Day 23 - 19/01/1998: A Ferry to Sakurajima: I didn't sleep very well the first night at Ritsuko's brothers house. Although I had gotten to sleep quickly after spending the day walking all around Kagoshima city, I awoke in the middle of the night and it was then that I realised that my pillow was filled with rice! In Australia pillows are filled with soft things like feathers, not with hard things like rice (or spilt peas as I experienced at another place in Japan). After waking up still feeling very tired I not being able to get back to sleep, everything about how different Japan was to Australia started coming to my mind and I just wanted to go home. Eventually I went and woke Ritsuko and swapped pillows with her because she had a softer one which was not filled with rice.
Well if the night's experience wasn't enough to shock me out of my comfort zone then maybe the day's experience would. Considering we were in Kagoshima and nearby Kagoshima is the island of Sakurajima home to one of the world's most active volcanoes 1. So we were crazy enough to go there and we have so photos to prove it! 2
The above photo of Sakurajima was taken from the deck of the ferry on our way there.
