We got the most fantastic train back from Hayato to Kagoshima City.  Run by JR Kyushu, we got the Hayato no Kaze (“Wind of Hayato”), a direct train that took just over an hour – too short, for such a fabulous ride.  A sleek, polished, old-fashioned-looking black train, Hayato no Kaze was kitted out inside with pale Japanese pine, with woven rubbish baskets and professional, uniformed ladies bringing delicious coffee and cake to you on little wooden trays.  Large floor-to-ceiling windows looked out to the sea and the great volcanic island of Sakurajima which could be seen just across the water more or less throughout the entire journey as the train chuffed along the coast.  Large, outward facing wooden bench-chairs had been positioned directly opposite the windows so that passengers could comfortably admire the view.

  

We were lucky to be able to see the volcano on our journey, because by the time we arrived in Kagoshima itself, the mist had descended and the volcano was barely visible.  Until then it had looked fairly placid and the usual puff of volcanic smoke wasn’t visible.  Sakurajima was sleeping.

 

As soon as we’d dumped off our luggage at our hotel – the Shiroyama Kanko Hotel,  perched on top of Shiroyama (Castle Mountain) facing the volcano – we took a CityView bus, a quaint little tourist routehopper, down to Sengan-en, a famous Japanese garden in Kagoshima which uses the “borrowed backdrop” of the volcano as part of its beautiful scenery.

Sengan-en was a villa built by the Shimadzu clan in 1658 – later, during the Meiji restoration, the house became their main home.  in 1851, Nariakira Shimadzu, then lord of Satsuma, built the first industrial complex in Japan in a bid to modernise Japan in competition with the West.

 The gardens were vast, with little food stalls near the entrance, a tea house, and several Shinto shrines, including one dedicated to the cat god, where I got a souvenir omiage for my cousin Asako, who loves cats, especially her own – Momo-chan.

 We shared a kintsuba, a cake made with local sweet potato, then some jambo, another specialty of the area – glutinous rice cakes on a stick, covered in a sweet soya sauce glaze.  It reminded me of one of my favourites, mitarashi dango, a smaller version that can also be found in Tokyo.  The two sticks we shared fired us up with the energy we were going to need to explore the gardens and the mountainside behind them.

 

At first, we explored the lower sections, discovering hidden corners and surprises, such as a garden for composing poetry, the Kyokusui garden, where people sat around a circular stream, casting off cups of sake on little rafts.  They had to complete a haiku before the sake cup came around again to be drunk.

The Konan Chikurin was a bamboo grove we found a little further up, where one of the Shimadzu clan had planted the first bamboo shoots brought over from China – the moso variety, which we had tasted back in Myoken Ishiharaso ryokan the night before.  The little shoots poking up out of the ground would have been too tough to eat though – the ones used in cooking are unearthed from beneath the soil before they see the light of day.

We carried on exploring the many shady hidden paths lit by bright splashes of pink, white and red azalea and rhododendra, until we found ourselves heading steadily upwards.  The longer we walked, the steeper the path became.  By now we were high up in the woods on the mountainside, surrounded by complete silence except for the bird calls.  The edges of the dirt path appeared to have been torn up, and I suspected wild boar activity  Sure enough, we then saw cloven footprints imprinted in the churned earth around the tree roots.  We guessed the boar had been busy foraging around the roots for food.  But being spring, with boar protecting their young offspring, we were rather hoping we would not encounter one.

 The sweaty, hefty climb was worth it – near the top, we had an incredible view over to Sakurajima; the mist had lifted for us and now the volcano was awake and puffing away happily, a cloud of volcanic ash rising from its south-eastern peak.

 

We clambered back down again to explore what we could of the rest of the garden before it closed, then hopped back on to the CityView bus to go to Dolphin Point, a modern recreation and restaurant area on the harbour.  A two-level complex with wooden decking surrounded by palm trees, something about it reminded me of Adelaide. 

There was a local specialty food market which we explored, buying some dried horse-mackerel belly as omiage for family back in Tokyo on the advice of a nice man and woman who helped us out.  We shared a small cup of satsuma-imo ice cream – flavoured with local sweet potato – duty-bound, of course, to sample local specialties.  Tasty.

Once we’d explored enough we plonked ourselves down at an ashi-buro – a shallow, long hot spring pool for people to soak their feet in, right there at the edge of the shopping complex, free to use for anybody passing by.  Perfect after wandering around for so long.  The hot water soothed our aching feet as we gazed out to the mountains and the bay opposite.  That was when we heared a “hello again!”.  It was the two people who had recommended the horse mackerel belly to us. 

The friendly lady and I ended up having a lengthy chat.  She asked us about our travels and we talked about the differences between Japanese and Western culture, about moving to Australia, about London, Tokyo and Kagoshima, and especially about food.  It turned out that the two were colleagues working for a company selling kurozu – fermented black vinegar, a local specialty. 

On the Tsubame shinkansen, I’d seen a poster of a field full of neat lines of dark glazed clay pots.  Higashiteso san (that was the lady’s name) explained that black vinegar was made by fermenting rice vinegar in clay pots arranged in rows in fields, with the fresh outdoor air circulating around them, using a naturally-occuring baccillus.  It can be made only in one particular area of Kagoshima, where the temperature and humidity remains constant.  It takes a minimum of one year before the vinegar is ready and develops a deeper flavour over time.  This is not cheap stuff.  It’s used as a cooking condiment – in chicken and pork stews, or as a marinade for oily fish, but it can also be drunk on its own as a health tonic, or added to fruit juice – we had tasted it this way in Myoken Ishiharaso, in the apple juice they brought us when we first arrived.

