Kyushu 2015 Autumn Self Drive Trip - Day 8

Day 8 : Kagoshima to Nichinan, Miyazaki

Due to time constraint/weather , we decided to skip the Senganen Garden as today is a very long drive from Kagoshima to Miyazaki. We went to Shiroyama Observatory (城山展望台) first before heading to the ferry terminal. It was very cold in the morning , as we reach there most of the shops is just opening and the friendly shop owners was commenting in japanese that how cold the weather is (and maybe why am i still wearing a short sleeve T-shirt). Anyway this is a observation deck where by you can get a full view of Sakurajima   (櫻島）and if you are lucky , you can actually get to see the smoke coming out of the volcano. Supposedly the volcano can erupt smoke up to 4-6 times a day but we did not get to see it. 2 months before we reach there, there was a level 3 warning and about 2 months later it erupted again. ( this is also a good place for night view of Kagoshima city at night )

After enjoying the nice view , we make our way to the ferry terminal as we will be taking the ferry to Sakurajima itself , entering from the east side then drive out from the west towards Miyazaki. Sakurajima is actually a volcano island but due to a major past eruption , it's lavas actually joined the volcano to Tarumizu.

The ferry we taking

View on the ferry of the harbour

Halfway through the ferry

Another ferry in the opposite direction

*Note : there are a few ferry leaving the port at Kagoshima ,  if you wanna bypass Sakurajima , there is actually a longer ferry about 40 mins to Tarumizu. For ferry timing and prices can click here. The ferry takes about 15 min and payment is done when you reach the island itself ( this is to speed up the process ) ** Also , remember where you park your car , we went down the wrong staircase and was panic cos it was reaching and we scare if we don't get to the car in time , might delay the traffic moving off.

Selfie with the volcano

Free foot bath

there is a trail with cooling lavas

Biggest radish

Once you reach the island , you can actually go for the free foot bath, its a very long stretch , with one side facing the sea and the other with the volcano view. Best to bring a towel with you (we brought with us one time use towels). Also Sakurajima is famous also for the biggest Radish and smallest mandarin orange. Image

There are a few observation deck to give you a different view of the volcano and it's crater. These few above is taken at 湯之平展望所 , this is where you can see the crater view.

The "ashy" off road  path

Shelter just in case there is an eruption

Lava formations

These are taken at 有村溶岩展望所 , another stop that can let you view the whole volcano , not only that , it is like a part here , full of ashes from the volcano eruption and also a lot of cooled lava formations.
The last picture is the smallest orange , which is the world smallest. After this spot , we drove through the connecting road and moved on to Tarumizu. There isn't any visible restaurants on these road so we had a quick lunch at 7-11. The convenience stores in Japan is really good to shop and a great place for quick nice food. ( actually after we had our lunch , about less then 5 min drive after the 7-11 is the main town area where you will start to see restaurants.

Another view from 垂水千本イチョウ園

The place we visited is千本イチョウ園 , the name actually means "Thousand Gingko Garden" , it's actually a private plantation and it's only opened to public during the Koyo Season from November till December.  It's actually planted by a couple about 30 years ago and it's free entrance Also as mentioned before , the trees were not in their prime condition this year so you can see from the pictures aboved that some trees are completely bare and some still greenish/yellowish and not the usually golden yellow gingko tree leaves. Link for some better pictures online.

Some of the slightly yellow tree

Some trees further down with tons of dropped leaves

Trees are a bit bare cos all the leaves dropped

along the highway 71 , we detour a bit to check out Osumi Lake , this is a supposed to be a koyo spot as well but the lake is very big and we do not have much time to explore but we were greeted with some very yellow gingko trees.

After taking come quick pictures , we drove on to the next location , Obi. There is a Obi castle here but our main reasons for checking this out is that they have a "coupon system", which is you can purchase a map + coupon @ 600 yen, then out of the 40 shops ? that participated in the program , you can choose 5 to exchange items/food/drink to redeem. Some of the shops had very nice item which we think is very worth it , but some ….  anyway the coupons will state what items can be redeem from which shops so you can actually decide. I won't recommend to come here just for it but if you like old building and also history then you can drop by here. Also this place is famous for a type of tree called "杉" , there is a area where they called the "power" spot ( to relax/find inner peace ? ) link. As this is really a day with a lot of place to visit and also due to the short daylight , we just visited some of the shops we interested in and quickly drives off ( when we reach here is ard 4.30p m and most shops here closed ar 5.30 pm (or eariler).
Dinner at the Ryokan : えぷろん亭, one of our best stay for the this trip , not only the view is great , stay is good and the host are very nice and helpful. While we were having dinner, the moon is out so the host actually came to inform us to take a look , even off the lights to show us the clear view ( cos scare windows reflection ). The lady ( maybe the host's mother ? ) was super nice, her english is not good but tried her best to communicate with us also to show how fresh the lobster sashimi is , she purposely use a chopstick to touch the lobster (Isa shrimp they called it here cos this sea area is know as Isa (i think) , the season is from October to March), the video of the "moving" lobster is here. Also she saw that we dunno how to eat the head and legs , so she showed us and wanted to do all for me but i refused (cos paiseh)  so we just follow they way she showed us (First time in my whole life i eat lobster so clean also eat the head part , one think about being in Japan , I tend to eat things I don't dare at home cos feel bad if I don't eat what they offered , like I do not eat eel but when at Sushi Dai in Tokyo , cos the chef served it in front of you , just feel oblige to eat it) *Note : if you dunno japanese and have some food that you really don't eat or with allergy , best to take down the translation in japanese so you know what to not ordered.

