Tanegashima
This is the second of four posts profiling the places we visited during Japan’s “Golden Week” in Spring 2007. The first is Yakushima, the third is the Fukiage Beach Sand Festival, ,and the fourth is Kagoshima City. We also had a couple of misadventures on the trip which I wrote about here and here.
 Guns were introduced to Japan on Tanegashima by the Portuguese, and it’s a big part of the local culture.
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 A shrine gate at Chikura Caverns, Tanegashima. We saw folks trying to toss rocks and shells onto it.
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 A rock formation at Kumano beach, Tanegashima
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 A life-size replica of a HII-A rocket, at the Tanegashima Space Center. That’s Kai and Eidan running to check it out.
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According to the taxi driver who picked us up after we stepped off the ferry to Tanegashima, it’s an island rarely visited by foreign tourists. I got confirmation of this quickly, as I felt long stares from everyone as I walked down the street. Another clue was the complete lack of any tourist guides written in English (in contrast, they weren’t too hard to find at Yakushima). The local accent was also noticeably different from “Tokyo Japanese.” For example, instead of hearing “kakoī na” directed at the boys by schoolgirls (aren’t they handsome), it was “kakēi na.”
Tanegashima has three towns. We stayed in the largest, Nishinoomote, which is home to the island’s main port. It’s population is about 18,000. In the middle of the island is Nakatane, and then in the south is Minamitane, where guns were first introduced to Japan by the Portuguese. Near Minamitane is the Tanegashima Space Center, which is Japan’s primary satellite launching facility.
While Yakushima’s economy appeared to be a roughly equal mix of tourism and agriculture, Tanegashima seemed to be more dependent on agriculture (and probably the space center). The island’s visitors are mostly Japanese surfers, as there are a number of good breaks all around the island. In fact, we stayed at the Tanegashima Miharusou, which is a surfer’s minshuku (you can think of a minshuku as a ryokan without the meals and attentive service). It had surfing stickers all over the front door, and surfboards lined up along the walls of the lobby.
We arrived in mid-afternoon, so our exploration that day was limited to a short taxi ride down the west coast of the island, to Yokino beach, so the boys could play after a morning of traveling. We were thrilled to have this nice long stretch of coastline all to ourselves. We ended up having the same experience at all 3 of the beaches we visited on Tanegashima. Kumano beach was surrounded by amazing rock formations, and there wasn’t a person in sight. The nearby Chikura caverns had great sea caves to explore. The “animal rock” beach, at the Iwasaki hotel was also great. Although it wasn’t the peak summer season, it was Golden Week (the busiest vacation time in Japan), so I couldn’t get over these great beaches being empty. My only explanation is that Tanegashima is not the easiest place to get to, so people looking for nice beaches probably go to popular destinations in Okinawa, Guam, or Kyushu. It was a real treat to have such wonderful surroundings all to ourselves.
We learned from our experience on Yakushima not to mess around with buses and bicycles, so we went ahead and rented a car for our second and third days on Tanegashima. The second day was all about beaches, and the third day was mostly for the Space Center. Maria particularly enjoyed the Chikura caverns, but for the three little boys in our family (I count myself as the third) the space center was the thing. It’s tagline is “the most beautiful rocket-launch complex in the world.” As you can see in the pictures, there’s probably no arguing with that, as the facility’s buildings nestle in nicely among the hills and beaches along the coast. They had a small but very well done museum, with a focus on rocket engines and how they work (most of the displays were in Japanese, but some also had English, and one of the short movies was available in English). Most importantly for Kai, of course, was the gift shop. Kai has a small collection of various toy American and European rockets, so he was thrilled to get his hands on a toy Japanese H-IIA rocket. I don’t think it came out of his hands for at least the next 3 days.
Good resources on Tanegashima:
- The JNTO web page on Tanegashima.
- The Tanegashima Space Center web site.
- Eddie Does Japan, Tanegashima category: gives a window into life in this far corner of Japan. Written with a great sense of humor.
- Also see the other links in the body of this post.
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Thanks, very informative.
Larry Kellogg