The slow-moving world of Nii and Shikine

Nearly two years living in Japan, and finally a visit to three of the Okinawa islands – Ishigaki, Iriomote, and Naha – is arranged.  Flights booked, hotels reserved, and then… in swooped typhoon #5. With the weather hijacking nearly the whole island country, a quick change of plans led us to discover Niijima and Shikinejima instead.

From Shinjuku via the yamanote line to hamamatsucho station, my husband and I caught a ferry from Tokyo’s Takeshiba port.  About 3 hours later, we arrived on the island of Niijima.

NIIJIMA

Because of high waves that day, we pulled into Wakago port, instead of Niijima port near the village city center.  A man from the hotel we booked, Umeyo was at the port with a sign with my name on it.  He drove us across the island to the hotel, where we checked-in and were treated to some Niijima plums.

Our hotel room:

in the next three days, we rented bikes and explored the island.

On Niijima’s east coast, Habashiura beach was good place to get lost.

After that, we returned to the village’s central area…but there wasn’t much to find.  Niijima is a small village and a rather quiet island, and this was still the end of the off-season, with the tourist season starting in July.  We asked around (to the few locals we could find) for a good restaurant that was open.  One of maybe four options, we went and got dinner at a place that had soba and pizza, Nihonbashi.  The food was decent, and the restaurant was actually full, which was a nice in a seemingly deserted village.  An old man at the bar asked us where we were from, a question we are used to as foreign looking faces in Japan.  His name was Katsu, like the breaded pork cutlet, just passing through the island on work.  After dinner, he invited us to the village’s only local snack bar (i.e. a place where young women in cute little outfits serve overpriced drinks and offer more chit-chat than the normal bartender).  He treated us to drinks, tofu and seaweed appetizers.   The seaweed on Niijima was like nori, but in crinkled, salted strips.  It was some of the best I’ve ever had.

The next day we visited an onsen on the coast, and the Niijima glass factory, just up the road.

For 3500 yen, you can craft your own piece with the help of the staff.

After that, we rode our bikes up a challenging section of mountain and found a beautiful little park.

The basket of my bicycle captured an unsuspecting victim on the way….

The restaurant next to the park – the Rest House – looked inviting, so we stopped in for lunch. I got the ashitaba pasta – ashitaba is a type of leaf that is famous on Niijima.  Mixed with the island’s special seaweed, it was a tangy Japanese style pasta.  It was so good that we promised to return for lunch the next day as well.

By the third day, we had seen the island and knew where we wanted to spend the day.   We hopped on bikes and made our way down to Habashiura again.  This time there wasn’t a cloud in the sky and the waves were perfect.  Alas, surfers had come out to ride the ocean. 

The high sand cliffs give Niijima a different feel than your typical beach…

Sun-whipped and satisfied, we headed back to Rest House for a late lunch, and took our time on our way back to town.  We stopped at the only paid onsen on the island (300 yen) and enjoyed a nice hot spring and view above the glass factory overlooking the ocean.

Later that evening,  passing a yakitori (grilled chicken) stand that we had seen earlier that week, we stopped for a small snack as promised.  While his son grilled the chicken, the old man from the stand invited us into a small adjoining room with a few plastic yard-chairs and a TV.  Two Asahi super-dry beers were brought out for us on the house, and we realized the man simply enjoyed the company during off-season more than the business.   We obliged and stayed to chat for a bit.  When the yakitori finally came, the man was right in that it was the best we had found on the island so far.   We thanked him and made our way to dinner….

The restaurant next to our hotel had a lit paper lamp in the the doorway: open.  We wandered in and ordered some delicious ashitaba tempura and beer.  The size of the beer…

The next day was our final morning in Niijima, and we had just enough time to say goodbye to the cute hotel cat that had entertained us every day with its quirky personality.

by mid-day we were on a ferry to the island of Shikine….

SHIKINEJIMA

Like on Niijima, there was someone from our hotel to pick us up at the port.  That seems to be the style here.  We checked-in,  and rested in the main tatami room for a moment, while the woman who ran the place showed us a map and explained how to get around.  We were hungry, so she suggested a convenience store down the road that made good bentos, or lunch boxes.  There weren’t any open restaurants on the island, so bentos were the way to go.  When we got there, we realized why she recommended them.  When an island does nothing but bentos for lunch, you’ll bet they do them well.  Our boxed and wrapped lunches everyday on Shikinejima became something I looked forward to.

After lunch, we went to see what the southern coast beach was like…

Instantly we were drawn to the rocky shoreline, exploring its endless ins and outs.

