I went to Shiraishi Island which is this tiny, remote island that you can only get to by ferry and spent Saturday and Sunday there. I went with a group of Australians and Americans who live in our building. Two of the Americans – Taube and Julian organised the entire weekend and booked the villas for us. These villas were so cool! We got the best view of the beach and pretty much the entire island!
The villas are only allowed to be booked by foreigners as a strategy to encourage tourists to travel to remote islands in Japan that they would otherwise be unaware of. In fact, when I told the teachers at school where I was going, not one of them knew about this island as it is so small and remote! There are only 700 people who live on this island and there is a small school that enables students from grade 1-9 to attend. There is a total of around thirty students who go to the Shiraishi Island School.
We spent the weekend swimming in the ocean, exploring small islands close to the main island by swimming and kayaking to them.
Tina, Julian, Jono and I even swam to this tiny island that was about 200metres away from Shiraishi Island and there was a small shrine on it.
We saw a beautiful shrine as we were hiking through the dense foliage of the mountains that was tucked away in a small section of the mountain. We got an amazing view of the island from the observatory when we got to the top of the mountain.
While we were paddling in the ocean, this young Japanese guy came up to us and asked us if we wanted to go for a ride in his traditional Japanese boat. So we all went in and he took us around for about fifteen minutes. I even got to try steering the boat. It was really hard and tiring! I only did it for about two minutes and then I was too tired to continue!
Aside from hiking, riding in Japanese boats, swimming and kayaking, we spent the weekend relaxing by the beach, getting to know the locals and on Saturday night we had this delicious barbeque whilst sitting around a fire, talking and having fun!
We also got a beautiful sunset view on Saturday evening and we went a bit photo crazy and spent a good forty minutes admiring the beautiful shades of pink and red change as the sun sunk into the sea.
After our barbeque, we decided to go back to the villa and play card games. Taube and Julian had bought Jenga so we got it out and started playing. It started off as being a fun, casual game and as the Jenga blocks got higher and higher, we began to get more and more serious about it as nobody wanted to be the person who knocked it over! Karen (one of the Americans) was known as being the person who always knocked the Jenga over, so nobody wanted to be the new Karen!
Well this time, Karen didn’t knock it over, but Jess did! I took the BEST photo of Jess knocking the Jenga blocks over – it would have to go down as being the best photo of all time in the history of photo-taking! Check out this masterpiece of a photo! It captures the essence of the moment!
Just before we left, I thought I would buy a tank top as a memento of the beautiful and remote island just off of the mainland of Japan that they call Shiraishi.
I went to the Moo Bar (which is a bar that is set up on the beach where you can buy drinks and souvenirs) and bought a Moo Bar tank top and took a photo in front of the bar, just so that I can say that I’ve been there, done that, bought the T-shirt and took the photo!
Shiraishi Island was so beautiful. I would love to go back there sometime this year and spend a little more time exploring the island and going on different hiking tracks. When it was time to leave, I felt really sad as all I wanted to do was to stay another day…or two!
2 comments:
Well this certainly was a relaxing weekend. I am glad that we got to experience it. Hope we can go again for your birthday!! :-)
I had heaps of fun too! We had many nice things to look at that weekend!!!!
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