Miyazaki Day 3: Miyazaki Jingu

It is only as I sit here typing up this blog that I realize that on all three days of our Miyazaki trip the main "site" that we went to was a shinto shrine. A lot of tourists who visit Japan complain of "shrine burnout" where they get dragged around Kyoto for days on end seeing nothing but shrines and temples that come to look increasingly alike the more one sees of them. In Miyazaki though its quite different as the shrines at Aoshima and Udo Jingu we visited on days one and two were more like adjuncts to the nice beaches and lovely coastal scenery in which they were set rather than sites in their own right.

On the last day of our trip we decided to stay in the city. Our bus back to Fukuoka left at 4PM and, now wise to the realities of Miyazaki transport, we decided not to risk getting stranded out in the countryside waiting for a train or bus that only ran 3 or 4 times a day while our ride back to Fukuoka was leaving us behind.

So we decided to head over to Miyazaki shrine, which unlike Aoshima and Udo Jingu is a shrine that you go to see for the shrine itself. It is dedicated to one of Japan's mythical ancient emperors and is laid out more like a palace than a shrine.

Despite its grandiose stylings, the somewhat "small city" reality of the present day shrine is given away by the presence of large numbers of roosters wandering freely around near the shrine entrance:
I have no idea what these birds were doing there, some of them were to be found wandering the street leading from the train station too. They definitely added to the atmosphere of the place though.

We followed a path through the woods (the shrine is surrounded by a forested park) which took us by these two guys:
Whatever religious purposes these statues may have once served has likely long since been surpassed by their current role as a place for idiot tourists to take gag photos of themselves.

The path eventually took us to the shrine. There is a long avenue leading up to the main buildings:
The entrance is quite impressive:
It is one of those shrines done entirely in "earth tones" without the bright orange that is used on most shrines (like Aoshima and Udo Jingu).

This is where our luck with the weather finally gave out. It was raining off and on all three days of our trip, but by good fortune on days 1 and 2 it had always rained while we were doing something indoors (riding a bus, eating lunch, etc) and had cleared up when we were outside. But at the Miyazaki shrine it started to poor rain and we were forced to take refuge under the roof of this structure:
This was actually really cool though. Because it was raining (and a Monday) nobody else was visiting the shrine. So we pretty much had the whole place to ourselves. The structure we took refuge under was in the centre of the shrine (its where people make offerings to the gods) so we had a really attractive setting to wait out the rain.
Unfortunately this turned out to be more than a passing shower and we eventually decided to leave the shrine. The Miyazaki Prefectural museum of nature and history was located in the same park as the shrine so we decided to head over there as we suddenly found ourselves in need of an indoor activity.

This also turned out to be lucky, as it is actually a really good museum. The walk from the shrine took us to the outdoor part of the museum, where they have a few thatched-roof farmhouses they had brought from various parts of the prefecture and rebuilt into an open air museum:
As with the shrine we had the place all to ourselves and decided to temporarily take shelter in one of them:
After that we went straight into the main museum building. Going in I was a little wary that this would be some small-town museum that took five minutes to go through, but in fact it is a really quality museum that has excellent exhibits that compare well with any museum I've ever been to.

The first floor was the nature museum, the highlight of which was probably the dinosaur display:
The second floor dealt with history and had exhibits tracing Miyazaki's history from paleolithic times to the present. It was a great way to spend a couple hours on a rainy day.

After the museum it was time to head back to Miyazaki station to catch our bus:
All in all, Miyazaki was a great place to visit. The only hiccup was the public transit, though with better planning we could have gotten around that (so if anyone reading this is planning on visiting Miyazaki, check the bus and train schedules in advance!!) and at any rate it didn't have much of an affect on our enjoyment of the trip!

Another point that I should make is that, surprisingly, every single place we visited in Miyazaki - Aoshima, Udo Jingu, Miyazaki shrine and the prefectural museum - had free admission. About a year or so ago I wrote a big rant on here about how poorly Victoria compares to Japan in that regard and my trip to Miyazaki really reinforces that view. If any one of these sites was in Victoria you'd probably have to pay 15 to 20 dollars to get in and as a result locals would never visit and only well-to-do tourists would be willing to make the splurge. Free admission (or admission at a reasonable rate of 4 or 5 dollars) in most of the big attractions in Japan (theme parks are an exception) really enables normal people on shoe string budgets to do more travelling secure in the knowledge that they won't be forced to shell out tons of cash on admission to sites of sometimes dubious merit (yes, Victoria Miniature World, that barb was directed at you).

So, Miyazaki prefecture, my hat is off to you!

Miyazaki Day 2: Udo Jingu

On day 2 of our Miyazaki trip we decided to head down the coast to Udo Jingu, a famous shrine out in the middle of nowhere overlooking the sea.

