Traveling Japan you will notice that something is missing… tourist cities on the coast… until the end of my trip I did not manage to get to some Brighton or Nice (Nizza for our German readers) of Japan… coastal towns strictly for leisure do not exits… and this although the coast line is really impressive… do not ask me for the reason, but I would estimate that either when you have a week of vacation as an average worker such places would economically make no sense or the threat of a Tsunami is simply to high … anyway I was determined to see the coast and had to go for… so I chose  Miyako as the last place on my trip… this is a city right on the pacific coast… and lucky me… Miyako had its summer festival right the day of my arrival… so after hurrying to see some of the beautiful coast I went back to the city… in all the crowed I counted just five western faces and the rest were people from Japan… guess we westerners drew the attention as every kid seems to stare at us… not sure why, but I guess this places do not have too much interaction with the tourist world and so countless times I was asked: Hello, how are you?… but my answer, I am fine and how are you?, only led to the fact that the people giggled and run away… but than, even from this limited conversation, I got more than one invitation for a beer (much more than one - hicks) and people appreciated that I made the effort to see and learn about their country… although in the end this is a pure guess, as the entire night I did not find a single person with whom I could have a communication longer than the one above…