Travel memories at the southernmost tip of Kyushu

The Sanyo Shinkansen goes all the way south, taking passengers to Kagoshima, almost the southernmost city on Honshu Island. Volcanic ash from Sakurajima drifts here all year round, and fine black ash accumulates in the gaps of the footpath. There is no nightlife in the city. After eight o'clock, except for the ramen shop and the burger shop, customers come and go from time to time. The only thing left in the shopping street is the fortune teller sitting at the intersection. The young girl sat in front of them and frankly stretched out her palm to let the strangers examine her fate. Are the young souls left in this aging and slow city feeling the same confusion?

Going south from Kagoshima to Ibusuki, the small town at the southernmost tip of the Satsuma Peninsula attracted me because it has "the southernmost train station in Japan". I know this place because of my friend Gou Ge. He said that in order to go to this place, he used all available means of transportation and even borrowed a bicycle from the store. On the way to Xidashan Station, I couldn't help but think about how he rode on this country road.

A unique story is that we met a Frenchman in Nagasaki. She asked my dad to take photos for her and we started chatting. He said that he bought a bicycle from Kyoto and rode all the way here. We all admire her experience very much, but I would never do the same thing. Those years of schooling and riding a bicycle exhausted all the passion for cycling in my life.

It’s like time has been frozen in Ibusuki. If Kagoshima is old, Ibusuki will only be called "senpai". Old streets, old-school hot spring hotels, and depressed commercial streets. Tokyo, which stands at the forefront of the world, is Japan, and Ibusuki, on the southern edge of the border between Kyushu and the sea, is also Japan.