A view from the shore of Miyake Island some 150 km south of Tokyo 

Diving with dolphins in the Izu Islands

It's Saturday morning and I'm sitting on the beach, struggling to strap on a pair of oversize flippers. When they are securely in place, I waddle down to the water's edge and gingerly step into the sparkling, crystal ocean lapping Miyake Island.


A shrine lies half buried by a lava flow from one of the many volcanic eruptions that occur on Miyake Island. 

"Ready to go?" asks Shuichi Taguchi, the owner of Dolphin Club TAG and my instructor for the day. Snorkeling gear in place, he and assistant guide Motomichi Takahashi lead our small group out of the protected shallows of the cove near Miyake's ferry port. We glide over pockets of spongy coral, where electric -blue fish dart in and out of crevices in which occasional spiny sea urchins are to be seen. On the ocean floor, a bloated sea slug makes slow progress toward safety in a forest of leafy seaweed that looks like something I ate at last night's dinner.

Out past the reef, the bottom drops away and the real challenge begins. Taguchi checks out our skills, guiding us through a series of exercises designed to improve our basic snorkeling abilities. We float and dive and practice clearing our breathing tubes, each time venturing further into the depths.

Finally, Taguchi has us rotate slowly while going round in circles, and I contort underwater like an aquatic gymnast. As my head breaks the surface, he gives me a thumbs-up. "Excellent!" he enthuses. "Now, you are ready to swim with the dolphins."

It's hard to fathom being able to dive among dolphins without ever leaving Tokyo, but the Izu Islands have always been one of the capital's best-kept secrets. Located a few hundred kilometers offshore, the islands — whose population would barely fill a city block — fall under the jurisdiction of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government, yet feel worlds apart from the frenzy of the city.

Used as places of exile for criminals and other undesirables during the feudal Edo Period (1603-1867), the islands today are an ideal weekend retreat, boasting fascinating environments both on land and beneath the waves.

Miyake Island, our overnight ferry's first port of call, has long witnessed the complicated relationship between humans and nature. Over the past few decades alone, multiple eruptions of Mount Oyama have changed the topography of this tiny island, and as recently as the year 2000, toxic fumes from its active volcano forced a hurried evacuation of the inhabitants. Residents only began returning in 2005, and the effects of the incident are still evident in the eerie, abandoned properties along the eastern shore.


A bottlenose dolphin passes right by your correspondent as it heads like a missile for the surface off Mikura Island. Some 28 km from Miyake Island, Mikura is ringed with steep cliffs that have kept it free of fishermen and frolickers — hence it is home to a large population of these playful and social marine mammals that seem happy to host unwieldy humans who come to briefly share their realm.

On a tour of the interior, Taguchi leads us along the Volcano Experience Trail, a boardwalk that traces the flow of lava from a devastating eruption in 1983. The expanse of black pumice stone is sobering, but in among the chunks of rock, bright green bushes are struggling to gain a foothold. Like Miyake's residents themselves, the plants are returning to even this barren landscape.

As much as I admire the fortitude of Miyake's residents, it's the locals living under the sea that have attracted me to the island.

From the island's main port, charter boats make the 28-km crossing to Mikura Island, home to a large population of Indian Ocean bottlenose dolphins. The island itself, a dormant volcano that looks like a grassy bowl resting gently on the waves, is only accessible with difficulty due to its ring of steep cliffs. As a result, its surrounding waters, free of fishermen and frolickers, have become a haven for these playful marine mammals.

"There are around 150 dolphins living in the area," Taguchi explains on the choppy boat ride to Mikura. "Most of them we can recognize by scars or the shapes of their fins." My guide, as it turns out, is both an animal lover and a passionate conservationist with an informative blog and educational children's book to his credit. He became hooked on Mikura's dolphins after a diving trip in the 1990s with the late Jack Moyer, a leading American marine ecologist and former resident of Miyake who pioneered efforts to protect the fragile ecosystems of the Izu Islands.

"Jack taught me about how dolphins socialize," he says. "Now I try to teach other people what I've learned."

It's a calling the former Tokyo office worker turned scuba instructor takes quite seriously. While it's easy to rhapsodize about the wonders of dolphins — and Taguchi does so unabashedly — his enthusiasm is tempered with a very real desire to protect them from harmful outside influences.