When we told Higashiseto san and Nagata san that we were hoping to sample some black pork shabu-shabu (hot pot) that night at Ajimori, a restaurant recommended by the Okuda san of JNTO in London (he is from Kagoshima himself – we knew any recommendation from him would be tip-top), they rang the restaurant for us to see if they had tables free (Ajimori is famous in Kagoshima, and as it was a Saturday they were concerned that we would not get a table) – then gave us a lift there, stopping off at their offices to present us with a gift pack containing a bottle of black vinegar and another of sugar cane vinegar, another product which they sell at a high-end supermarket in Tokyo, so that we could sample it properly for ourselves.  On the way there, we chatted more about the vinegar.

Selling their Kibisu (sugar cane) vinegar to Meidi-ya, their challenge was to explain to the many foreign customers who bought from this supermarket chain how it shoud be used.  I said that I thought a simple leaflet would be useful, and that as a food-enthusiast keen to spread the word amongst non-Japanese foodies and as someone who wrote leaflets and brochures for a living I would be delighted to cobble something together for them.  A happy coincidence.

When they discovered Paul was a chef, they asked him to come up with recipe ideas they could put on the English page of their website.  Paul and I were going to have fun thinking up ways of using the kuro- and kibi-su from then on.  We’re looking forward to experimenting when we get back to the Tokyo flat.

How nice these people were!  They were going to be visiting Tokyo for their monthly sales trip there, and we agreed to meet up with them for a drink.  I hope to bring you more on our kuro- and kibi-su culinary experiments in the next weeks.  Who knows, you may see bottles for sale somewhere near you sooner or later!

Having dropped us off, we just had a half-hour wait for a table at Ajimori.  We chose a standard pork shabu-shabu menu and a dish of chicken sashimi on the side (see previous post!) – and yes, that really is raw chicken, thinly sliced and dipped in ginger and sweet soya sauce.  There was straight chicken breast as well as wing (the latter slightly cooked) and gizzard.  Paul hesitated just a moment – he said he had to get his head around the golden rule that states – always, always eat your chicken well cooked.  But this local, free range and organic chicken, a specialty of the area, was as fresh as it could possibly be.  And it was absolutely delicious.  We both wolfed down every bit.

 

Everything at Ajimori was tasty.  Some pickles.  A plate of golden katsu (short for “cutlet”) -  breaded and deep fried pork cutlet, served with Burudoggu (Bulldog) sauce, a dark, thick, worcester-sauce flavoured condiment and finely shredded Japanese cabbbage.  A bronze-coloured nabe pot full of stock soup was placed on a burner in front of us, and the thinly sliced, surprisingly red pork, marbled delicately with fat and without a shred of gristle anywhere was brought on a large dish, together with another plate of vegetables and a bowl of whole raw eggs.

   

The waitress put the first batch of pork slices into the stock and told us to eat them just as they were, without any sauce or dip, once they had turned opaque and creamy.  So we did, and we melted with the tastiness of the meat.  Neither of us have ever had pork like this – sweet, soft, melting and so delicious that it needed no accompaniment whatsoever.  The next batch, said the waitress, could be dipped, sukiyaki style, in beaten raw egg.  Paul gave that a miss, but I went for it and again, it was delicious, the egg cooking slightly with the heat of the pork and giving it a rich flavour. 

As the stock intensified, the waitress added more water, until we’d cooked up and eaten all of the meat.  Now it was time to eat the udon noodles that usually signalled the end of a shabu-shabu meal.  These were hand-made, thick white noodles, brought cold and fresh to the table, then emptied into the stockpot to cook through.  These are served up in little bowls with the stock from the cooking. 

They say the sign of good pork is the complete absence of scum rising the top of the cooking fluid.  Sure enough, the stock was golden and crystal clear and scrumptious and we ate up every last shred of noodle. 

Rounding off with our choice of dessert – vanilla ice cream or a local red bean paste dumpling – I had the former, Paul the latter, we finished up and rolled back to our hotel, where we headed off to our respective female and male baths.  I sat in the outdoor bath, perched up on the third floor of the hotel, and gazed out over the twinkling lights of Kagoshima city, and out at the dark outline of the volcano on Sakurajima, ever present over this beautiful and friendly city.  Once out of the baths, both of us were peacefully asleep within half an hour.

Next morning, we had one last important task to do.  We wanted to visit a little ramen (chinese-style Japanese noodles) shop in Kagoshima station building, Zabon ramen, which had been heartily recommended to us by Okuda san back in London for its local specialty – Kagoshima tonkotsu (pork broth) ramen.  Having loaded our stuff into a locker, then found the shop in the basement of the busy station building, Paul and I plonked ourselves down on stools at a counter table and ordered a Zabon Ramen each – the shop’s own specialty bowl, which had slices of tender black pork, menma (pickled bamboo shoot), chopped spring onion, flecks of fried onion, bean sprouts and the famous tonkotsu pork broth soup.  Okuda san, it was muchakucha oishii!!! – not only was it cheap and cheerful and filling, it was absolutey delicious.  Thank you for your recommendation!