Japan
Tanegashima
A surf island where Japan launches rockets and Portuguese sailors first brought guns.
The rockets launch from a beach. Japan's space centre sits on the south-east coast of this long, low island of white sand and blue water, and when a rocket goes up — a column of white flame against Pacific blue — people watch from parks along the shore. Tanegashima is where Japan reaches for space, and where the surfers were already waiting.
Guns came to Japan through Tanegashima in the sixteenth century, when a Portuguese ship came ashore carrying matchlocks; the island's museum tells the story. The space centre was founded in 1969 and is now run by JAXA, whose Space Museum is open to visitors year-round, while on launch days the Rocket Hill observatory closes and the crowds gather at Uchūgaoka Park and Hase Park instead. The island lies 43 kilometres south of Kyūshū and under two hours from Kagoshima by hydrofoil, with a surf culture drawn by point breaks on its Pacific coast, and sugar cane and sweet-potato fields inland give it a subtropical character unlike the mainland.
Friends
Watching a rocket launch from a beach park, surfing the Pacific breaks, and the right to boast of having watched a space launch from the sand.
Couple
The space museum, the surf, and the cane-lined lanes make a day that swings between high-tech spectacle and barefoot simplicity.
- JAXA launches rockets from the island's coast — on launch days the crowds gather at Uchūgaoka and Hase parks along the shore.
- Surfers come for the Pacific point breaks, and the Space Museum is open whether or not a rocket is on the pad.
- Guns first came to Japan here in the sixteenth century, aboard a Portuguese ship — the island museum tells the story.
- Sugar cane, sweet-potato fields and white-sand beaches give the island a subtropical character unlike the mainland.
Anno-imo sweet potatoes, the island's famous variety, roasted until they run like honey.
Flying fish and Japanese lobster off the island's reefs, at a harbourside kitchen once the boats are in.
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