Japan Trip – Kagoshima

We were up early and off the ship by 7:30am! We took the ferry over to the volcano and had time to soak in the foot bath before our bike tour. This is the longest foot bath in Japan. The water contains iron and is fed by a natural hot spring 1000m underground. It was divine and Cory even tried it. Before our tour we used the bathroom and this was the one and only squat toilet I saw. I wasn’t exactly sure what to do, but you literally just squat!

There was one other couple from our ship on the tour with us, but the wife decided to bail and hang at the foot bath all day. Rento was our guide. He was awesome and taught us all about the volcano. It is called Sakurjima and it’s a super volcano. The left side is dormant, but the right side is active and erupts almost every day. So far this year there has been 114 eruptions by April 22nd when we were there. There are 11 active volcanos in the area. We only saw steam coming out of it.

The tour started out really nice biking along the ocean and the lava field. It got steep quickly though and these e-bikes were not like the ones we have at home, not a lot of power. David (the guy from our ship) was super encouraging and always kept up the rear. When I struggled, Cory came alongside me and would push me from the bottom of my bike seat. I wouldn’t have made it without him. It was rewarding to get the top! Rento brought us a local snack and we had some time to grab a few souvenirs and pictures. We went back down through the forest and the sweet smell of the orange trees.