Trip Down to Miyazaki

So as I wrote a couple posts ago, Leeann has transfered out of our Nakatsu branch down to the blue waters of the Miyazaki beaches.

A few weeks ago we were chatting in the staff room and Leeann was saying, "I don't know how I'm going to get all my stuff down to Miyazaki. I can't fit it on my motorcycle, and it will probably cost a fortune to ship it all."

"You know," I said cautiously (somewhat thinking aloud) "I've got a car. And I've always wanted to go down and see Miyazaki."

"What are you saying?" Leeann asked.

"Well, I might be persuaded to drive down with your stuff. Of course I'd want to stay over a couple days to make the drive worth my while and do some sight seeing in Miyazaki."

"You can stay at my place no problem," Leeann answered.

"And it would be nice to have some company on the long drive down," I said. "Maybe if we re-arranged everyone's schedule a bit so Amy could come too?"

I'm not sure why I haven't made it down to Miyazaki before now, since it is directly to the south of Oita. And especially since I've heard nothing but good things about Miyazaki. Whenever I talk about how beautiful Kyushu is, or how much I loved the beaches in Southern Oita, someone will always say to me, "Yeah, you should go down to Miyazaki. It's really beautiful down there."

But, despite having spent almost 4 years just a few hours away from Miyazaki, I never made the effort to go down before. Probably just my laziness and sedentary nature: the same reason I never made it up to Nagoya to visit my cousin, or Kagoshima to visit a fellow Calvin student, or didn't visit Himeshima Island until this year, or didn't get around to sight seeing in Tokyo until just last week...et cetera, you get the picture.

But with Leeann in Miyazaki, and with her stuff needing transport, I had the perfect excuse to go down and do some sight seeing.

Amy re-arranged her schedule so that she could come down as well. Because I had just gotten back from Tokyo a couple days before hand, I didn't do a lot of preperation for the trip down to Miyazaki and it really got thrown together at the last minute. I didn't get out of work until 9 on Tuesday, but since I routinely stay up till all hours of the night anyway, I thought it would be best to just drive through the night rather then get up early on Wednesday morning. Tuesday night I had a last minute change of heart and decided:
1) I didn't feel like making the drive that night and
2) I wanted to see the scenery on the way down.

So we left Wednesday morning. It was supposed to be a 6 hour drive down, but we went with the intention of making a day out of it and stopping at everything along the way.

Although I took my video camera along on the trip, I didn't use it. Amy had her trusty digital camera, so I let her be in charge of photography for the trip and I would just steal the pictures from her website later. For the complete set of pictures, visit Amy's photosite. And for Amy's version of events, you can read her blog entry here.

The first stop we made along the way was when we saw signs for a cave. We parked the car and explored the cave and took some pictures. (Southern Oita actually has many caves like this. This is the third one I've been to know in my travel's through the South of Oita Prefecture. The other two I both saw when I was heading down to Harajiri Waterfall). Anyway, here are some pics:

Encouraged by our first successful rest stop, we saw signs for a scenic valley and a natural spring water. We followed them up a long windy mountain and back down again before deciding that they didn't go anywhere.
"Actually," I said to Amy, "This is what usually happens to me when I go out exploring in Japan. For every cool place I find, I end up following a lot of signs into the middle of nowhere and getting caught by stupid tourist traps. I can be a good guide if I'm in areas I'm familiar with like the waterfalls in Yabakei or Ajimu. But once I'm in unfamiliar territory I always seem to spend a lot of time doing aimless wandering. For every cool stop like the cave we're probably going to average about two duds."

Unfortunately this prediction proved to be a little bit more prophetic than I would have liked...

We took the long road down because I wanted to swing by Saiki town on the Southern coast of Oita. I had been to Saiki 6 years ago in 2001 for the JET welcome party, and remember being in awe of the beautiful beaches. The green mountains came almost right up to the beach. The sand was soft and black. The water was crystal clear. The abundant green plant life reminded me of my image of the tropics, and the way the town was sandwiched in between the mountain and the Ocean fit my image of what a Mediterranian fishing town must look like.

I was thinking that once I got into Saiki I would have no problem finding the beaches, but it turns out I didn't remember the town quite so well as I thought. After a lot of driving back and forth we succeeded in finding some fishing ports, but not the beaches I remember swimming at 6 years ago. Maybe if we had stayed longer we could have eventually found what I was looking for, but we had a destination to get to so we drove on. Another dud to add to our list.

We stopped for lunch at a nice diner out in the country side. I got my picture taken next to a giant bug, although we decided not to follow the sign to the advertised bug park.

Once we started to get into Miyazaki itself we started to see a lot of beatiful beaches. We pulled off to go swimming at one. It's October now, but it is still plenty hot in Southern Japan. (I even got a little burnt). Here's a picture of the beach.

And a couple of me coming back from my swim.

hyuga-- movie of the beach.mpg

Also the further South we got, the more Palm trees we began to see along the road. (There are some Palm Trees up in Oita prefecture, especially around Beppu, but for sheer quantity Miyazaki seems to have us beat).

Eventually we got into Miyazaki city. With all of our stops and wanderings, we had managed to turn a 6 hour drive into an 11 hour day. I'm not exactly sure how we did this even with the stops, but I think we both enjoyed seeing a bit of Kyushu on the way down.

The next day we set off with Leeann to some sight seeing around Miyazaki town. We saw some scenic overlooks of the Ocean.

We also went down to Udo shrine. Now after all my time in Japan I've definately had my fill of temples and Shrines, but this one was overlooking the cliffs of the ocean, so it was a lot more scenic than your average shrine.

We also went to Aoshima Island. I took this opportunity for another swim in the ocean.

After this Leeann had to go to work. Amy and I toured around the city for a bit.

We went to a science Museum. And we got our pictures taken as an astronauts.

Finally, believe it or not, it turns out Miyazaki has a Pizza Hut. (An incredibly rare find. In all my time in Japan, the only other time I found a Pizza Hut was up in Sapporo.) There's lots of Pizza shops in Japan, but almost no places that do a real deep dish American style pizza, so this was a real treat for us. Kudos to Amy's quick eye that spotted the store.

Friday morning back to Nakatsu and work again.

Link of the Day
The War Party’s Latest Spin: George Orwell Was Right