• Japan Guide

  • Introduction to Japan
  • Weather
  • Things not to miss
  • Getting around
  • Money
  • Public holidays

• Explore Japan

  • Tokyo
  • Around Tokyo
  • Northern Honshū
  • Hokkaidō
  • Central Honshū
  • Kyoto
  • Nara
  • Kansai
  • Western Honshū
  • Shikoku
  • Kyūshū
  • Okinawa

• Cities

  • Aizu-Wakamatsu
    
  • Akita
    
  • Aomori
    
  • Fukuoka
    
  • Hakodate
    
  • Hirosaki
    
  • Hiroshima
    
  • Kōbe
    
  • Kagoshima
    
  • Kakunodate
    
  • Kanazawa
    
  • Kumamoto
    
  • Kyoto
    
  • Matsue
    
  • Matsumoto
    
  • Matsuyama
    
  • Miyazaki
    
  • Nagano
    
  • Nagasaki
    
  • Nagoya
    
  • Naha
    
  • Nara
    
  • Narita
    
  • Niigata
    
  • Okayama
    
  • Ōsaka
    
  • Sapporo
    
  • Sendai
    
  • Shimonoseki
    
  • Takamatsu
    
  • Tokushima
    
  • Tokyo
    
  • Yamagata
    
  • Yamaguchi
    
  • Yokohama
    

Japan Guide

Kyūshū

Kagoshima

• Accommodation
• Eating

With a population of just over 600,000, KAGOSHIMA curls round the west shore of Kagoshima Bay, a mere 4km from Sakurajima, one of the world's most active volcanoes. Sakurajima's smouldering cone constitutes the city's most obvious and compelling attraction, but Kagoshima contains a few sights of its own which justify a day's exploration. Foremost of these are its classical garden, Sengan-en, which uses Sakurajima in the ultimate example of borrowed scenery, and several excellent museums of local history and culture. The best are devoted to Kagoshima's mid-nineteenth-century heyday, when Saigō Takamori (among other local heroes) played a major role in Japan's modernization.