Yaeyama-gun

After the long journey to Japan and thanks to last nights sake I fell to sleep like a stone on the comfy tatami mats, feeling not sign of jetlag. The night was much too short anyway and we just had time to buy some breakfast from the supermarket constisting of some Okinawa style onigiri with sausage and some vegetarian goodies soaked in broth called oden.

Afterwards we went to the port od Ishigaki and took the Ferry to Hateruma where we ate our breakfast and used the 1.5 hours to sleep a little more. Arriving on the southernmost island we were picked up by the host of our apartment and got some useful tips of bars during the short ride. After the check in we could rent two extremely old and rusty bicycles and some snorkeling equipment directly from our host. So just dumped our stuff at the apartment and took the bikes to discover this small island.

Even though quite small the bikes turned out to be ok. On the island live maybe a around one thousand people and probable twice as many goats which are chained all around the island. Most of the people seems to live from agriculture and growing sugar cane First we went to the southern side which has a beatiful rock cliff coast. Time and water formed here marvelous spiky and sharp figured into the lava stone. We dumped the bikes and went to discover this beautiful place climbing over the cliff and enjoying the great weather. 25 C and sunshine with some small clouds :-)

Afterwards we went farther along the south coast and saw the beautiful landscape. Mimosa trees, weird palm tree fruits and many many huge and colorful butterflies! Shortly we arrived to the southernmost monument of Japan which marks the end/beginning of Japan. Then we got hungry, needed to get out of the scolding sun and went back to the settlement to have lunch at very local place. We ate some were nice miso soup and I had interesting pickled pork with some salad and an amaying freshly made banana milk shake.

Having the snorkeling equippment carried around all the time we thought it would be a good idea to finally use it! So we went to a beautiful beach with turquoise water and what appeared to be some coral reefs. Soon adter we started to swim, we were absolutely amazed! Not having reached the reef already a big swarm of maybe 20 hand sized grey fish was interestingly surrounding us with having no fear whatsoever. And the deeper we went into the riff the more amazing fish we saw. All imaginable colors and forms! I felt like in one of this videos of discovery channel! And some of them were really large, maybe 30 cm long with funny hornes and so on! At one point when I saw a small, black and white stripes watersnake I even got a little scared but it was a really really cool experience which never had before in my life!

So we spent a good amount of time at beach got some burn of course before we started to continue our discovery of the island. This lead us to some tombs, more goats, another monument in honour of the farmers and some really small bananas on real plants, which had a very nice taste but felt very odd and dry in your mouth.

For dinner we went to a nice small pub enjoyed a beer and some very cool snacks: papya salad, pickled pork and fried seeweed which was all excellent. Then we went home and René gave me an instruction for the toilet...

Actually already yesterday I had to do my business and went to the toilet. The first shock happened when the lid automatically opened when I entered the room. Then I saw this super fancy toilet with all the buttons and was slightly confused... Anyway, as I sat down there was rhe second shock: This fuckin seat was very warm! XD But then when I was finished I had no clue how to use this toilet so I just used the ONE-layered toilet paper (really?? Fancy toilet and then that!!?) and searched five min for the flush button alwasys beeing afraid so beam of water would hit me in the face^^ After this experience I decided to get the instruction for these tiolets which are everywhere in Japan and actually clean all your dirty parts very very well 😅

This day ended with a great observation of the amazin starlit sky here, some weird light on the sky, an extremely bright starlet and some nice conversation!
Tomorrow we will take the Ferry to Iriomote and discover the next Island!Read more