Japanese Local Knowledge

[Kim]

OK everyone - we need a main thread that describes the diving in various parts of Japan. Where have you been? What was it like? I'm sure you all know the drill! Hopefully we can make this thread into a reference thread - and if it works out properly ask Net Doc to make it a sticky so it doesn't get lost. So lets hear from everyone - tell us what you know!

 

[Kim]

Fukuoka
For those of you that don't know, Fukuoka is the most northern province on the southern Japanese island of Kyushu - it's where I live. Just to the north of Fukuoka city. jutting out into Hakata bay, there is a penisular that expands into a small island: Shikano-shima (shima or jima is the Japanese for island). This is my local dive site. It's a beach dive from a small stony beach with an easy entry/exit point that is protected by a large outcropping of rock. The site has no facilities, no water or shop, so you have to take everything you need with you. However, it's free, and it's tolerated by the local fishermen (something quite unusual in Japan). It does get used by a lot of the dive shops from Fukuoka, and is where many people do their basic O/W training.
From the entry point there is a fixed chain on the floor which runs out for about 75 meters to an underwater bouy at a depth of 5 meters. This is Point 1 and it is mainly next to this point that the instructors teach their students. The sea bed is covered with rocks with occasional patches of heavy, gritty sand - with quite a lot of sea-weed and sea-urchins - this helps a lot to teach the value of good bouyancy skills! Around Point1 - anything from 100 meters to about 350 meter - are several other points that are also marked with bouys. These points provide a great opportunity for navigation practice. These tend to be larger rock formations that reach from the sea bed up to the surface (or just below) the average depths here tend to be between 10 and 12 meters. These formations provide interesting walls to swim around - with lots of small crevises and overhangs to explore. There is a good variety of fish and nudi's all over the site. I've seen Lionfish, Groupers, Scorpionfish, Squid, Octopus, Fugu as well as many smaller fish in abundance. If the sea is calm the visibility can be very good - up to 25/30 meters maybe more: if the sea is a bit rougher the visibility can drop to around 5 meters. Water temperatures range from around 10C in the winter to about 26C in the summer (last weekend it was 24C). There is never a current that I have noticed, although
While this is not really a dive that I would travel especially to do (we have Okinawa for that ) - it's a great dive if you live locally or happen to be in Fukuoka. If anyone is in the area and wants to go - let me know, and I'll show you around!

Yamaguchi
Yamaguchi is the most southern province on the main island of Honshu. On the northern coastline there is another small island called Omi-shima. I've only been there once as it's about 200 km from where I live. On the northern side of the island is a small bay with a rocky volcanic headland on the right side of the bay. The main dive area is around this area - starting out from the beach. This site has some facilities. There is an air-fill station on site as well as rental showers, and a couple of small shops and a snack bar. There are also a few rental beach chalets - so it's possible to stay if you want to. The one time that I went the visibilty wasn't so good - about 7 or 8 meters, and there were a lot of jellyfish in the shallower water. Swimming out from the beach the sea bed gradually drops away - it's mainly sand with sea grasses at first. When you have gone far enough - about 150 meters - the rocks begin. They are very jumbled and provide many channels, small swim thru's etc. There is also supposed to be a small cavern somewhere - but we didn't find it the time I went! The sea bed is at about 20/22 meters at the bottom - but occasionally you are forced to swim over large rocks that will take you up to 15 or 10 meters. It's very much a maze so it's necessary to have good navigational skills if you don't have a guide (we didn't - except for my Japanese instructor friend who'd been there twice before) The types of fish etc were similar to that in Fukuoka - in fact the whole dive was quite similar - except it's much bigger and a lot deeper. It's advisable to have a torch with you for the swim-thru's. All in all I enjoyed the dive - it's not that difficult a dive - but it's not for the complete beginner. Again, I probably wouldn't come from Tokyo to do it - but occasionally it's a change for us to go somewhere a little more challenging than Shikano-shima.

For now I'm going to leave my site descriptions like this. I have been to Okinawa several times, but I'll leave that to people that live there to tell you about. If they miss out any of my favorite Okinawan sites - I'll add them in later!

 

[diverkim]

There are plenty of good diving spots on Izu Peninsula. The water is quite warm until late Autumn.

 

[takito]

I heard Okinawa has some good places. My friend dove their and loved it. It is kinda far from Nagano, though...

 

[okinawascuba]

I heard Okinawa has some good places. My friend dove their and loved it. It is kinda far from Nagano, though...

Yep, Okinawa has some terrific places. Almost the entire East China Sea side of the main island is a dive site, and there are spots off of the Keramas, Ie Island, and just about all the other islands as well.

The seawall in Sunabe and the steps at Kadena are fantastic because you park your car, gear up, walk down some steps and enter the water. Though they can be crowded, I still find the diving to be great and hardly easier anywhere else. I particularly like the Kadena Steps because it isn't as popular but has some great sea life -- saw two very large rays there a couple weeks ago (1.5m across).

