Yaeyama Islands - Taketomi, Iriomote & Ishigaki

We are now back home and reflecting on our journey while we set up our new house in Christchurch. The Yaeyama Islands, just off the coast of Taiwan, was the last leg in our journey through Japan. We visited 3 islands - Taketomi-jima, Iriomote-jima and Ishigaki-jima. Unfortunately the weather was not really with us for this part of the trip due to the tail end of the typhoon season, but despite the constant wind and random rain storms, it was still pretty warm and we were rewarded with some occasional sun and beautiful sights.

We spent our first night on Taketomi-jima, a little island just 10 mins ferry ride from Ishigaki-jima and a UNESCO World Heritage site - home to a collection of very quaint traditional Okinawa-ken houses with red tiled roofs, coral roads and coral rock walls. Our accommodation at a local guesthouse with a beautiful tropical garden came with wonderful local meals of fish and seaweed and a bottle of awamori (the local spirit) to share between guests. This was a great icebreaker despite not being able to really speak each other's language and one of the other guests had lived in London for 4 years so his english was certainly better than our Japanese and he ended up as group interpreter. After dinner we all wandered down to the local pub where we were the only customers and were treated to live music and singing. The next morning we walked around the whole island (it's pretty small!) and the rest of the settlement, then caught the high-speed ferries out to Iriomote-jima (via Ishigaki) on rough seas, where we would spend the next 2 nights.

Traditional Taketomi-jima houses with tiled roofs and coral walls and roads

Traditional Okinawan music at the local pub

Kate trying out traditional Okinawan dress!

We arrived on Iriomote-jima at Ohara port in the south as the seas were too rough to land in Uehara. If you buy a ticket for Uehara, even if cancelled, they include a bus ride all the way around to Uehara in the northeast and will also drop you off at your accommodation. It's a really good way of seeing the island actually so we were reasonably glad the weather was so bad as we would never have gone down as far as Ohara. Iriomote was super quiet - really is the off-season as nothing is open. We were really glad we had booked a place that served breakfast and dinner as I think we would have got rather hungry! The owner of our accommodation (Sawayaka) was this very talented young guy with his family that was an amazing cook, musician, dancer and he drove us out to some places when we needed it (public transport is a bit erratic). That evening we went for a walk around the northeastern tip of the island, visiting Hoshisuna-no-hama, the star sand beach, with tiny skeletons of foraminifera that are somewhat star shaped. The next morning we set off up Urauchi-gawa on a river cruise and hike through the jungle to some waterfalls that takes 3 hours all up. We were the only ones on the boat but we did meet a number of other people on the track. If you keep going past the waterfalls it turns into the Across Island Track, all the way to Ohara in the south. It's home to the very rare Iriomote wild cat or yamaneke (literally mountain cat) with only 80-100 left. They're super shy and nocturnal so unfortunately we didn't see one, but we saw heaps of geckos, birds and butterflies.

River cruise and walk up Urauchi-gawa, Iriomote-jima

Dave & Kate in the jungle, Iriomote-jima

We spent our last 2 nights in the Yaeyamas on Ishigaki-jima, the main island. The weather was still very rough so we didn't do a lot of swimming and couldn't snorkel on the reef edge but we hired a car for the day and explored the island. We drove out first to Ugan-zaki, a lighthouse on the western edge of the island, with a great coastline of big waves (seems popular with surfers) and geology. We then headed to Kabira-wan and the beach at Sukuji where we got some brief sunshine before the rain decided to really set in. We had planned to do some exploring of the reef at Yonehara but it was still raining and windy so we continued up north around the island and stopped at the Tamatori-zaki viewpoint on the northeast. We finally managed get some swims in at the nice beach outside the ANA international resort back near Ishigaki city.

Ugan-zaki wild coastline and geology, Ishigaki-jima

Kabira-wan pearl farming, Ishigaki-jima - no swimming allowed! :(

Tamatori-zaki viewpoint along the north eastern coast, Ishigaki-jima

Aso-san & Beppu

Leaving Nagasaki, we headed inland into the centre of Kyushu, and into the old caldera of a very large volcanic complex, Aso. The train ride over the interior is an event in itself and very beautiful. The old caldera is really a ring of mountains with almost a cliff edge on the inside at a circumference of about 120 km, with the active cone rising up from the centre consisting of 5 main peaks, of which Naka-dake has the currently active crater on the side. In between the ring and the cone complex, there is a wide area of rice paddies, farmland and a few towns. We stayed in Aso town, which was a great base for our day trip up the mountain. We stayed at this fantastic brand new backpackers, Aso Base Backpackers, which was an awesome last minute find as it really had only just opened and it was really beauitful. Lovely wood everywhere, a log fire, owners who spoke very good englishh and wallpaper that had tiny glow-in-the-dark stars all over it! :)

The evening we arrived, we decided to go up the mountain to get the eveniing light as we would be leaving the next day in the afternoon. Was hard to get a good view of the actual active part of the complex, but we had a fun time in Kusasenri (a meadow plateau with little lakes and grass) with some impressive clouds and lighting.

