in Japan (possibly the world, but we wouldn't want to make any unfounded claims to fame here!), and Gemma had heard rumours that she might need an ash umbrella! How exciting! It's last big erruption in 1914 blew ash 8000m in the air, some of which landed in Russia. We were ready to see some bubbling lava and the chances were good - it's errupted 40 times so far this year!

So we headed across to Sakurajima with great anticipation and she was smokin' away like a beauty! We had a soak in an onsen with magma heated waters (they like to be clean these Japanese!) and headed closer . . . sadly not too close. Gemma was keen to go and have a peer in the top, but it, perhaps sensibly, was a 'no go area'.

The next day, anxious not to let an opportunity go past where we might miss a bathing opportunity, we caught a train to Ibusuki a bit further down the Satsuma peninsula. Ibusuki is famous for it's thermal sands so we duly headed down to be buried. It was rather toasty and little bits of wriggling to try and put a bit of air between body parts and steaming sands was obviously not the done thing because those little ladies and their shovels came along and covered you back up again! We managed a massive 15 minutes before we started to feel scalded and little bit cooked! So we headed back inside for another piping hot bath! Graham continues to be a little bit too amused at Gemma's slightly boiled look when she comes out . . . !

Another thing we discovered that Kagoshima is good at is fillet steak! We hadn't realised we'd been lacking it until we stumbled across a Steak & Beer restaurant - GREAT! It was, quite possibly, the best cooked (or not cooked as the case may be!) bit of meat we've ever had! Mmmmm, mmmm! A rather friendly chap befriended us there - we think because he couldn't believe the size of the steaks we'd ordered, nor the size of the 'medium beer' . . . we were slightly surprised at that too - a medium beer turned out to be about 1 litre! He was very nice, we were a little concerned but decided to give him the benefit of the doubt and eventually came up with the theory that the two very young schoolgirls he was with were his daughters . . . .?!

All in all Kagoshima was great . . . sadly no bubbling lava was spotted nor ash umbrella needed!