We've booked a room for tonight on minna-jima, an island merely 20 min away by ferry boat from Okinawa mainland.
Before getting there we spend the day in a huge aquarium.
Many of these we got to see again the next day... But I'll come to that later. Now the sharks, manta rays, manatee, turtles(or tortoises, whichever lives in the water), and so on.
I know that's a lot of crappy pictures for an aquarium but I'm glad I took them since I couldn't take any the next day, for the proper stuff.
But for now let us catch the ferry and arrive there :
The weather wasn't as good as it could have been (is still the rain season), but the temperature is still really warm and the rain is more a welcome way to cool down than a bother. The sound of it, mixed with a few foreign animal noises and almost no human sound, was amazing to fall asleep to.
There's 30 inhabitants on this island, plus a couple of cows, a big school (at least 4 times the size of the one I went to) for 4 students (2 in primary school, 2 in secondary), and yet 3 "B&Bs". Indeed a lot of tourists come to the beach during the day, mainly for snorkeling or scuba diving and it's only at night that it gets really quiet again.
I really liked the room we had. Wood all around, tatamis on the floor, and that's it. Nothing extra, just a clean room with what's necessary. We were the only ones to stay that night and actually wondered if they were opened on Sundays or if they just did it for us because they know Laura and her dad. The food was very good too and the welcome similar to the room : very good with no unnecessary fuss. It was a bit of a shock after having seen the ways in Osaka and Kyoto, where one is always welcome, but with so much fuss and codes that it's hard to feel at home. None of that there. Even without understanding the language, I could hear the difference in the speech. Less bowing and no constant smile, just a few genuine ones.
Right, enough anthropological thoughts for now.
The following morning, the diving instructor brought us or suits (it was raining quite a bit, not the best to get changed on the boat) and we got ready for our first diving experience !
Water really isn't my element and I was quite freaked out about going underwater, relying on a bottle of oxygen tied to my back. I actually had a dream about it the night before, where we had a lovely instructor who explained us every detail and reassured us. And that's exactly how it happened. The first step towards relief was when she told us we were going to do a workshop they normally do with secondary school students. They drove us just a bit further and when we were fully equipped we started by taking a few breaths underwater from the ladder. It felt very unnatural but worked perfectly and the beauty I caught a glimpse of really made me want to go and see. So down we went, each with an instructor checking on us and regulating our "floatability". They had a magic board to communicate us the names of things we saw (thank Sa she wrote in English for me). They took a picture of us but we won't get it for quite a while, so if you really want to see just how pretty the coral and tropical fishes are down there, I'm afraid you'll have to go and see by yourself.
The pictures above are actually nothing like what we saw down there even though a lot of the fishes were the same. The sky was grey and it was raining a bit but the colours were just unbelievable. Anyway as we got back to the beach we had to go for an hour of snorkeling before catching the 1 o'clock ferry back.
After all these emotions we still had the energy to go to Ryukyumura, a reconstruction of a village as it would have been before the Okinawa became Japanese. I didn't take many pictures but we danced traditional dances with an 94 year old lady dancing with a bottle of sake on her head, and the was a section on habus, the venomous snakes that infest the island.
And now the randomness of the day :
Before getting there we spend the day in a huge aquarium.
Many of these we got to see again the next day... But I'll come to that later. Now the sharks, manta rays, manatee, turtles(or tortoises, whichever lives in the water), and so on.
I know that's a lot of crappy pictures for an aquarium but I'm glad I took them since I couldn't take any the next day, for the proper stuff.
But for now let us catch the ferry and arrive there :
The weather wasn't as good as it could have been (is still the rain season), but the temperature is still really warm and the rain is more a welcome way to cool down than a bother. The sound of it, mixed with a few foreign animal noises and almost no human sound, was amazing to fall asleep to.
There's 30 inhabitants on this island, plus a couple of cows, a big school (at least 4 times the size of the one I went to) for 4 students (2 in primary school, 2 in secondary), and yet 3 "B&Bs". Indeed a lot of tourists come to the beach during the day, mainly for snorkeling or scuba diving and it's only at night that it gets really quiet again.
I really liked the room we had. Wood all around, tatamis on the floor, and that's it. Nothing extra, just a clean room with what's necessary. We were the only ones to stay that night and actually wondered if they were opened on Sundays or if they just did it for us because they know Laura and her dad. The food was very good too and the welcome similar to the room : very good with no unnecessary fuss. It was a bit of a shock after having seen the ways in Osaka and Kyoto, where one is always welcome, but with so much fuss and codes that it's hard to feel at home. None of that there. Even without understanding the language, I could hear the difference in the speech. Less bowing and no constant smile, just a few genuine ones.
Right, enough anthropological thoughts for now.
The following morning, the diving instructor brought us or suits (it was raining quite a bit, not the best to get changed on the boat) and we got ready for our first diving experience !
Water really isn't my element and I was quite freaked out about going underwater, relying on a bottle of oxygen tied to my back. I actually had a dream about it the night before, where we had a lovely instructor who explained us every detail and reassured us. And that's exactly how it happened. The first step towards relief was when she told us we were going to do a workshop they normally do with secondary school students. They drove us just a bit further and when we were fully equipped we started by taking a few breaths underwater from the ladder. It felt very unnatural but worked perfectly and the beauty I caught a glimpse of really made me want to go and see. So down we went, each with an instructor checking on us and regulating our "floatability". They had a magic board to communicate us the names of things we saw (thank Sa she wrote in English for me). They took a picture of us but we won't get it for quite a while, so if you really want to see just how pretty the coral and tropical fishes are down there, I'm afraid you'll have to go and see by yourself.
The pictures above are actually nothing like what we saw down there even though a lot of the fishes were the same. The sky was grey and it was raining a bit but the colours were just unbelievable. Anyway as we got back to the beach we had to go for an hour of snorkeling before catching the 1 o'clock ferry back.
After all these emotions we still had the energy to go to Ryukyumura, a reconstruction of a village as it would have been before the Okinawa became Japanese. I didn't take many pictures but we danced traditional dances with an 94 year old lady dancing with a bottle of sake on her head, and the was a section on habus, the venomous snakes that infest the island.
And now the randomness of the day :
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