Kyushu adventure - Day 2

The next morning we were up and about early and tucking into the French stick we’d bought the day before... breakfast is hard enough at home here but on-the-go like we were its even harder... hence the bread stick and only the bread stick that morning! Back on the road again by about 9am after another walk along the beach we headed further down the Miyazaki Coastline towards another coastal campsite on the Nichinan coast. We had an amazing day along the way which was by complete fluke... we spotted a sign (in English!!) that said there was a waterfall close by to where we were... after a quick ‘should we, shouldn’t we’ we decided what the heck and followed the signs along yet another long and windy road through beautiful forests and more of rural Japan’s spectacular scenery. Once at the car park we had another ‘should we, shouldn’t we’ discussion about whether or not to change into our walking shoes of stay in our jandals... we opted for jandals... probably not the best choice and headed up the track. It probably took us way longer than it was meant to but we stopped every 10 metres or so to take more photos... it was really beautiful being amongst the bush (was actually quite a lot like home) but was strange not seeing or hearing many birds. Instead I got the fright of my life when a lizard (I’m not afraid to admit it was even a pretty small one) jumped out in front of me... a scream may or may not have escaped my mouth much to Nathan’s hilarity (but only after he’d made sure it wasn’t a snake like my scream my have implied). After 40 minutes or so we finally got to what we had walked to see.... a 78m waterfall. It was amazing! We scrambled our way over the riverbed along some precarious beams and got to within metres of it... again a million photos were taken! Sure was good to get out of the car and stretch the legs a bit! After a stop-off at a combini for some rice triangles (another stable food on the trip) we then headed the rest of the way to our campsite. Again we weren’t disappointed by it... another beachside location with more Palm trees and white sand.... paradise! Thankfully we had perfected our skills when it came to asking for a site so it was pretty straight forward. By this time our tummies were telling us we were hungry again and so drive into the little village looking for somewhere to eat... not too many options to choose from but we settled on a little restaurant which was lit up with paper lanterns on the outside. When we rolled back the door to the entrance we were met with walls and walls of baseball memorabilia – posters, balls, photos, trophies etc etc. Unfortunately my Japanese reading skills which served me so well the night before were not much use when it came to ordering off this particular menu – it was written in old-school Kanji = impossible to read! The one and only thing I could read was curry so we just went for that. What a fantastic choice it turned out to be! Rather than just getting a curry in a bowl on some rice like you usually would all the veggies and meat came out on their very own gas cooker for us to cook ourselves. Was great fun and tasted delicious! When leaving the chef, his daughter (the waitress) and his wife (also the chef) came out to say goodbye.... we tried talking to them in our limited Japanese to try and figure out what the deal was with all this baseball stuff... from what we could gather one of the local boys from the area had hit the big time by playing for one of Japan’s best teams and has since gone on to play for the Boston Red Sox.... he and several of the team have been to the restaurant to eat hence the many photos of them, autographs etc. The owners loved us so much they even gave us little ice-creams to take away with us. They are just some of the many friendly locals that make our experience here so worthwhile.