At Nature's Mercy, Part 2

The Tarumizu michi no eki was a little too comfy and I spent a while there relaxing in the foot bath reading a book and eating lunch. Eventually I got up the raw courage to leave and look for my night's beach campsite. I liked the previous night's results I wanted to do it again and, weather willing, every time I do this sort of thing. I found the perfect spot nestled in some tall beach grasses and made note of where it was before heading to Nafco (a hardware store) to get grease for my bike's crank. Damn thing's shot to hell, I need to grab a new one some time soon. Well, I'm walking to my car in the lot when hear a soft rumble and I look up to see a plume of black jetting out of Sakurajima--the mountain was erupting!

This is sort of a big deal to me. Four years ago when I first came to Kagoshima for just a day and a half I was genuinely touched by the image of Sakurajima looming over the city in the middle of Kinko Bay. Kagoshima will most likely never become the Japanese Pompeii for various reasons, but with the enormous Taisho and Showa Era eruptions that wiped out towns of thousands in a matter of days on the eastern slope the people of Kagoshima are folks that live their days to the fullest. It is indeed my not-so-secret dream to move to this city, rent an eastern-facing apartment on the top floor of an apartment building and wake up every day to the sight of Sakurajima, shaking its fist at me menacingly.

So, yeah, getting to see it erupt ratchets up the majestic several notches. Naturally I had to get closer, I had no time to waste. I whipped out the bike, greased up the crank and started a mad dash to the volcano 10-15 kilometers away. The first thing I noticed about the people of Tarumizu while Sakurajima was doing its thing is that nobody gave a damn and I was the weirdo sprinting down Main Street towards the thing with a stupid grin on his face. Getting closer and closer the temperature jumps at least a few degrees and you lose track of what time it is because the ash cloud blocks all sunlight. When I start riding around the actual perimeter of the island ash is getting into my eyes and sticking to my sweaty skin. The bike's getting a fine layer of raw pumice from the source, which I don't know if it's a good or bad thing. By this point I've just gone full bore for 15+ kilometers and am feeling tired and covered in ash, so one of the island's onsen is an order, but when I find one it's gaudy and pricey and I hate it. A little less than halfway around the island is the ferry port that connects the peninsula to Kagoshima and they have a non-gaudy, non-bank-breaking onsen called the "Rainbow Magma Springs". Intriguing.

Jeebus H. Christ...the place lived up to its name. The water was impossible to enter fully and, in fact, even a bit too much for my feet after five minutes. The digital thermometer on the wall read 91C (about 195F, the boiling point of water being 212F). The shower had adjustable settings, mercifully. Now that I had a chance to relax two things became apparent to me, the first being that I was utterly spent after the 25km speed run to the port, and the second that my left ankle was messed up and if I didn't knock off the repetitive motion and hard cycling I'd be in trouble. Well how am I going to get back to my car then? I floated the idea of partying the night away in Kagoshima in honor of having seen a volcano erupt and spending the night there, but ran into the "I'm spent" barrier. Take a bus back to Tarumizu? No way am I going to leave my bike. Luckily there was an Intl. Youth Hostel near the port with rooms for the low low price! of 2,400 J-bucks, so I stayed there. Before the sun had even set I was conked out and slept for twelve hours.

--Matt