The bay ferry
15 minutes from town.
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An active stratovolcano in Kagoshima Bay, the most active volcano in Japan, just four kilometres across the bay from the city of Kagoshima. Once an island, it was joined to the Ōsumi Peninsula by the lava of the 1914 eruption, the most powerful in twentieth-century Japan. Its summit has three peaks, the highest, Kita-dake, at 1,117 metres, and it is almost never quiet: between 1955 and 2024 more than 15,000 small eruptions were recorded from the Minamidake and Shōwa craters, sometimes dropping ash on the city. A few thousand people live on the volcano, whose fertile soil grows the world's largest radish and a small mandarin. Visitors cross on the Sakurajima Ferry from Kagoshima port in about 15 minutes. By the ferry terminal is a visitor centre explaining the volcano and a lava-shore park with a long hot-spring footbath, and the Yunohira viewpoint on its slopes looks right at the crater. Exploring is free, and the ferry runs around the clock for a small fare, per visitor guides. Climbing to the summit is not allowed because of the eruptions; on ash days a mask and glasses help.
15 minutes from town.
Close to the crater.
On the lava shore.
Sakurajima, Kagoshima Bay (visitor centre at the port)
No, the summit is off limits because of constant eruptions, but the Yunohira viewpoint on its slopes looks close at the crater.