Leaving Nagajima

Yesterday we did the museum and the art gallery. The museum is a modern building on the castle site. It gives a good overview of the history and culture of Kagoshima. They were a rampaging mob of samurai here for centuries. Farming was hard because in places the ash/powdered pumice is 200m deep. Water retention is a problem but the 600 varieties of bamboo thrive.

The Art Gallery has a small, comprehensive collection of 20th century European painters and a large collection of local's work. One in particular was impressive. He painted an egg on a wine glass on a table with another broken glass against a blue, blue sky. I wonder what was his meaning?

The day befor we went to the aquarium which was fabulous. Did you know that deep, deep tube worms have a haemoglobin that has reception spots for oxygen and for H2S. That is so they can feed their commensalism, sulphurphilic bacteria. This is a huge whale shark.

The volcano has been entertaining.

After dinner we came across this guy taking his cats for a walk. (Jo thought he was trying to sell them.) as soon as I took a photo others around is lost their reserve and wanted to pat the cats.