Kyushu 2015 Autumn Self Drive Trip - Day 7

Day 7 : Izumi to Kagoshima

Today we went to the Izumi Crane Observation Centre ( about 25 min away from the station ) to see the Cranes that had flew here to avoid the  winter. Every year , between late October to March , there will be more then 10,000 cranes here. English site and a blog from someone who had better pictures. When we got there , it was drizzling a bit and the weather was very cold but still we did saw a lot of cranes there though picture quality is not that good. Here are 3 links of the videos i took when i was there , Video 1 , Video 2 , Video 3

Cranes in the field along the way

In the open field might have some , here and there

It started to rain when we were leaving so we decided to check out the "Samurai House" near the Izumi Station area. There are a total of 3 that is open for visiting , all are free. Think they are free guides but the only do Japanese only so we just visited one and look look see see.
Next , we are wanted to go straight to Kagoshima and visit Senganen Garden (仙巌園) - it's a garden facing the sea and Sakurajima ( one of the "live" volcano in Kyushu ) . Apparently it's once belong to a powerful clan , which the garden was design in a way that the Volcano is the "mountain" and the sea is the "pond" , like how in chinese said "有山有海“. But because it's drizzling and we did not really managed to catch any nice Autumn colours yet , we decided to detour to 曽木の滝公園 , which is one of the Koyo place cos according to the web report , there is still Koyo ( red leaves ) here. There is actually a abandoned factory nearby that is only visible when the water level is low (think in the summer months , link here if you are interested).
This is like a big park with an underground passage tunnel ( think you need to pay to go through , think it will take you from the entrance of the park to near the water basin area , we did not go in ) , there are some shops and a few restaurants (we had our lunch here).

The only red tree left

A glass panel at the end

Another tiny falls on top at the other end

There is a small platform with a part with glass panel , which allows you to see the part where the water was flowing out but as it was raining on n off , it looks very dirty with all the sand. The water here is flowing very fast that is why there like a Dam to drive power from these water nearby. There is a few attractions nearby , like the submerged power plant , a dam and a bridge but due to time constrain and also the weather , we just stayed a while had our lunch and moved on.
We decided to drive to Kannondaki Park (観音滝公園) to try our luck again cos this is another Koyo spot. There is a waterfall here , think some chalets ( like a campsite kind of thing ) and there is a river which think you could go down for activities in summer months. We were lucky then the rain is not that heavy when we are there , but it got bigger when we were about to leave. The pictures will looks even better if the leaves were in better conditions but still this is one of my favourite picture.
After here we actually detour again to another spot , 藺牟田池県立自然公園 , this is actually a big lake which is also a place for sakura viewing other then Koyo but when we are there , it was very cold and most of the trees are already bare ( cannot trust the online reports of koyo too much cos we detour here cos one of the site put that the leaves is just nice for viewing ). We just spot take a look and then move on to Kagoshima city cos the weather is kinda of dark and hope to get out of the mountains road.
It was about 7 pm and was still drizzling when we reached Kagoshima and checked into the hotel. Was very lucky that there is a last carpark lot for us at the hotel ( apparently for Toyoko Inn hotel , some carparks had to be reserved when you do the booking ( else have to call them  if cannot do online , not very sure cos we never know about this) but some is First Come First Served. Do note also most ( if not all ) the carparks for the hotel chain is all on top , meaning they is those auto parking type. You drive into a life and then everything else is automatically controlled by the parking staff. So meaning , best to have everything you want taken with you when you alight as if i am not wrong thought they only charges a flat rate from check in to check out but if you wanna take out your car and park again additional charges will incur.

For dinner we had the famous Kagoshima Kurobuta Pork at Kurokatutei (黑かつ亭), which is also known as "6 white" aka “六白” ( this means that other then the 4 legs , tail and nose  is white, the rest of the pig is black in colour )  also the pigs are fed with sweet potatoes. Quoted online " The Kagoshima Kurobuta pig has black hair throughout its body and six white markings, namely its four limbs, nose and tail. Compared with other types of pork, the fat of the Kagoshima Kurobuta pork has a higher melting point, and is thus non-sticky and has a light, crisp flavour. Having fine muscle fibre and rich in amino acids, the Kagoshima Kurobuta pork, touted as “soft, tender and tasty”, is highly regarded throughout Japan and is also the pride of Kagoshima prefecture. "  The cutlet is really good ! not only the pork does not have the usually "porky" smell/taste , they way they fried it was really good , crispy and non oily. they also sell the black pork bun but it's chill :( so we did not buy to try , Actually wanted to buy and maybe use the hotel microwave the next morning but cos we will leave early so a lot of guest will be having breakfast there ( the microwave is usually at the dinning area too ) , so paiseh lor.

After dinner , we went to the shopping street and did some Omiyagei shopping and also went to try the famous 白熊冰 at the Shirokuma Cafe , It's basically shaved ice with condense milk syrup and topped with fruits . Think someone mentioned that if you were to eat inside , you have to order a portion each , no sharing ( their minimum order i think ) but you can also eat at any of the restaurant in that building think they had a few floor and you can ordered it ( not sure about this but online someone mentioned they had set which is a bit cheaper ? ) Anyway you can choose to take away like us , look at the design of the take away plate in the last picture. It's was about 8 degree and drizzling when I had that ice :P Before going back hotel we went to Don Quijote for some shopping as it was just opposite, the next day is staying near the coast and there is no shops nearby so need to top up some drinks and snacks.