Sakurajima volcano and Kagoshima - Mar 15

After breakfast we drove to Sakurajima, one of Japan's most active volcanoes, that has multiple eruptions several times a day. You can see it coughing up some ash in my photo. Until 1914 Sakurajima was an island in the bay, but a powerful eruption and subsequent lava flow connected it to the mainland in that year.
After viewing the volcano we took a ferry across the bay to Kagoshima.
We started in the Senganen garden, a Japanese style stroll garden that incorporates the views of Sakurajima and the bay into its garden vistas. It was built in the 17th century. Besides all the usual garden ponds, sculpted trees, rocks, vistas, etc. there was a Shinto shrine to cats. For some reason this shrine had the style of tori gate reserved for the Imperial family. I know that is how cats view themselves (as Emperors) and I guess the Japanese agree. Although our Japanese tour guide had no reasonable explanation for it.
There was a museum just outside the garden showing the clan here as one of the earliest adapters of Western technology in the 1800s.