Ishigaki, Okinawa

Okinawa is an archipelago of islands that make up Japan's southern-most prefecture. We're pretty close to Taiwan but it just wasn't worth heading over there when we're flying out of Seoul soon.

It's been said that Okinawa is like Thailand without the tourists. So far that seems to be true. We're in a very southern island called Ishigaki. It's still a touristy place, as evidenced by all of the T shirt shops. But high season is over and it's nowhere near as bad as Thailand now. Other tourists that we do see seem to be mainly Japanese, Taiwanese, and Chinese.

The weather has been overcast but in the 70s so we can't complain. The city of Ishigaki itself is pretty ugly, the only one we've seen on our trip in Japan. The reason to come here are the beaches throughout the main island and visiting the smaller pristine Islands nearby.

We've taken a ferry twice now to the small nearby island of Taketomi. You can rent bikes here but why? It's so small and flat that you can walk everywhere easily. We bought a 5-day bus pass when we arrived at the airport. That let us see several of the beaches on the main island and get to and from the small airport.

The local drink here is called Awamori. It's another rice based alcohol like shochu and sake but it's distilled for more of a kick. The apartment hotel room we rented includes a 3 hour happy hour of drinking it or the local beer, Orion. Most of the t-shirt shops here are selling shirts of Orion beer if that's any indication of what there is to do here. I'm certainly not complaining though. After all the running around we've been doing it's nice to just relax and have beach days.

More photos and videos are here.
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