S P O T ／ SPOT-300

Yunohira Observatory (Sakurajima)

湯之平展望所（桜島）ゆのひらてんぼうじょ

Perched at the fourth station of Kita-dake, 373 meters up the active volcano Sakurajima, this is the highest point of the mountain that ordinary visitors are allowed to reach. The raw, exposed flank of Kita-dake looms directly ahead, while at your feet spreads the Taisho lava field — lava that flowed out and froze in the catastrophic 1914 eruption, an event that fused the once-separate Sakurajima to the mainland. Across Kinko Bay sits the skyline of Kagoshima, southern Kyushu's largest city, so that a smoking active volcano and a 600,000-person metropolis share a single view. The crater itself is off-limits by eruption alert level, but the observatory lets anyone drive right up to the edge of that restriction line — an uncanny landscape of volcano and city in intimate coexistence that only Kagoshima offers.