oh yeh, best photos I've seen in a long time.

Def not in the competition with thunderpants.

My place is 19km from a reasonably large rural city. However, the locality has a church, a hall and one house, the nearest house to mine is 100m away, after that you're looking at 1Km+.

I used to be in a place of population 400.

Now it's something like 2 million!

I preferred the former.

I used to live and now spend a lot of time in a VERY remote place, it is infact 25 hours from mainland Japan and only accesible by boat not airplane (yet still considered part of Tokyo!! Go figure!). It is called Ogasawara, or for some Americans the Bonin Islands.


Amazing group of islands, which some call the Galapagos of Asia on account of the amount of endemic species there. There are a few photos on my profile on Sj somewhere.

I was in Chichijima last summer farquah, there is a TR about is somewere in the forums.
Great place, I wanna go back again sometime. Were you there working at the sea turtles conservation center?

Tsonda, I must have missed that TR will check. Yeah I was researching at the Turtle Center there, did you visit? Were you studying there as well or just travel? Did you visit the Izakaya there called Yanky Town, it is right infornt of my house. If you didn't and you have chance next time try and get over to Haha Jima and Muko Jima too.

The ferry there is a killer isn`t it!

Tsonda, just read it now...natsukashii!!! Few of those beaches I have been sat on many a night waiting for the buggers to lug themselves up and lay eggs. Top stuff, recommend anyone to visit. Tsonda next time you go give me a heads up as may well be down there as well.

The ferry was not problem, its a MAST actually. In Greece we have a saying that, if you didn't get on a ferry for more than 8 hours you didn't have summer vacations (thats because all the great islands are more than 8 hours from Athens). So basically I chose that place because it would give me the chance to travel by sea. I really prefer it to getting on a plane.

I didn't go to Yanky town and hardly stayed up later than 22:00. Everyday we had an early start and stayed all day in the sea. It was great, hadn't done that for quite a few years. Hahajima is also on the things to do list, will let you know for sure next time I am going down there.

I live in a remote area of Kansai - very country, but still a decent number of people...

Thunderpants, is there a straight flight from tokyo to tanegashima?

no, got to fly from Kagoshima. actually that is a bit of an issue among the tourist industry here. a group of people are working hard to get a direct flight from Tokyo, but the airlines are arguing that the island need a bigger tourist attraction, which some one is working on now. another group of locals are working against that, so we have our own little civil war here, very entertaining

you can also take the ferry from kagoshima for only 5000 yen, but the transport from the airport to the sea port is rather long, my wife mentioned 1 hr...

I think spook would be in one of the most remote places at the moment. He's on a small island off the coast of Sumartra helping to set up a surf camp. Basically they are setting up their own infrastructure such as water, power, sewer, ect.

That sounds cool Mantas.

Tp, thats what I thought. Ferry ride from kagoshima sounds nice. Any idea how much is that? If me and tsondagirl were to come down there, would you recommend July or August?

Also, is there any kind of connection from tanegashima to yakushima?

Tsonda (what's with the avatar??)
Toppy from kagoshima is 5200 round trip takes 1.5 hr there is also a sloow (3.5 hr) ferry but i don't know the price.
Rainy Season ends a little earlier here, som mid july might be ok, but you know that the weather is a tricky one to predict.
I hear August is very hot, but that is the same all over japan.
The Toppy ferry also sails to yakushima and we have another ferry down here too, it leaves from Shimama i think it is very cheap, i'll ask my friend tonight how much it cost. Yakushima is high on my list of places i want to go to, make sure you bring rain gear though legend says it rains every day somewhere on yakushima

Good to see you here Thunderpants

I prefer my drinks from the bottle as God intended, not mixed.

In the summer, red wine should come lightly chilled. Enough to cool the person, but not so cold as to kill the flavour

I have tsondagirl looking up the routes and stuff, we are thinking about the last week of July. I ll give you a call sometime next week once we both know if we can take that week off.

Soubs, i show live F1 at my place, and give free beer away when McLaren takes it (sorry SJ for the advertising)
i would love to see you here live and in person

Tsonds, pm'ed you

PMed you back.

I'm not that remote but my friend lives in Mie ken in a place that has just 15 houses and no shops. It's a 20 minute drive to the nearest town and even that is small.