Down the windy mountain roads we made it to the coast for our next stop in Miyazaki. It is really fascinating how, within just a couple of hours, we can go from the foggy mountains to the tropical paradise of the east coast of Kyushu. Palm trees, coastal shrines, and relaxed surfer towns. The saying “the journey is the destination” couldn’t be more accurate.
Not as enjoyable, but also fascinating, are the huge “kite” birds spotted everywhere. That’s probably not the correct translation for these eagle-like birds we’ve been seeing everywhere, but that’s what they called them on the signs warning that they might swoop down and take your ice cream. Jess’ worst nightmare, so no ice cream or snacks for us whenever they were in sight.
The relaxed vibes hit us hard, making us even forget our camera at home one day and leaving us to document everything with our phone cameras. A couple of pictures did make it onto the blog, can you tell which ones?
We also did a quick magical stop at the mossy Heiwadai Park adorned with lots of different terracotta statues as far as the eye can see, and a towering “peace” statue erected during the war. So many beautiful, eerie picture framings, it was hard to choose THE one.
With that, our time in our rather hip hotel came to an end (all the windows were green, which led to a rather trippy experience in the morning), and we were already off to our next destination, back into the mountains. The drive there was again paved with many curiosities and stops. A rather expected stop was the mystical forest shrine of Kamishikimi Kumanoza Shrine, while a not-so-expected curiosity was a roadside DVD porn vending machine shack. No pictures on that one though, need to keep the blog PG after all!
- Country
- Japan
- Region
- Miyazaki
- Date
- 28 September 2026
- Camera
- Sony a6700, Iphone 15 Pro
- GPS
- 31.912939,131.42031000312542
