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Published: April 12th 2006
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Iriomote Island
Waterfall along jungle trek I got up a little late today, no thanks to my new watches alarm....oh yeah...I have to apologize to my dear mother, whom I made dig through boxes in my parents basement looking for my only working watch, then sending it to me so I wouldn't have to buy one for the trip. Unfortunately, after I got into Kyoto during my second week, my watch started losing time, so I had to buy a new one. I considered it a birthday present for myself, not an expense of the trip 😊 Anyway, it's a bit fancy-shmancy and the manual only came in Japanese of course, so I've been having a hard time figuring out how to work some of the features. So I ended up having to take the 10:30 ferry to Iriomote. Iriomote-jima (island) is Japan's last unexplored frontier. It's a pretty big island, made up of lots of mountains covered in tropical rain forest. There are a bunch of rivers that run through the island and you can take boats up the river, which is a bit like the amazon river....but not as long. Anyway, after missing the bus to the river boats, I met a Japanese girl Soke,
who again, spoke very little english, but was determined to help me. So we walked to Hoshizuma, where she was headed and I caught the bus from there. I think Soke was a photo-journalist and we had a nice little chat during our 45 minute walk in the blistering heat. Before parting ways, she took a pic of me and said that she was going to write a short article about meeting me, which I thought was very flattering. I figure the least I could do was add a little blurb about her in my blog.
The river-boat trip was pretty cool, mangroves, mountains, and jungle. Then the boat drops you off 35 minutes up the river and you can walk up to the waterfalls, which were more like rapids than waterfalls. The trek through the jungle to the waterfalls was the best part. It was about a 50 minute walk each way along this make-shift path, through the jungle! There were all kinds of lizards and frogs and weird insects running across your path and crazy tropical birds chirping, it was amazing....and very humid. On the boat ride back, I met Stephen and Yu from Tokyo. Stephen, a
Vancouver native and very nice guy who works for DFAIT in Tokyo, told me he and his wife will be moving to Ottawa shortly, so we started chatting about the housing market there and my trip through Japan thus far and he even offered me a tour of the embassy in Tokyo, which is apparently one of our nicest, but I didn't have the time unfortunately. After we got back to the river boat terminal and I realized that I had just missed yet another bus, he and his wife talked to their hotel shuttle-bus driver, who was a super-cool guy and they offered me a lift to a nice little beach where I had a quick swim before heading back to the ferry terminal to Ishigaki. All-in-all, a perfect day.
I have some picks, but unfortunately the pc here runs on Linux (don't ask why) and my knowledge is limited to OSX and Windows and some Banyan Vines 😊 So uploading pics from my camera is not possible. Maybe lata!
Oh yeah, one more little story...the other day when I was at Kabira bay in Ishigaki, about 5 minutes after I arrived, this Japanese photography group showed up. There were about 15 of them, men and women, all in their 50's-60's except two who were in their 20's . They had the craziest photographic equipment I have seen. All of them had top of the line 35mm SLR's and others had top of the line digital SLR's. I'm not talking your Canon digital rebels or Nikon D50's, these were serious professional cameras! All EOS D1's or EOS 1's one guy even had a Pentax 6x7 camera! Some of these cameras start at about $5000.00 Canadian. And they all had these top of the line zoom lenses to boot, trust me I know, and they all had these serious tripods, like the kind you would use to mount a huge gun of some kind. So they hauled this stuff around, stopping at spots to setup and take pictures of all the nice scenery. Then today, about 5 minutes before the boat ride up the river, they show up again, with gear in tow! So I had to contend with this photog group for the ideal picture spots. I tried to stay ahead of them, but when you stop for 5 minutes to take pics, it's more than enough time for them to catch you. After about halfway though, they began to tire, so I managed to get away 😊 Ok, that's all for now!
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CB
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Go Dan Go
Thanks for sending me the link to your blog Sounds like you are having a great time. And your roommate in TO sounds like he is having a good time too. Keep on writing Dan this is great. Sounds like you have met a lot of fun people - make the most out of every day!