The Ultimate, Part 1

I forgot to mention that I would be gone from Sunday to Wednesday this week, so if anyone was trying to contact me (not bloody likely) I was with Maia hitting up the southern reaches of Kyushu once again--and it was amazing.

The background to this mini-vacation is that Maia and I have been studying like a pair of born-again undergrads in preparation for our respective levels of the Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT) held last Sunday in Beppu. The prep's been three months of daily, steady flash card review and textbook slogging, so we figured a break was an order. Foreign lands were considered and discarded as too costly and time-consuming, but Maia still hadn't been properly introduced to Miyazaki and Kagoshima Prefectures yet, and I wanted one last blast in that southern paradise, so southward ho it was!

The eastern road down Kyushu, route 10, isn't terribly exciting leaving Oita but also not offensive. Of course, my perception of what is and isn't offensive is colored by the Golden Week/Hiroshima trip, because I don't think much can be as painful to the eyes as the Chugoku Region. Anyways, it's just a leisurely four hour stroll down the coast filled by trippy tunes and us harassing uyoku dantai (right wing protest groups) noise trucks. We arrived in Miyazaki City just in time for a blanket of darkness to cover the city, but not obscure things so much that I couldn't find our first beach campsite for the night...the backside of the Miyazaki Phoenix Zoo.

If you're in the land of onsens (for bathing) and conbinis (for toilets), what concievable reason would one have to spend money on a hotel room?

I stumbled onto this largely deserted, nigh-pristine beach during the '08 Miyazaki sojourn and have kept it a closely guarded secret. Two people came in the night to light off fireworks and one woman came in the morning to sit under a parasol and stare out at the sea wistfully, but other than that it was empty for a kilometer or more in each direction. As an ingenious natural tsunami protection barrier the city has built countless wood-fenced cells stretching almost the entire length of the city's coastline and reaching a hundred or so meters inland and then planted native pine trees to grow within. A group of kids could have the time of their lives in those cells playing hide-and-seek.

Aoshima-jinja, one of the most colorful and alive shrines I have ever laid eyes on here.

Miyazaki City is blessed with at least one Starbucks and two Tully's, so after a brief cuppa joe in the morning it was straight to the road again for a short jump south to see Aoshima. I talked a bit about Aoshima last year, but here's a refresher: the "island" (only one at low tide) is a low, long sandbar with an immensely dense tropical jungle growing on it and surrounded by a strange geological formation aptly known as the "Devil's Washboard". In the center of the island a massive effort must have been undertaken in days of yore to hack away the thick vegetation and build the gorgeous shrine that stands there today where visitors can bribe the gods and complete some adorable-yet-pointless task to get them pushing fate in your direction. (Can you tell I'm not a spiritual person?) We paid some skrilla, tied a green wire to a sacred rope to help us get jobs and then chucked a clay disk at a rock, somehow sealing the whole deal. Hey, how many shrines can you go break dishes at?

Aoshima is surrounded by this rows of rocks and sand that all face the same direction and are all 100% natural. Next, Maia throws dishes in a holy place. My kind of house of god.

I'm starting to get pooped out now. Let's continue this stuff later. Blogging and reading about this trip will require a commitment from the both of us, respectively.

--Matt