Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55 f/2.8 @ 17mm — ¹/100 sec, f/4.5, ISO 800 — map & image data — nearby photos
Approaching Takeoff

As I mentioned on my Amami Islands post, it was really really really windy for the first few days of our New-Year's visit to Amami Island (奄美大島) in the East China Sea in the far south of Japan. The airport is near the Kasari-cho area (the north-east part of the island) where Fumie's grandmother lived until a teenager, and in exploring that area after we arrived, we found ourselves at a deserted lighthouse at the most northern tip of the island.

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55 f/2.8 @ 20mm — ¹/200 sec, f/4.5, ISO 800 — map & image data — nearby photos
View from the End of the Road

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55 f/2.8 @ 55mm — ¹/250 sec, f/2.8, ISO 800 — map & image data — nearby photos
Whipping Wind

I don't suppose that the picture above really shows the whipping wind very well, but it was truly impressive. There weren't the torrential rains and crazy-large waves as with a typhoon... it was just really really REALLY windy, and you could watch the wind carve ever-changing patterns on the surface of the slow-moving (relatively speaking) waves.

The wind wasn't particularly gusty... it was just there, like sticking your head out the window of a car. A really fast car.

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55 f/2.8 @ 17mm — ¹/160 sec, f/5.6, ISO 800 — map & image data — nearby photos
Most-Northern Outcrop
as seen from outside the lighthouse

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55 f/2.8 @ 17mm — ¹/160 sec, f/4.5, ISO 800 — map & image data — nearby photos
Looking Back Toward the Car

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55 f/2.8 @ 17mm — ¹/100 sec, f/4.5, ISO 800 — map & image data — nearby photos
Daisies in the Wind

The little two-story lighthouse building had a walkaround on the outside. The pictures of me leaning into the wind were taken by Fumie while she was standing in the (relatively) calm southern side protected by the building. Besides offering the ability for Fumie to stand unassisted, that location also offered the largest area for us to take a picture in.

Walking forward (North) from where I am standing in the picture was a considerable task without the aid of the little concrete wall. But the worst wind – far far stronger than where I'm standing in the pictures – was at the next corner of the building 20 feet in front of me. It's at a point where the wind is rushing up the side of the cliff from the ocean and pounding directly into the face of the lighthouse, thereby getting forced at molten speeds around that edge. When I tried to make my way around that little corner of the walkway, the wind got under my eyelids in the same way you see it puffing out the jacket in the first picture above. I felt as if I were sitting on the wing of a jet at 30,000 feet.

The extremely odd (and fairly painful) feeling of wind under your eyelid aside, the whole visit was really fun.

As we were leaving it started to rain, which turned “really fun” into “really awful”, but once we proceeded a few steps down the path from the lighthouse, the wind was less of a physical danger and we could get back to the car pretty quickly, especially with Anthony going piggy-back on me (while I held onto his shoes, lest the wind take them: that was a real concern that we discovered moments after the last picture above was taken).