Clouds tumble over Kusasenri

The next day we caught the first bus we could straight up to the crater (which unfortunately wasn't until 9 am). The weather was perfect, not a cloud in the sky and practically no wind - not great for photography but I wasn't complaining! It wasn't too hazy either, which was a first for us for quite some time (Japan is quite hazy unfortunately). The crater wasn't puffing out much steam like it had the night before but it was great because you could see the unusal green-blue of the lake, which you usually don't see. We spent about 4 hours up on the complex, around the crater and across the plateau, eventually making our way back to Kusasenri where we caught the bus back down again to catch our train to Beppu (there's only 4 direct trains per day so you don't have a lot of flexibility).

Us on the west rim of the crater (Nishi-koko) at Naka-dake

Walking across the upper plateau (crater in the top right)

Naka-dake and Taka-dake from across Kusasenri

Beppu was actually a lot better than we had been led to believe by the guidebooks. It may depend on what you do there! We decided to spent our day there (as we stayed for 2 nights) going to some different onsens. We tried the big onsen complex at Suginoi Palace at the back of Beppu on the hillsides overlooking the city and the harbour. Wonderful views and really great pools - for each men and women there are 4 main tiered "infinity" pools on the cliff edge, and also tubs, sauna, waterfall and an indoor pool. After dinner that evening we also tried out our first (and maybe last!) sand onsen. Great experience and fun to try but really hot! The black volcanic sand is also very heavy and it's hard to breathe - rather wierd sensation!

Beppu shore-front - very warm and clear water

Nagasaki

Our first stop for the southern island of Kyushu was the port city of Nagasaki. I'm sure it's been said many times, but it reminded us a lot of San Francisco - not just in looks and trams, but also the cuisine and mix of cultures. Nagasaki is a very vibrant and friendly city and we loved it immediately. Our accomodation for the next 2 nights was Akari backpackers and just upstream from the famous Megane-bashi (Spectacles Bridge). In fact, there are 10 old stone bridges across the river in this section, all originally leading to the many temples lining the street parallel at the foot of the hillside. Nagasaki, of course, is also (in)famous as another nuclear bomb target but it's remebrance is of a somewhat different feel here and we also decided to experience the other flavours of the city instead.

Megane-bashi

That evening we decided to take the trams to Glover Gardens at the south entrance to the harbour on the hill. This was mainly for the view - we had seen photographs and heard it was a good place to view the city in the evening and also relatively easy to get to. We had thought that we might just see the view from beside the gardens without actually going into them as seeing western gardens and old western residences in Japan did not interest us all that much. As it turned out, we had to pay the entrance fee to even just see the view and we were actually really glad we did because it was beautiful! The location is wonderful and there were many viewpoints to overlook the city. The history was actually quite fascinating and old for our NZ standards! The old residences are quite unique and though western, there is a lot of influence from the Japanese, particularly in the garden design. Makes for a really interesting combination.

 

Us at Glover Gardens, overlooking Nagasaki

Glover's house overlooking the city - Glover was a scottsman, so there was bagpipe music playing!

Nagasaki after sunset from Glover Gardens

Our day in Nagasaki the next day was pretty quiet as we didn't have anything in particular to see. Dave went out and explored while I let my stomach rest a bit! We had really great food here, including trying the local specialty, Champon, which is a type of soba noodle soup with all sorts of seafood in it. It's a blend of Japanese and Chinese cuisine - the Chinese have a huge presence in this city, including a chinatown district and a few temples. The Champon also reminded us a lot of eating seafood chowder in San Francisco!

Hiroshima & the Inland Sea

Heading next day to Hiroshima, we decided to take a bit of a side trip to the small fishing port of Tomo-no-ura, just to experience a bit more of the Inland Sea and some more of the different aspects of Japan. We appreciated it more later on, as we didn`t have very good weather in Miya-jima.

