Yaeyama

Far south of the main islands of Japan, is the tropical Okinawa group. It was a separate kingdom called Ryukyu and only formally became part of Japan in 1872. Far south of Okinawa island itself, as far from Okinawa as Okinawa is from Honshu, is the small group of islands called Yaeyama. The main inhabited island is called Ishigaki. We went there for Christmas.

It was nice.

The hotel was on the seaside (no beach -- seawall straight into the water) and we had a great sea view from our room.

The temple architecture is very different to what you find in Tokyo or Kyoto -- more like what we saw in Taiwan, which is not surprising considering how close it is. But more wild colours even than that.

We ate tacos for lunch and listened to reggae deep cuts.

Just a goat with his jet ski.

On Christmas day itself, however the weather was not so nice.

So we consoled ourselves with lunch time cocktails.

I think this is intended to be a lion, but it has a strong Gruffalo energy if you ask me.

Christmas isn't christmas without tablet, provided by my parents' friend Kay.

It was minging outside, but we did have a nice dinner.

The next day we went to another, smaller, island called Taketomi. This is a random house there, I just liked the sticker.

I enjoyed the big chunks of coral used as bricks for wall building.

Weather was better than the day before but still pretty windy and grey.

But it changed for the better the next morning.

We rented bikes from the hotel, and explored a bit. This is the "lone mangrove", a popular photograph.

There is a "village museum" of traditional Okinawa-style houses.

And monkeys!

And a sad eagle with a broken wing that cannot fly.

And a mangrove swamp! They look so weird...