January 5, 2026 –  near Hirara, Miyakojima to Shiraho Beach, Ishigaki – 25 kms – Plus Life Shiraho 

January 6, 2026 – Shiraho Beach – 51 km day ride – Plus Life Shiraho

January 7, 2026 – Shiraho Beach – 28 km day ride – Plus Life Shiraho – island count : 14, with the addition of Ishigaki – total distance cycled: 977 kms

Gordon: It was 10:35 yesterday morning, and we were already hungry from our challenging ride in the mountainous jungle of northern Ishigaki.  Google said that a well-reviewed restaurant was a kilometre ahead, and that it opened in 25 minutes.  A few minutes later we arrived at the derelict structure, which looked like it hadn’t been serving since Google was incorporated.  Even functioning businesses keep notoriously irregular hours in the Ryukyu Islands, but we decided to wait.  It was only 15 minutes until the scheduled opening, and there were a trio of goats penned nearby to feed and pet.  The presence of the goats made me wonder if goat sashimi, a local specialty, would be on the menu if the restaurant was to open.

As luck would have it, a few minutes before 11:00 a woman stuck her head out of the sliding door of the restaurant and invited us in.  The restaurant does in fact serve goat sashimi, as well as wagyu beef and wild boar.  (We did see a wild boar in the forest earlier in the day.  It’s currently the hunting season for them, so we just got a glimpse of a fleeing ham.  Other delicious sightings on our ride included numerous flocks of feral peacocks and several ring-necked pheasants.)

It was surprising to learn that Ishigaki, and several other of the Ryukyu Islands, are important producers of wagyu beef.  At first blush it doesn’t seem like the highest and best use of the limited land base, but given that a single 8 oz steak can cost $70 in a butcher shop in Naha, perhaps there is a strong business case.  Wagyu beef is easily identified in a butcher’s display case, as it is very light in colour due to the extensive and highly visible marbling of fat.  “Wagyu”, which just means Japanese beef in Japanese, is the meat from one of four Japanese breeds of cattle.  The (abundant) fat it contains reputedly has a lower melting point than ordinary beef fat, enhancing the rich mouth feel.  It’s delicious, but I’m sure it’s on nobody’s list of healthy food options.

At our rustic restaurant we each ordered a meal set that included wagyu beef as well as a number of side dishes and a bowl of soba noodles. I also tried the goat sashimi.  It was good, but not vastly different from any other raw red meat, at least to my COVID addled taste buds.  The wagyu beef patties were a treat.

Dining in Japan is of course an enjoyable experience.  As well as the usual Japanese dishes, the Ryukyu Islands offer a number of regional specialties reflecting their climate and historical trading relationships.  The quintessential dish is a type of soba noodle, which in this region is a pale wheat noodle rather than the dark buckwheat noodle of mainland Japan.  A popular flashy and expensive dish is shabu shabu, a meat oriented hotpot.  It was more common on Okinawa proper than on the smaller islands.

While meat and seafood are comparatively expensive, dining in Japan can be quite reasonable, at least compared to North America and Europe.  A large, filling bowl of soba noodles and vegetables only costs about CAD 8 to 10 (5 to 6 euros).  Our feed of wagyu beef and goat sashimi, which was excellent and large enough to stuff two hungry cyclists, cost about CAD 28 (17 euros) for both of us.

Ruth: We are enjoying living in the village of Shiraho. Other than a number of rental apartments, this is still an authentic village. On our first warm late afternoon we met two ladies talking on the corner surrounded by five cats. Unfortunately the timid felines mostly scattered before I could take a picture. There are still a number of traditional homes here and the narrow lanes are lined with fukugi trees.