Now is that giddy transition period between winter and spring in Japan and oh boy, let me tell you, does it do wonders for the human psyche forced to to live through that most horrible of the four seasons. It's like the feeling you'd get after passing out from a night of binge drinking Bailey's Irish Cream with the graduating class of the Tijuana Sub-basement Beauty College and being handcuffed to a steam pipe while your pockets are picked clean (even the lint!), but then waking up to find you've been blessed with super-strength and -stamina, a kick ass video wrist phone and, in fact, you own the only breeding pair of unicorns on the planet. And for that reason I'm glad that Lisa unintentionally delayed her beach birthday party until last Saturday, even if it turned out to be a sort of comedy of errors for me.
The plan, as I understood it, was deceitfully simple: Get from Kusu to Sumie Beach in Miyazaki Prefecture (the beach I and several other ALTs went last summer), stopping along the way at the astounding coffee otaku's mobile caffeine dispensary in Kuju and Bungo-Ono City's Harajiri Falls to finally rectify a shameful sightseeing oversight. Departing my apartment at noon, the fabulous weather, really excellent time we made over to Kuju via the scenic Yamanami Highway mixed with Maia's Icelandic synth-pop and bossa nova CDs to equal a recipe for the perfect road trip.
I've been visiting the Kuju area quite a bit lately and the magnetic attraction is, I feel, completely justified. The area is jam packed full of hot springs, cafes and wide open spaces, which are three things I seek out when the craving for relaxation overtakes me. The mobile cafe we visited this day may not be the best cup of joe in the land, but their variety, quality and price beats the ever loving hell out of virtually all cafes in Japan, stationary or with wheels. I ordered an iced Vienna coffee and was floored when it came with really real whipped cream—thick!—and a single coffee bean for decoration on top. Before she willed the coffee to life I got to specify which type of coffee and how strong I wanted it. Now that's service! It was so tasty I completely forgot about that bean until I damn near lost a tooth and control of the car when I bit down on it hard.
The michi no eki at Harajiri Falls (yes, another one down!) was hopping to say the least. There was a tulip festival going down and we couldn't find parking in the normal lot so I decided to just toss the car illegally onto the sidewalk and call it parking. Don't worry, there are no consequences here. The tulip fields were impressive, like a walk through Holland only without all the best bits, i.e. the hookers and drugs, but the real attractions of the place were the bridge and waterfall. The bridge is a traditional wood plank-lashed rope span with steel cables slyly underpinning the whole thing. Still, when you're walking on it with fifteen other people going both ways it feels about as stable as the bridge in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Harajiri Falls, which is best viewed from the center of that bridge, is like a micro-Niagara in that it's long and low, however you stand a much better chance of surviving a jump from this one (go back to the old wine barrel days!). Above the falls, perched in the waters feeding them, is a large torii. The whole package viewed together must be spectacular in the sunset.
It's so low I just want to jump off it so badly. If only there weren't sternly worded signs to stop me.
East to Mie and south over the mountains towards Nobeoka, we're retracing parts of last year's charity bike trip and I can't help but think how it took us a day-and-a-half to make it over this hump while we did something like this every day of this year's. Whoops. Anyways, nothing much exciting happened until we arrived at Sumie Beach, home to Deus Ex Cibo, my nickname for possibly the single most enigmatic chef in Japan (well, he's in the running with the chef of Hita's Orange). When I came here last summer I marveled at his Thai vegitable green curry and told Maia about it who patiently waited nine months to try it out. She was awestruck. And so was I, for that matter, but with my fried rice of all things. Fried rice: The stuff is about as basic, cheap and forgettable as you can get when it comes to Chinese cuisine and yet this beach bum Miyazaki Prefecture senior citizen can mix it with his ancient blend of herbs and spices, fold in some mountain greens, dry salted pork and fry it up into an entirely unique flavor experience. Oh, and it wasn't oily either! Never doubt the power of back country folk cooking.
We kicked around the beach for a while waiting for others to arrive. A cryptic phone call from Lisa in which she said she had to run home for fifteen minutes to get some stuff should have tipped me off earlier that something wasn't quite right. Sumie Beach and Tsukumi are more like an hour and a half apart by car. It wasn't until we actually wanted to go see which cabin we'd stay in when it hit me—we were at the wrong beach.
Heading to Sumie Beach wasn't a complete washout by any stretch. Maia got her longed for green curry, I got my Karate Kid on...
Ultimately the fault for such a colossal mistake lay on my shoulders and seeing as how it was nearly six I peeled out of there north, aiming towards the mountainous coastal roads. Just before the spot where Miyazaki becomes Oita the main road linking the two prefectures' seaside towns turns from two-lane well-paved thoroughfare to rutted winding horse path. To give you an idea of how rural this road was I'll tell you that I almost hit a wild monkey that leaped off the road just as I turned a bend. Well, no matter how humiliating and time-consuming this mistake was at least we can say we ate some of the best beachside food in Japan and saw a wild monkey.
...and we both engaged in antics with an abandoned child's wheelchair. Fun was had by all!
We did finally end up reaching the cabins where Lisa, perhaps the kindest among all the 2007 incoming ALTs, was waiting with a heart-shaped balloon. The rest of the night went off without a hitch...mostly. I can't pour my own beer from a keg to save my life, Maia and I made WAY too much salad and somehow Nobu's ladyfriend's two JHS-aged kids played beer pong with us (no, they didn't drink any). Somewhere around 2:30AM I fell into a comfortable inebriated sleep.
I was awoken at 6:00. Maia had been vomiting into the toilet all night thanks to (probably) some bad mushrooms we grilled up and I had to get her to a hospital. Nobu and Lisa were great in helping us find one that was nominally open on a Sunday morning and though a fairly cranky doctor had to be called and woken from bed to treat Maia the job got done. Seriously, a far cry from the hospitals in Kitakyushu. Feeling like I was straddling the line between consciousness and Hunter S. Thompson-esque hallucination, and with Maia fully conked out after a night bent over the loo the weekend was over for us. A rather funky ending for a weekend that ran the emotional gamut. We'll get back to Sumie this summer for a real weekend of sand and swim at that beach...and, of course, my magic fried rice.
--Matt
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