Maeda Point is THE most popular spot on the island from what I've seen, and for good reason -- has some great scenery though some of the more people-conditioned fish can be annoying, acting like ravenous seagulls or rats (batfish in particular).

Diving off of Onna is very good with a good sized wall down to about 130ft or so. The "toilet bowl" is a neat entry point with the wall just a few feet away.

Seen quite a variety of sea life here. I see sea snakes on nearly every dive and typically spot about 6 each time. I just dove this past weekend at Manza Beach and saw one very juvenile and one big monster lionfish drifting along -- I've seen multiple scorpion fish, stonefish, and leaf fish around. Every variety of damselfish, angel fish, clown, parrot, etc., etc. I've seen my fair share of lobter poking about, and the variety of anemone, nudibranches, and other coral denizens is striking. My dive on Manza was filled with all sorts of sea fans, and I was told that Seragaki beach has even more than that (up near the top of my list now!). Sea turtles are around, but I haven't met any yet.

The one thing that Okinawa does NOT have is wreck diving. There is a SMALL fishing boat at the mouth of the Higa River, but that's the only "wreck" near the shore. There is the wreck of the USS Emmons off of Ie Island, and I hope to dive that next year. All of the wrecks from the Battle of Okinawa in WWII have been towed to deep water to prevent looting accidents, which claimed the lives of more than a few people awhile back (in one case using explosives to detach ship hull panels while said ship was carrying thousands of tons of ammunition).

My only worry about diving in Okinawa is that I'm going to be spoiled when I have to leave for somewhere else!

 

[Kim]

As no-one has posted any more site descriptions in this thread for a while I thought that I'd add a bit about diving one of the islands in the Okinawa chain - Miyako-jima.
To get to Miyako you normally have to fly to Naha on the main island and take an 'island hopper' for another flight of about 50 minutes. Personally Miyako is my favorite place in Japan!
The main attraction for divers in Miyako are the caverns of Shimoji. Shimoji is a smaller island just off the coast - normally about an hour by boat from Miyako. The best caverns are normally dived only in the spring - up until the end of April - due to their location on the windward side of Shimoji.
These dives are not for beginners - several are quite deep. They are spectacular though.

Nakanoshima Channel.
This is often used as a warm up dive and to give the DM's a chance to check the capabilities of the divers before they take them into the main caverns. It's a dive to about 20 meters and around a maze of volcanic channels, tubes and small swim throughs. There are a lot of fish here - as well as quite a few banded sea snakes. There is very little coral due to the often very rough weather conditions - but the rock formations are simply beautiful and there is a lot to explore.

Nakanoshima Hole.
After the DM's have decided that everyone can handle themselves the next dive is often this. Dropping to the rock floor at 6 - 8 meters a short swim brings you to a small hole in the rock. You enter the hole one at a time feet first (you have to stay vertical as it's very tight). From there it's a drop down the chimney to a small cavern at 28 meters (this is NOT a dive for anyone suffering from claustraphobia!) The cavern exits back out into open water. The rest of the dive is slowly making your way back up the wall exploring as you go.

And now the three big ones!!

Antonio Gaudi.
With the main entrance at 36 meters this is an amazing dive. Once inside the cavern as you look up you can see tiny holes like windows all over the ceiling. The cavern is quite long and as you swim through it you ascend to the top exit at about 17 meters. On a sunny day the light coming through the holes is very beautiful. There are often small shoals of fish inside the cavern.

The Palace of Saturn.
In some ways this is quite similar to Antonio Gaudi. The entrance is at about 27 meters. The main attraction of this dive is the size of the cavern - it's huge. Again the ceiling has several small holes and windows letting in light. There are many wide passageways to explore giving a dive profile ranging from 25 - 15 meters and back two or three times. You have to watch your computer carefully on this dive as it's very easy to incur as small deco obligation - especially if it is the second dive after Antonio Gaudi. The DM's take you out and you hang around under the boat at 4-5 meters for about 15 minutes. My Suunto Vyper didn't like this dive very much!!! I thought it was great.

Torike.
If you see an aerial picture of Torike it's a small lake just inside the island:

In this picture the open sea is in front of you behind the ridge line. It's a small freshwater lake connected to the sea by a passage underwater. The roof of the passage is at 26 meters - the floor is about 43 meters. Basically the dive is from the sea - through the passage into the lake surfacing in the lake for about 10 minutes. It's not unusual to have very surprised tourists gawping at you from the path you can see in the picture! The DM's check everyones air and as long as everyone has 120 bar left you go back down and exit through the passage again. The passage is about 75 meters long. If you don't have enough air then you have to exit the lake and walk back to the sea to get back to the boat!! Apparantly it does happen sometimes - so this isn't a dive for a hoover!! Where the freshwater interfaces with the seawater the visibility virtually disappears generally through 5 to 10 meters of water.

