Since he was elected in January 2007, the governor of Miyazaki has unleashed a marketing blitzkrieg to inform the rest of Japan (especially the rest of Kyushu) about the southern prefecture’s gorgeous coastline, delicious chicken, and mysterious connection to Easter Island. His unwieldly name is Hideo Higashikokubaru, but most Japanese know him better as former comedian Sonomanma Higashi. Like most Japanese prefectures, Mr. Higashikokubaru employed a charming little mascot to promote tourism in Miyazaki; the twist is that he employed himself as that character, cleverly cashing in on his own celebrity.

So far, it has worked brilliantly. Mr. Higashikokubaru’s toothy grin is everywhere: on onigiri wrappers, adorning mangoes in supermarkets, on JR and JTB posters, in conbini windows, on bottles of shochu, and on countless bags of limited-edution junk food made in flavors of Miyazaki meibutsu. In Tokyo a couple weeks ago, his likeness was flying on a flag outside a curry shop – I’m not sure why. Just by sheer ubiquity of this weird little man’s infectiously happy countenance, my interest was piqued.

Of course, there were a few other factors that played into my decision to take a trip down there – and I went during my frenzied ramen-binging, apartment-cleaning, guidebook-designing, perfectly-useful-kitchenware-discarding final week in Japan, no less. In March, a close friend of mine rode his bike there to visit his family and participate in the Miyazaki Marathon – in which he ran next to Mr. Higashikokubaru himself! He had a fine time and made Miyazaki sound pretty sweet. So naturally I was excited to go to the Miyazaki JET beach party held in late May; but that fell through due to rain. And finally, I dipped into Oita for the first weekend in July, so by that time I had been to every prefecture in Kyushu – except Miyazaki. I felt that it just would have been such a shame not to go.

And I felt that way even more so after actually going there. But before I get into the awesomeness of Miyazaki itself, I want to talk about the awesomeness of the bus I took down there. It was an overnight bus called the Phoenix, operated by Miyazaki Kōtsū from Fukuoka to Miyazaki. I expected it to be a typical coach: bumpy, loud, uncomfortable, and cramped. But I was wrong. There were only three seats in each row, with an aisle between each seat; the seats themselves were quite wide, and they unfolded and reclined in a variety of delightfully sleep-inducing ways. Thick curtains blocked out any trace of light, and the ride was so smooth and quiet that when I awoke, I thought the bus had come to a stop. And not only was it awesome, it was a bargain! I reserved my tickets with the SunQ Pass, which cost only ¥10,000 and allowed me to ride any bus in Kyushu for three days! So that’s my osusume if you’re day-tripping to Miyazaki from Fukuoka.

I got in at about 7:00 in the morning, so I had lots of time to enjoy myself before my return bus left at 11:00 that night. After picking up a dry, chewy breakfast of famous Miyazaki smoked chicken (again, with Mr. Higashikokubaru’s face on them), I hopped on a bus to Aoshima, site of the Miyazaki JET beach party and the Devil’s Washboard 鬼の洗濯板, a bizarre, visually striking formation of volcanic rocks lined up into neat parallel rows by the movement of the waves.

The beach was beautiful, but shortly after I got there, it started to rain. I took cover under a palm tree and watched cute little crabs scuttle by, clicking across a confetti of sand, stone, and crushed shells. It reminded me of Thailand.

Soon I had had enough of the rain, and took refuge in an omiyage stand. Just as I was about to board the bus again, the rain stopped – a good thing, because my next destination was outdoors, as well. In the now-sunny skies, I took in beautiful views of the Pacific Ocean, puncuated by fishing boats, rock formations like that of the Devil’s Washboard, and inns advertising lobster dinners. After about 30 minutes, I had arrived at Sun Messe Nichinan サンメッセ日南, home to the famous Miyazaki Moai.

It was cool to see the Moai. It was ridiculous, yes, but it was also cool. If the informational placards told the truth, then they are the only life-size Moai replicas that the government of Easter Island has allowed to be built outside the island itself. And it will be quite a while before I make it to Easter Island, so I just basked in the uniqueness of it all and gleefully took photos like any good tourist would. It was a beautiful day.

It was a hot day, too, so I ducked into the air-conditioned Moai museum, then had some hyūganatsu kakigōri, and then left a bit earlier than I planned because I wanted to get away from the weird guy from Hiroshima who kept following me around. On the way out, I snapped a photo of a Higashikokubaru Moai on my keitai and sent it to a friend, who replied that it was “kimoi” (creepy).

