Yonaguni-jima - Westernmost Point in Japan

Success.
Left Okinawa Hontou (main island) at 8:30am. Decided on skipping the comp breakfast at the Hotel Gran View since I am such a morning straggler. I did not want to risk missing my plane and fucking up my whole travel itinerary.
Gran View was a great convenience I must say. Being able to roll outta bed, jump in the shower and hop on the monorail, one stop away from the airport was precious.
Once in Naha airport, I got to play the part of the smelly foreigner since hoofing it around with all my shit on my back had me breaking a sweat. Not to mention, I was a little tense trying to figure out where I needed to go, where my luggage needed to go, and whether it was gonna follow me when I changed planes on Ishigaki-jima (the word "jima," as in　"Iwo Jima," translates to "island." Ishigaki is one of Okinawa's many rittou (small, separate islands). Ishigaki is one of the most populated of the Yaeyama island group.)
The plane touched down on Ishigaki without incident and I made my way through the tiny airport to the boarding area for departing flights. My flight to Yonaguni was scheduled to leave an hour later, at 10:30am. I sat for a while by myself in the mostly empty waiting room. Most of the other people who were there boarded the plane I had just exited and returned to Naha. Although I have been feeling pretty good about interacting with people in my broke-down basic Japanese, I have some difficulty understanding the loudspeaker announcements made on the planes and in the airports and on trains. For the most part, this does not present a problem as in many places they are conducted in English as well, but it seems that the further out one goes here in Okinawa, the fewer translations one finds, hahaha. Which is absolutely fine. However, as the small group of Yonaguni-destined travelers sat in Ishigaki airport, some announcements about our flight were made that I could not quite follow. 10:30 was fast approaching. The designated boarding time came and went. I noted that a flight to Hateruma, scheduled to leave before ours, showed as cancelled on the overhead monitor. The weather in Ishigaki was quite overcast, with a very low cloud ceiling. I was beginning to infer that weather was delaying the flight, but I could not make out any details of the annoucements.
While I was sitting there, wondering what the fuck was happening and what I should decide to do about it, I noticed a guy sitting a few rows ahead of me with an underwater video camera housing. I nervously decided to approach him and strike up a conversation in Japanese. He was a pretty cool guy from Shibuya in Tokyo. He said he comes to Yonaguni to dive a lot and had been to Isseki Point (the famous ruins - more on that later) a few times. We talked about Hammerhead sharks - Yonaguni is famous for them - apparently they do not attack people - and he helped me figure out what was up with the plane. Apparently, Ishigaki was the only outlying island with low cloud cover, so the plane had re-routed to Miyako to wait the weather out. He figured it might be an hour or so that we would have to wait.
An hour came and went and we were still sitting there, thinking of things to discuss in broken Japanese. He planned on being in Yonaguni the same number of days as me, but on the 10th, when I would head to Iriomote, he would have to head back to Tokyo and work. Ugh. So, in some ways he had more riding on the weather, although I did travel further to get there.
After about three hours, around 1:30pm I think it was, we got the great news that the clouds had lifted enough for the plane to land. My new friend, who had introduced himself as Ishida, almost leapt with joy. It would have been a retarded detour, I must say, to hang around an Ishigaki airport-area hotel until the next morning to see if the weather would clear. Luckily, that situation was avoided.
Now, my only problem as I had explained to Ishida who looked bemused, was that I still had no idea what or who would be waiting for me at Yonaguni airport, if anyone. I had checked my mail at the hotel that morning, but had received no word from the American dive company that had assisted me in making arrangements for Yonaguni. I had decided that I would simply make my way to Sonai, where most of the diving shops seeemed to be located, and inquire (in broken Japanese) about going out. As soon as we de-planed at Yonaguni kuukou (airport), I saw about 5 or 6 dive companies waiting just outside the baggage claim area, waiting to pick people up. I grabbed my stuff and approached a guy holding a sign for SaWes, the dive company I had read the most about while doing internet research for the trip. SaWes is owned and operated by a guy named Aratake, who is kinda the scuba godfather of this island. The name SaWes actually stands for "south" and "west," Yonaguni being the south-western-most island of Japan. (Hateruma has the distinction of being the southern-most).
The guy holding the SaWes sign was a guy of about 30-something. (This was Keizen, aka "Joe.") I hit him up with broken Japanese and he answered me back with broken English. We worked it out. I hopped in his van and we headed for SaWes. I was the only one of about 30 people who had arrived to roll with him.
I explained, in bad Japanese, that I had attempted to make arrangements already, with an American dive shop on Okinawa hontou, but had been unable to make a confirmation. As it turned out, I had found my reservation, as SaWes was the dive shop that had been reserved for me. Since my plane was late, we stopped first at Irifune. I think it is a hotel that is also owned by Aratake. They hooked me up with lunch, which was needed at that point. I slammed down some eggs, fish cake, some kind of seaweed something-or-other, and another bowl of noodles that resembled last night's souki soba quite a lot. (Souki-soba, or Yaeyama soba - a close variant - turned out to be very prevalent, and I think I ended up eating more of that dish than any other, although I got to sample a wide vareity of dishes, including raw beef liver and pig's face). It was great, but I knew I was gonna go diving right after, so I was afraid to really chow down.
Sure enough, while I ate, I filled out some paperwork and then was told it was time for "junbi" - preparation.
We drove over to SaWes and I was shown to the shower and got suited up. I was the only diver in sight this whole time. I figured all dives for the day had already finished and they were taking me out alone. As it turned out, we drove a short distance to Kubura port and jumped on a boat that was bustling with (what I thought were) Japanese divers. I had ample opportunity to look like an idiot novice diver, running late, not speaking the language well, and fumbling with my equipment, being rather out of practice with diving in general. Not to mention, I took note of Aratake-san sitting on the boat. He pointed at a tank and told me to get set up. I felt like the guy who was holding shit up, sitting right in the way of everything.
