May 2026 Tour Day 4

Italian for dinner in Miyazaki. The public bath and sauna in the hotel was amazing. There was a show inside the sauna with a young lad wafting a towel around to music by The Beach Boys. Quite surreal. In the morning we headed down the Nichinan Coast, stopping for a swim in the Pacific. Further down the coast we visited the Udo Jingu Shrine, built right into the cliff. Then a long ride over mountain passes. When we stopped for lunch we saw a tanuki, which is kind of like a badger. In fifteen years of living in Japan I had never seen one until then. Wonderful. Just before we headed to our hotel, we stopped at Kagoshima Bay and took in the sight of Mount Sakurajima, a large, active volcano.