We were pretty excited to go down there because the bus ride would take us along this coastal highway that was reputed to have some fantastic views. One tiny failure in our trip planning though was that we failed to consider the fact that Miyazaki is a much less populated prefecture than Fukuoka, which means that public transportation is infrequent and inconvenient. We ended up just missing the bus that we intended to take which meant that we had to kill a ton of time in town until 12:45PM to catch the next one. We sort of realized that we have been spoiled by Fukuoka's trains and buses which run every 10 or 15 minutes from sun up to midnight.

Nonetheless once we got on our way things were looking good. Until the rain hit. While we were going through the Hori Kiri pass (one of the best viewpoints along the coast) we hit a major rain storm:
We were really worried as we didn't have umbrellas, but luck was with us as by the time we arrived at our destination the rain clouds had moved on and it was sunny again.

The ride took about an hour and a half and once we got out of the suburbs the views were quite nice. The bus actually dropped us off in a little village a couple of kilometres from the shrine. We walked along a coastal road from there which offered some nice views of the washboard rocks:
Eventually we arrived at the Udo Jingu ("Jingu" means shrine). It is without a doubt the most beautifully located shrine I have ever been to. Actually I would say that the shrine and its surroundings are together the most beautiful site I've been to in Japan. The walk from the entrance to the main shrine takes you along some fantastic coastal scenery:
The clash of colors provided by the green palm trees, the blue sea and sky and the orange shrine features is really amazing:
And of course throw in a cute couple (well, a cute girl and her gangly husband) and the scenery takes on a whole new look:
There are a few small shrine buildings stretched out along the path leading up to the main one:
To get to the main building you have to go down some stairs going down a cliff face:
The main hall itself is not large but is quite beautiful - not so much for the building itself but by virtue of its being snuggly fit inside a little cave:
It is definitely the most interesting location for a shrine I have ever seen.

You can walk around a bit, the cave isn't very large but they managed to squeeze a little pathway behind the shrine building:
After moseying around the cave a bit we went and bought these little clay pebbles:
You are supposed to throw them at this rock jutting out of the sea below and, if you get them into this one spot you'll have good luck (at something, I've forgotten what deities this shrine is dedicated to):
We were both able to hit the rock but our clay pebbles bounced off into the sea. I'm not sure if you had to get them to stay on the rock for it to count or not.

After spending a pleasant while exploring the shrine and enjoying the views we once again got screwed over by the quirks of Miyazaki's public transport system and our own lack of advanced planning. The last bus back to town left at 4:20PM (the town of Fukei, where the bus stop was, looked like it had a population of only three or four hundred), which meant that we had to start walking back to the bus stop after only spending a little over an hour at the shrine.

Instead of returning by the coastal road we walked up a set of 800 steps that took us up and over the hill behind the shrine:
Technically this is the way we were supposed to have entered the shrine rather than the coastal road we took. The stairs actually provide a shortcut.

At the top of the hill we paused to enjoy a nice view of the mountain scenery:
A 20 minute walk later we were back at the bus stop waiting for our return ride back to town.

Back in town we had dinner at a nice little restaurant and retired to our hotel room to watch some TV and rest our feet!

Miyazaki Day 1: Aoshima

Ena and I had our little summer holiday this week and spent 3 days down in lovely Miyazaki. Miyazaki is on the southern part of Kyushu Island and, though its only a 4 hour bus ride, has a significantly milder climate than Fukuoka. It gets warm currents from the south Pacific and the water off the coast is about as warm as it is in Okinawa hundreds of kilometres further south.

We stayed in a hotel downtown. Miyazaki is the capital city of Miyazaki prefecture and our hotel was right next to the prefectural government building, which is something of a tourist attraction in itself:
We arrived in town at about noon, having taken an early morning bus from Fukuoka. We decided to go hit one of Miyazaki's most famous sites, Aoshima:
Aoshima is an interesting little island just off the coast about a 25 minute train ride from downtown Miyazaki. It is no ordinary island but has quite a few interesting features. The first are these:
The island is completely surrounded by these long rocky strips called the "devil's washboard." Actually these types of formations are found all over the coast off of Miyazaki and it is rather mesmerizing to watch the waves crash over them. This is what they look like close up:
The next interesting thing about Aoshima is its shrine, which has the only buildings on the island:
Its not particularly big but its quite attractive. You walk straight up from the beach to it and you can see the ocean from the front gate, which has a ton of good luck charms for sale:
The next interesting thing about Aoshima is that the forest that covers it is almost entirely made up of palm trees:
There are palm trees all over Kyushu, in Fukuoka as well, but this is the first time I've come across a palm tree forest growing naturally in Japan. It is quite attractive.

The final interesting little thing about Aoshima is this:
Well, not just Ena, but what she is standing on. The island is made of billions and billions of seashells that got washed onto the devil's washboard.

There is also a great beach at Aoshima:
I did a bit of swimming after we visited the shrine:
After spending the day in Aoshima we retired to Miyazaki city's bustling nightlife and had dinner at a Mexican restaurant:
After that, back to the hotel to rest our feet for the next day ahead of us!