The japan you don't know - Our arrive to Kagoshima

After days and days spent walking through dark houses, travelling on punctual trains and getting to know on our way stuff, stuff, and again stuff that solve every silly problem, my body is tired, my soul is in rags. Meanwhile, it’s already night.

We arrive in Kagoshima driving the long way that goes straight from the airport to the outskirts, immersed in the harsh and gloomy Japanese vegetation.

The landscape suddenly opens up like a treasure chest and the whole lake lights up with thousands shining lamp posts. The huge volcano almost seems to reach the moon. You start thinking that Naples has a hidden twin in the East, but no one has never known it!

We arrived at our 25 square meters apartment on the top floor of a palace. A real cubbyhole without any kitchen, but with a nice microwave! From our little balcony we can see the Sakurajima volcano inspecting the bay, regularly smoking blue ashes.

The next day I wake up from what it seems the most comfortable bed I've ever had.

Once we come downstairs, we immediately find ourselves surrounded by the life of a city where you can feel all the European influences. In 1865 the Shimazu clan in fact managed to have a small group of young men smuggled out of the country, allowing them to go and study western UK technology, with results that can still be seen almost everywhere! When you walk in these neighborhoods there are brick buildings in Liverpool style, buses in Lisbon version, Harbur in Sydney mode and squares inspired by the city of Rome.

In short, the impression is that a good idea in the hands of Japanese technicians can really become great, on a human scale, but above all nice: like this one pleasant neighborhood, its greenery, its people who fill the markets, its wide avenues split into patches of woods, the giant koi carps in the city streams, his European festivals, his delicious sweet potatoes and his liqueur, the chicken and goose sushi, its sulphurous water paths in which to dive.

A few days later we take tents and sleeping bags and we walk to the old port of Kagoshima. Here in Japan you can’t book a passage on a merchant ship – you just must wait and get on board for first, finding some space on the ground among packets of rice.

The ocean is calm outside, the sunset is promising and for about a couple of months we have seen neither tourists nor westerners. Our cargo ship sets sail with a long black smoke; its balustrades are corroded by the sea and the salt has rusted every corner of the boat exposed to the waves. The sunset, on the other hand, is still on the surface of the water and does not stop setting on the horizon.

We wake up the next day awkwardly hugging our backpacks and watching the spectacle of hundreds of flying fish competing in flights on the keel of the ship. This makes us feel light as in some ways, we are too jumping towards another world.

Some moments later, we reach Yakushima island.