Hachijojima Madness
I got back from Hachijo island last night. It was pretty much good times all around. It was probably the prettiest and best place I've been to in Japan so far. The island looks a lot like what I suppose Hawaii or Okinawa looks like, but it's not all tacky touristed up like the others. In fact, there's hardly any toursity things at all. Besides the man who was in the "Hachijojima Visitor's Centre information Booth" for a total of 30 minutes everyday.
The best thing about this island and Japan I have noticed. Is that you never have to worry about leaving things out or anything. Because thefts and crimes of that nature are so rare. So we didn't have to worry about leaving our tents there all day. Or leaving our bikes to go into the store. Kind of nice to be able to trust people.
I'll let the pictures speak for themselves and put it comments as needed.
This is the from the boat as we were leaving Tokyo. It was a really nice view of the bay with all the night lights, unforntuantely it's pretty hard to take a good night picture. This is the bridge to Odaiba called the rainbow bridge.
I couldn't really sleep much on the ship going down to Hachijo. It was like 100 degrees in the room where we were supposed to sleep. But luckily there was a full moon so it was nice to just sit on the deck for a while. Here is my arty attempt at the full moon.
At about 4:30am, they sounded this incredibly annoying alarm that sounded like birds chirping to wake people up. We soon found out that this ship stopped at 2 islands before Hachijojima. This was right about the time of sunrise. This island is called "Miyakejima".
The sunrise on the opposite side of the ship.
This was the 2nd island we were to stop at. I didn't understand what the name of the island was, and I couldn't read the charachters. So just call this one the mystery island.
This was the first sight of Hachijojima. This part of the island is called "Mt. Hachijo Fuji" we found out. This is the volcano that made the island.
This is the left part of the island. not really one mountain but like a little mountain range.
Some of the greenery on the island.
These two pictures are from the onsen we went to. It was on the top of this waterfall that you could see when you were in the bath. I didn't get great pictures. But oh well.
One of the many strange things about this island was the really random resort hotels we would come across like this. Litterally in the middle of nowhere would be these huge hotels that looked really run down but still open.
This is a sign telling you that you are 30 metres above sea level here, which would be pretty safe in case of a tsunami. You saw these little rocks everywhere.
Me climbing on the giant concrete things made to protect the island against waves I'm guessing.
This was our campsite. I think this is definately the best view from a campsite I have ever seen. And it was free!
An airplane coming into Hachijojima. We saw a lot flying in and out of the island. But there were pretty much no tourists on the island. Strange.
Mount Hachijo Fuji in the morning.
Some baby palm trees.
The streets on the island were immaculate. The token austrailian that lives on the island told us that Tokyo gives the island tons and tons of money for roads, but won't spend a dime on infrastructre to build up the tourism industry on the island. Not really that surprising, I think the Japanese government spends more money on construction projects than any other country in the world by far.
A view of our campsite from the beach. You can see the gazebo. We had a homeless friend who slept there in the night.
Betty Boop and Doraemon love Hachijo.
We changed the position of our tents when some old man came up to us and told us it was going to rain hard and we would get rushed away in the night by the flood. There was no rushing or flood, but you always listen to a crazy old man that says "there's a storm a brewing".
There were a lot of goats we saw when we were riding bikes around the island.
This is the small island off the coast of Hachijojima. The name? "Small Island". That Japanese get pretty clever with their names.
On the other side of the big volcano were these huge fields of Aloe plants growing.
The clever island folk constructed this garden to looks like Hachijojima. The big lump on the left is Mount Hachijo-Fuji. The small lump in front is "small island" and the plateau hump is the mountain range-esque side of the island.
Although most of you probably can't read that, it says "Tokyo-to". Which means "Tokyo Metropolis". I thought it was pretty funny that even though we were about 250 km's from home, all of these islands are still considered to be part of the Tokyo Metropolis. Who knew Tokyo was so tropical and lush.
Me with Hachijo in the back. I look kind of preggers and bitter. I blame it on the rain.
Clouds/fog. Neat in a hippy sort of way.
The Hachijojima Tourist Infomation Centre. It had just been opened its 30 minutes of the day.
The dock with out boat in the back.
This was the room they put us in on the way back. It looked sort of like an airplane. We just put our stuff in there and went out on the deck the whole trip. Silly Japan.
