Ishigaki (ISG)

Ishigaki is amazing and my first day was just consumed in cognitive dissonance. It looks and feels like the tropics, but it's indisputably Japanese and it's not as hot and humid as South-East Asia. (Note well: April is the best time of year to go and visitors in the (cold-ish) winter or (pressure cooker) summer may well disagree.) Ishigaki City itself is a bit grubby, although obviously getting better with posh new restaurants and hotels popping up here there, but the blue sky-yellow beach-azure ocean triple whammy scenery of places like Kabira Bay remains jaw-dropping. The tides here at 160 cm between high and low are among the largest in the world, which means that at low tide the craggy islets in the Bay just pop up out of the water and the mangrove trees around the coastline seem to stand up stilts... I did a couple of dives on my second day and spotted no less than 5 manta rays, the stealth bombers of the fish world, zooming past on the second one. Okinawan food is also great, I detest the South-East Asian version of the bitter gourd (usually slimy and tasteless) but the Okinawan variety is dark green, crispy and great in a stir-fry. Orion beer and the Okinawan fusion masterpiece of taco rice also went down a treat!

There was only one downside: the day of my arrival I received an e-mail from Yonaguni, telling me that the strong winds had been blowing from the east for over a week now and that the ruins were thus inaccessible. Disheartened, I let my initial reservation of tickets lapse and had already started making other plans, when around 6 PM on the second day I heard that the winds were changing to the north and there was thus a chance that the ruins would be diveable -- but no guarantees. I vacillated for a while but eventually figured that while I've occasionally regretted not doing something, I've rarely regretted going ahead, so I plunked down Y16,500 for return tickets on JAL's website and headed to the airport early the next morning.

Check-in was OK, although in typical Japanese style I had to reconfirm my credit card payment at another desk, and the lady at the counter warned me that due to bad weather there was a chance that the flight would be delayed or cancelled -- evidently the dead gods of Mu were not going to let me off that easily. Announcements about the fate of flight JTA961 were indeed made at 5-minute intervals, which kept me on the edge of my seat trying to decipher the near-incomprehensible politeness (o-kyaku-sama ni go-annai wo mooshiagemasu...), but in the end boarding started on schedule and we walked across the tarmac to the waiting plane.

NU 961 ISG-OGN B737-400 seat 5K

I now had the pleasure of adding Japan Transocean Air (JTA) to my collection of airlines flown, although it was kind of anticlimactic to fly to the Lost Continent of Mu on a bog-standard 737, and one slightly peeling at the edges at that. Unlike ANK, Okinawa-based JTA still retains some of its own identity with its own IATA code NU, planes in non-JAL livery (although the typeface matches JAL's) and crew in funky tropical fish outfits too. The inflight catalog offered "Drunken Shiisa" T-shirts showing inebriated Okinawan guardian lions, and the passengers on board -- again perhaps 60-70% full -- seemed to consist of equal parts grizzled locals and visiting divers. (Families with kids and lovey-dovey couples, both much in evidence on the NGO-ISG flight, were notably absent.)

The hop was only 30 minutes and, while the seatbelt sign was duly switched off after ascent, an announcement was made to the effect of telling everybody to stay in their seat because we'd be down soon enough anyway. (Incidentally, pre-takeoff a stewardess dropped by to check if I understood Japanese, and was relieved to hear that I did and she didn't have to stammer her way through the safety demo in English. No such niceties on ANK earlier...) The weather didn't seem particularly bad, no turbulence or anything, but cloud cover was fairly dense and I suppose descents to OGN are always VFR...?