Nyutabaru Air Show
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Nyutabaru, on the southern Japanese island of Kyhusu, is a real superbase, if not THE superbase. At least that's what everyone says who has ever been there. With one squadron of Phantoms and 2 of F-15 Eagles, among the the colourfull Aggressor aircraft, the flying activity is very high with jets being in the air non-stop during the day.
Come with us and have a look what their airshow is like that is held every December!
Where? Nyutabaru, Kyushu, Japan
When? 07/12/2008
f(this is an excerpt of the Japan 2009 Trip Report that can soon be found here as well - a first read might be the Japan blog)
After a really cold night in the car – the windows were even frozen… - we woke up at around 6am near the airfield and saw to our surprise that the roads were already getting crowded with cars and even at the nearby parking the snack stands were already preparing their food! When we got out of the car we earned some amazed looks of the Japanese that were also spending their nights at this place. No wonder, as we were the only Europeans there.
One guy, still hidden in the dark of his car, was asking us:"Where do you come from?" "From Germany", we replied, and then he showed his face, smiling, and said "I am from Japan" We had a good laugh with him and a nice chat as he helped us a lot to get the final steps of organizing the day at the show: how to get there, how to come back, what to take with us, how many time it willl take, and so on… But somehow after a lot of thinking we decided to get two hot coffees from the nearby dispenser, grab our stuff and walk to the gate. On our way we saw the sunrise and the first rays of sun felt comfortably warm in our freezing faces.
As we arrived at the gate we obviously did not wonder that we were not the first ones to be there, and at around 7am the traffic jam along the road had already build up!
The ordered queue in front of the gate soon converted into a disordered pack of aviation fans and when the gates opened at half past seven (if I remember correctly), everybody 
rushed in to get the best place in the first row. We felt happy at first to set our feet on the holy grounds of Japan's Superbase Nyutabaru and looked at the shrine gate: "Welcome to Nyutabaru". Finally we made it!!!
Luckily the few enthusiasts running in front of us preferred to position their chairs in front of the Blue Impulse demonstration team, giving us the chance to get our photos of all the aircraft in the static display without people being in the way. Less than half an hour later we would not have had any chance to so.
a first look around...
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So we rushed through the ground exhibition, photographed the F-4- and F-15-exhibition and get some shots of the aircraft parked along the fence line. This was quite good: RF-4E, F-2, C-130, E-2, T-7 and many more aircraft of the huge variety of JASDF aircraft were present. Even some special coloured ones were sent to the show and we have been extremely pleased about the YS-11 and C-1 in special colours.
Static Display
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Gateguards (F-4, T-2, F-104, F-84)
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Unfortunately the light was not good from the morning on for the photos and became even worse during the day, so we still took some photos of the gate guards (extensive collection including an Aggressor T-2 and also an F-4EJ Kai) and left the airbase again after one hour. Without any souvenirs or whatever as we did not have any time to 
look for them...
That was quite a short visit for an airbase that we always wanted to see, but getting on the other side of the airfield to get some nice shots of the flying display was more important to us.
The transfer to the southern side of the airfield was no problem and we soon found a nice place on our stepladders along the fence, ready for the flying display.
