I was really excited to get to Kagoshima, the largest southernmost city in Kyushu, as I had timed my visit with Ohara Matsuri, a huge dance festival that went all weekend. It was a bit tricky finding my hostel– I had some issues with mixing up station names, trying to figure out what tram I needed to take (one of those mysterious perfect English-speaking business men materialized out of nowhere, “Do you need some help?” “YES PLEASE!”) and trying to find the hostel using the barebones map provided. But soon I was checked in, nice and close to the festival streets, and a short walk to the water, where the enormous profile of the active volcano Sakurajima stood.

Me and Mary, a girl I met at the hostel, went to the main road for the first night of Ohara Matsuri. It was held on a large, wide street, separated by a boulevard on which the trams ran. Dancers made their way down one side and then back down the other, dressed costumes ranging from brightly coloured happi robes to beautiful kimonos to random Halloween stuff, and they all had their own dances too. There were loud speakers set up all down the tram way and from them blasted the same four songs over and over, the dancers performing a different dance for each song. The energetic voices of commentators spoke rapid fire the whole time, crying out “O-tsukaresama desu!”

The energy was really fun and I was jealous I didn’t have my own troupe to dance in! This was a huge festival but I only saw a few foreigners, all of whom were in dance troupes. We wandered around and ate some food from food booths.

The first night ended pretty early, around 8:30, so we went back to the hostel and drank a beer. There was a friendly Japanese girl in our dorm room and she mentioned her and her friend were going to Yakushima, a small island covered in dramatic old growth forest, the next day. I had really wanted to go to Yakushima but had decided against it, as it sounded a bit complicated for a solo traveler with only a small grasp on Japanese. Her friend, it turned out, was a very pretty French guy with green gold eyes and skin the colour of a golden brown piece of toast. He came into the room and fixed me with a very serious gaze.

“Of course you can go to Yakushima. It is not complicated. Nothing is impossible. You can do it.”
I explained my concerns.
“No! Nothing is impossible. You can go!” All with a dead pan expression.
“Could I take the ferry with you?” I asked.
“Of course.” He said.

I got a little excited. The two seemed quite interesting and I was mentally doing the math on how much it would cost to go with them. In the end, however, finances won out and I decided to just stay in Kagoshima and enjoy Ohara Matsuri as planned.

The next morning I put on my headphones and walked to the nearby ferry to Sakurajima. Sakurajima, as mentioned previously, is the massive volcano that sits just across the bay from Kagoshima. I knew it was best to explore the island by car but I hoped to take a bus to a lovely looking oceanside onsen (with a consecrated shrine!), spend an hour or so there and then head back to town to watch the festival.

I stood on the top deck of the ferry, listening to music and watching the fishermen on the breakwaters and the hazy islands shimmering on the horizon. Over me loomed the enormous Sakurajima, smoke puffing from its peak. Unfortunately when we docked, I looked at the map at the information center and the onsen I had wanted to visit was closed! The very sweet woman at information offered me some other suggestions but I wasn’t in the mood to do any crazy wandering. I walked around the area near the ferry dock, bought a bag of mikans out of a roadside basket and ate some down by the water.

When I got back to the mainland, the parade area was now bumping. I stopped in a park filled with families sitting on plastic tarps eating food from the stalls lining the lawn. There was a stage on which stood three men dressed as ninjas and a bunch of little boys with plastic swords and headbands. The ninjas were teaching them how to swipe their swords in front of a large audience of children. They then had the kids line up and take turns “battling” two black-clad ninjas. Somewhere a soundboard supplied slashing sound affects and the ninjas rolled in exaggerated defeat and the little boys struck a victory pose.

After thoroughly enjoying the little ninjas, I spent the rest of the afternoon watching the dancing, shooting video and having lunch in a little ramen shop where an entire family worked at breakneck speed dishing out steaming bowls of noodles. I loved watching the grandma assemble the bowls, grandfather washing them as fast as they could fill them.

Back at the hostel that evening, I kept hearing people going up and down the stairs to the roof, so I went up to see what was going on. There was a guy setting up some speakers in the corner and another person setting up a griddle with a takoyaki pan on it. I asked what was going on and I was told there would be music later and that I was welcome to come up and listen.

Later I wandered upstairs with a chuhei and found a decent sized group of people gathered on the roof. The guy from earlier was tuning up his guitar in the corner and talking to a petite woman with lovely waist length hair. An older man was pouring batter into the takoyaki pan and he offered me a heaping plate. There was a small charcoal fire pit going and an empty seat next to a white girl who was chatting in rapid fire Japanese with the others. I sat down, gawking at the size of the takoyaki.

“Do you want to share?” She asked me in accented English.
“Yes please!” I laughed and offered her some chuhei as well.

We started chatting and I learned her name was Julia, originally from Switzerland, but currently living on Yakushima. I was so stoked at that! She lived there with her boyfriend and worked in a bar.

The man who had been making takoyaki came over and stoked the fire pit and Julia recognized him and spoke to him. I heard her say something about a Snack bar, and I am sure I have expressed my strange fascination with Snacks before, so I asked her if she had met him at a Snack bar.

Turns out she WORKS at a Snack bar on Yakushima! She said the man had been there recently and had been so drunk he had laid on the bar and the Mama-san had to drive him home. She said if I went to Yakushima with her, I could stay with her and her boyfriend and visit the Snack and she would take me for rides on her motorbike. This sounded like the greatest trip to Yakushima ever, but unfortunately she wasn’t going back for a month.

Suddenly a beautiful voice rang out and we turned to see the woman with the long hair clutching a microphone and singing. The guy with the guitar started playing repeating patterns while she sang long, lovely, aching notes. As they performed, three other people started setting up drums and a keyboard and some bongos and in the middle of the next song, they started playing too, softly drumming and then radical psychedelic organ chords on the piano.

Needless to say, I really enjoyed the evening, especially when a friendly Japanese girl asked me, “Do you like wainu?” DO I LIKE WINE? And we ended up drinking two very cheap bottles between the three of us, snuggled around the charcoal pit with blankets, listening to the beautiful music. The guitar player got really drunk and was swaying like crazy, trying to chat with me,

“I got too drunk” he laughed and started playing songs for me that turned out to be old cheesy commercials. “It’s a joke,” he said, “We call it teppan gaggu.”

You can hear Amamjaubb’s music here.