This small museum stands by the port where 19 young men from the Satsuma domain secretly left Japan in 1865 to study in Britain. They travelled in defiance of Tokugawa restrictions, learned Western science and industry, and later helped shape the modernising Japan of the Meiji period.
The building mixes red brick with a Japanese tiled roof, a neat visual shorthand for the story inside. It is a good stop if you are interested in how a remote corner of Kagoshima became tied to Japan's rush toward the modern world.