As I was waiting for the bus back to Miyazaki City, a woman pulled over and offered me a ride. I wasn’t even hitchhiking! I was reminded of the hospitality I received on my first visits to Tokyo and Kumamoto. I declined, however, because I was looking forward to listening to my special Miyazaki playlist on the hour-long bus ride back. When I got in, I grabbed a quick lunch of chicken nanban チキン南蛮 – a local specialty of fried chicken topped with a vinegar-based dressing and tartar sauce. The name literally means “barbarian chicken,” and I wonder if the prototype for it was originally introduced by European missionaries and traders, who were originally called barbarians and were known for eating a lot of fried food and vinegar. Anyway, it was delicious – fresh from the fryer with a tempura crunch, juicy with vinegar to counteract the oil, and slathered with tartar sauce to counteract the vinegar. Certainly several notches above the sodden mess I was used to from Hokka Hokka Tei (though I like theirs, too).

After that I settled in for another sixty-minute bus excursion to Shusen no Mori 酒泉の杜 (literally “forest of liquor springs”) – a glorious tourist complex near Miyazaki’s border with Kagoshima in a rural town called Aya. Shusen no Mori was built by the adjacent Unkai buckwheat shochu distillery, but the fun does not stop there; on the multi-acre land there is a hotel, an onsen, a winery, a brewery, a one-stop shop for Miyazaki omiyage, and a shochu gallery, where customers are given free reign to sample any number of dozens of varieties of shochu – plus sake, liqueur, and truly awful attempts at wine.

The onsen was fantastic, offering a smörgåsbord of different kinds of baths; my favorites were the sake bath, which really had a nice smell of booze, and the electric bath, which delivered the somewhat disconcerting and somewhat wonderful sensation of a low-voltage electric current passing through your body.

After rehydrating myself and cutting my foot on the corner of a step, I moseyed over to the shochu gallery, where I tried four kinds of wine (all of them undrinkable or borderline-undrinkable), a few tasty sakes and liqueurs (including one made from hyūganatsu!), and fifteen or so different shochu. I got to sample one variety that had always intrigued me: Mayan no Tsubuyaki, or “Mumblings of an Old Man.” I didn’t like it very much – it was a bit too rough, I thought, like something a mumbliing old man might drink – but I’m glad I got to try it.

I then stumbled across to the omiyage center, where I picked up some hyūganatsu sweets and Miyazaki chicken chips for my taiko group. After that I had a few beers from the on-site brewery – much better than the wine – and then went back to Miyazaki City, hungry for dinner.

I ate at a place called Dogenka Sentoi-kan どげんせんとい館, which I chose more or less because they offered a free pint of Hideji lager if you mention their website. The name of the place means something in Miyazaki dialect that I don’t understand, befitting their dedication to local food and culture. I ordered the Miyazaki jidokko omakase course, which, among many other things, included famous Miyazaki grilled chicken. The method of preparation was as inscrutable to me as the name of the restaurant, but I understand that Miyazaki chicken is grilled in a basket, and the texture is meant to be springy – or even crunchy. Springy it was – but it was also ebulliently juicy and tender at the same time. Its flavor was thick with charcoal smoke, and I was sad when I discovered I had eaten it all.

By this time I was pretty drunk on shochu and Miyazaki craft beer, and pretty sated with chicken (I just realized now that I had chicken for all three meals that day). So I walked around what appeared to be the remnants of a festival downtown, then headed back to the bus center. Inevitably, I got lost on the way there; the cabbie who eventually picked me up was friendly, though he insisted that I have a piece of gum after I initially declined his offer. “I offer it to everybody,” he explained, as if aware that I was worried that I had bad breath.

Then It was back on the Phoenix for another restful trip. Back in Kurosaki, I stopped at a conbini for something to drink, and I spotted Mr. Higashikokubaru’s balding, jovial face yet again on a packet of candy. This time, I smiled knowingly back at him.

After breakfast in Kurokawa, we took another lovely bath, then packed up and left for our next stop: Aso. Our perpetually pleasant innkeeper drove us to the bus stop, and just a few minutes after he dropped us off, he was back again, to give us a complimentary tourist map of Aso! What a guy.

Then we were on our way. The bus ride was uneventful, as bus rides tend to be, but the view from the winding mountain road into the sprawling Aso caldera, green with agriculture and encompassed by high, volcanic mountains, was gorgeous. I suppose it’s a shame I don’t have a picture, but I figured one taken through a shaky bus window wouldn’t turn out very well, so I just relaxed in my comfy coach seat and enjoyed the moment.