The "Japanese divers" actually turned out to be a film crew. I tried to ask if they were doing a documentary. Isseki Point's ruins have ignited a lot of interest and controversy as to their origins and it seemed feasible to me that a TV crew might want to do a special on them. There was just too much hustle and bustle to have those questions answered at the time though. (I found out the following day that the crew were all from Hong Kong and Taiwan, and only a few spoke Japanese, but most were very fluent in English. The film is a horror/thriller whose title is roughly translated as "Lost.")
We set out and as soon as we left the port, I was clutching the side, hanging on tight to avoid falling on my ass and being swept off the boat by the swells we were coasting over. I would guess they were about 6-10 feet in height. Good enough size to cause the boat to pitch pretty dramatically. I'm used to day trips to Catalina, not the East China Sea.
I had two guides really. But I forgot their names, isn't that fucked up? I forgot everyone's name, which makes writing this blog really adjective-heavy and proper noun deficient. I apologize to the SaWes crew for being retarded like that... I have just had too much sensory stimulation to retain names.
Anyway, one of my guides was a girl from Nagasaki who has only lived on Yonaguni for a week ! (...This was Kitako...). And the other was a guy who was really cool and did a second dive with me alone and helped me get settled at my minshuku. (...This was Rui...) The guy is pretty fluent in English, which makes life way easier. Even though it is fun trying to use Japanese, I think the ocean surge and whole dive boat experience would have been a lot more overwhelming if I also did not really know what the fuck people were saying. So that calmed my nerves quite a bit, just to know what conditions we were about to jump into.
We went to the south side of the island, to a spot called the Twin Arches (I think). The film crew did giant stride entries off the back of the boat and Rui and I backrolled off the side. We did not meet at the surface as we often do in California, but just plunged right on down and grouped at the bottom. That plunge was fucking crazy. I was still halfway thinking to myself, "What the fuck am I doing here, about to jump into this crazy foaming ocean?" when I found myself upside-down in bubbly warm ocean water on my way down to about 50 or 60 feet.
The site was an interesting geologic structure, with a few arches (hence the name), which we made our way under and through. Visibility was not the greatest, although it still beats shitty days at Catalina. The sky was dark with clouds and the water was a deep rich dark blue. I imagine that if the sun is penetrating well, there are probably a lot of colors in the fan corals and rocks and stuff we saw down there.
Fish-wise, I saw some that looked like Moorish Idols - pretty gigantic ones - and some other stuff that I would have to use a book to identify. There are some large ass fish out here though. Nothing totally amazing today - no hammerheads. I did see a tortoise on my second dive of the day. And Rui and I explored more caverns and tunnels.
All of my underwater photos are sucking so far. The first dive, I had my camera too locked in to my BCD to be able to free it up and compose decent shots. I tried twisting my body around and snapping a few. Aratake-san led us through a tunneled area, where once we emerged from the other side,we could see our spent air bubbles rising like a curtain from the cracks in the rock. That was cool and I think I managed to take a shot of it.
Anyway, diving was fun and it got me tired. Tomorrow, I don't want to forget my motion sickness pills. I forgot them today and lucked out that I did not want to vomit. The boat pitches pretty strongly on the way out and back.
Right now I am in Sonai's only ( as far as I know) internet cafe. It is actually a store, but there are 2 PCs here that are hooked up to the internet where I can rent time. (On my last day, I chatted it up with the proprietress of the place and hit it of with her. Her name was Kotoe Tajima and she worked as a computer consultant in Yonaguni, in addition to running the shop. She has a sister in the States and she introduced me to her brother, Yoshikazu, over sandwich and a coffee in the back of the shop. What is REALLY cool is that she has a blog that is all about YONAGUNI ! Please check it out at this link. ) It feels like it is getting late - it is 9pm. I am sorta afraid that the propietress might want to close and I am holding her up,but she has not said anything to me. I am also worried that everything else around here will close soon, if it hasn't already. There is a market I need to go to to pick up some morning munchies. ( A few days later I got some excellent chocolate bread at this market, but it was brought in on Thursdays from Ishigaki and they were out when I went for more. ) And I should go see about dinner, although I am much more tired than hungry. ( I ended up eating in a small restaurant with a sit-down bar, some tables and a tatami mat area. Some dudes were parked at the bar drinking and I ordered goya champuru, knowing that it was Okinawa food and not really knowing what anything else on the menu was. Unfortunately, the chef told me there was no more goya and no more tofu, so he'd cok me up some "yasai" (vegetable) champuru instead. Champuru is basically a stir-fry, famously made with goya - a bitter gourd - and SPAM ).
My minshuku is called Adan (a minshuku is basically an inn... there is a private room with a shared bath and shower... Adan is a cactus-like plant that grows all over the Yaeyamas). I already tried the bed and it's comfortable. I'm gonna be getting back to it soon I think. I'm here two more days. Tomorrow is diving - hopefully weather is good and we make it to Isseki Point, as that is really the main point of this trip. However, the last day I hope to rent a moped and just buzz around the island. There are some cool cliffs and lighthouses and stuff. The waves crashing on the rocks are pretty amazing - especially when you are getting a close-up view of it from the boat. I'm gonna try to get some better photos, but no promises where the underwater ones are concerned. I've already found a link to another diver's photos of Yonaguni that are fantastic, so if mine suck, just look at hers. I saw many of the same sights, but cannot match her photographic skill, so check them out. Also, she shot more of Sonai, which will give you an idea of what the town looks like.
I think I have heard the same Christina Aguilera song three times now in this internet cafe, so that is officially my cue to sign off and go in search of food.
More tomorrow or the day after.