Mainland Japan consists of four major islands, Hokkaido Island, Honshu Island, Shikoku Island and Kyushu Island. The most south-western one is Kyushu Island and Kagoshima Prefecture is situated south of it. South-western part of the prefecture is Satsuma Peninsula. Kaimon-dake (Mt. Kaimon) is located on the south point of it. Kaimon-dake is, as you see in th picture, a very beautiful volcano, now not in active.The volcano is 922m (3024ft) high and, as you easily imagine, you can get a magnificent view from the top.
Ohsumi Peninsula is separated by Kinkoh-wan (Kinkoh Bay) east to Satsuma Peninsula. In the center of Kinkoh-wan there is a very active volcano, Sakura-jima. Once it erupted over 400 times in a year.
There are so many active volcanoes on Kyushu Island. Another name of Kyushu is "Hi no Kuni", that means "the country of fire".
Indeed they are sometimes very dangerous but it is also the fact that they form extremely wonderful landscape and they atract a lot of tourists. Actually the people there don't have too much anxiety. Recently scientists have succeeded to foretell about several eruptions.
The southern end of Ohsumi Peninsula is Sata-misaki (Cape Sata). The latitude is 31 degree north. It is almost equal to that of Shanghai, China. The cape is not only the southern end of the peninsula but also that of Mainland Japan. But Japan doesn't end here. Okinawa Prefecture expands south to Kyushu Island. Hundreds of sub-tropical islands belong to Okinawa Prefecture. We have 47 prefectures in our country.
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