Category: <span>Whattodo</span>

Free self-guided route · Ishigaki

Three Ishigaki panoramas.

A relaxed self-guided driving day beyond Ishigaki City, with three landscape stops, local food pauses and practical notes for weather and road conditions.

Island life

Making, learning and local materials.

A craft workshop offers a way to understand an island through its materials and the people who work with them. This story returns to a DiscoverYaima visit to Yachimunkan near Shiraho.

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Beaches of the Yaeyama Islands

What kind of day by the sea are you looking for? Yaeyama coasts range from managed swimming beaches to reef edges, long open shores and tide-dependent sandbars.

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Hiking in Ishigaki

A walk in Banna Park and a mountain outing on Ishigaki are not the same thing. Here is how we think about the places we have walked, and what to check before setting out.

Food & everyday life

From island to table: Batida.

A visit to Batida in Ishigaki: the ingredients, people and ideas behind a restaurant inside Seven × Seven Hotel.

Food & everyday life

Inside Ikehara Distillery.

A hands-on visit to an Ishigaki distillery, where making awamori brings rice, black koji and three generations of family knowledge together.

Culture & community

Kabira: village, culture and the bay.

Spend time with Kabira beyond the bay viewpoint: its village, food, craft and the landscape around it.

Culture & community

Kitsugansai on Kohama.

An account of visiting Kitsugansai on Kohama, where performance, prayer and harvest traditions come together in village life.

Food & everyday life

Papiru: cakes and tea in Shiraho

A place we return to for cakes, birthday celebrations and the small rituals of life on Ishigaki.

Feel the magic of the mysterious fireflies in Ishigaki & Iriomote

THE THINGS YOU HOPE TO SEE ONCE IN YOUR LIFE One of them is a tiny glowing beetle. Fireflies in Japan are called Hottaru. The magical Hime bottaru can be seen from late February until late April in Iriomote island. Fireflies in Ishigaki island show up from March until June. During this season the tiny […]