Tackling Miyakojima - I
A beautiful scenery in Ikema Island
The way I decided to tackle my visit to Miyakojima is to divide up the places that I wanted to go into three geographic regions as I was going to stay for three days. I wanted to make sure that I had enough time for traveling to the places, eating at restaurants, timing of sunrise/sunset and changes in weather. The weather was kind of unpredictable as it kept changing every time I looked at the weather forecast. If the weather was cloudy during the time I wanted to take a photo sunrise/sunset, is there another day I could do that as well? Or, is my plans interrupted if it rains for a long period of time?
When I travel, I enjoy taking photos so I am not the typical traveler. I pack a lot of gear and although cell phone cameras are useful and can take great photos, I still prefer my dSL. I still use my cell phone a lot for quick ‘here I am snapshots’ for social media or silly photos but enjoy the process of taking a photo that I can treasure.
Below is my quick synopsis of my travel plan. It will give a quick digest of where I went. I will eventually have links to content that was interesting to me that you can follow through or back on the main page.
The answer is THREE, no more, no less
Day 1 - Cape Nishihennazaki and Ikema Island ‘Heart Rock’
My first day was really only a half day. I arrived just before noon from Tokyo, needed to sort out my rental car and check out where my hotel is located. After that, I needed to get some food and check out some places near Ikema Island:
コロッケのころっ家
I found this out by accident near my hotel and was curious enough to go try. I was also hungry by this time as it was past noon. I had a good conversation with the individual operating the truck and bought a beef, mentaiko (spicy pollock roe) and pumpkin flavoured croquettes. The name of the food truck is Croquette Croquette
Cape Nishihennazaki
There is a path to walk around the coastline behind where Harry’s Shrimp Truck is located. It was too bad that I was not hungry anymore as I would have loved to try them.
My first real up close view of the water of Miyakojima is pretty surreal. I have never seen the soil near a body of land to be that colour before. It really added a punch to an otherwise normal shoreline.
From the coastline, you can see the Ikema Bridge that connects the main part of Miyakojima to Ikema Island.
Heart Rock
The place is actually situated left of the beach just below Ikemajima Gelatocafe Ninufa. There is some nice open seating staring out at the lovely beach and shoreline. If you can’t find it any GPS, Google or Apple Maps, try typing Ikemajima Gelatocafe Ninufa . Its easy to miss as you don’t see the beach and the back of the cafe from the road. From the parking lot, there is a path to cafe where I ordered a dragonfruit and banana gelato and coffee.
Day 1 - Sunset Beach
There wasn’t a ton of stuff to stop and see in the area and it was too early for dinner and still a few hours till sunset. Driving down to Sunset beach wasn’t difficult as it was mostly about backtracking the same roads and then through the ‘downtown core’.
This was one of the major photo/video opportunities that I really wanted to create a time lapse of the sunset. The conditions were perfect as it was a sunny day with nice small clouds moving around. This is one situation where my iPhone is better than my dSLR. I grabbed my tripod, camera bag and scouted for a good location. Before the trip, I bought a sun location app which gives the path of the sun’s path for that day. It provides the time range but it works best when you are there as it overlays an augmented reality path in the scene using the camera. The scene that I decided upon is a view that has Irabu Bridge and the sun setting behind it. The final time lapse can be seen in my Instagram Reels:
