Getting from Kagoshima Airport to the city

Ten bays, and only one of them is the city

• Kagoshima Airport's bus stands are numbered 1 to 10 and they are not sorted by how many people use them, so the city bus is not bay 1.
• The Kagoshima city line leaves from bay 8, operated jointly by Nangoku Kotsu and Kagoshima Kotsu. That is the bus for Kagoshima-Chuo Station and the city centre.
• Bays 2 to 5 are taxis and rental cars. If you have walked to bay 3 looking for a bus, you are in the wrong place.

The rest of the map

• Bay 6: Kajiki and Aira locally; the Sakurajima-go coach to Fukuoka; the Mango Liner to Miyazaki.
• Bay 7: Taniyama and Ibusuki, which is the line for the sand baths at Ibusuki; and the Kirishima-go coach to Kumamoto.
• Bay 1: Hitoyoshi and Ebino, and the Kirishima City M-Wagon.
• Bay 9: the routes north and west, Minamata, Okuchi, Kurino, Akune, Izumi, Miyanojo and Sendai, plus the Kirishima line and the dedicated Kirishima Jingu access bus for the shrine.
• Bay 10: Kokubu Station and Tarumizu Port, Kokubu and Kyocera, Makinohara, Iwakawa and Shibushi, and Myoken Onsen.

Booking

• Coaches that leave Kagoshima prefecture are reserved through Highway Bus dot com. For the Fukuoka, Kumamoto and Miyazaki services, book rather than turn up.
• The local lines are pay on board in the normal Japanese way, taking a numbered ticket as you get on.

The airport

• Kagoshima Airport is not near Kagoshima. It sits inland at Kirishima, in the hills roughly 30 km north-east of the city, which is why the bus network here is a proper regional web rather than a shuttle.
• There is a free natural hot-spring foot bath in the terminal, called Oyattosaa, on the landside. It is a genuinely pleasant way to spend a delay.
• The airport is the gateway to the Satsuma peninsula, Sakurajima and the Kirishima mountains, and for the Amami islands and Yakushima, which it serves by air.