There's that Halloween fever I warned you about.

Today then I made it over to the volcano island where I walked about a bit and took a bus around a bit and wondered at the immensity of it all.  There are three cones on the the mountain and they say there are eruptions in the south cone more or less every day.  In all the pictures I've taken there's certainly smoke coming out of it and I feel in some a tinge of orange where the smoke leaves the mountain but that could be my imagination.

What I'd really like to have seen of course is massive chunks of rock being thrown in the air and streams of red hot lava running down the sides,  It was pretty cloudy all day so the photos are not too exciting.  Here's one to illustrate the electricity cable situation I was moaning about.

My walk took me by the 100 metre long set of foot bathing pools that have been set up for the relief of weary walkers or just to show off the presence of volcanically heated water.  

I didn't feel the need to wash my feet but I did check that the water was warm.  There were nice big chunks of rock and views back over to the mainland.

The bus took us to what is the highest point you can get to by road and where there's a viewing spot.  

I spotted this odd looking set up high up on the mountain but there was no knowledgeable person around to ask about it.  I know that the authorities are keeping an eye on things all the time and taking measures to improve the safety of the people who live near volcanoes and I suppose it's something to do with that.  They practice emergency responses all over Japan because of earthquakes and tsunamis and the like so I suppose they have their eruption drills on Sakurajima as well.

After a few hours enjoying a good slosh around I filled up on coffee and headed back to Kagoshima to visit Sengan-en.  No mucking about looking for buses and trams today.  It was straight from the ferry into a taxi.

It's an impressive place.  You can visit both the house and grounds and a couple of nearby industrial sites because the family who lived here for 300 years or so were not only politically active aristocrats but took a major part in the industrialisation of Japan in the late 19th/early20th century. 

Here's the house's inner garden.  Sorry about the intrusive tourist.  I'll get rid of her with Photoshop.  There's another little inner garden with just a couple of rocks in it.

The house is quite swish inside and there's info about all the bigwigs who were visitors in days gone by like Edward VIII, Czar Nicolas and various Japanese notables.  I'm sorry to note that I've chopped off the tiger's head in this picture, kind of ruins it.  But forunately I've got the head in closeup

with the bonus of a good view of samurai body armour.  I've noticed this in other houses I've been in.  I don't know whether that's an addition dictated by modern curatorial ideas or whether your samurai kept his gear handy just in case he needed to leap on a trusty steed and swing his sword about a bit.

One of these perhaps.  A label told me that there was something religiously important about the big one and it got taken to the shrine every day but what it was I don't remember and furthermore I don't know whether it was this model horse (lifesize) or its real counterpart.

Prince Shimadzu Tadayoshi got a grand view of his garden and the mountain as he sat contemplating what improvements he could make to the reverberatory furnace a hundred yards down the drive.

The servants meanwhile were probably dreaming about when they were going to move on from the palaquin age to the steam engine or the horseless carriage.

A couple more pictures to illustrate how beautiful a place it is.

On my way out I passed a gate in a wall with what looked like a watchman's hut beside it and beside that this little statue.  Grasping a club in his hands he could be the God of watchmen and someone has been making offerings to him.  Let's hope the contents haven't reduced his ability to keep baddies at bay.