Now I am in the village of Kashima on the island of Shimo-koshiki to the west of the Kagoshima coast. Kashima is a beautiful little harbour village. Both the houses and most of the people I have seen so far are old and sweet and very countryside-like. Everybody says hello, and mostly not as in "Hello strange foreigner!", as I have encountered before, but rather as in "Hello neighbour!". It seems like everybody grows their own crops, and they do it really well. Most vegetables are huge. 

When Petri had picked me up at the Kushkino station we went to his wife Shinko´s parents´ place in Yunomoto, which is a neighbour town. They were really sweet. I stayed there two days and among other things we went to buy some fruit trees to plant in their garden in Kahima. On the way we passed a lot of huge tea plantations and we stopped to look at and take pictures of them too. I have never seen tea bushes before. At the Plant shop I saw some people harvest the tea leaves of a nearby tea field with a peculiar machine. After that we went to Kagoshima city to watch Mount Sakurajima, apparently the most active volcano in the world. Then we drove around in the tree-clad mountains looking for a good place to stop and eat the bentou we had with us. Unfortunately there were no places to pull over where the views were the most beautiful but we finally found one peaceful beautiful spot. Later that evening we went to look at some ceramics in Higash-ichiki since the ceramics from that town are supposed to be famous all over Japan. 

The next day we took the ferry to the island of Shimo-koshiki where Shinko´s parents´ other house is. The view of the islands was amazing when the ferry arrived to the ports on the way to our stop. The house is a beautiful old style house with tatami mats in every room. As I said above Kashima is a wonderful little harbour village and Petri showed me around a bit. Among other things, he showed me a piece of land, that Shinko´s parents own, but haven´t been used for many years. There was trees and bushes and weed there until Petri cleared it away to prepare for a small plantation. Well, not so small actually; it is about 30 m² or something on a slope. The view from there is great. You can see all the way to the harbour and the sea.

Because of the lack of isolation it gets pretty cold inside and in the house in Kashima there is no heater, but fortunately there is a kotatsu table - a table with a heater underneath and a thick blanket so that the heat stays under the table. So with some hot tea and your feet under the table it is no problem.

At Shinko´s parents´ place in Yunomoto I met Petri and Shinko´s daughter Anni for the first time since I saw her as newlyborn in Sweden. At first she was shy and quiet and still. Petri had never seen her like that. But now that she has gotten used to me so she is wild as ever. 

Petri said that the Russian space station Mir is probably going to pass over the island tomorrow so we have been following the news about it on tv. But it seems like we might miss it. This evening we also saw a program about the nature in nothern Sweden and Norway. It seems to have been made or produced by the Swedish nature program show host and producer and Bo Landin.