I ask if our presence in the waters today will be detrimental to the dolphins. "Not if we're careful," Taguchi assures me. His concern is more about a new ferry dock proposed for Mikura. "More boat traffic means more disruption of the environment. It could seriously affect the animals' habitat," he laments.

For now, thankfully, the project is stalled and the waters around Mikura are blissfully empty. As we approach the rocky shoals, it's time for me to put my morning lessons to the test. I swing my legs over the bow of the boat and secure my snorkel gear as our captain scans the midnight-blue waters for any sign of dolphins. When a gray dorsal fin slices through the waves off to our right, the call rings out: "Get in! Get in!"

I break the surface with a splash, momentarily disoriented by the churning waters around me. Flailing my arms to clear the bubbles from my vision, I follow the first pair of flippers I see. I swim for what feels like ages in my cumbersome wetsuit before a downward glance reveals a pair of dolphins mere meters from my face, their torpedolike bodies propelling them along with seeming ease at great speed. I'm stunned and awed and belatedly realize that I'm going to have to move if I want to keep up. I readjust my mask and kick my feet, still not quite believing what I have just witnessed.

For the next two hours, we exhaust ourselves in a game of chase with Mikura's tireless dolphins. I fling myself into the ocean seven times, each encounter as memorable and exciting as the last. After the final dip, I sit dripping on the deck, still glued to the antics of the enthusiastic pod as we motor away from the cliffs and head back toward Miyake.

Once there, we end our excursion with a trip to Furusatonoyu Onsen, a justly popular retreat on this island of volcanic activity. From the indoor baths, big picture windows offer extensive ocean views past a group of weathered rocks just offshore that jut out like bony fingers reaching skyward.

Later I learn how that unassuming outcrop — known as Sanbondake — was actually the genesis for Miyake's environmental movement in the 1950s. Back then, U.S. warplanes used the rocks for bombing practice, devastating the colonies of rare seabirds who called them home. Jack Moyer, then a serviceman and budding activist, petitioned Washington directly to stop this immediately, and the letter he sent to then-U.S. President Harry S. Truman resulted in a halt to military activity and the saving of the seabirds.

Today, according to Taguchi, the colony is growing and a pod of six dolphins also frequents the area. The glassy surface betrays no sign of the playful mammals, but it's enough to know that — thanks to the work of dedicated conservationists like Taguchi and Moyer (a former JT Nature page contributor) — they're out there somewhere, riding on and beneath the waves.

Miyake Island can be reached by overnight ferry from Hamamatsucho, Tokyo, departing nightly at 10:40 p.m. and arriving at around 5 a.m. One flight a day — subject to weather conditions — also services the island, leaving Tokyo's Haneda Airport at 11:45 a.m. and arriving at 12:30 p.m. Return flights leave Miyake Island at 1 p.m. An overnight dolphin-tour package through Dolphin Company TAG costs ¥35,000 per person, including meals, accommodation, a guide, a hot-spring visit, a snorkeling lesson and the dolphin swim itself. A dolphin dive and hot-spring visit alone cost around ¥16,500. For more details, call 04994-6-0996 or visit www.dolphin-club-miyakejima.com/eindex.html

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fv20091004a1.html

Natural nourishment for body and spirit in Nishi-Ogikubo

Japan Times — Nishi Ogikubo or Nishiogi, as the locals like to call it, is a quiet, low-rise neighborhood, a backwater that most people overlook in their hurry to get to bustling Kichijoji. Therein lies its primary appeal.

Hippie holdout: Nishi-Ogikubo's "Hobbit Village."

Its main claim to fame these days is its high concentration of antique shops (63 listed on the free tourist handout map), kimono dealers, bric-a-brac merchants, recycling outlets and secondhand bookstores. Back in the day, though, the area was perfumed with a heady whiff of counterculture.

One pocket of that righteous hippie ethos still lives on at Hobitto-mura ("Hobbit Village"). It's not hard to find: Just south of the tracks, it's the tatty building with star-shaped windows up the stairwell and foliage covering its facade.

The produce store at street level stocks a motley selection of natural foods, homemade cookies and farmhouse miso. Two floors up, the tiny Nawa Prasad bookshop crams in a remarkable range of alternative books (some in English) and new-agey CDs; while the tatami space of the Hobbit-mura Free School offers yoga workshops and butoh dance performances.