…until we stumbled upon some natural onsens, or hot springs.

We soon learned that the island had 3 coastal hot spring areas; two of which were completely natural.  When the tide came up, the hot pools were flooded with cool seawater.  We climbed into a pocket of rock, bordering the open sea.  It was warm from the springs, but with every wave that came in, cold seawater splashed us, making for a refreshing hot-cool experience.

Over the next few days, we learned that Shikinejima was an island quite different from Niijima.  The beaches were mostly in coves and bays, making them calmer  for swimming, with more mini-reefs here and there for snorkeling.  Although the island was small enough to walk around in merely a half-day or less, the coast had so many rocks, caves, mini-bays, ins and outs, and cliffs that we could have easily spent a week exploring it.

We spent a morning navigating the hiking trails that covered the entire west side of the island.

The rest of the time, we relaxed on the beaches and explored the shorelines of the many bays.  The biggest and most beautiful cove, Tomari, was our favorite beach for swimming and relaxing.

 Tomari also had an interesting coast to explore. We waded across a small channel and picked our way over a steep, rocky peninsula to the east, half hiking, half climbing in spots.  We found a large, beautiful cave on the edge of the open sea.  We walked inside it, right up to the edge of the roaring waves on the other side.

The other bays had their own specialties as well.  Nakanoura bay was smaller, with a more dynamic coastline home to more sea creatures.  Snorkeling there proved to be quite interesting, as we were able to see two giant white-spotted ushi (a type of sea slug).

Back at the hotel in the evenings, we could browse through marine picture books to identify the creatures we had seen during the day…and eat our delicious dinner spread of fresh Japanese-style island cuisine.  Dinners and breakfasts came with several courses and were all included in the hotel package.

On our last morning, the sea was calm enough to go on a guided sea-kayak outing.  Starting at Oura bay, our guide equipped us with kayaking and snorkeling gear, and the two of us – in a tandem kayak – followed him into Kanbiki bay where he set us free to snorkel for awhile.

While we kicked around in the bay looking at the amazing spread of marine life under the waves, our guide walked around the coast and pried clams and sea urchins from the rocks.  When we returned, he had proudly pried them open and cut them into little strips of sashimi for us to try raw.  The sea urchin exterior was still squirming.  After one look I was about to say, no thank you, but the man told us in a proud voice that he did this especially for his customers, so they could have a chance to try some of the islands dishes, fresh from the sea.  “Douzo,” he urged for us to try it, and stretched out the piece of driftwood with the raw seafood toward us.  My husband, Daniel, gave me a look and I knew I was the one who would have to appease.  Avoiding the wiggling sea urchin, I pricked up the tiniest strip of raw clam, took a deep breath, and said itadakimasu!  It took a while to chew, and it was exactly how I might have expected.  Daniel was ready to double over in laughter when he asked me, “How is it?”

It tastes like I could have licked that rock right there, I said, pointing.
Daniel tried to mask his amusement in front of our guide.

After that mid-morning ‘snack’, we paddled back westward into another little bay between Oura and Tomari beach, a small cove often accessed only by the determined fishermen, as the trail to reach it by land was rather tough.  Here, there was an actual live reef, and we felt we had found the best snorkeling secret on the island.   Our guide had to coax us back because we could have easily overstayed our half-day tour in this untouched little inlet.

Out in the waves again, we rounded the corner back to Oura where we started, and out guide was kind enough to drop us back at the hotel.  We paid our 6000 yen fee, which we both felt was more than worth it for the experience.

With only a few hours before our ferry departed for the mainland again, we ate a quick bento lunch and rushed across the island one last time to see the last thing that had been on our list.  Jinata Onsen was the other natural hot spring we had yet to visit.  The man at our hotel had explained it to us as a deep crevice we would walk into, with many stairs down to the sea.  It looked as though God’s hand came down upon the earth, cutting out this great landform, he had told us.  His description was quite accurate, as we made our way through high cliffs down many stone-carved steps.

The pools at the bottom were a deep copper-orange, and much hotter than than the first onsen we had visited.  There was a perfectly sheltered area of blue sea that came right up to the edge of the springs, with a few scattered mixed-water pools near the perimeter.  Too hot to try the orange water -which is said to have healing properties – we jumped in a few pools closer to the sea to cool ourselves down.

Jinata Onsen was the perfect end to our quiet, last-minute-changed vacation.  If it weren’t for typhoon number 5, we might have had a great time in Okinawa, but never discovered these quiet and fascinating islands of Tokyo.  Sometimes nature can create havoc, but it lends itself to adventure at the same time.