After arriving on Ishigaki (main island of the Yaeyama group, due east of Taiwan), catching a bus into town, settling in at the comfy guest house (where we found communication most convenient via translation services from a friend that we phoned), we slowly realized that our Japanese mastery or lack thereof (especially written comprehension, which is not far above 0% fluency) was not going to be nearly as forgivable in the Yaeyama-shoto as it often is here on Okinawa. And since there were quite a few activities we were interested in taking part in during our long weekend (3 nights) there, we decided to seek some assistance & spend a bit more money than we normally allow ourselves to. So we booked a tour thru Hirata Tours at the nearby ferry port for Saturday, called an English speaking dive shop to set up some SCUBA diving for Sunday & decided to only chance our partial day on Monday to our own fallible communication skills. After those plans were made, we followed a lovely walking tour (printed from a website) of the main town before finding a delicious dinner at Yuna, across the street from our guesthouse.
On our first full day, we embarked on a day tour to Iriomote Island which included round trip ferries from Ishigaki, bus transportation on Iriomote, boat trip up the Urauchi-kawa, hike to the Maryudo falls, delicious resort lunch, star-sand hunting/gathering, & a wooden cart pulled by water buffalo to tiny Yubu-jima for a scenic stroll about the gardens. Though it certainly wasn't cheap, it sure was easy to do more than we could probably have figured out on our own & we thoroughly enjoyed each part of that was included. Dinner back on Ishigaki that night consisted of some yummy bento box food we found from a local vendor in town.
We did some SCUBA diving on Sunday, finding a dive shop in Kabira that could handle our language needs (Umicoza). Unfortunately, the Manta Scramble location (famous for regular year-round sightings of awesome, huge Manta Rays) was too choppy for the dive boat to visit, so we had to settle for 2 dives in different areas that boasted coral reef life in Nagura Bay. It was quite lovely, but not terribly different from what we witness around Okinawa Island. Still, our very knowledgeable divemaster (Satoki-san) showed us quite a few things we'd never seen before (arrow crabs, jawfish, etc), often using his underwater flashlights to illuminate places normally concealed to our view. Also provided by Umicoza was a delicious lunch of curry, rice, spaghetti & salad (very nice after diving). After getting dropped back off at the guest house in town that afternoon, we quickly realized that not bringing our AAA-issued international driving permits would be preventing us from rental of any motor-powered vehicle(s), so instead we rented bicycles to get in a few hours of riding across the southern coastline (great sunset views & monuments & a small lighthouse). On our way back, before returning the bikes, we happened to see a fresh seafood shop & purchased some fresh fish sashimi which we paired with some bento food from a Hot Spar store near our guest house.
On Monday we awoke to bright, gorgeous weather (the clearest of our days there) & ferried over to Taketomi-jima, where we rented bicycles (highly recommended) to see the island's beaches, typical Ryukyu village architecture, shrines & historical sights. In only 3-1/2 hours we found that we had seen basically all of the small island's very interesting scenery & we docked back on Ishigaki-jima JUST in time (i.e. 30 min before time was up) for a DELICIOUS lunch buffet at the Chisun Hotel. We even had enough time to leisurely stroll with our backpacks from the ferry port to the airport instead of taking the bus! ;-)
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