Enjoy a sightseeing tour of Taketomi Island, where the original landscape of Okinawa remains!
Taketomi Island is still lined with old Okinawan-style houses. Red-tiled roofs, stone walls, and buffalo carts that go along unpaved coral-white sand roads… you can enjoy the original landscape of Okinawa as you have imagined it. In addition, Taketomi Island is rich as the entire island is designated as a national park. Kondoi Beach, the most famous beach on the island, offers the best contrast between the beautiful white sand and the emerald-green sea! It is truly a tropical resort.
You can spend your time in various ways on Taketomi Island, such as sightseeing by buffalo cart which you cannot experience daily, leisurely town sightseeing by rented bicycle, beaches with star-shaped sand scattered everywhere, and observing the crystal clear sea covering Taketomi Island by glass boat. There are also other tropical cafes with red tiles, and you may feel the flow of time more slowly than on other islands!
Taketomi Island offers a panoramic view of the island from the observatory.
Unlike Ishigaki Island, Taketomi Island is flat, with a few ups and downs. The highest point is said to be 21 meters above sea level. Because of the town preservation ordinance, two-story houses are prohibited on Taketomi Island, so the highest point, excluding the observatory, is said to be a red-tiled house. Therefore, when you see the village of Taketomi Island from the observatory, the contrast of red-tiled houses, lush green trees, and white sand roads is lovely. If you visit Taketomi Island, you should enjoy the gradation of Taketomi Island village and the beautiful sea surrounding the island from the observatory!
Enjoy Taketomi time with a buffalo cart through the red-tiled streets.♪
Speaking of Taketomi Island, one cannot miss the red-tiled streets. The villages of Taketomi Island are the first in Okinawa Prefecture to be designated as Important Preservation Districts for Groups of Traditional Buildings, and the scenery of red-tiled roofs is precisely what we imagine Okinawa to be like in a tropical country. Riding a slow-moving buffalo cart through the streets of Taketomi Island is a blissful sightseeing experience. It is also very emotional that there are almost no cars on Taketomi Island because there are no rental cars, and only bicycle rentals or buffalo carts are allowed there.
Other colorful flowers, such as hibiscus and bougainvillea, bloom on Taketomi Island, and the lush green tropical trees enhance the vividness of the primary-colored flowers. In the buffalo cart sightseeing on Taketomi Island, you can enjoy the Okinawan atmosphere as an older man plays Sanshin (an Okinawan traditional three-stringed instrument) for you on the slow-moving buffalo cart.
Glass boat tour to taste the undersea world
It is a unique experience on the Taketomi Island sightseeing tour; you can observe one of the largest coral areas in Japan, “Ishinishi Jogoko (lagoon),” located around Taketomi Island while riding on a glass boat. In the sea, you can enjoy colorful corals such as coral and table coral that fill the sea bottom. In the emerald green sea, you can see substantial coral reefs, clownfish (famous as Nemo in “Finding Nemo”), bright blue Luris sparrowhawk, and rare creatures such as endangered sea turtles and manta rays if you are lucky! Those who do not like swimming in a bathing suit can enjoy the glass boat.
Anyone can enjoy Taketomi Island Sightseeing Tour.
Taketomi Island is a remote island that a 10-minute ferry ride from Ishigaki Island can easily reach. In addition, the circumference of Taketomi Island is very compact, about 9 km, so it will take less than a day to visit tourist attractions by renting a bicycle or a buffalo cart! You can enjoy just strolling around nearby cafes, a fashionable post office made of round old-fashioned post boxes and wooden structures, and an elementary school still in use.
The sightseeing tours on Taketomi Island are almost fatigue-free, so everyone from small children to older people can participate. This tour is especially recommended for families with small children and older people who are not physically fit, as they may be limited in the activities they can participate in.
The best choice for Taketomi Island sightseeing tours is to book a set plan!
While Taketomi Island sightseeing can be thoroughly enjoyed in about half a day, the most popular tour of Taketomi Island is a one-day set plan combined with other activities! For active people, snorkeling and diving in the morning and relaxing in the afternoon are popular courses to visit Taketomi Island.
For those who want to visit various sightseeing spots of the islands, an island hopping tour combined with sightseeing on Iriomote Island and Kohama Island is popular. In the morning, you can spend a whole day touring Iriomote Island, the “Galapagos of the East,” where mangroves surround 90% of the island, and Kohama Island, which has a beautiful landscape of sugarcane fields popularized by NHK Churasan, followed by a visit to Taketomi Island. You can also spend a whole day touring Taketomi Island.
Please choose the tour that best fits your physical strength and what you want to do.
