:: Izumi, the Town of Cranes
I’d actually heard of Izumi(出水) before I started planning this trip. I like Kagoshima(鹿児島), and I like kurobuta and shochu, so at some point I’d gone looking to see whether there were other towns in Kagoshima Prefecture worth traveling to.
Izumi sits at the northern edge of Kagoshima Prefecture, right on the border with Kumamoto.
Izumi is famous for the cranes that gather here to spend the winter. More than 80% of the world’s hooded cranes are said to winter here in Izumi.
With that many birds in one place, an outbreak of something like avian influenza would be extremely dangerous — enough that there’s a project underway to disperse them across multiple wintering sites.
So tourists come to Izumi to see these cranes. Which means Izumi’s high season is winter.
I came at the exact opposite time of year, in midsummer.
Izumi has a midsummer festival whose name means cranes taking flight — Izumi Kakushosai(いずみ鶴翔祭). In 2026 it ran for two days, July 25th and 26th.
But I visited right before it started, so I didn’t get to see the summer festival or the crowds it draws.
Not winter, when the cranes arrive, and not yet the summer festival — that was the Izumi I saw.
Literally the off-season. Maybe that’s why it felt so quiet and tidy. I think that atmosphere is part of what makes traveling to smaller towns worthwhile. But looked at from another angle, it also makes for a slightly dull trip. It wasn’t easy to spot people on the street.
Izumi in the daytime, under a clear blue summer sky, and Izumi at night, with streets too quiet for the word “downtown.” I wanted to show you the scenes I caught wandering those alleys.
