Day 5: Trip from Okinawa to Amami Oshima

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I was up and out the door heading to the airport by 8.30am. I had Erina, Makoto and little Sora, oh and dog, came to take me there. We had some breaky and I was off to Amami Oshima (Isl and) at 10.20am. Makoto and Erina are a b and called Jujumo and they gave me a few of these towels for me and also to take to Tohoku and give the people. They also had me as a guest on their radio station last week. Thanks so much for all your support. xx
I was pretty excited as I had no idea what it’s like or anything and all I knew was that there would be a man waiting for me at the airport thanks to Ako and Ko chan from Daisy’s Cafe in Chatan Okinawa who had made arrangements. Thank you 2 again, U have done so much for me and this run. xx
 
 
I arrived at the Amami airport to find a group of people all holding signs and waving at me. I was so stoked, never had that before. It was all the doing of my new Isl and dad Mr Ganaha. He and his wife had started telling everyone and had a tribe there waiting for me. Thanks so much. They told me we had to get going as they had organized a few things for me.
 
We stopped in for a awesome lunch with lots of fresh veges and tofu which was just amazing, and then we had our first interview with a local newspaper. Then we went straight to another newspaper and then to the Radio station where we recorded an interview which was then playing at 5.55pm tonight. I just couldn’t believe how much they had sorted as I had only said to Ako that I was going 2 days before and was only going to have time to run one day there. That didn’t matter at all and it was super fun meeting and doing so much in one afternoon. Then we went for a drive to a beach which is famous for its sunsets but today the clouds were here so that wasn’t to be.
 
From there we headed back to Ganaha san’s house, which then is when I found out I was going to be staying at his house. Huge thanks. Had a quick shower and then we were out for dinner with some of their close friends. Super fun and they had the Japanese guitars out called Shamisen. They have a great sound and everyone was singing along. I took some video but sorry haven’t worked out how to upload it yet.
 
Ate some more awesome food and talked about all sorts of different things and places around Amami. I’ll be coming back here for sure. Real beautiful here, so green and really chilled out. Sounds like a great place to come surfing too.

So a huge day and tomorrow I have 35km to run back to the airport before I board another plane and head to Yakushima Isl and. I didn’t know anyone there either but with another friend of a friend I now have a place to stay and contacts there too. So looking forward to meeting them for the first time tomorrow. But first I have an 8am start at the local town office here in Naze where it sounds like the newspaper and a group of people are coming to see me off. Can’t thank everyone enough for making this happen. Amazing what the word of mouth can do.