Apparently my Japanese accent is still good enough to fool Japanese people into thinking I know more Japanese than I remember. I don’t know how I have managed this, but I’ll take it. It’s the only way we can get around out in remote Okinawa anyway! Today I used my Japanese powers to learn about ox carts.
Our very kind hotel host made us breakfast for the final time, and then we left early for a leisurely putter around the island to get back to our arrival port. We wanted to be able to see some of the sights we hadn’t seen upon arrival due to the rain, and maybe we’d even see the Yamaneko. So far, we had only seen it in adorable souvenir and sign form.
We passed mangrove forests and overlooks, mountains and inlets, and stopped to take pictures whenever we felt compelled. We passed a lot of kayaking and canoeing equipment just sitting and waiting for the owners to come along and claim it. I generally leave the car with our possessions inside, keys in the ignition and windows down. There is nobody out here – and even if there was somebody, crime is so low that there is a higher chance of someone picking up your stuff to return it to you than someone stealing it!
We wound our way around the island to Yubu Island and its ox cart rides. When we were in South Korea, we went to Udo, cow island. We rented bikes, and I was the only bicyclist without a bell. This cow island time, we went to Yubu island, an island you can only reach by ox cart. Maybe ‘only’ is a bit of a stretch – you could also wade to the island if you were brave and didn’t mind wading through ox pee and poo.
The ox carts depart every half hour. When we arrived, there were about ten colorful, old-timey ox carts and their drivers milling about, waiting for passengers. Our round trip tickets were red flowers pinned to our shirts.
Our cart was driven by an elderly chap (or mostly, the ox, as it did not really require much direction). Iriomote island is the only place you can ride in an ox cart in Japan. The oxen were originally brought over from Taiwan for farming, but now they’re solely used for tourist ox cart rides. Yubu island breeds its own oxen for usage in the carts, and from the age of three they become able to pull the carts.
Our ox pooped immediately upon entering the water. We were clearly destined to be together. The cart ride takes about twenty minutes, and towards the end our driver pulled out a shamisen and played a song that all the Japanese people knew. We clapped along anyway. It culminated into an unintentional Avatar ambiance, like he was our Uncle Iroh but neither of us were benders. The fire nation thankfully did not attack.
Upon arrival, we were given pink and orange leis and then freely milled about. It was significantly warmer on this island than on Iriomote because there was no wind blasting from the ocean. Shamisen and other traditional music was piped in softly around the island.
We went to the beautiful butterfly garden first to view butterflies without them flitting off out of reach immediately. The star of the show was the giant Painted Kite, a large black and white butterfly about the size of my palm. It flitted between flowers and other butterflies before finally allowing me to photograph it.
We explored stingray beach next, which was a rocky beach with strong winds and beautiful views of Iriomote and the other islands. There were people out in the water gathering shells and coral. We saw no stingrays except for a sign with one on it outside the shell house.
Oddly enough, the island also had a bougainvillea garden, and there were bougainvilleas everywhere. I didn’t catch a sign explaining why there were so many, so I will just run with the assumption that the caretakers of the island really liked them. They are really beautiful, and a few of the plants had multiple colors of flowers growing out of them.
On the ox ride back, the ox took a moment to go to the bathroom again, and the driver explained that the oxen have created different bathroom zones in the water. We were apparently in the pee zone. Poop zone was closer to the shore. The more you know!
We returned to the trusty Nissan Moco and finished our circuit of the island’s one road. After the last town, the road narrows into farming land and isn’t quite as wide. The jungle was beginning to retake the edges of the road, and trees branches swept low overhead. Trusty 77.7 FM, the weird random music channel, was beginning to come and go. There was truly nobody out here.
The road dead ended with a “rental car prohibited” sign. There was supposedly a beach nearby, but we didn’t have any reception on our phone, and the waves are sometimes deceivingly far sounding. We decided to walk on the old path anyway, and found that it pleasantly ended at a shady, abandoned beach, with a sign that had rusted off and fallen from its post. This beach was not as clean as the others, but it still offered nice views of the surrounding mountains.
It was finally time to bid our rental car farewell. We had someone figure out how to fill up our gas tank (which was not difficult as there are almost no self-service gas stations in Japan) despite my lack of gas station vocabulary, returned our car, and rode a rocky, splashy, loud boat back to Ishigaki. No wildcat for us – but we did fill up on souvenirs.
Ishigaki seemed like a proper metropolis compared to Iriomote’s 2,000 people. There were buses, more than six cars, and stoplights. Our last hotel was down a back alley and on a coral-y beach, surrounded by the constant roar of waves breaking on the beach. Tomorrow it would be back to the bustle of Tokyo and into frigid winter air.
