Takachiho Gorge

We headed out to the gorge on Thursday leaving at around 8:00am. We made a stop at the conbini, and picked up our re-entry permits so we can hopefully do some traveling. But before any of this gets underway at the conbini I have already got my purchases and am waiting outside. When lo-and-behold a really hot guy in a solid red jumpsuit with an epic japan man-afro. It was fabulous no one here has awesome hair except when you count anime/host hair styles. As Im staring at this guy I look through the glass door at Muqin only to find her dancing on the other side of the door.FAIL... Then I also notice all of the cars are honking and I see a man standing in the street bowing to every car that goes by and waving...uhhh what?? apparently this man was running for some government position and that was him campaigning..okay. Then finally I notice the van next to the boxy mobile is filled with workers eating cup ramen next to me. Where the F did they get the hot water?!?
Okay now fast foward 5 hours were in nobeoka still driving and we stop for Yakiniku of course so we can eat mass quantities of beef for \1100. Delicious.Continue on to multiple book stores and we arrive in Takachiho at 3:00pm. We check into our super fancy ryokan called God's house sounds nice right? A worker greets us and shows us to our room and we then head out to the gorge before it gets too dark out. We ride on boats and bother everyone around us. We ask this poor couple to take a picture of us but they were good-natured about it. We buy our omiyage and head back to the ryokan to eat the largest dinner I had EVER eaten. Beef, vegetables, fresh fruits, more meats, mountain vegetables, wine, and salads. I barely get through the meal when we have to run out to catch a bus to a traditional dance performance. We take a bath in the super nice cedar tubs then call it a night.The next day we hit up the takachiho shrine, a look out, the shrine where it was a cave. Then we drove back into Nobeoka and went to the Aeon mall for some shopping. It was pretty small but we picked up some lunch and snacks and headed back to Nichinan. After driving forever we were almost in miyazaki when we ran across an awesome second hand store with clothes, cds, manga, action figures, dvds and all sorts of stuff. We got back to Nichinan around 10ish. We drove back way too slow and ate probably 4 bags of chips in the process.