Last week during "Spring Break," I went to Ishigaki island in southern Okinawa for 4 amazing days of scuba diving. The weather was nice most days, much warmer than Tsushima has been, and flowers were blooming everywhere. My scuba diving vacations (so far 2 trips to Key Largo, FL; one trip to Jeju island in Korea; one trip to mainland Okinawa and Yongaguni island; and the most recent trip to Ishigaki) have tended to be a bit pricy scuba-wise and very cheap accomodation-wise. I think it started when the let`s-do-our-open-water-dives-and-get-our-scuba-certification-cards group trips to Key Largo invovled staying at a campground. Pay less for accomodation, have more money for diving! The trip to Ishigaki followed this trend, too. I stayed at a $10/night hostel which was an education in itself. Unlike most Japanese hostels I`ve stayed at, the sleeping accomodations weren`t separated by sex. The hostel, called Sandalhouse, is actually in two buildings. Both have one big room with a living room common-space, kitchen, and compartmentalized bays (sort of like a capsule hotel) for sleeping quarters lining these rooms. The bays are only separated from the main room by a split hanging curtain, so there isn`t much privacy. For part of the trip I was sleeping in a compartment next to a late-20`s migrant worker who was waiting for the sugarcane to ripen. I chatted with another worker who had come from Yonaguni island; he`d spent 2 months there working 22 hours/day in a sugar-processing plant, making the distinctive molassasy-brown-sugar blocks that are famous sweets in southern Okinawa. Part of his job involved taste-testing the final product; he said he never wanted to eat brown sugar ever again. While the hostel didn`t offer as much privacy as I`d hoped for, it was really cool staying there. I`d come back in the evening, and people might be BBQing fish on the roof or, on the one rainy day I was there, grouped around a pot of nabe (soup) at the table. I had the most mind-blowing homemade onigiri (rice ball) of my life, filled with garlic-miso-flavored ground pork. The owner sometimes bought a bunch of food for one of these cooking endeavors, and you could join in the feast for very little (about $3). It felt like family, especially after the beer and aomori started flowing. And, in fact, a bunch of the people staying at the hostel were there long-term, a handful 6 months or more. I was the only foreigner, and almost everyone my age, mid-20s to 30s. Some of the long-term residents were trying life in Ishigaki, testing it out to see if they wanted to move there to live permanently. Others were working part-time jobs and enjoying island life, sort of like taking a working holiday in their own country. While I tried to be social a bit every day, I also took advantage of the relative urbanism of downtown Ishigaki. The area around the port was much more built-up than I had anticipated, but that came with the added bonus of having conbinis and some Japanese fast-food, which I`ve missed in my more rural Tsushima exile. Every morning I`d walk by this interesting mural on my way to Coco, the closest conbini:
.... the mural is of a famous anime, Dragonball-Z, which came to America when I was in middle school. I think it`s still pretty popular. I also walked past many beautiful flowers on my way to Coco, too, including this funny yellow plant.
...and there were --tons-- of these flowers:
...with some birds of paradise chillin` in a local park...
The flowers served quite a feast for the eyes. Speaking of feasts... I wanted to try some local Okinawan cuisine, and someone from the dive shop recommended a delicious little local restaurant by the shopping arcade. I ordered one of their set menus:
...which had quite a few local delicacies. While I swore to myself that I wasn`t going to go out to eat sushi (like Tsushima, Okinawa`s got the kind of pride in its fish that only an island can have), this sashimi was decadent. Just look at the cut, showing off the layers.
...and a hunk of local pork, too, swimming in juices that I can`t even explain. Yes, there are layers of fat in between; I separated the fat from the meat, but I think they`re usually both eaten.
Deep-fried glorious fu (wheat gluten), topped with some shaved daikon. Yum!
...the set was so amazing that I had to go back a few days later and order it again ^^
The dive shop owner`s son, a self-proclaimed "milk junkie," said that I should go to the local, hidden-away, tourists-don`t-know-about-it-or-spend-hours-looking-for-it gelato shop, called MiruMiru (which is apparently a shortened and cute-i-fied version of, `Milk! Milk!`). It was a bit of a trek from my hostel, but I took one of the free rental bikes and enjoyed a ride around the coast on the way. The sun was shining down on sugarcane fields, which I`d never seen before. I didn`t think it would look so much like grass or early corn.
...and, at last, I found the secret gelato shop!
...the local sea-salt/sugarcane flavor combination was delectable ^^
.... the mural is of a famous anime, Dragonball-Z, which came to America when I was in middle school. I think it`s still pretty popular. I also walked past many beautiful flowers on my way to Coco, too, including this funny yellow plant. 
The flowers served quite a feast for the eyes. Speaking of feasts... I wanted to try some local Okinawan cuisine, and someone from the dive shop recommended a delicious little local restaurant by the shopping arcade. I ordered one of their set menus: 
...which had quite a few local delicacies. While I swore to myself that I wasn`t going to go out to eat sushi (like Tsushima, Okinawa`s got the kind of pride in its fish that only an island can have), this sashimi was decadent. Just look at the cut, showing off the layers. 
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