Posts Tagged ‘Travelling’

Blue sunny skies, sandy beaches, a warm beautiful ocean, snorkeling and fishing, and a ton of new restaurants. Yeah, I wasn’t missing internet too much, but after three weeks it’s finally installed. We also picked up our new used car. So as promised, here is a compilation of pictures from our arrival until now along with the story.

We left Tokyo on the morning of October 15th and arrived in Miyakojima in the afternoon. The weather was cloudy with a little drizzle of rain, but quite warm. For the first three days we stayed at The Sun Rooms, a guest house just out of town. It was cheap, but with no bathroom, sink or shower in the room we were eager to get out of there.

We spent the next couple of days looking for an apartment, and eventually found one located just outside the main part of town. It’s a 2 story house that has been turned into two apartments. We rent the upper half. It’s huge compared to my apartment in Tokyo and costs less than half. As you can see there is even a slight view of the ocean. After the 3rd day, the weather really cleared up and turned beautiful.

View from the road

Ocean side view

Farmland side

This is the pier (久松港) 10 minutes walk from our house with an amazing view of two smaller islands

And Painagama beach (パイナガマビーチ) is about 5 minutes by car

After finding out that we wouldn’t be able to get internet for about 3 weeks, we decided to just relax and enjoy the island. Here are a few pictures during that time.

Shimajiri Mangroves (島尻マングローブ林)

Eri at Aragusuku Kaigan beach　(新城海岸)

Left: Eri, Center: Me, Right: Guppi- We did this jump about 5 times to get this shot

After a busy day of snorkeling, Eri cooked our first meal at home. Guppi (right) was a huge help in our transition to Miyakojima. If you come to Miyakojima, make sure to stop by for a shiatsu massage and get his advice on places to visit.

View of the Ocean from Kurima Island (来間島)

Lunch at the Pani Pani Cafe. Mie (center) was Guppi’s friend visiting from Osaka. Kaori (right), runs an art shirt store here in Miyakojima

Sunset at Maehama Beach (前浜ビーチ)

If you would like to see more pictures of Miyakojima, please check out Eri’s blog. She has started a blog that focuses on Miyakojima. It is all in Japanese, but you can at least see some more pictures.

Please let me know what you think!

So it has been just a little over two weeks since My wife and I left my old life in Tokyo and moved to the tropical island of Miyakojima. I am happy to say that things are still going great.

We have an amazing house that has a slight view of the ocean and is about 10 minutes walk from the harbor. It feels like we live in the country, but we live just outside of the city. It’s much bigger than our apartment in Tokyo, but costs less than half what we were paying.

Shopping for a vehicle has been a little more difficult. We rented a car for a month so we would have plenty of time to look, but it was difficult to find something worth while in our price range. Since the island is small and we were only planning to be here for a year, we wanted to spend as little as possible. The original plan was to rent for a year, but the local people we met told us we could save a lot of money by purchasing. They were right. We eventually found a nice little car for about $1,300 out the door. That is what it would cost us to rent for 4 months, so hopefully it runs well.

Even though it’s November, the weather is still warm (if not hot) and we are able to swim in the ocean several times a week. The water is warm and the life is amazing. I am an avid diver (I actually used to work at a scuba diving shop in California) and there is so much to see here. Yesterday we found a great spot that had literally dozens of clown fish.

The only difficulty so far has been getting internet. Our internet will be installed this coming Friday and I will try to post some pictures. In the meantime, I have found a �media center� where I can connect for free. The good thing is since we have no internet or TV, we have had to fill our time with swimming, fishing, dinner with new friends, and attending festivals.