No Call Number: Not Hiroshima, and with a volcano

We planned to spend our second and last day in Japan at Hiroshima. The atomic bomb is not a part of American history I am proud of, but I felt, as Americans, that we should see it. We went to the train station that morning and asked for two tickets to Hiroshima. We had about 15 minutes to board the train: just enough time to find breakfast and coffee, get stuck in the turnstiles, and find our seats. Turnstiles are our nemeses here, and each one has some different method for crossing. All turnstiles are all the same type, which does nothing to indicate a wrong move until two barriers pop out to close on you. There are always helpful subway/train attendants who watch us carefully as we try to navigate the system and pop out to direct us through the idiot proof turnstile when we mess up. This time I had put the wrong ticket in the turnstile, as I had a Japanese and an English version.

Anyways, we were on the train and moving before I realized that our journey was 2 hours 20 minutes instead of the 70 minutes the internet said it would be. We were on a “slow” train (this train probably went about 85 miles per hour, but it was not the famed maglev bullet train). After about an hour and a half, everyone got off the slow train and boarded a bullet, so I figured the track was broken, which would explain the longer journey. I am no stranger to railroad mishaps.

It wasn't until I got off the train and went to the tourist information kiosk for a map that we realized we were in the wrong city. The lady at the train station in Fukuoka had misheard me and sent us to Kagoshima. Instead of 200 kilometers north, we went nearly 400 kilometers south. The floor dropped out from under me. All of our plans and we were in some nothing city! Bobby tried to cheer me up, saying we'd make the most out of it. We browsed our tourist map and saw a volcano island on the south side of town.

We've seen Mount St. Helens, so I wasn't expecting much. The moment we came in sight of the volcano and smoke began to billow slowly out of the top was priceless. It was an active volcano! It was truly inspiring to see. We found a nearby restaurant where we could eat lunch, and after some excellent ramen and a Kirin, we had decided we had made a fortunate mistake. If we had known there was an active volcano so close to us, we may have opted to go to Kagoshima anyways. Bobby loves volcanos. We decided to get closer.

We took a ferry to the island and a bus to get closer to the cone. Our observation point was covered in black ash, and we looked over a lava field from the catastrophic 1914 explosion that turned the island into a peninsula. Afterwards, we went to one of the island's many hot springs—this one for feet—and warmed our toes. Kagoshima was relatively warm and beautiful, with lush vegetation (once you got out of the ash covered area). The beaches were littered with black volcanic rocks. We watched the volcano turn red as the sun set, then headed back for the “road to the Meiji restoration,” which included a samurai house. We had dinner at a sushi joint—that's right, I had nothing but ramen and sushi the entire time I was in Japan—which was also a shopping mall with a ferris wheel on top. It was a long journey home, but we were both satisfied with our mistake. We lost an atom bomb memorial, but gained an active volcano.