Swimming with the dolphins

Just outside Tokyo, a weekend trip away, is the island of Miyakejima (三宅島) where we swam with dolphins.  The experience was pretty great except for a hard evening on the ferry.  We left Tokyo at 10pm, and arrived at 4:30 am.  We did catch up on more sleep when we arrived, so it was still pretty good.

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The departure on the ferry had us floating under the Rainbow bridge.

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The ferry arrived at sunrise.

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To see the dolphins, we took another boat (40 min ride) to another island Mikurajima.  The island looks like the Napali coast in Kauai

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The dolphins have white noses.  They play by circling around each other.  The dolphin guides were great.  There’s no feeding or touching which is very eco-friendly.  The diving was simply just follow where the dolphins are and then jump in.  There were about 20 dive drops.  Pretty good for a 3.5 ~ 4 hour cruise.

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This dolphin looked right at me.  I could see the whites of it’s eyes.  I was aiming the camera at it for the shot before it got bored.  I could almost touch him.

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All boat names in Japan end with 丸 (maru).

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We had this katsuo (かつお) sashimi, slipjack tuna, for dinner.  It was katsuo fishing season, so this just came off the boat!  Definitely the best katsuo that we’ve had yet in Japan.

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Miyakejima has an active volcano on the island.  There was an eruption in 1980′s and the 2000′s.  In the 80′s the island had to be evacuated because of the lava flows.  We saw a few of these lava flows still on the island.  One flow was covering a school.  The other flows made some awesome rock formations on the coast.

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There’s sulfur gas from the active volcano.  So, it’s a little weird that it kills the trees that grow too tall.  It was a little eerie, but still very different.

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We ran into the local joke on the way back home.  We planned to take the plane back home, but due to the gas and wind direction, the plane usually only takes off 30% of the time.  So, we ended up taking ferry back to Tokyo.