Once again, that is probably too many pictures of the same things over and over. But luckily I didn't show you the 110 others I took. Mostly of these same things but from a slightly different angle.
The best thing about this island and Japan I have noticed. Is that you never have to worry about leaving things out or anything. Because thefts and crimes of that nature are so rare. So we didn't have to worry about leaving our tents there all day. Or leaving our bikes to go into the store. Kind of nice to be able to trust people.
I'll let the pictures speak for themselves and put it comments as needed.
This is the from the boat as we were leaving Tokyo. It was a really nice view of the bay with all the night lights, unforntuantely it's pretty hard to take a good night picture. This is the bridge to Odaiba called the rainbow bridge.
I couldn't really sleep much on the ship going down to Hachijo. It was like 100 degrees in the room where we were supposed to sleep. But luckily there was a full moon so it was nice to just sit on the deck for a while. Here is my arty attempt at the full moon.
At about 4:30am, they sounded this incredibly annoying alarm that sounded like birds chirping to wake people up. We soon found out that this ship stopped at 2 islands before Hachijojima. This was right about the time of sunrise. This island is called "Miyakejima".
The sunrise on the opposite side of the ship.
This was the 2nd island we were to stop at. I didn't understand what the name of the island was, and I couldn't read the charachters. So just call this one the mystery island.
This was the first sight of Hachijojima. This part of the island is called "Mt. Hachijo Fuji" we found out. This is the volcano that made the island.
This is the left part of the island. not really one mountain but like a little mountain range.
Some of the greenery on the island.
These two pictures are from the onsen we went to. It was on the top of this waterfall that you could see when you were in the bath. I didn't get great pictures. But oh well.
One of the many strange things about this island was the really random resort hotels we would come across like this. Litterally in the middle of nowhere would be these huge hotels that looked really run down but still open.
This is a sign telling you that you are 30 metres above sea level here, which would be pretty safe in case of a tsunami. You saw these little rocks everywhere.
Me climbing on the giant concrete things made to protect the island against waves I'm guessing.
This was our campsite. I think this is definately the best view from a campsite I have ever seen. And it was free!
An airplane coming into Hachijojima. We saw a lot flying in and out of the island. But there were pretty much no tourists on the island. Strange.
Mount Hachijo Fuji in the morning.
Some baby palm trees.
The streets on the island were immaculate. The token austrailian that lives on the island told us that Tokyo gives the island tons and tons of money for roads, but won't spend a dime on infrastructre to build up the tourism industry on the island. Not really that surprising, I think the Japanese government spends more money on construction projects than any other country in the world by far.
A view of our campsite from the beach. You can see the gazebo. We had a homeless friend who slept there in the night.
Betty Boop and Doraemon love Hachijo.
We changed the position of our tents when some old man came up to us and told us it was going to rain hard and we would get rushed away in the night by the flood. There was no rushing or flood, but you always listen to a crazy old man that says "there's a storm a brewing".
There were a lot of goats we saw when we were riding bikes around the island.
This is the small island off the coast of Hachijojima. The name? "Small Island". That Japanese get pretty clever with their names.
On the other side of the big volcano were these huge fields of Aloe plants growing.
The clever island folk constructed this garden to looks like Hachijojima. The big lump on the left is Mount Hachijo-Fuji. The small lump in front is "small island" and the plateau hump is the mountain range-esque side of the island.
Although most of you probably can't read that, it says "Tokyo-to". Which means "Tokyo Metropolis". I thought it was pretty funny that even though we were about 250 km's from home, all of these islands are still considered to be part of the Tokyo Metropolis. Who knew Tokyo was so tropical and lush.
Me with Hachijo in the back. I look kind of preggers and bitter. I blame it on the rain.
Clouds/fog. Neat in a hippy sort of way.
The Hachijojima Tourist Infomation Centre. It had just been opened its 30 minutes of the day.
The dock with out boat in the back.
This was the room they put us in on the way back. It looked sort of like an airplane. We just put our stuff in there and went out on the deck the whole trip. Silly Japan.
Once again, that is probably too many pictures of the same things over and over. But luckily I didn't show you the 110 others I took. Mostly of these same things but from a slightly different angle.
posted by Scot @ 21:42
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