Sumie Beach Miyazaki Day One

What a wonderful two days in Miyazaki! We all always enjoy the beach so much! Home again, tired, headachey with dehydration and lack of sleep, with shoulders aching with sunburn, I wonder how I ever managed to survive for a whole two weeks or more when I was a kid! I guess you take it slower when you have more time. But I wonder if I would ever be able to get Amy out of the water, even if we were there for a month, she loves it so much!

The beach is calle Sumie (same as Kanji's mother), and is about a three-hour drive away. We took a van/mini-bus eleven-seater. Us four, Kanji's friend Takuya, his wife Maki and two daughters Karin and Momoka, who are the same age as Amy and Lena, and his brother and sister Osamu and Yukko. Plus Kana, their father's friend's daughter. We listened to anime songs the whole way, which was a bit of a heachache. Karin and Momoka don't use either child seats or seatbelts, which was a bit hard for Amy and Lena towards the end of the drive, when they started to complain and wanted to get out and play on the floor of the van. But mostly they coped.

We arrived far too early for check-in, and went first to a beachside park where we ate lunch, which we had bought previously, in the foyer of an air-conditioned building in the park. There was a big playground and a cable-car up to the top of a high hill that had a superb view of the bay and beach. We came down again via a huge slide and bobsled. I was a bit concerned about going too fast, especially with Amy between my knees, but the brakes were very efficient!

We decided we needed to swim, even if the cabin was not yet ready, so we parked and went to a smaller beach to one side of the main beach. The day was stinking hot and the water temperature just perfect. We stayed in for an hour without even being aware of it, before forcing ourselves out to go put on more sunscreeen. The kids only stopped long enough to have it rubbed in before they went off to build sandcastles, then we all jumped back in the ocean again. Me and Amy had goggles, which was great fun because the water was quite clear, as long as no-one kicked up the sand.

We finally had to pull ourselves out of the water, checked in, and showered and changed for dinner. We had a barbecue, of course, all prepared earlier by Maki and Yukko so we didn't have to do anything except drink beer and wine and wait for someone to figure out an efficient way to get the barbecue going, since none of us could do it! Very smoky, certainly no embers. We were peering at our neighbors' barbecues, but got no surefire tips from spying alone. At one satge they were taking the coals to the gas cooker inside to heat them up! At least we resisted the tempation to pour petrol on it. We finally got it cooking and at steak and kebabs, and scallops with butter and shrimps and veges.

It took ages to get the hyper-stimulated kids to sleep, and after that we sat down for another drink but I was so exhausted I could not believe it was only 10pm! We went to bed not long after, leaving Amy and Lena who were sound asleep in Karin and Momoka's beds!