We had booked a stay at another onsen resort, but before checking in we headed to Moo Moo Farm (formerly Friendly Farm), an establishment that offers hands-on encounters with the rural idyll (plus lots of dogs, for some reason). I don’t remember how I found out about this place – I think it might have been through the official Aso tourism website – but I’m glad I did. They have a restaurant and a rather sad souvenir shop, but Moo Moo Farm’s main draw for me was a series of fun, farmy workshops and experiences (taiken 体験) such as butter making, pony rides, and bread making. Also, there were ostriches, just for good measure. Anyway, we chose to do three activities – calf nursing, cow milking, and sausage making – which we had to reserve ahead of time by phone. (In the summer months, reservations are required only for the food workshops.)

First up was cow-milking. Our coach was a kindly young woman who explained, with wisdom and respect in her voice, the finer points of mother cows and their delicate dispositions. She reminded us that the cow (named Bell, or possibly Belle) is an animal, just like ourselves, and as an animal, we should treat her with respect, and also watch out for sudden… uh, evacuations. Then she showed us the milking technique, which took a lot more finesse than I expected. Then again, I expected it to look something like this:

Here’s what it looked like in reality:

Bear in mind that I’m from Wisconsin, born and raised in America’s dairyland (it says so on our license plates). And when I grasped that squishy pink udder in my hand, I felt I had grasped something important; no, something elemental, something at the very core of my being. At that moment, I thought to myself, “This is me!” It was like holding my own heritage in my hand.

Actually, I didn’t feel like that at all. I was mostly just focusing on the matter at hand: trying to coerce some milk out of the large mammal before me. However, upon reflection, the whole situation does strike me as somewhat strange. I spent all of college and most of high school wanting to live in Japan after growing up in Wisconsin. And what do I do now that I’m here? Milk a cow. I mean, WTF?

Anyway, we were done milking in a matter of minutes, at which point we tossed the spoils to a pair of hungry pugs, who wedged their heads into the bucket and began pushing it along the floor in a panicked attempt to lick up as much of the fresh milk as they could. Then we headed for the barn, where we were to nurse calves with warm milk in big baby bottles. It turned out to be a feeding frenzy. The calves became unmanageably unruly as they scrambled for the warm milk; the whole thing was over in about sixty messy seconds. I only got one picture out of the experience.

Then we played with the dogs, ate soft cream, and made sausages in our final workshop of the day. Considering it was our first time, I think the sausages turned out pretty good! However, I do think our coach overcooked them and they tasted a little dry in the end. But they were still palatable, though their porky aroma was somewhat overwhelming on the bus ride to Sozankyō 蘇山郷, our hotel.

I have more exciting things to write about than our lodgings on this leg of the trip, but I must say that it was a fantastic deal at only ¥14,000 per night. It included a nice little private bath, a sizable breakfast, and some of the best service I’ve ever received – and I live in Japan! The bar’s shochu collection was quite impressive, too. Highly recommended if you’re in Aso.

We spent just an hour or so relaxing at the hotel, and then we set off to what would be the highlight of the trip: the hifuri kamiwaza 火振り神事 at Aso Shrine, one of many fire festivals held around this time of years in and around Aso. Because of its somewhat alarming volcanic activity, the Aso area, and sometimes the whole of Kumamoto Prefecture, is known as hi no kuni, or the country of fire. At the festival, which loosely translated means “divine fire throwing,” the nickname proved to be more than just poetic.

I knew that the festival’s main attractions was some sort of spectacle involving people throwing fire; what I didn’t know is that this spectacle would be performed by whoever the hell wanted to give it a go! Here’s how it works: festival leaders light two or three big stacks of hay on fire, in the center of a long, narrow courtyard in front of the shrine. Then, eager members of the crowd rush to grab small bales of hay bound with rope (about one foot in diameter, and about two feet long) from large piles in various places throughout the courtyard. They unwind the rope, dip their bale into the flaming haystacks, and whirl it around their heads like crazy people.

It was like a culture of pyromaniacs. There was no dearth of volunteers for this, despite the fact that nobody had been trained or briefed on the dangers of swinging large fireballs around. It was not at all rare for a rope to burn through, sending flaming hay flying into other participants, into reporters, or into the wide-eyed crowd. It was madness. And it was awesome.

Needless to say, I had to give it a try.

I have had a lot of fun in Japan, and I have done a lot of really interesting, exciting things. But I’m afraid I can’t think of any other experience I’ve had, in Japan or any other country, that comes close to the thrill of wrangling a flaming bale of hay above my head, in close proximity to others doing the same thing. It is really very dangerous, and yet nobody seemed to get hurt over the course of the hour-and-a-half-long fire-flinging free-for-all.

There was also something going on about a goddess princess’s wedding ceremony. As good an excuse to play with fire as one could probably come up with, I suppose.

