Miyazaki: Surfer's Paradise

So last night I just got back from my trip to Miyazaki with my friend LeeSean, and it was incredible. Miyazaki, for those of you who don't live here or just suck at geography, is the prefecture in Japan located just south of mine in Kyushu, famous for good beaches and laid back people. Definitely true on both counts! Lee and I had been planning this trip for months, because he's leaving Japan this month and we needed a last big hurrah. The weather was not playing along, however, until the holiday weekend that just passed here, and MAN, did it ever play along then! We left on Friday night, just to get a head start, and I drove most of the way out of Oita and into Miyazaki. It was a long drive through the moutntains, but beaufitul in the extreme. Up in the mountains nothing is overdeveloped and spoiled like in many other places here, and you can drive for hours with just the sub-tropical jungle to keep you company, whizzing by on either side. It's lush, thick, coated in mist as the sun sets, and like reminded me a bit of Thailand. We managed to get into Miyazaki city just after 10, and found a cheap hotel to crash in for the night.
The next morning we awoke to a dazzling sun and a cloudless sky, and after all the rain we've been getting here this month, I was doing a little dance of joy. We pushed on to try and hit a beach, and ended up in Aoshima, a place with a long dark sand beach, lined by plam trees, and an island surrounded by the unique rock formations you see in the picture here. They look like waves of stone rising up from the ocean, and I've never seen anything like them before. Called "The Devil's Washboard" by locals, I assume they're a product of some volcanic activity or another, since Japan is positively infested with volcanoes. Anyway, after that we drove around for a bit, took in the countryside, and made our way to our crash-pad for the night. We stayed with another ALT, one who lives deep in the mountains of Miyazaki, and enjoyed a nice Italian dinner with him that night before polishing off a bottle of champagne and drifting off.
The next day (Sunday) it was off to rendezvous with our friend Sophie in Huga, near Miyazaki City again. Sophie was singing at a music festival that day, so we tried to catch her performance, but unfortunately missed it, as it was just too bloody early. So, as she slept, recovering from a bender the night before, we checked out the festival (mostly hip-hop, meh), had lunch, and decided to hit another local beach. This beach, Okuragohama (sp?) had some MASSIVE waves, which we splashed around in for a while, until we got bored and decided to wake Sophie up. Sophie, good sport that she is, took us back to hang out at her place for a bit, where we met Kat, another ALT. Later, the four of us plus two other ALTS down for the weekend went out to a really fantastic little restaurant by the ocean, just outside of Huga. It had a Hawaiian theme, and the sunset from its patio was spectacular, giving us a view of the mountains on either side as they plunged into the ocean. Afterwards, stuffed and satisfied, we dropped off to sleep at Sophie's for a good 12 hours.
The next day was our last day, and seeing as it was another spectacular day weather-wise, we wanted to surf. Sophie is a pro surfer, and had some extra boards for us, so we went back to down to Okuragohama and decided to give it a try. Mind you, I had never done this before, so I decided to stick with body-boarding as a first step toward full-out surfing, and it came to me pretty easily. I had fully expected to make an ass of myself, but it was fun, and since the waves were pretty big I caught a few and really enjoyed myself, without getting too much seawater launched up my nose. I also managed to get a pretty fantastic sunburn, so that now my ass is more tender than Kobe beef. At least I'll get a good base for the summer though.
All in all, it was an amazing weekend, and I definitely have the surfing bug now. I'm thinking of going back down sometime later in the summer, because Miyazaki is the best place in Japan for it, and the people are so much more chilled out than in other places here...it's kind of like the California of Japan. Oita, being the Idaho of Japan, seems a little less exciting by comparison now...