108

Is the number of sins in Buddhism. It's also the number of active volcanoes in Japan.

The most active is Sakurajima, on its eponymous island across the bay from Kagoshima City. It's so active (with over 450 eruptions so far this year) that people's cars and balconies are covered in an ever-renewed layer of ash.

Sakurajima obligingly erupted in this huge cloud of ash just as we were poised here to take a picture. No lava - just ash. The last lava flow was decades ago. And the major eruption before that (in the Taisho Era, 1915) was so huge that it sent ash all the way to the Kamchatka Peninsula in Siberia!

Either way it's an impressive volcano. After taking this photo, we scurried away to the shelter of a soba restaurant to let the ash settle a little before taking the ferry back to the city. The volcanic soils nourish some especially excellent fruits and vegetables, apparently. Sakurajima is famous for tiny tiny mikans that only grow on the island, as well as enormous round daikon radishes that can be purchased in many, varied, kawaii forms.

Our lunch was delicious - cold hand-cut soba with a dipping sauce, tsukemono of the famous island daikon, and including a faintly green jelly for dessert that they told us was almond - but we are pretty sure was actually daikon!