Miyakojima

Myakojima is a very tiny island in the very southern extent of the Japanese islands. This screen capture from Google Maps shows how small it is. (Hint - look at the scale in the bottom RH corner).

And this screen cut shows how far south it is and the little distance we are from Taiwan. The ship doesn't go very fast usually.

So again we are on a bus ride to essentially no where..across a fantastic bridge to Irabu Island that you can see in the first screen cut. There we go for a couple hikes (aka slow walks)...this is always how they describe these excursions - as a hike. Well there's nothing about them that resembles a real hike - trust me!

Anyway, it's better than sitting on the ship and drinking and eating all day. And we do get a traditional Japanese meal today!

So this is the view from the ship this morning. Not the worst view we've had.

The "hike" takes us to a couple sink holes. In the first one there's actually scuba divers who come up to wave at us.

No such luck at the second one.

After the hike to the sink holes we hike (stroll) to a scenic lookout.

From here we can see our ship across the water.

And some other scenic stuff. It's a very green island.

So here's part of what we had for lunch.

There's some raw fish (Sashimi) right in the middle of the pic below. I'm not too fussy about this stuff but Terri likes it. The tuna and salmon were okay but the octopus - the white looking blob below the dandelion looking thing - was pretty horrible. Not much taste with a terrible texture. Kind of like eating a rubber eraser. The salad was good, the pickled veggies (below the raw fish) was okay but I skipped the squid (I think) next to the pickled veggies. This was just the start - they kept bringing more and more food. AND they gave each of us a big bottle of beer.

After lunch its back on the bus and off to the beach.

And it's a real nice beach too. Can't figure out why just about everyone is wearing their clothes in the water. Maybe they're all muslims here.

A wee beach video.

Back at the ship we have a sunlit view of the power plant. WOW!

That's it for Miyakojima.