Minna-Jima!

What a great day at our own private little island! Let me tell you about our adventure to Minna-Jima. You can see on the map that we live in the southern part of Okinawa. So it took us about an hour and a half to drive up the coast to Toguchi Port which is around Motobu on the map. Then, we took a ferry ride to Minna-Jima!

Here is the island! So if you can read that, it says the ferry dropped us off over there on the right side of the picture. And then Dan and I decided to walk to the other side to get away from the crowd. And that's where we ended up for the day. We only saw 3 other people that walked by the entire time we were there. Everyone pretty much stuck to the beach right by the drop off spot. 

We found this island on the blog, Okinawa Hai. (http://okinawahai.com/2012/07/minna-jima.html). We just decided yesterday that we wanted to check it out. The forecast was iffy, but as we learned last weekend, you never know what the weather will actually be like until you get there. We left around 9:30am and drove through some pretty dark clouds, so we weren't sure if we would actually do the ferry trip today or just find something else to do once we got up north. We only made one wrong turn on our way up and got a few kms off track, but we finally found the building around 11am. The next ferry out was at 11:45, and the sky seemed somewhat clear, so we bought our tickets and waited for it to come!

The ride only took about 15-20 minutes. We could see the little island from where we were leaving. The windows were really tinted in the boat, so we couldn't really see out too much unfortunately. But here is where it docked to let us out. Gorgeous water!

Here is the beach that pretty much everyone stayed...except for us!

Dan graciously carried our snorkel stuff!

So after we walked around the island and found a spot, we sat down for our little picnic, pb&j sandwiches, and relaxed for a while. The sun got pretty hot though, so we decided to see what was under the water. That was a disappointment! There was nothing to see except about 8 white fish that blended into the ground. It was nice to have snorkel masks so we could see where we were going and watch out for jellyfish. The water felt great, so it wasn't a big deal that the snorkeling was a bust. We didn't think it was too safe to venture far away from the land since we were alone and there were a few jet ski's flying by every so often. We stayed until 4pm just relaxing on the beach, sitting in the water, taking pictures, and hanging out. It was so relaxing, and I'm sure we will be back someday! We were pretty fried by the end of the day and came back home with burnt shoulders and legs. Overall, great spot and great day!

 

The main beach was sandy, but where we were at, it was mostly coral. Kind of rough on the feet, but not with our snorkel shoes!

On our way back, we experienced the Japanese McDonald's for the first time! Yum.

On a side note, we filled out the paperwork for my car yesterday! Super excited about that. 

2004 Honda Fit Aria. Of course, I'd prefer a different color, like bright blue! But here, you can't really be too picky. This is the only one I've seen like this, so I couldn't pass it by. It will be great to have a little more freedom now. Should have it by Wednesday!