Saitobaru Matsuri, Saito

The hut thing before it was subjected to some pretty serious flame treatment. Everybody was waiting very patiently for the show to being, it seemed to be taking aaaaggeess!

There was also a story to accompany all the burning.

And then it burnt and made us all a little bit warmer. It had apparently been treated to a pretty serious shower of petrol earlier in the day.

Scary looking although I'm sure very nice Japanese dude warming up in front of the burning hut thing. The mens routine involved a lot of skillfully flailed swords and manly who-haa-ing.

Our talented and culturally enlightened friend Tristan showing us all how it's done while not looking out of place at all. Kind of. John O'Flynn was the other crazy gaijin who participated and no photos will be shown of him.

Obligatory fireworks afterwards.

Love this shot by Em.

Ebino Plateau

Ebino's saving grace would have to be Ebino Plateau. We have been up there a few times now and it is pretty breathtaking, even if you are just hanging in the carpark trying to work out where to hike. On this occasion we managed to find the path and I convinced Emma just to trust me when she was all like 'you don't even know where you're going' and I was all like '..there's a hill, we should climb the side of it'. Anyway, look at the pretty photos.

Half way up Karakuni Dake (we didn't really take into account the time and effort commitment required to reach the summit!). Anyway, we were really lucky with the weather so you can see Sakurajima in the distance having a grumble and the ocean looked nice too. A worthwhile and interesting afternoon wander even if we didn't make it to the summit.