Kyushu: Win, Win, Fail, Fail, Fail, FFFFFF-- Compromise.

FIRST!!! Stats, because the thingie is on and I don't want to forget.  Also, it has somehow acquired satellites from within the hotel room, with the window covered with thick wooden shutters, and it thinks i'm moving in circles at a rate of 3km/h, which is weird...

Distance Travelled: 223.3km
Avg. Speed: 39.1km/h
Stopped time: 2h 02m
Max Speed: 79.2km/h

TOTAL DISTANCE THUS FAR: 1646.3km

Morning was sunny, and that made me happy ^_^

Right, started off south, aiming for Cape Toi. Drove and drove. Made it through Miyazaki City alive, despite being behind and/or beside a huge tour bus with 日本同盟 painted on it blaring old timey (and, assumingly right wing) music.  That was... fun.

Once out of Miyazaki, there were lots and lots of parking spots along the road specifically for pretty pictures.  We'd seen them last year, but they'd been on the wrong side of the road for us to use them. This time, headed south, I stopped at almost all of them (but some were super duper full, so I didn't bother).  All my pics are in RAW on my camera though, so I can't share them with y'all yet. :/  There's this one I took with my cell phone...

So yeah, kept driving south. Passed the turn off for Udo Shrine, and thought, "I'll do that on the way back, if at all -- it's probably stupid amounts of stairs, and I dunno if the alleged tit rocks are worth it."  Passed Sun Messe (which has Moai statues for some reason...), and since it was on the other side of the road, decided I'd just catch it on the way back, npnp.  Kept heading south.

Eventually turned off National Road 220 and onto the road for Cape Toi (National Road 448), and it was very wild on both sides, any habitation that was here was all overgrown with kudzu and other shizzle now.  Kept driving.  At one point there was a pretty friggin' awesome view of a long beach and there was parking along the side of the road, so I stopped and got out and took some pictures and stuff. When I got back in, I noticed the satnav had decided I was here:

Yeah, wtg satnav. At least you didn't try to kill me today!

When I was about 12km from the Cape, I ran into the backlog of traffic.  I made a judgment call: based on my previous experience with capes (in the form of Cape Ashizuri in Shikoku) and on my knowledge of Cape Toi (there's a light house and allegedly wild horses), I decided to pull a u-turn out of there.  I'd driven the road I wanted to, and now I could drive it the other direction, npnp.  Hit up the other places I wanted to, as well.

Well, the line of cars at Udo Shrine was stupid, so I decided to give that a miss. Better to skip it than to wait forever to be disappointed by decidedly un-breastacular tit rocks.  Sun Messe, with its moai, then, was my last chance to actually DO SOMETHING today.

But when I got there, they weren't letting cars in anymore! It was too close to closing time, they said, and the place was already full, so no more people could come in.  So I didn't get to take pictures of ridiculous Easter Island replica statues. :(

At this point it started to rain, which is perfect pathetic fallacy, I guess.  I was pretty bummed, and I was leaving this great area, and though I'd taken a bunch of pics earlier in the day when it was sunny, I was still sad to be leaving the Nichinan Coast, because it's fucking beautiful. I was sad to be leaving the smell of the sea air behind me. I was lonely.  There was nothing good coming up on my iPod.  And then there was a detour in Miyazaki for some reason and I ended up way too close for comfort to SeaGaia.  I was afraid the fail of SeaGaia would rub off on me :<

Before I got to Miyazaki, though, I should point out that I apparently drove on a new road. It was there last year, but apparently not when the maps in my navi were made.

Yeah, gg, satnav, gg.

So, I kept driving north, not sure what to do now that it was nearly sunset.  I knew I had a sunburn on my window-side arm, and so I stopped into the biggest, most spacious, and most offputting drugstore/supermarket I've ever seen.  "Hello, where may your sunburn treatments be?" I asked.  Then the guy tried to sell me 4000yen upmarket moisturizing spray. What? Fuck off.  I ended up buying something that's not actually sunburn treatment, as such, but can be used to ease the symptoms. It works best when it's kept in the fridge though. FFFFFFFFF- I AM iN A CAR ON A LONGHAUL DRIVE DOUCHEBAG.  Whatever. WHATEVER.

I decided I wanted to shoot the sunrise from the Hyuga Michi no Eki (it's a government-run rest stop) tomorrow, but I was too close to there to just drive there and sleep there in the car -- I would have gotten there at like, 7pm.  Then I realized I hadn't passed the hotel I stayed at last night, so I didged in, and they had a room and so here I am again.  Planning to leave here around 4 or shortly after tomorrow morning so I can get to Hyuga Michi no Eki in time to catch the sunrise.  Then I'll continue on north. Destination: Home (though I won't get there for a while yet D:)