Miyazaki Science Center

Located just a stones throw from the main station in Miyazaki City is the Miyazaki Science Center, easily visible by the rocket standing in front. I stopped in befoe heading down the coast on the 22nd day of my walk around Kyushu.

It is very much aimed at kids and is very colorful and noisy and somewhat resembled a games cnter.

The first floor is primarily about space and Japoan's space program which is based a little further south in Kagoshima.

There is also a planetarium and lots of interactive exhibits. There is virtually no information in English but kids would be sure to enjoy it.

Horaisan Chokyuji Temple

Chokyuji Temple is at the base of a small hill called Horaisan in Miyazaki City. I visited it on the 22nd day of my walk along the Kyushu 108 temple pilgrimage of which it is the 38th temple.

I also visited more recently on my 14th day of walking the Kyushu Fudo Myo `pilgrimage. It's the 12th temple of that pilgrimage. It was founded in the late 16th Century.

Horaisan, the small hill behind the temple once had a small castle on top of it. The main hall of the temple is modern and made of concrete with a large Kannon statue in front.

This temple also had a miniature 88 temple pilgrimage of statues in its grounds. As always I was please to find several Fudo Myo statues.

Maruyama Konsenji Temple in Miyazaki

Early in the morning of my 22nd day walking around Kyushu I visited Konsenji in the Maruyama district of downtown Miyazaki City.

It's the 37th temple on the pilgrimage and is not an old temple, being founded in the early 20th Century, and it's also an urban temple, but has  a surprising number of statues.

They are the 88 honzons of the all the 88 temples on the pilgrimage.

The main hall is a concrete affair.

Miyazaki Minka-en

In the grounds around Miyazaki Jingu Shrine is the Prefectural Museum of Natute & History, and in its grounds is the Minka-en, an open air museum of traditional farmouses.

The farmhouses have been dismantled from their original sites around the region and reassembled here. All of them are now thatched, and represent different styles and relative wealth.

They can all be entered and some artifacts are inside. best of all the museum of farmhouses is free to enter.

More details and more photos can be seen in a longer piece I wrote.....

Kyushu Pilgrimage Temple 36 Kansenji

There are many different reasons for doing a pilgrimage. Among my reasons, one is to explore, discover, & learn. On the 108 temple Kyushu Pilgrimage I walked there was not a lot of famous temples like on the Shikoku Pilgrimage or the Saigoku Pilgrimage.

There were also lots of surprises, like Gyoshinji, the temple I had visited a few hours earlier, but there were also lots of run-of-the-mill, small temples with no great architecture or gardens, like Kansenji.

It is rare to find somewhere that does not have something interesting for me to learn. Kansenji had quite a few statues, but one, in particular, struck me. It was of Kobo Daishi, the focus of this and many other pilgrimages in Japan, unusually holding a baby.

This is a Koyasu Daishi and is related to a story from the 61st temple of the Shikoku Pilgrimage where Kobo Daishi met a pregnant woman having a difficult and painful birth. He prayed for her and the result was a successful birth, so this temple is a popular place for expectant mothers to visit.

Down the Kitagawa

I started my 18th day along the Kyushu Pilgrimage just across the border into Miyazaki. I started to follow one of the branches of the Kitagawa River as it flowed downhill towards Nobeoka. Walking long distances in japan means either walking the coastline which is relatively flat, or following a river up to a pass and then down the other side...... the path of least climbing.

For much of the year mist clings to the mountainsides and fills river valleys, and today was no exception. There are probably dozens of Kitagawa Rivers in Japan..... the name simple means North River. Most family names in Japan are derived from locations, so Kitagawa is a fairly common family name..... the most famous that springs to my mind being Kitagawa Utamaro, the famous Edo Period artist.

As is the nature of rivers, as one descends the route becomes less steep, the river larger, and the valley wider.....

The mist was at times so thick the sun became white. By lunchtime I was down much closer to sea level, the mist had long since burned off, I pass where a larger branch of the river joined up, and traffic had increased.

Manhole Horses

There is archeological evidence that horses have been in Japan for thousands of years, however the earliest records of Japan by the Chinese in the third century say that Japan did not have any horses. It is known that horses were introduced from Korea in the 4-5th centuries and this seems to be from when most Japanese horses are descended. The above manhole is from Mochizuki, a small town in Nagano. The area bred and raised horses for the Imperial court since ancient times.

Kushima, at the southern tip of Miyazaki, is home to a breed of wild pony, the Misaki Pony, considered a Japanese breed. They live on Cape Toi and are a tourist attraction. there are about 100 of them. Misaki means "cape".

This final one is from Ishigaki Island in Okinawa, and other than the fact that the area offers horse riding as an attraction I can find no explanation for the horse on their manhole design.

Takachiho Gorge

This manhole cover is one from the town of Takachiho in Miyazaki Prefdecture, Kyushu.

Takachiho is famous as being the place where the myths of Japan have the ancestors of the Imperial family descending from "The High Plain of Heaven" and beginning their invasion and subjugation of Japan.

The design of this draincover shows the Takachiho Gorge, cut by the Gokase River through the volcanic basalt rock.

In the middle of the gorge is the Minainotaki waterfall that drops 17 meters into the river.

It is possible to rent little rowboats, 1,000 yen for 10 minutes, and paddle around in a tiny roped-off section of the river, but it does allow the best views of the falls.

The place is very, very popular with a constant stream of tour buses arriving and disgorging thousands of tourists. When I got back I learned from friends that Takachiho is considered a "Powaa Spotto".

One may think that this equates to what we might call a Power Spot, but with a little research I found something curious about Japanese Powaa Spottos. I would think of a power spot as say Sedona, Lourdes, the Pyramids,... places connected to the earths energy that transcend the country they are found in. But is seems for the Japanese it is a little different. Many of the Japanese powaa spottos; Takachiho, Izumo Taisha, Meiji Shrine, etc, are all places intimately connected with the State and Emperor System. Places that do no transcend the country they are in. They are political. As if Abraham Lincolns grave was a power spot, or the beach Columbus first landed on.

Anyway, Takachiho Gorge is really quite pretty. especially when the sunlight penetrates the gorge and illuminates the spray from the falls.

There is a path that runs along the gorge for about 600 meters.