Contrary to what we expected, the weather in Ishigaki and the Yaeyama islands is not always sunny ! Today has been the proof of that, unfortunately.

We first decided to go to the tourist office to get information on the things to see on the islands. Most of the documentation there was in Japanese, but we were happy to find there a young woman speaking pretty good english. She gave us a few papers in english, and also tried and called several car rental offices to see if it was possible for us to rent a car foir one day or two dring our stay on the island.
Unfortunately, due to the Ishigaki triathlon that took place the day before, and the coming Golden Week, there was no available car left in Ishigaki city ! Hence we decided to buy the 5-day bus pass the next day, and to spend the afternoon on Taketomi-jima, the closest island.

Then we had lunch in a very nice restaurant in Ishigaki city named "Eat & Café Adimaka". We had specialties rom Okinawa (basically grilled fish fr O. and pork for me), and then we shared a wonderful mango desert !

We finally headed to the ferry terminal and boarded a ferry to Taketomi Island. It takes only 15 minutes to join the port of Taketomi. The weather was still bad but it stopped raining.
Taketomi has a population of approximately 360 and an area of 6.32 km². As the island is quite circular in shape and very flat, everywhere is within walking distance, even if we could have rent bicycles.


From the ferry terminal, we rapidly arrived in the center village, also called Taketomi. Many houses in the village have red clay roofs with guardian shisa lions, a low surrounding wall of volcanic stone and extensive flower beds. Many roads are unpaved lanes of white sand and ambling water buffalo pull tourist-packed carts through town. Various rules are in place to prevent the more aesthetically-displeasing aspects of modern construction from ruining the beauty of the island, such as replacing concrete walls with hand-packed stone.



While walking in the streets of Taketomi, we could indeed see many water buffaloes, but this touristic activity is definitely not was we were looking for, hence we kept wandering on our own in the very nice streets.


We finally reached one of the sandy beaches of the island. It should be noticed that Taketomi is one of the only island of Ryukyu archipelago where you can find white sand beaches. Most of the islands have mountains and black sand beaches, where Taketomi really looks like a real tropical and desert island with beautiful white sand beaches. Sun was the only detail missing...

We kept walking around the island following the beach, which was possible since it was low tide. We finally arrived on "star sand beach", which is very famous since it is the only place in the archipelago (with Iriomote) where you can find such kind of 'sand' formed from the shells of thousands of tiny crustaceans.


For the record, bear in mind that people are not allowed to take the sand ; you must pick the individual stars. We tried our luck at finding ou own "star" and succeeded in it !
It was also quite funny to see full buses delivering groups of chinese tourists on the beach, all of them looking for some stars in the sand ;-)


We then walked back to the village, and climbed the belvedere to enjoy the nice view on the red-clay roofs. We then made a quick stop at a weaving factory, and finally returned to the ferry terminal as rain starting to fall again.