Sakurajima

Today we took the ferry out to Sakurajima, Japan's most active volcano.

Our ferry was called the Cherry Queen. Yeah, that's what they called it.

 There's the volcano.

 We visited Tsukiyomi shrine. Incidentally, Tsukiyomi is the Japanese god of the moon.

 It was a bit of a hike.

 Sakurajima also has a dinosaur park. Obviously I had to see it.

I just saw this fuzzcat in a store window.

Fried fish cakes (satsuma-age) are a specialty of Kagoshima. We picked some up for snacks.

 The hot product suffers.

 Here's Shiroyama.

The view of the city from Shiroyama was really nice.

By the time we reached Kumamoto, it was dark.
You may be familiar with Kumamon, Kumamoto's mascot.

Since it's December 31st, we went to another shrine at midnight.

 I got to try amazake for the first time. I liked it! It was slightly sweet, and didn't have much of an alcohol taste.

 A taiko performance started at midnight.

 The procession was somewhat eerie, and the shrine was beautiful at night, but it lacked the excitement of a Western celebration. It was an interesting experience, but it didn't really feel like we brought in the new year.

Kagoshima

There are so many places around here with great views of the open sea.

This morning we visited Udo shrine in Miyazaki. I thought Aoshima temple from yesterday was my favourite, but Udo really gives it a run for its money.

 I'm not exactly sure what this seashell statue thing is.

 There was a pretty cool hiking path up the mountain through the forest.

 The steps got pretty steep.

It just kept going!

 Honestly it seemed a little dangerous.

 Now the cool part: this shrine in on a cliff overlooking the sea. 

You can see fishermen on those rocks out there.

 A game where you throw things off the side of a cliff.

 The main part of the shrine is in a cave on the side of the cliff.

It's in a cave on the side of a cliff!

 Coins are just shoved in this rock.

 This rabbit is loving it.

 Here are ema boards shaped like rabbits.

 After that, we made our way to Kagoshima and visited the Kirishima Geopark.

It was basically a farm with a gift shop and food.

 These egg-shaped mango cakes were very cute. I bought a couple of boxes to bring back as omiyage.

 There were a lot of cute farm animal goods.

 I never really thought about the term "cowlick" before, but these cows had wet fur sticking up all over the place because of how much they lick each other.

 I took a lot of panorama shots.

After that we went to Kirishima shrine.

 This god-tree was huge!

 Sunset.

For dinner we had the famous Kagoshima black pork katsu.

 Very high quality pork. It came close to being too much food for the girls, but they fought their way through.

Ferris wheel!