Minna- "Truly a South Seas Paradise" -Okinawa Island Guide
This past Monday and Tuesday Mark Oshman, another Cadence missionary, Cole Maxey and Kevin Adair and I went on a trip to Minna Island. We packed up our sleeping bags, snorkeling equipment and two of days worth of food onto a couple of kayaks and headed out to sea. There is actually a ferry that runs to Minna a couple of times a day but when we got to the East China Sea and we could see that Minna was only a couple of miles away everyone said, "We don't need no stinking ferry." and we headed off under our own power. It only took us about 40 minutes to Kayak the 2 miles to Minna and then another hour to circle the island looking for a place to camp. While we were on the island we decided to go exploring and found a dive guide that lives in a log cabin. The first one that I have seen in Japan. He told us where the good places to snorkel were. We asked him what he did during the down season (Tourist season is basically the summer in Okinawa) and he told us that he sleeps a lot.
Since we basically had the island to ourselves we decided to set up camp in a large, covered platform that was on the beach. We grabbed some chairs from another platform and we were set as we talked and ate around the campfire. That night Kevin was the fireman and kept our fire going while Mark, Cole and I went out to do some night snorkeling. I have always hated swimming in the deep dark waters, especially at night. Besides all of the creatures that I can imagine in normal fresh water lakes at night we have sharks, sea snakes and other animals that really can hurt you. Mark caught a puffer fish in his net and we through it in our kayaks to take a look at it. A puffer fish fills itself up with water and basically looks like a volleyball with points on it when it gets scared. After it "unpuffed" in the boat we threw it back into the water. For about 15 seconds it chased after Cole, nearly giving him a heart attack.
This was the view of the sky the next morning when I woke up. I headed down the beach to spend some time with God and was able to get a picture of the sun rising over the Okinawan mountains.
The snorkeling was great on Minna. It is amazing the number of fish and the different types of fish that there are over here. Some of them are so bright and have such cool designs. We saw a couple of Lion Fish which look to me like Turkey fish. They have these huge feathers that float all around them and it looks to me like a small turkey underwater. When we got back from snorkeling about 100 Japanese kids from Tokyo had invaded our island paradise. They jumped right in the water with jeans, dresses, skirts or whatever on. I don't think they know about bathing suits. Anyway our Cole and Kevin were a big hit with them and had to pose for many pictures. After our posing we packed up our kayaks and headed back to mainland. On the way over the sea had been smooth as glass and there was virtually no wind. On the way back we had waves breaking over the front of the boat and the wind in our faces about 15-20 miles an hour. It took us quite a bit longer to get back and we were all exhausted but it was well worth it.