After that big, explosive climax, the rest of the trip consisted of much-needed falling action: a couple baths, a few beers, a ¥1000 glass of shochu, a big Japanese breakfast, and a pleasant denouement atop Mount Aso. Mount Aso is apparently the largest active volcano in Japan, and one of the largest in the world. We got up there by bus and by ropeway, and at the summit, the air was brisk and tinged with the smell of sulfur. On the way up, I wishfully half-expected to see bubbling streams of magma and barely-solidified black rock. Instead, there was the almost equally striking view of a steaming-hot, bright turquoise pool of mineral-dense liquid (I hesitate to call it water, because it didn’t look like any water I’ve seen before) in the volcano’s deep crater.

That’s about it. It was an amazing trip. Granted I haven’t been to Oita or Miyazaki yet, but I’m pretty sure after this long weekend that Kumamoto is my favorite prefecture in Kyushu. I will miss Kumamoto quite a bit when I leave Japan this summer.

One of my first-ever entries was a travelogue about Kumamoto City, a place that made me fall in love with Japan all over again over the course of three days filled with hospitable people, delicious and exotic cuisine, ska music, storied history, and beautiful art. I vowed to return; and I have – twice! I took my parents there last spring, and over the summer I took my friend Vijan, to let them take in its consummate Japaneseness: the castle, the garden, and of course, the beer, ramen, and horse meat.

I never did feel compelled to write about Kumamoto again, though, because I didn’t really have anything new to report after my subsequent visits. But this weekend, I travelled to the quite volcanically interesting far northeastern regions of rural Kumamoto for a much-needed countryside getaway, and the newness and excitement of the trip refreshed me in the same way my original visit to Kumamoto City did. So without further ado, here it is: Kumamoto, part two.

The first stop on our journey (by train, then bus) was Kurokawa Onsen, a hot spring resort area famous throughout Kyushu for its gorgeous scenery, especially in the fall, when the maple leaves glow red in the crisp, blue mountain air, and in the spring, when the plum and cherry blossoms burst open and their pale petals cover the mossy ground like snowflakes. Or that’s what I hear, anyway; we came a bit too early to see Kurokawa in all its exuberantly floral glory, but it was beautiful nonetheless. With time to kill before our check-in time, we took a leisurely stroll to admire the vibrant terrain around us after a surprisingly delicious lunch and a glass of refreshing Balsamic vinegar ginger ale at a cute little hilltop cafe.

However, even all of Kurokawa’s natural splendor couldn’t entice us away from Tairōkan 大朗館, our ryokan, once we checked in; the service, the food, and the baths were just too nice and too inviting to neglect. Despite hearty recommendations from six of our friends (three couples), we weren’t so sure about the place when we first got there. It was lodged awkwardly in a row of shabby, nondescript houses, and there was nobody there to greet us upon our arrival. And the lobby smelled of teacher’s room coffee – something I had really hoped to get away from during our trip.

But despite first impressions, it turned out to be a lovely stay. The baths were rustic, salty, roomy, and piping hot; the room was spacious, homey, and comfortable. The octogenarian owner told us that his ryokan had been in business since for 180 years – since the late Edo Period! The proprietors’ pride in their establishment’s history was palpable in the overall quality of the inn and in the courteous, smiling, and fretful service we received.

After a dip in a spacious, rocky bath overlooking a natural waterfall followed by a spirited game of Travel Scrabble, it was dinnertime. We knew there was going to be a lot of good food – there always is at these ryokans – but nothing could have prepared us for the amount of food brought up to our room, in three trips. I have never felt more honest in declaring gochisosama deshita (“It was a feast!”) than I did after this meal, which included, let me think… something like fifteen to seventeen different dishes. Plus ice cream. I won’t bother rattling off the whole menu (mostly because I don’t know what everything was), but here are some highlights: a hotpot piled with noodles, vegetables, and beefy duck meat, with a hearty depth that reminded me of homemade turkey soup; a cold salad in which the crispness of bamboo shoots were met with the lively, aromatic tang of creamy yuzu dressing; tender horse meat sashimi freshened up with sliced onions and grated ginger; and (probably my favorite) a teppanyaki course with eggplant, chicken, onions, and luxuriously marbled chunks of Japanese beef, sautéed to soft, browned, buttery perfection.

The meal was so large we had to take a breather halfway through to digest. Amazingly, we did end up eating everything, then relaxed in the taruburo 樽風呂 (barrel baths) before hitting the futon, thoroughly unwound and satisfied.

Huh. I just noticed this photo looks like a skull. Weird… anyway, up next: Kumamoto, part three: Aso!

If any foreigners living in Japan read this entry and would like help planning a trip to Kurokawa, please leave a comment and I will try to be of assistance!