Monday, May 28, 2012

Memorial Day Weekend on Miyako Island


View of the ocean walking through the gardens of the hotel.

Just like the name of our blog implies, we keep our bags packed, ready to jetset whenever we can. For whatever reason, Elyce and I didn't make any plans despite both of us being totally responsibility-free for the entire weekend. After Elyce got out of class on Friday, she had to run some errands so she picked me up from work and I rode with her to tie off some loose ends. While on Kadena we were talking about what things we could do this weekend....bar-b-que's, movies, road trips? All of which would have been great after the last few weeks filled with work, tests, a respiratory infection... So I asked her, how about calling the good folks over at IACE (travel agency) to see what they have going on. Well to make a long story short, we were on a plane off to Miyako Island the next morning.
So in our brief research of this place that we've never heard of before, we found that Miyako Island is about 40 minutes by plane south of Okinawa (great!). It is supposedly home to Japan's most beautiful beach (outstanding!), there are no Habu snakes on the island (perfect!).
After an extremely easy and short trek through the Naha and Miyako airports we took a taxi through tons of cornfields to our hotel on the southern coast of the island. Besides beautiful beaches, I guess Miyako is mainly farmland... We didn't waste anytime once we got to our hotel, we got some lunch, booked our kayaking/snorkeling trip for the next day and then headed out to enjoy the warm weather, quiet pool and tropical gardens.
The Miyako Island Music Festival 2012, Maehama Beach. 
It was just our luck that on this sleepy island called Miyako, was a music festival planned the day after we got there on their most famous beach, Maehama Beach. Of course we went to the music festival and although we knew we were on a Japanese Island, because we were only a couple of the few non-Japanese people there, we felt like we were at some Caribbean concert because of the mixture of music that was played, Reggae, Spanish, Japanese folk music, Japanese-pop, harmonica instrumentals, etc.
For a last minute trip, this was a great get-away.
The pool at our hotel. We were the only ones there most of the time...

Hey Elyce, what are you reading?
Me spying on Elyce. 

Sculpture in the garden.

Just a shot of some of the flowers. There were so many flowers and butterflies, it was a little weird. 

I'm not really sure what this says, or what the frog is doing to the bag...

In between all of the cornfields were rows of sunflowers.
Hiroshi-san preparing our teppanyaki. Hiroshi-san was very nice and we enjoyed our conversation with him.

Flambe!

In Japan, you buy your steak by the gram, not the ounce like in the States.





Elyce, I wasn't quite ready....

Cheese!



This is after kayaking and snorkeling at Shigira Beach.

Elyce and her Kayak.

Reggie looking a little confused.

Shigira Beach House.



Only in Okinawa!



Elyce: Hey Reggie, what's that over there?
Reggie: I don't know, it looks like a leaf that the wind is blowing. 

Reggie: Let me go see what it is....Hey Elyce, check it out!
Elyce: "Already walking back the other way..."
Plane flying over Maehama Beach



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