Kagoshima is small enough to see on foot in a day, and big enough that you should give it two. The unmissable trip is the ferry across the bay to Sakurajima, the active volcano that defines the skyline. Back on the city side, Sengan-en is the great Shimazu strolling garden, with the volcano as its borrowed backdrop and a UNESCO-listed industrial complex next door. Mount Shiroyama, the wooded hill above downtown, is where the Satsuma Rebellion ended; the lookout near the summit gives you the same Sakurajima view the samurai had on their last morning. The Museum of the Meiji Restoration is the best introduction to why this remote southern city produced so many of modern Japan's founding fathers, and the Reimeikan prefectural museum fills in the wider history. The covered shopping arcades of Tenmonkan are the heart of the modern city — eat, drink and wander here after dark.