the tall blond guy goes to japan

South

Kagoshima

There's even less here. It seems like Nishi-Kagoshima is the main train station, while Kagoshima Station is just here to keep someone in a job. So I'm here. Nice place. My hotel has no phone plug so all this stuff will just sit in my laptop until I can pour it out through the wire soon.

There are these ISDN pay phones scattered all over the place. ISDN seems to be much more popular here than in North America. The neato thing about these ISDN phones is that they come with a phone jack where one can plug in an ISDN modem and do a fast data transfer. Some other phones have data plugs too, for regular modems. Unfortunately, my external modem requires a plug. There are no plugs in these phone booths. Drat!

Kagoshima is about as far south as you can get in Japan without getting on a boat. There are a couple of towns on this island that are a bit more south, but they're difficult to get to, and pretty small. This is as far south as I'd like to be, thankyou.

There are palm trees here.

Palm Tree in Kagoshima

I sometimes forget just how big Japan is. It looks so small on globes, you know...

Kagoshima's tourist board has done an excellent job at making the city tourist-freindly. I was given a simple map of the area with all the sights marked on it (not difficult for such a small place, but that's beside the point). There are signs everywhere, pointing people to shrines, monuments, statues, even cannons used against the British (they're particularly proud of those).

Kagoshima is a very walkable city with a nice new waterfront section just being built. It reminds me in some ways of San Diego. Fewer Mexicans though.