12 Sapporo / Yuki matsuri

                  YUKI MATSURI (clip)

Colorful play of light on ice.

Amazing effects.

This year the theme was the movie Star Wars.

Susukino, hectic and funny place of entertainment.

Commercial lights give shape the ice sculptures.

 NEXT : 13  Mino washi

7.1 Iriomote jima

 

Iriomote-jima is forty minutes far from Ishigaki by boat.










When I was preparing this trip to Okinawa at home, in Madrid, Iriomote seemed to me the island of Jurassic park.
Daab san told to me that in fact the movie, or at least some parts of it, were made in Kauai island in Hawaii which many people say ressembles very much Iriomote.
Walking through Iriomote I tried to see the dinosaurs... Not dinosaurs, not even Iriomote wild cat but all others, birds, turtles, spiders, amazing ferns, tropical and subtropical plants, mangroves, rivers and waterfalls, an explosion of nature.

"Yamaneko", Iriomote wild cat (lynx) is there. Ads talk about him, but he is not so visible, he was discovered in 1965 and it is estimated they remain 100 of them, they have a huge wild land to walk through without being disturbed.

Second largest island in Okinawa, 289 km. square, 130 km. of circumference and 2.279 inhabitants according Iriomote brochure.

Also lonely beaches.
Hoshizunanohama.

I enjoyed very much.

An star sand beach.

Abstraction work ? To me it was.

Always curious cows...

and some sheep too.

Species description graffitti.

Funaura port.

Nakama estuary.

Nakama river holds the Japan´s largest mangrove forest.

NEXT :  1.2  Iriomote (Mariyudu Waterfall and Urauchi River cruise)