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| Travel |
Text and photos by Stephen Mansfield |
The Washboard Coast
The faded glories of Miyazaki are ripe for rediscovery
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| Miyazaki’s balmy, sultry nights are reminiscent of faraway places |
When evening falls on Miyazaki, you could be forgiven for thinking, as a scarlet and indigo sky drops behind the phoenix palms that line the city’s roads and wide boulevards, that you are strolling through a middle-class quarter of Cairo or Marbella.
The city reminded travel writer Will Ferguson fleetingly of Miami, but one “without the handguns or shiploads of narcotics or Cuban exiles. Both cities,” he noted, “do share the same sun-bleached feel, where the colors fade into pastel shades of neglect and where the people are grateful for a breeze.”
Like Miami, Miyazaki is said to have one of Japan’s highest number of gambling establishments per capita, a hangover perhaps from its heyday as a top honeymoon spot. Modern Japanese couples, finding the area too provincial for their tastes (its locally grown mangos and palm fronds a poor shot at exotica), have moved on, but the casinos and pachinko establishments remain, still attracting a hard core of serious gamblers and local enthusiasts—as well as growing numbers of Chinese and Koreans who descend on the city after visiting Beppu and Mount Aso.
Miyazaki’s attractions are very much in the eye of the beholder. Its main drawing card, the Seagaia resort, is by any standards a daring project. Containing luxury hotels, hot springs, a spa, golf course and zoo, it is nevertheless most renowned for a man-made indoor beach called Ocean Dome. Though just a few minutes’ walk from a real beach, Ocean Dome’s temperature-controlled, unsalted water attracts thousands of vacationers, drawn by its simulation of a tropical paradise replete with a wave machine that sends 3.5m-high breakers pulsing across the water at regular intervals.
More manageable for the casual traveler is the Miyazaki Prefectural Museum of Nature and History, a digest of local lore and geography in the best of presentational taste. Archeologists work here on pottery shards, and there is another tangible link to the past in the small collection of old thatched houses on the same grounds, which form the Minka-en. The city also boasts an excellent science center where, among the displays of robots and satellite imagery, you’ll find the world’s largest planetarium.
At the center of Peace Park, the Haniwa Clay Figurine Garden is a curiosity worth visiting, with its replicas of 4th-century haniwa models that were discovered in a nearby burial mound. The original statues were probably made to protect aristocratic tombs. Representing dancers, animals and ordinary country folk, the models stand on damp, moss-covered earth under a copse of trees. A self-mocking humor marks the facial expressions of many of these Japanese ancestors. Models of cuddly animals with cheerful, comical expressions stand bedside figures strongly suggestive of Grecian statues, with vases and urns balanced on their heads or shoulders.
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Visitors enjoy the simulated paradise of Seagaia |
But if some of the expressions engage, others disturb. Models with mouths agape in soundless horror are like figures from butoh, Japan’s avant-garde dance theater. Edvard Munch, you feel, may well have seen a photo plate depicting one of these figures while he was leafing through a book of Oriental art, resituating the face onto that of a man crossing a bridge somewhere in Europe.
The Tower of Peace is also here, Miyazaki’s most hideous structure, built, strangely enough, in 1940. A mix of then-prevailing Teutonic ideas, the badly stained column is topped with mythological gods clothed in contemporary, quasi-military garments; it’s astonishing the building survived the American Occupation, and postwar tastes. Traces of a far older cultural geography are visible elsewhere protruding through the surface of the city: burial and shell mounds, ancient camphor trees at the Uriuno Hachiman Jinja, a gnarled white wisteria at Miyazaki shrine.
If Miyazaki proper is pleasant but unprepossessing, a place for atmospherics rather than major sightseeing, more interest can be found along the Nichinan coast, which stretches south of the city. A delightful train line of the same name follows the shore, taking a slightly inland route. This is a decidedly rural line. When the two orange and yellow carriages, with their period ceiling fans and lumpy upholstery, stop at country stations further down the track to pick up locals and schoolchildren, the scenes are strongly evocative of stills from an old Ozu film.
The crowds, where they exist at all in this part of western Kyushu, are reserved for Aoshima, a seaside resort with plenty of action of the modern kind at its beaches, cafés, hotels and amusement arcades. Patronized by sun worshippers and weekend surfers, Aoshima’s main attraction is its tiny subtropical island of the same name, surrounded by great platforms of “devil’s washboard”—eroded rock formations, row upon row of shallow pools, indented octopus-shaped rings that are sunk into long furrows of basalt and that disappear at high tide. At low tide, comparisons flood the mind: lines of buckled portholes bored into the gunmetal gray of a capsized war ship, a barrier reef of takoyaki molds.
By now, a less advanced or more mystical people than the Japanese would surely have claimed an extraterrestrial foundation myth for these striated lines. Similar but smaller suppurations of rock occur farther down the coast. Here the Black Current streams up from Okinawa and the Pacific, reaching the Japanese mainland at Aoshima and imparting in the process a subtropical character to this shore, covering it in a jungle of green tuft and luxuriant plants. Aoshima Jinja, an attractive vermilion shrine, stands at the center of the island, smothered in lush palms, cycads and glorious fronds.
| Miyazaki Airport is just 5km from the city, but most people arrive by train or bus. Miyazaki station has a good tourist information office with English-speaking staff. Discovering Miyazaki is a useful newsletter to grab. The Satsuma-so (0985-51-4488) has spotlessly clean tatami rooms and friendly staff. The Hotel Kensington (0985-20-5500), despite its stately English home pretensions, is a smart business hotel with an efficient staff. Suginoko, at 2-1-4 Tachibana Dori Nishi, is one of the best restaurants in town, with lots of local fare. Less atmospheric but cheaper is Ogura, located on Tachibana Dori Higashi in an alley behind the Yamakataya store. It’s only 25min on the JR Nichinan line from Miyazaki to Aoshima. The award-winning Rough Guide to Japan is as dependable as ever when covering this region. Will Ferguson’s Hokkaido Highway Blues also has a well-observed section on Miyazaki. |
HIS Experience Japan is offering tourists and residents of Japan a chance to experience “real Japanese culture,” in addition to the usual tourist spots. The company has nearly a dozen programs that allow participants to learn directly from professionals. Activities include sushi-making, yuzen silk-dying, calligraphy, karate and ninja lessons, taiko drumming and lantern-making, among others. Guides who speak English, Chinese, Korean and Spanish are available, and reservations can be made online at www.j-experience.com. Further info is available in English by calling 03-5328-4030 or emailing info-en@j-experience.com.
From August 26 through September 13 (excluding September 7-9), Tokyo Dome Hotel is offering a late summer accommodation promotion, in which rooms will be discounted by up to 45 percent. During the period, the rate is ¥14,000 for a single room, ¥18,500 for a twin or double and ¥21,000 for a triple. Fifty rooms will be available per day. A variety of events are being held at Tokyo Dome City during this period, including the 78th Intercity Baseball Tournament (August 24-September 4) and the popular children’s program The Jukensentai Geki Ranger Show will be performing on stage at Sky Theater until September 2. For reservations, call 03-5805-2222 or visit www.tokyodome-hotels.co.jp. CB
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