A tattered red lantern swings back and forth on a rusty hook outside Densuke, a small, family-run pub-restaurant on Shiokaze Street. The name of the street means salt breeze, and inside Densuke a gregarious, decidedly "salty" bunch of customers sit on sagging tatami mats whose surfaces, like rough hessian, have seen better days.

Others perch at the counter where the real action (if, that is, you can understand Kagoshima-ben, the local dialect), takes place. Dockyard workers and ferrymen, students and middle-aged women, join the lively alcohol and tobacco-fueled banter, in a scene that can have changed little over the years. Over greasy gas burners and sizzling woks, cooks prepare local favorites like chicken and horse fillets, grilled sparrow, squid fried in butter, broiled baby clams, or the region's sweet potatoes which are a permanganate color, stained by the iron, potassium and sulfur in the soil.

The local poison here at Densuke, as everywhere in Kagoshima, is shochu, a powerful sweet potato and grain based liquor. A 1.8-liter bottle will be plonked in front of you, along with a bucket of ice, after which you will be encouraged to help yourself and get as sozzled as you like. Locals frequently do, earning the good people of Kagoshima the unflattering nickname of "potato samurai." At 150-200 yen a glass, shochu is an easily acquired taste.