These are the main dives at Shimoji - although there are a few more that I haven't done yet. If the weather isn't good enough to dive this side of the island then you have to go to the leeward side. There are several smaller sites there - again, lots of rock formations, small swimthroughs and caverns - including one cave called Snake Hole which is a cave inside the mountain only accessable from underwater. You can surface inside the cave, but you need lights to see anything as it's completely dark inside.

If you like rocks and caverns then Miyako-jima is an amazing diving destination. It's also possible to take some very beautiful photo's there. Unfortunately when I went I didn't own a camera yet so I can't post any pics for you to see.

 

[HamsterHuey]

I'm in Okinawa, and one of the things I hate about diving here is...everyone dives the same spots! So, in that spirit, I'll describe a couple of spots that my wife and I enjoy diving.

Motobu Peninsula

An East China Sea site, this site is in the Okinawa Diving Points Main Island book with sketchy-at-best directions. However, during summer months, it is a fantastic dive site, and worth the bit of exploration it takes to find it.

Like so many dive sites in Okinawa, it is a park-and-walk dive, with the four-car parking spot at the top of a short paved road that leads to the beach.

Best time for this dive is at high-tide, which minimizes the amount of walking over the ankle-breaking lava stone. You can partially inflate your BCD and float over the rocks (the wade goes to 4-feet pretty quickly).

The rocks drop off to about 20 feet about 100-150 yards from the beach, and begin a series of channels and swimthroughs. "Walls" generally don't dip below 70 feet, and it is easy to get a good hour out of a tank going either left or right of the beach. Fauna includes the usual anemonae fish, porcupine fish, surgeons, 'cuda, jacks, sea bass, tuna and parrots. Because this area enjoys a lively surf year around, it also sports good patches of living coral.

Southern Links

Part of the same channel system as Channel Crevasses, SL is a popular site for Okinawan dive classes doing confined water skills, with its two tidal pools. As with Motobu peninsula, this dive is best done at high tide. After passing over the shallow rocks, the site drops off immediately to about 30-40 feet, and the channels bottom out at around 70-80 feet.

Most notable about SL is the canyon-like passages to chase fish through. With decent buoyancy control, the stillness of the water in the channels gives one the impression of flying through a blue version of the Grand Canyon. Because of the bottomography, coral formations here are sparse and/or dead. However, it is a good place to see large bass and small sharks.

Again, these two sites are great for the diver that wants fun "terrain dives" that depart from the sandy bottom-reef outcropping-sandy bottom of many dive sites. Plus, because they are relatively unknown, they are low-traffic, both in cars and Mer-People.

If anyone wants detailed directions, let me know!

 

[nori1841]

I dived in Hatsushima yesterday which is small Island located away from Atami in 20min. by regular line.
The site was opened but a half of shops cancelled the tours because of bad weather and sea swell.
Water temp ; 25 degree, Visibility ; 6-10m
Sightings ;
Bigfinereef squid and many white eggs in spawning bed
Bluechips, Cornetfish, Flatfish, Octpus, schools of fish, corals
Top shells,

Hatsushima Diving Center only accept shop tours.
There was sea swell and currents even in sand area -18m , waves were big so many divers fell over at exit but you can come up smoothly at good timing. The Service Staffs helped divers today.

A bad point is an expensive meal price. It is 1.000Y on Chinese nuddle and 1,500-2,000Y on sea food commons.

 

[patriot_flyer]

I've been away from the board for a while and it's good to be back.

Just moved to Japan about a month ago and did a boat dive two weeks after we got here. It was great, even if we are in the most northern part of Honshu. The dive site was about 3.5 hours via bus, but that wasn't too bad. Kodomori, I believe, was the name of the area where we met the boat. The dives themselfs were great. Nothing like Hawaii, but you can't really expect that. The coral and rock formations were beautiful and the water temp was ~80 Deg. F, 3 mil easily did the trick. Vis, about 45-50'.

Oh speaking of Hawaii, we did a boat dive on a wreck with Enzo (name of the boat charter, I think) and it was not only terrible it was dangerous. The currents were ~3-4 knots. It was my wife's and my daughter's (she's 12) first boat dive and they are newly certified. A south shore swell was predicted and instead of going to another site, like we were told they would do, they chose the one closer. Found out later the boat captain had a scuba class to teach and couldn't be late for it. The dive master with us (works for a separate dive shop) was angry as well. Lesson learned-- choose your boat dives carefully.

I've been diving in Okinawa too and it is truely is easy and beautiful-- can't wait to go again.

 

[aihfl]

www.okinawascuba.com has detailed information and even maps of dive sites on the Okinawan mainland and some islands in the immediate vicinity.