Roving Japan

Photoset Coming - Stay Tuned

Driving in Yakushima really tested my patience. There is a main road that circles the island, but all the main tourist spots are off little side roads. You would think that these side roads would be of decent size and clearly marked… nope! They are little 1 lane roads that have almost no markings from the main road. Just a little sign right at the turn off. We probably missed every single turn off at least once. One of the waterfalls required about 4 turnarounds before we found the road.

Other than the frustrating roads, the sights around the island are awesome. The waterfalls are cool, and the scenery is really pretty. The best part, however, were the monkey’s! The western side of the island had tons of monkeys sitting on the side of the road. The little guys are really cute. I think they must come down to the road because they know people will feed them. Clever little monkey’s.

While photographing the monkeys, we had a small tragedy. The 2nd and final battery in the main camera died. Risa was devastated. Every fiber in her being wanted to photograph the 3 monkeys sitting on a rock… and she couldn’t. I think she died a little inside today.

One plan for the day was to hit up an onsen that is out in the lava flows by the ocean. The onsen is only open at low tide, since its basically a really hot tide pool. When we got there, we discovered that the onsen has no male/female dividers and no swimsuits allowed… it was also full of dudes. So we didn’t go in. Too bad, since it was a cool looking onsen.

We’re back in the campground tonight. Tomorrow we head back to Kagoshima. We will spend the night, then leave in the morning for a Kagoshima special sandbath/onsen thing. After the sandbath, we get one more night in Kagoshima, THEN we finally start our walk back to Tokyo.