Hello, everyone. It's has been a long time since I wrote a post last time. August was kind of a busy month for me, as a mother with a school boy. There was almost no time to rest. But my elder son's elementary school started this morning (on August 30) after the summer break. In our school district, schools begin at the end of August, but when they begin nationwide differs from town to town.

One of biggest events our family had was visiting my husband's hometown. It's far-away place, Kagoshima Prefecture from Niigata Prefecture.

(Wikipedia's links are found at

Kagoshima Prefecture : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kagoshima_Prefecture
Niigata Prefecture : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niigata_Prefecture )

My two sons, husband and I went there from Niigata, which locates on the Sea of Japan side. My husband drove a car to Tokyo, and then took an airplane from Haneda Airport to Kagoshima Airport. Each journey took more than six hours by the car and one and half hour by air.

 
Along with seeing relatives of ours, we visited Sakura Jima Island. They got on a ferry at the wharf in Kagoshima City. The island has been well-known for a volcano, and to our surprise, we encountered the volcano erupting. The black smoke was rising from the mountain top. I and other tourists took pictures on the background, but as it turns out that, locals tell me, the eruptions have been happening oftentimes.

(Sakura Island : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sakurajima)

Kagoshima prefecture was such a fantastic place as different as our rice fields and flat land. There were a lot of hot springs, too.

My family enjoyed my husband's hometown, thank to our parents in law.

Scenery of Kagoshima City  from Sakura jima Island