The slender dragons on the roof coil their tails, while long-bearded Chinese sages look down on the visitors. The colourful cluttered structure in the South-west of Ishigaki Island is called the Tôjinbaka: a tomb for Chinese sailors stranded on Ishigaki in the 19th century. A shop nearby sells the fake paper-money used in Chinese funerary rites. But on Ishigaki, the Chinese connection is not limited to those sailors: Although Ishigaki and the surrounding Yaeyama Islands belong to Japan today, for most of their history they have had more Chinese influences.
The culture of the first inhabitants (at least around 4000 years ago) was similar to that of Micronesia, Indonesia or Taiwan. By the middle ages – the time of the Kingdom of Ryûkyû and the gusuku castles on Mainland Okinawa – the Yaeyama islands were connected to the Ryûkyû kingdom. The capital Naha was about 500 km away over the sea, but the Ryûkyûan kings did send governors to the Yaeyama Islands. The King of Ryûkyû, in turn, sent tribute and trade missions to the Chinese Emperor and also traded with countries such as Vietnam and Thailand.
Today Ishigaki, one of the largest of about a dozen islands in the Yaeyama archipelago, houses the main administration. With its international airport it is the hub for foreign and Japanese visitors – but also a great destination on its own.
An intense light blue is the trademark of Kabira Wan, the most famous bay at the Northern coast of Ishigaki that is on every tourist's itinerary. Even on a rainy winter day, the water with the white sand and the coral reefs somehow looks calm and blue. But never mind the rain – what you do here is board a glass boat and watch the tropical fish from above.
Snorkeling is forbidden at Kabira Bay, because with its absolutely clear water and just the right shifts in water temperature is also a perfect cultivation area for pearls, including the rare black pearls.
Further to the North, a long peninsula stretches out like a finger pointing into the sea. At the final cape, Hirakubosaki, ruins of old watchtowers and fire signal facilities were discovered: When the Chinese Qing dynasty and Japan's Shogunate started to compete for dominance over the Yaeyama Islands in the 17th century, guards were placed on lookout here, and whenever a ship neared from the North, the governor would be quickly informed via fire signals and mounted messengers.
Presumably, the local tofu varieties also have their own unique characteristics, but they are all just called shima dôfu – island tofu – and they are all extremely fresh and tasty. One morning in Ishigaki, we walked to a tofu factory out in the fields nearby and had an all-white tofu meal in their cafeteria: delicious!
It's the hub of the Yaeyama Islands, and you need to go via Ishigaki in order to visit Iriomote, Taketomi, Hateruma and other islands. Ishigaki has a subtropical, relaxed feeling, a great culture mix, and good food. Do go!
Currently the only access is by airplane, but a ferry connection to Taiwan is being planned for 2017.
Showa period retro is all the rage in Japan. Since Showa Tenno, or Emperor Hirohito, was a particularly long-lived sovereign, this covers a considerable period of time from pre-war until the 1980s. Even though most items in a retro restaurant such as this one center on the immediate postwar period, we still find many of them quite familiar from our first visits to Japan.
Strangely, we realise that we have been involved with Japan for long enough to share this Showa retro craving with Japanese in our age group, and we find ourselves talking in "oba-san mode" to students: "You know, when I lived in Kyoto there were no high buildings and no supermarkets…"
Japanese food – washoku – has been named an intangible world heritage in 2013.
While Japanese rice-and-fish dish sushi (or its varieties from numerous other Asian countries) has become commonplace in most Western countries, many other items are virtually unknown outside Japan.
The Japanese cuisine is rich in vegetable dishes – for example, radish is often simmered or fried instead of just being eaten raw. Soy beans appear in numerous variations – they are made into tofu, miso, soy sauce and much more.
A traditional home-cooked dinner such as this one consists of sometimes a dozen different dishes served in individual plates and bowls. There is no particular order in eating the dishes, and not all of them are eaten hot.