Rain poured and wind howled all night long, shaking our single-pane window and softly rattling doors in the lounge. Despite the inclement weather, we found it to be clement anyway, since it was tropical and warm. When morning came, it was windy but not really rainy, which is certainly 1000x better than snowy and cold, like home and apparently Tokyo.
Today was to be beaches and being lazy. But first, dear reader, I must also apologize for the lie about our rental car color yesterday. While there are some beautiful powder pink Nissan Mocos on this island, ours is more of a yellowy-pink (like that hair color in Pokemon that is called “pink brown” which is actually nothing like pink at all).
In my defense, it was dark and rainy yesterday when we got the car and I am biased towards the color pink.
Our hotel key is a pirate’s treasure chest key attached to a cat keychain. Everything here is cats! I chose the rental car company because they had the cat as their mascot (and they were also cheapest).
I went down to the beach near our hotel, tsukigahama (or moon beach). It’s naturally sandy and a good beach for swimming, paddle boarding, and sticking your feet in the ocean. I also attempted to collect swirly seashells, but every single one I found had an inhabitant!
We explored the western side of the island in our car, going to the end of the One Road. We saw only a handful of other cars on the way and a few people working on construction in the tiny town at the end of the road, Shirohama. We discovered an enka radio station, and that the magical 77.7 disney showtunes station just played random stuff every hour. We picked it up during “smooth chicago jazz hour” (I couldn’t make that up).
The small town had a sundial commemorating an earthquake in 1997 (which I googled the crap out of, could not find more information). Oddly enough, it was donated by the Japanese Lottery.
After the small town, we drove to Hoshizuna beach, or star sand beach, on the northwestern point of the island. It was windy. I had to lean into the wind to walk, and nearly fell over on the slippery tidal rocks a few times. The water was an unreal tropical blue despite the grey skies and stirring sands and nearby divers were exploring the coral reefs.
The beach gets its name from – you guessed it – the star-shaped coral fragment sand.
I bought a little bottle labeled “Iriomote island” and did my tourist duty with it by filling it with sand from this beach. I also discovered that my hair looked fantastic after being in the wind all day.
Iriomote is filled with beautiful butterflies, and I’ve noticed no less than ten species on the small path between our hotel, the parking spot, and the beach. I managed to get a magnificent shot of a black and red butterfly. Suddenly, the exhorbitantly priced flora and fauna book of Iriomote I saw in the shop is a lot more tempting…what are these magical creatures?
The rest of the day was spent flopped on the beach near the hotel, listening to the waves and drawing in the sand with a stick.
