Glass-Bottomed Boat

So we finally got on. Here's Markian looking down at the glass. Below you can see a few shots of the coral, but most of my photos of it are awful. To be honest, it wasn't that impressive. The reason we took the boat was to go to this island that it stops at.


In about 15 minutes we arrived on the island. There were tons of really cool rock formations. Too bad they only gave us about 15 minutes to walk around before the boat left this area.









I think these are so neat. Look how turquoise the water is.


Above you can see the boat we road on. Below I'm riding outside the boat trying to keep my hair out of my face because it's so windy.

Sandstone

Past the Chinese building there was a place on the coast where you could stop for glass bottom boat rides. Well, they only ran every hour or so, so we had to kill some time first. We decided just to walk around the area a bit because it is known for it's sandstone rock formations.
Above: I love these things! They look like jacks. It makes me want to play Katamari Damacy.
Below: The view from the pier back towards where we were driving and parked the car.

Above: Markian looking down into the water.

We decided to walk out onto the sandstone rocks. They were really slick. I was afraid of falling, which I came close to many times. The treads on my tennis shoes are pretty worn down and weren't that great in the first place. Below you can see a strange structure in the water. You could pay to go underwater there and see the fish and coral reefs. We were opting for the boat tour instead though.



Here is the sandstone up close. You can see all the tiny little crevasses in it.







Some of the rocks looked really rusty. I guess there is a lot of rust in it.
Finally after about killing 30 minutes or 20 it was time to hop on the boat!

A Chinese Ghost Town

So we kept driving along the coast near the cape and we came to this old Chinese building that housed a museum. I was wanting to go. The parking lot was dead and the place was as deserted inside as out. It looked like it had been really cool at one time, but had become dilapidated over time like everything in this area which was kinda sad. This area used to be popular with tourist in the 1970's but now apparently no one cares.
We went inside and the museum was closed. So we walked around the huge gift shop with random items and then just walked around the outside grounds since we were already there. It's a shame this building has been ignored because it looks like a lot of work was put into it when it was built. I guess because of the lack of public transport in this area and the fact that most Japanese now go overseas to Thailand or Bali or somewhere else for their holidays this place has been ignored in more recent years.

Is that a road or your driveway?

So we left Ashizurimisaki and headed back towards Sukumo where we were spending the night. The roads to get there and back and really narrow and it's some serious countryside.
The road you see above you is a two way street, it's just crazy narrow and really curvy with a lot of drop off cliffs. As you can see we had a GPS system which was really useful, although it talked to us in Japanese the entire time and it wouldn't shut up. Little did we know the lines on the map were to scale and the road is really small and the car barely fits on them. Mom, you would have hated this, same goes to Markian's mom as well from what I've heard. Also, my grandmother, she would have been so car sick! I spend most of the time backseat driving and clinging to the "oh s*$%" handle.
The cool thing about having a car is that you can stop at all this little spots you never would have seen if you'd taken a bus or ridden the train. The tori above was in the middle of nowhere. I just had Markian pull over so I could take a picture. Below you can see farmer's fields.

This road was SO narrow and curvy. Do you see the mirror in the picture above? This is so you can look to see if another car is going to plow into you from the other side of the curve. Then you can pull off the best you can and not get hit. Fun.
Yes, this is a two way road as well. I even forgot how narrow it was!

Here is someone's family shrine we stopped at. Markian wanted to hike past the tori to see the actual shrine and where it lead, but it was crazy muddy and there was all these lizards, and also we were not sure if we were allowed to go up there. I mean it is someone's shrine after all and I don't think it's public. We hurriedly took our pictures and moved on. The woods were really nice though. The trees were so tall and everything was green and mossy.



I chased a dragonfly around. If you look closely you can see him/her in the grass. Dragonfly's are good luck I think! I like them because they eat nasty bugs.


So yeah, I wouldn't recommend driving for the easily panicked nervous types. I wouldn't recommend it if you hadn't been over here at least a few months either. It's awesome to be able to see the types of things you can see, but at the same time it was stressful (not so much for Markian, he was the driver, but for me the passenger).