And, providing sustenance for the physical body, the second-floor cafe-bar-restaurant Balthazar serves worthy, non-additive meals blending Japanese and Western ingredients and influences. Whether you prefer grilled fish and sake, spaghetti and organic wine, or the classic genmai pizza — a patty of brown rice topped with either salad or spicy ground beef — the cooking is capable, if hardly stellar.

But it's a friendly, casual space where you can settle in and take as long as you like to chat, read or just gaze at the annotated Allen Ginsberg photos on the wall and slip back into the time warp.

Hobitto-mura 2F, 3-15-3 Nishiogi-Minami, Nerima-ku; (03) 3331-0522; nearest station: Nishi-Ogikubo (JR Chuo line); open 11:30 a.m.-2:30 p.m.; 6-11 p.m. (Sun. 6-10:30 p.m.); closed Tue. and 4th Mon.

A chilled bottle of Singha beer forms a ring of condensation on the table. The heady aromas of fried garlic, lemongrass and curry spices waft from the kitchen in the corner of the wooden hut. Two waitresses gossip in Thai.

The riverside terrace of Beach Lounge Yuigahama offers excellent views of the surf and tasty food including tod man kung shrimp patties, spring rolls and green curry to go with ice-cold beer.

The sea sparkles. A surfing video flickers noiselessly on the screen behind the bar. The sound system plays house music, the beats merciless in the midday heat. Another typical day on the beach in Koh Samui? Rather closer to home, in fact. We're just an hour south of Tokyo, tucking into lunch on the Kamakura coast in Kanagawa Prefecture.

The cluster of temporary beach huts affectionately known as Little Thailand has been a regular fixture on this stretch of Yuigahama Beach for six summers now. Operating just for the months of July and August, they are set up and staffed by a number of established Thai restaurants in Japan (one from up the road in Kamakura itself; another as far away as Narita in Chiba Prefecture).

While this year's incarnation is more compact than in years past — don't expect any muay thai boxing or traditional dancing — there's still a massage room (totally above board), a stall selling shapeless Thai fishermen's pants, and the inevitable henna tattoo artist. Most importantly, the food is as reliable as ever, with trilingual menus that cover a good range of tried-and-true street foods.

It works like a miniature food court — think a mellower waterfront version of the Yataimura (Foodstall Village) in Hyakunincho, north of Tokyo's Shinjuku district. You order from whichever counter takes your fancy, then seat yourself at the communal tables in the center of the stalls. It's well sheltered, cool and comfortable, but there's one major drawback: From here you can't actually see the waves.


Nepalese competition: Piping-hot tandoor-baked nan is served at Himalaya Curry. 

That's why this year, we transferred our affections away from the Little Thailand enclave, to the elevated terrace of a hut known grandly as Beach Lounge Yuigahama. You can't miss it as you arrive at the waterfront. It stands on its own, right by the estuary of the narrow river looking out on the surf. Primarily it's a bar — you get contemporary dance music not Indochinese pops — but thanks to the Thai ladies in the kitchen, the cooking certainly holds its own.

The ¥1,000 set lunches are good value but we decided to explore the extensive a la carte menu, which lists more than 60 items. We started off with delicate spring rolls stuffed with shrimp, freshly made, light and appetizing, and a plate of tod man kung, deep-fried patties of shrimp with the obligatory dip of sweet-spicy red chili sauce on the side — perfect with that first chilled draft beer.

Spice levels are kept well in check. The som tam (green papaya salad) was far from the fiery concoction you would find in the Issan region of northeast Thailand, but still crisp and refreshing. The green curry with chicken offered barely a tingle on the tongue, but was tasty nonetheless, with a fried egg to give it an extra dash of warm, summertime color.

For "authentic" Thai cuisine we'll stay in Tokyo (or fly to Bangkok). For prime location, though, this is mighty hard to beat.

U ntil this summer, the only exotic flavors on this stretch of the coast have been Thai. Now there's some serious competition from Nepal. Himalaya Curry is a new beach hut set up by the friendly little Nepalese restaurant of the same name in Sangubashi, on the far side of Yoyogi Park in Tokyo.

No prizes for guessing what's on the menu. The eponymous curries — choose from chicken, egg, mutton or vegetable — are mild and creamy, like a kinder, gentler variant of north Indian cuisine. What makes them stand out here on the beach is that they're served with freshly made nan that arrives puffed up and piping hot, straight from the tandoor oven.