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!