The lighthouse at Tomo-no-ura

 

View over Tomo-no-ura and the Inland Sea

Hiroshima city was quite vibrant and pretty but the Peace Museum was rather gruesome and distressing. We really hope that atomic bombs are never used again (which I guess is the whole point of the exhibits). The Peace Park itself was very interesting and the A-Bomb dome is well worth seeing as a poignant reminder.

Looking through the Cenotaph to the Peace Flame and the A-Bomb Dome

The A-Bomb Dome at night

 

A-Bomb Dome and Aioi Bridge (the intended bomb target)

Next morning we headed out for the day to Miya-jima. Unfortunately the weather had packed in overnight even though the forcast had said it was going to be sunny! It was still a really great day out and we went up the ropeway to the top of Mt Misen and walked back down. Unfortunately the famous monkeys are in the forest eating this time of year so we didn't see them, but there were heaps of sika deer everywhere and we could still make out many of the island in the Inland Sea and see all the way back to Hiroshima. We stayed on the island for dinner and caught a late ferry back so we could see the famous red torii gate lit up at night. Miyajima was super packed with people despite the weather! Early the next morning we had a really nice stroll through the riverside gardens of Shukkei-en in Hiroshima. This is a "shrink scenery garden" - depicting landscapes in minature, and apparently modelled on a lake in China. We enjoyed this garden a lot and preferred it to the wide open more famous gardens. Shukkei-en was completely destroyed in the atomic bomb and re-opened 6 years later.

Ropeway up Mt Misen

 

Itsukushima shrine torii gate, Miya-jima

 

Shukkei-en

Himeji &Kurashiki

Travelling back through Osaka and now heading into Western Honshu, our first stop was the smallish city of Himeji and it`s impressive castle, Himeji-jo. Himeji-jo is the number 1 castle in Japan and is a very impressive complex, much larger than other castles we`ve seen. Although Matsumoto-jo was more photogenic, we are glad we saw Himeji-jo after it, as we might not have been so enthusiastic about Matsumoto-jo!

Himeji-jo from the main entrance

 

Himeji-jo and blossoms in autumn!

 

The beautiful view over Himeji from the 6th floor

The next morning we got on a bus and travelled up through Himeji to the Shosa-zan ropeway and the mountain temple complex of Engyo-ji. This was well worth the visit and much better than we expected, not least becasue it was very quiet (although it did get busier later) and it was a really beautiful sunny day. The sun through the autumn leaves up here was stunning and the location of all the wooden temples in amongst the mountain top forest was really gorgeous.

 

Engyo-ji complex on Shosa-zan

 
Priest and Samurai training facility featured in the "Last Samurai"

Statues of Jizo - protector of children, travellers and the dead

Later that afternoon we headed west again to Kurashiki for the night. Kurashiki is one of our hometown Christchurch`s sister cities - chosen, I believe, because of the canals here. They were really beautiful in the evening light anyway and we enjoyed a nice stroll around the kura (japanese store houses, now converted into shops and galleries).

Kurashiki canals

Japanese food

Thought I would just post a few pictures of some of the different kinds of food we've been having here! Half the time we're not entirely sure what we are eating but since most of it's vegetarian, it doesn't worry us that much! We've had very few things we didn't really like - it's all perfectly edible, just some of it tastes better than others :)
What we have noticed is that it's very different from the "Japanese" food we get in NZ. Lots more pickles and vegetables and we haven't been eating much sushi at all.

Soba noodle soup with rice and pickles

Kate with yaki-soba in Nikko

Dave with dinner in Takayama

The meal we had in Takayama. Hida beef pieces in local miso paste with a selection of wild vegetables.

Markets - lots of fresh (still moving) seafood and vegetables. Very hard to find actual meat and is quite expensive.

Many resturants have these plastic replicas of their dishes - makes choosing food very easy!

Desserts - the Japanese seem to love desserts and french bakeries. They are everywhere! We never would have guessed how good the bread and pastries are here. They are all french boulangeries or patisseries and quite expensive - seems to be a bit of a delicacy.

Our huge dinner meal in Koya-san. Traditional vegetarian/vegan monk food.

