Day 61: Beaches And Beefing
You'd think maybe I would get bored of doing essentially the same thing every day. Beaching and eating, that is. But no. Sick of it I am most certainly not.
After driving around the island through some tropical forests and up a mountain, plus seeing a damn boring dam (not sure why it's a tourist attraction on the island?) we found ourselves at a secluded beach not too far from Kabira Bay.
We also found out that one of my Japanese friends, Yusuke, was coincidentally here with his girlfriend so made plans to get our Ishigaki beef on for dinner. And let me tell you, it was gooooood.
This place is heaven. If you are planning to go to Japan, Okinawa should be on your must visit list.
And here's a bit of a trick which saved us a tonne of money in getting around Japan...
Both JAL and ANA have special tourist fares which they don't seem to advertise very well. Basically, you can fly up to five legs anywhere in Japan for around ¥10,000 per flight. It's so much cheaper than buying your tickets the normal way and gets you to places you thought might be too hard to get to (like Ishigaki). Oh, and if you're a Qantas Frequent Flyer, you get a tonne of status credits for flying these routes too.
Here are the links – Japan Airlines and ANA. You're welcome.
We found these beach swings!
We saw rain clouds coming so hightailed it away from the beach and made it back to our place just before the rain hit. Oh god, when the tropics rains it really does rain. We got soaked on the way to lunch!
This is another cute restaurant in Kabira Bay. It's called Hidechan and serves (you guessed it) local Okinawan cuisine including super cheap soba noodles. It's also one of those places where you have to take your shoes off, so keep that in mind when making your sock and shoe selection.
Large soba set with naked onigiri. It only cost ¥650! The soba was so big we couldn't finish it.
We also ordered the chanpuru lunch which is like an Okinawan stir fry. This had a heap of tofu, sausage and veggies in it and tasted a little bit Chinese.
We drove to Ishigaki city to meet Yusuke and his girlfriend for Ishigaki beef yakiniku.
Look at all that marbling! This place was called Yakiniku Kitauchi and had a range of Ishigaki beef options.
But what is Ishigaki beef? It's the local wagyu found on the island and it's about as good quality as Kobe beef. The fat melts at a lower temperature which means that it's super tender and the fat doesn't stick around in your mouth. It's so good, I wish I could afford to eat it more (it ain't cheap).
