A couple weeks back we had a 3 day weekend, so Yuki and I decided to get out of town for a couple days. We'd actually hoped to go overseas, but tickets to just about everywhere were significantly more expensive than usual. As a compromise, we stayed domestic but went to Hachijojima, an island roughly 200 miles off the coast of Japan.
There are two ways on and off the island: by boat or by plane (actually, helicopter is a third choice, though not particularly realistic). The boat ride takes around 10 hrs, with just one boat in and one boat out each day. The one from Tokyo to Hachijojima departs at midnight and arrives a little before 10am the following morning, so we left on Friday night so that we could get started first thing Saturday morning. For the return leg, we took the plane, which is just a 45 min flight.
Hachijojima is essentially two volcanos that popped up close enough to merge together. The city itself is nestled into the valley between them. By no means should it be mistaken for a resort town; it is mostly residential and definitely not the second-home-on-a-semitropical-island type. In fact, it has no sandy beaches and much of the island is fairly run down. But the nature is pretty good, so we can put that aside.
Just using google earth, it was pretty hard to get a sense of what the terrain was like. Roads ring the two mountains, so we thought at the least we could cruise along those and enjoy the coast line. As it turns out, pretty much everyone rents a car when they visit, which makes sense since a car costs $40/day there and we paid $35 to rent two bikes for a day (not that there was much choice: neither of us has a Japanese driver's license). Let me make this very clear: this island is not bike friendly. AT ALL.
Our first goal was to make our way up one of the mountains. In hindsight (and probably common sense too), trying to go up a mountain on a bike is borderline stupid. We probably ended up walking more than riding. Cars flew by us, with at least a grin on their faces, if not open laughter. I'm sure they were thinking "Those poor stupid bastards", and I can hardly blame them. Still, we stuck with it and, little by little, the town in the valley got smaller and smaller below us.
Most of the way up the mountain, there is a field where they raise cows. What idiot thought it was a good idea to raise cows on a mountain, I don't know. But Yuki really wanted to see them, so we went. These weren't the kind of cows that produce Kobe beef; no beer or massages for these guys. They were just regular old cows that happened to be on a mountain. Their milk is supposed to be really good but I tried it and can assure you it tastes like milk, nothing special. Maybe I missed something...
I had wanted to go up to the caldera at the top of the mountain, but we were pretty much dead already and there was no way we were going to make it the rest of the way. I guess it's something to save for next time. This map gives a pretty good idea of just how far we had gone (we were with the cows).
Making our way up the mountain had be torturous, but going back down was absolutely incredible. The hills were so steep we had to ride the brakes just to keep under control. The sun was out, the weather was warm, and we were flying. I'd rank it in my top 5 best things since coming to Japan, no joke.
Once we finally reached the bottom, we cruised along the coast for a couple of miles. There was almost nobody else around and the scenery was beautiful. There wasn't anything particularly stunning about it, it was just all very calming.
After a long and tiring day out, we finally made it back to our hotel. Actually, hotel probably isn't the right word to describe it, but it wasn't really a resort either. It was sort of like a really large house, with several private rooms, a shared bathroom, and a big dining room. On Hachijojima, almost anywhere you stay provides breakfast and dinner (probably because there aren't many restaurants to go to otherwise). The place we stayed was run by a middle aged man who cooked up a pretty respectable dinner as well. He was also a diver and pictures he had taken while out diving were placed all over the dining room.
A crazy storm hit on the morning of the second day, which would have been awful except that we had reservations for a diving course, one of the few things that you could do given the weather. Though the storm whipped up the sand a bit and limited our visibility a little, it was really quite cool. I enjoyed it enough that I'm actually considering going out and getting the full diving certification some time...
The weather cleared up shortly after we finished diving and it was pretty clear for the rest of the day. We hopped on a bus (there is one route, with one bus per hour, and costs as much as a trip all the way across Tokyo) and headed to the other side of the island to soak in the hot springs a bit. Afterwords, we were checking out some of the local landmarks, one of which is by far the coolest hot spring I have ever seen. It's owned by the local government and is coed, so you wear a swimsuit in it (unfortunately Yuki had forgot hers at the hotel, so we just looked). The awesome thing about it was the location; it's pretty much on the side of a cliff, with waterfalls falling to either side of it. Mind you, they aren't big huge roaring waterfalls, just little gentle ones, but the sound of falling water adds a whole new level of relaxation to the hot spring experience.
Not far from the hot spring was a waterfall that showed up on several of the guide booklets, so we thought we'd check that out too. To get to it, we had to hike on a winding trail a good ways off the road, but again were greated by more great nature. Again, nothing jaw dropping or anything like that, just natural, beautiful, and calming.
To keep things interesting, we'd booked a different place to stay for the second night and arrived just before dusk. Because of the storm, the morning flights and the boat line to the island for the day had been cancelled. Our room was supposed to be on the inland side of the hotel facing the mountain, but we suspect that they had some better rooms that were no longer filled since their occupants couldn't make it to the island. Which would explain how instead we ended up with a corner room with a view of the ocean. 50 ft from our window. Score.
We were on the morning flight back to Tokyo, but we woke up to catch the sunrise (our room faced East) and walk around a bit. One of the coolest things about the hotel was a path that lead right down to the water. There was a little bench there to sit and just take it all in.
I managed to catch a couple more pictures of the island from the plane as we were taking off as well.
Our two days on Hachijojima involved a lot of walking/hiking/biking and were pretty tiring physically, but it was nice to get out of Tokyo and enjoy a little nature. It helps calm me down, reflect, and put things in perspective.
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