I left my bags at the guesthouse and rented a bicycle. There was still plenty of time before check-in, so I figured I’d ride around Akune and see what was there.
Akune is a port town, so there’s sea wherever you go. Riding along the water felt like summer.
It was a little hot, though. No — it was very hot.
The area in front of Akune Station and around Sunset Road is where the fishing boat unloading docks and the big factories are, so it’s a different kind of sea from the one you’d normally picture.
So I rode over toward Tobashira Natural Park(戸柱自然公園) instead.
The name sounds grand, like there might be something impressive waiting, but it’s a small wood with a path running through it, and if you follow the path there’s a little shrine. Follow the road down to the water and you come to a beach with a rock called Hikaruze(光礁).
The park entrance is behind a high-end hotel called VILLA Hikaruze. The big torii gate makes it clear this is where the park starts.
Riding a bicycle out here at midday, in the bright heat of July, was pretty rough. As I mentioned before, I hadn’t put on sunscreen properly, and my arms and legs were turning red.
But looking at that sky and that sea, you want to keep pedaling and see how much further you can get. It was that kind of summer. Summer in Akune.
A lot of people probably don’t have a clear sense of how far south Kagoshima(鹿児島) actually is.
It’s much further south than Jeju, at about the same latitude as Shanghai. That’s why you see so much subtropical vegetation here — palms, sago palms. And there are plenty of other trees too, all of them thick with leaves, so the place turns intensely green in summer.
From the park entrance, for a little while, I rode slowly along a road covered over by dense trees.
The sea through the trees, the sunlight falling through the leaves, the forest path kept cool and shaded by the thick woods — it was a good place to be.
Where the road ends, a small shrine appears, covered over by dense trees, with an unusual feel to it.
The stairs in front of the shrine take you down to the beach. There’s one large rock there. It has a name — Hikaruze(光礁).
I don’t know the details, but apparently there’s a legend that this rock once gave off a mysterious light. Which is why it’s counted as one of the Seven Wonders of Akune(阿久根七奇).
When you actually get there and look at it, there’s nothing much to it — it feels like a large rock on a beach, and that’s about it.
There used to be a small torii gate on top of the rock, but even that’s gone now, which makes the scene even more ordinary.
Next to Hikaruze there’s a long breakwater stretching out.
I’d come to Akune to see the sea, after all, so I decided to look at it properly.
The thing is, there’s no shade on the breakwater. Which means taking the full midday sun with your whole body.
The sea at Akune, seen from the breakwater, was pretty great. And Akune itself, seen together with that sea, was worth keeping in memory too.
I thought it was fair compensation for taking the sun full-on and giving up a layer of skin to sunburn.
I think Akune will stay with me as a “summer sea.” It wasn’t the kind of sea where you run around on sand or snorkel over clear water, but the scenery and the smell, the feeling of sunlight hot enough to burn against skin, and the wind that briefly made up for it — those stayed with me more strongly.
It had been a long time since I’d felt a summer sea like that.
I got back on the bicycle. Sweat ran down with every push of the pedals. A bicycle in summer — it might sound like a romantic combination of words, but the reality is a hard road.
Still, I can’t stop.
You only move forward if you pedal.
Now I’d like to go somewhere cool and rest for a bit.
