Amami Superman Photography

I think we got a late start for the rainy season here in Amami. It's usually over by now but we've had pouring rain for the past couple weeks. Yesterday it finally gave up and I took the family out.

We decided to go to Ayamaru Misaki just north of there airport. I was expecting it to be kind of crowded but, to my surprise, it wasn't. I took some sunrise photos earlier this year from this spot.

The first thing we noticed when we drove into the parking lot were these 5 mini bikes.

Except for the green one, these bikes are customized Honda Gorillas and Honda Monkeys. All of which have 50cc engines. Gorillas have a squarer gas tank while Monkeys have a round one like the red bike has in the front. I don't know the other differences between the two bikes, but I believe their parts are interchangeable.





As we were walking out to the edge of the reef, I came across a girl running toward me screaming my name. When she got closer I realized she was a student of mine. Although most Japanese have straight hair, China has naturally curly hair and is very cute in pigtails.



There aren't many shells to find out here on the reef beds. You can find a lot of mussels that people like to gather to take home to cook up for a meal. I'm not too fond of mussels or shell fish, but it all depends on how they're cooked.



Although there were a lot of clouds this day, there was a lot of blue sky also. I tried to take these photos with the sky as the subject but they just didn't seem to work for me. I was kind of annoyed with myself because I forgot my polarized filter at home.









The name of this drink is Deka Melon Cream Soda. "Deka", or "dekai", means "big" or "huge". The drink is 500ml (about 16 or 17 ounces), hence the "Big Melon".

I was looking for something to drink but most of what this particular vending machine had seemed like generic brands.


This particular beverage caught my attention and I had to try it. It wasn't that great. I did a search in Wikipedia for this drink and came across a page for it. I thought the part about the 500ml bottles was a bit funny.

I remember the other types of shady cola they had back home, like Jolt. This next drink's name kind of reminded me of that, "Hard Spark Cola". This drink falls in the I'll-never-drink-that-again category.