Kumejima!

We went to beautiful Kumejima last month to run the 10k portion of their annual marathon. I cannot recommend enough to those of you in the area this race. Hands-down this was the most generous race I've participated in: we were given really nice technical shirts (not the usual cotton tshirt), each of us got a bottle of Kumesen awamori, we got free cookies, and we were given a coupon for 400 yen to use in the food booths after the race was finished. Nice!

Kumejima is west of Okinawa honto, we took the Kumejima ferry from the port in Naha and the trip was about 3 hours. This is a great ferry ride because you pass several other isladns, like Tokashiki and so it feels nice and scenic.

The ferry leaves the port around 8:30 and arrives in Kumejima around noon. We checked into a nice place that had two seperate guest houses. Ours was closer to the Eefu イフ beach and had two seperate rooms and boathrooms. The rooms were just down the street from an internet cafe/video/moped rental place, Lucky Gate.
(ain't much in Kumejima)
Heads-up for lunch: the restaurants in the staging area all keep seperate lunch and dinner hours. That means you should really put your stuff down in the hotel and get to a restaurant before they close at 1pm. We found a nice place, just down from Lucky Gate (my only point of reference now) that was open after 1:30 and we had what chicken tastes like:

We went down to the beach but the coral had all died out (which is becoming increasingly true around the islands). That said, the water was like a bath and the nearby hilss made it quite scenic. I later noticed after my swim the sign that warns about warm water=more jellyfish. Not that I'm saying ignore these signs, but, I've only seen one jellyfish in the Okinawa area during my snorkelings around the island. I think the signs should be heeded, but not keep you from swimming.
On the way back from the beach I saw a couple of bits of grafitti from GUN, who seems to own the entire Ryukyuan Kingdom.

We tried to rent a moped so we could explore the island, but the number of tourists running the race the next day meant that there were no mopeds for us. So, we rented a car and drove around the island. I really dropped the ball and didn't take nearly enough pictures while we were there (which was really only 24 hours). Kumejima has a large number of traditional wooden houses in the Ryukyuan style and they're just gorgeous to take in. If you've been to Ryukyu Mura (the traditional Ryukyuan village theme park) and been inside these homes in the summer you know how awesome they are. Driving around I even saw an owl.

One of the coolest things I've seen in nature has to be the Kumejima Tatami Ishi. These are cross sections of volcanic basalt columns that look like neatly-arranged tatami or turtle carapaces:



There are much better pictures of these online, so I recommend googleing them.

I learned later that after the Japanese took control of the Ryukyu Kingdom during the 19th century they exiled many of the royals to Kumejima.