Sakura Jima, Kyushu. JAPAN
13th July 2009
Sakura Jima is the shouthern most place that we travelled to. In Kyushu, the southern most prefect excluding Okinawa and the southwest Islands. The weather was a lot hotter and dryer than everywhere else we travelled to. We stayed on Sakura Jima, a volcanic island very close to Kagoshima. The landscape was unbeleivable, very different to that which I have experienced before. The Island consists of three peaks; only one of which is still active - Miname-dake. Since 1955 there has been an almost continuous stream of smoke and ash. There was a huge eruption in 1914 in which the Island became a peninsula, three billion tonnes of lava erupted from the volcanoe. Half of the island is covered in ash, and has a constant haze in the air; the bus we travelled around the Island in left track marks in the ash on the road and everything had a thin white coat of ash. It was incredible to me that people live with the ash, and so close to an intimidating and huge volcanoe. The photos below show an eruption of ash, which happened when we were walking over the old lava flows of previous eruptions, it really made me think- at which point should you start panicking?!
