Okay, I'm back. The period of time between now and my last two posts has been inexcusably long (especially considering that I left it on a cliffhanger), but I've decided to keep continue writing now.
So, why has it been so long since my last post? Well, to be honest, I just didn't really know what to write about. Or more correctly, I wanted to write about everything. Moving to a new country and beginning a new job in a new city, literally everything seemed worthy of writing about. When combined with the fact that I've basically been busy since I got here, wanting to write about everything has meant that I have written about nothing.
However, life has started to calm down a little now, and I'm starting to better differentiate between what in Japan is genuinely interesting and what is simply novel. So I will try again at writing about life here.
I live in a city called Kagoshima. It's a fairly large city in the south of the island of Kyushu, which places it way in the south of Japan. A bustling port, the city is home to about 600,000 people who are spread over a curiously narrow area owing the topography of the area. The city is convenient and interesting, with a great variety of interesting things to see and do. Before I came to Japan I was worried about possibly needing to own a car to get around, but in reality the public transport around here is so good that it simply hasn’t been necessary. There is a tram stop literally on my front door that services most of the places that I need to go in the city, and for those places not near the tram lines, there is an extensive system of buses, trains and even ferries with which you can get about.
The settlements upon the island of Sakurajima are also considered part of Kagoshima city, though it's a little difficult to tell where Kagoshima city ends and the smaller nearby cities start as they are largely connected by nearly unending suburbs. Sakurajima is by far the most striking feature of Kagoshima city; the whole island is a large and highly active volcano. I'll talk about Sakurajima in greater depth later, but suffice it to say that living in such close proximity to something with roughly the same destructive potential as a nuclear bomb is one of the few novelties that has yet to wear off.
In summer, when I arrived, the temperature was (for me) extremely hot and
humid, and although the autumn months were comfortably temperate, the winter
has actually been surprisingly cold (even coming from Scotland, a country not
exactly renowned for its hot weather). It’s starting to get warm again now, but
I can’t say for sure when the temperature will reach the nigh on unbearable
levels it was at when I first arrived.
Being somewhat closer to the equator, I’ve also had to get used to there being less differentiation in the length of days (and the lack of daylight saving time). Simply put, in summer the days felt shorter and in winter the days felt longer. Generally, the weather here is very nice when it’s nice and pretty awful when it’s bad. There have been days when the temperature has ranged from very cold in the in the morning to very hot in the afternoon, and from very sunny to suddenly very wet.
Kagoshima is, generally speaking, a very nice place to live. As a
busy port city, I wouldn’t say that it is beautiful in the more traditional,
European sense of what makes a city beautiful[1]. However, it is energetic,
colourful and vibrant, with plenty of green spaces. Furthermore, the city’s
backdrop; the plunging wooded mountains of the Japanese countryside, the
turquoise blue sea and the hulking presence of Sakurajima are nothing if not
impressive. As would appear to be par for the course with many Japanese cities,
Kagoshima is clean, safe and easy to live in.
I live very near Tenmonkan, which is perhaps the main shopping
street in Kagoshima, close to the train stations, city hall, the Sakurajima
ferry port and is surrounded by many very fine restaurants and bars.
There is much more to say about Kagoshima (especially its history), but I will wait until later and give these things their own blog posts. Until then, またね.
Here are some more pictures. They are far from technically good, but I feel like they capture a little bit of what Kagoshima is like:
There is much more to say about Kagoshima (especially its history), but I will wait until later and give these things their own blog posts. Until then, またね.
Here are some more pictures. They are far from technically good, but I feel like they capture a little bit of what Kagoshima is like:
[1]
Kagoshima actually reminds me a little of some of the Southern French cities that
I have visited, though I couldn't say exactly why.
