Author archive
3 July 2023
Bad news I had pre-booked our ferry tickets to Zamami Island and back, having read that the ferry can fill up. The departure point involved a bit of a walk from the monorail so we treated ourselves with a taxi ride ordered through Uber. Then bad news struck, my credit card number had been used […]
2 July 2023
Interisland flight We woke to stunning weather today. Damn! We could have done with this yesterday for our exploration, but today all we’re doing is a short interisland hop by flight from Ishigaki to Naha on Okinawa island. We left our hotel by foot around 0850, slightly ahead of our intended 0900 departure time. We […]
1 July 2023
Our rental car Today’s the day we have a comprehensive exploration of Ishigaki by car. We walked to the port ferry terminal to collect our rental car at 0900. We had been warned that they would hold the car for fifteen minutes only if we were late. No-shows or cancellations beyond 1500 yesterday would be […]
30 June 2023
Today was reserved for going to Taketomi Island. With low tide at 1100, it didn’t make sense to go in the morning as swimming would not be good. We spent the morning indoors checking our to-do lists from home and paying bills before heading out around midday. We grabbed some food from the convenience store […]
29 June 2023
I got picked up by Hangout Divers before the appointed time of 0800 and got to the large dive boat shortly after. I had booked online through their website that had a couple of English pages. English-speaking dive centres are hard to find in Ishigaki. My driver and divemaster, Natsuki Yanagisako turned out to be […]
29 June 2023
Today, I have a dive pre-booked, so it’s fortunate that the weather had taken a turn for the better. We had hoped to arrange for Kim to go snorkelling but the place we found only accept Japanese speaking customers for today’s trip as they don’t have English-speaking staff on duty. I got picked up by […]
28 June 2023
Above: It seems so funny that an Indian restaurant provides chopsticks! Today is our day of orientation and research for things like daytrips and car rentals. As most activities are sea-based we didn’t want to book online too early in case of uncertain weather. The weather looked cloudy from our room and by the time […]
27 June 2023
Above: I find a noodles sandwich strange, in that it’s all starch. What I find stranger is that it costs more than a hamburger. Seen at Narita Airport. Flying to Ishigaki With a flight at 1435 to Ishigaki today, we had a lazy morning, taking our hotel buffet breakfast around 0800. Checkout was at 1000 […]
26 June 2023
We woke in earnest around 0645 which wasn’t bad for the 3h time change. We took our time and went down to the hotel’s included breakfast around 0800. Not knowing what to expect, I brought down my muesli in case it was a light continental offering. But we were wowed by the green salads, fruit […]
25 June 2023
Above: Our first meal in Japan this trip. Despite the slightly delayed pushback, we landed at Narita at our scheduled time of 1650. The flight went pretty quickly with two meals, a mid-flight snack, chatting with friends on the unlimited free wifi and a lie-down. After our dream departure from Auckland, we had a dream […]