Getting cabin fever from being cooped up inside due to the swine flu hysteria, Fumie wanted to get out and into nature, and I was all for it. We decided to visit the Sanzen-in temple (home page) in the mountains north-east of Kyoto, about 20 minutes by car.

We'd gone by the unattractive bus parking lots for it many times, and so based on that my preconceived image wasn't very complimentary, but it turns out that my prejudice was what most prejudice is: ignorant.

The unattractive parking lots are apparently private third-party lots, among many dotting the main road through [...]

On the second day of our short trip to Ishigaki Island in the far south of Japan, just shy of Taiwan, after our stopover at a lovely scenic lookout for breathtaking views and ice cream, we continued north in search of a beach. It wasn't an arduous search, because it seems that most of island's entire coastline is beach.

We were heading for a specific beach we saw on the map, when – for just a moment during a bend in the road – we caught a glimpse of a gorgeous stretch of beach. It took a bit of searching, [...]

The second day of our trip to Ishigaki Island in the far south of Japan was the one I was really looking forward to, because we planned to just drive around and check out the views.

Ishigaki is an oddly-shaped island that's about 21 miles long at its longest diagonal....

And it has generally wide, modern roads, so getting around is quick if you ignore the ridiculous 25mph speed limit. Our hotel was in the south-west, so for today's trip we planned on cutting a diagonal through the main part, then up the panhandle that is sometimes only a few [...]

On the first day of our trip to Ishigaki Island (southern Japan), between our arrival and stopping for the sunset, we drove around on the island a bit. Driving on a pretty rough road that I thought took us to the top of a mountain, it turns out that it eventually just petered out into nothing (where "nothing" is defined as "dense, unpenetrable mountain forest").

But before retreating all the way, I stopped to take a picture of a huge fern. I should have taken something to show the scale, but the width of the whole thing, seen in the [...]

After arriving to Ishigaki Island on the first day of our short Golden-Week vacation, we puttered around the island a bit, and ended up at Oganzaki (御神崎) in the north-west corner of the island. In checking photos on Google Earth prior to the visit, it seemed like it should provide a nice sunset, and when I mentioned it to Fumie, she said she'd had it on her list as well, from reading the guidebooks.

It's not much more than a small lighthouse and a small park...

Beyond the park area the adventurous can take paths out onto the rocks and [...]