Nara & Koya-san

Heading south from Kyoto, we arrived in Nara to a cold and very rainy day but we still decided to head out and look around Nara-koen (koen = park) and visit Todai-ji and the Daibutsu-den (Buddha hall). Many hundreds of umbrellas actually made it very colourful in the end! Lots of school groups were also out for the afternoon and eager to stop foreign tourists (like us) to ask us questions in english. We were also given many little origami shapes as gifts. There are tame deer wandering around Nara-koen that are rather eager for food - you can buy special deer biscuits at some stalls to feed them, but be warned! As soon as you buy them the deer are ready for them and think nothing of butting you :) The park staff round them up every year to saw back their antlers so they don't hurt people. We saw one young one with antlers - they are two very sharp prongs!

Dave and a Shika (deer)

Todai-ji is very impressive. The Daibutsu-den is the largest wooden building in the world and it's not even the original, which was nearly twice as big! As the name suggests, it was built to house an enourmous statue of Buddha (amongst 3 other statues). This Buddha, unlike the Daibutsu in Kamakura has had a rough time and lost it's head quite a few times. The latest head still dates back a couple of hundred years. Most of the Japanese temples and buildingss etc we have visited are not not originals but their replacements still date back a lot further than anything in NZ's history!

Todai-ji's Daibutsu-den

After Nara, we headed south again up into the Kii Mountains. It was an impressive train ride through some very beautiful orchard growing regions and forested mountain valleys. The final leg up to the mountain-top World Heritage buddist complex of Koya-san is up a ropeway. Koya-san is very pretty nestled in amongst very tall pines with quaint traditional buildings and temples. There are currently about 4000 inhabitants and over one hundred temples for the monks but this is just a fraction of what used to be here. We spent the evening wandering through the massive Oku-no-in cemetary, ending in the sacred Torodo building with hundreds of lanterns, including 2 that have remained lit for over 200 years. Through the back of the building you can see the roof of the mausoleum of Kobo Daishi (also Kukai), the buddist monk who set up this complex and many others around Japan. He was an amazing person - has been compared to Leonardo Da Vinci in the many talents and great work he did.

Oku-no-in

Statues of Jizo

Jizo

Buddist graves and monuments

Our stay in Koya-san was with some monks living in the temple of Shojoshin-in. This was really fantastic as the temple was beautiful, the monks were so friendly and the food was amazing (traditional vegetarian shojin-ryori). We really enjoyed this and was well worth it! We also got up early for the morning prayer ceremony which was a great experience. The monks have beautiful voices.

Shosjoshin-in

The garden at Shojoshin-in

Kyoto

Kyoto was amazing and well worth the visit! We split our sightseeing up into 3 full days, also spending the first evening wandering around the very impressive Kyoto Railway Station. Not going to say much about Kyoto here as not sure where to start, but hopefully some of our photographs speak for themselves.

First day we went to Arashiyama district and visited Tenru-ji and the famous bamboo groves, then on to the gorgeous Gio-ji (a small forest temple with lots of moss and momiji - we highly recommend this and was one of our favourites), Ryoan-ji and it's zen garden and also some rather amazing rainbow coloured momiji trees, then finally Kinkaku-ji (the golden pavillion), which was also one of our favourites.

Kyoto Station

The bamboo groves of Arashiyama

Gio-ji

Ryoan-ji zen garden

Rainbow coloured momiji

Kinkaku-ji

The 2nd day we headed northeast to the Path of Philosophy and gthe many temples and shrines along it's route. We started at Nanzen-ji at the southern end, then did a small detour up into the hills to visit a little forest shrine behind Nanzen-ji - Nanzen-ji Oku-no-in, the path which also led us into an old cemetary hidden in the forest. We emerged on the path again just north of Eikan-do. We wandered along the Path of Philosophy to Honen-in with it's lovely moss covered gate, sand garden and a local photographers gallery. Finally we reached Ginkaku-ji (the silver paviillion). We also stopped at the local monthly market held at Chion-ji but didn't stay long as we could hardly move for the crowds!

Nazen-ji aqueduct

Nanzen-ji Oku-no-in

The Path of Philosophy

Ginkaku-ji

Our 3rd day saw us up early and on the train south a couple of stops to the business shrine of Fushimi Inari Taisha. The hundreds of red/orange torii gates that wind around this hilly shrine are amazing and were another highlight of our time in Kyoto. Was also wonderfully quiet on a monday morning after a rather crowded and busy weekend. We spent the rest of the day in Gion and the Southern Higashiyama district, wandering around some amazing craft shops and wonderful old streets.

Dave and Kate at Fushimi Inari Taisha

Torii gates at Fushimi Inari Taisha