00:00:00 John Daub: Hello everybody, welcome to Painushima. I guess it would be New Ishigaki Airport. This is a small airport in Ishigaki Island, Okinawa Prefecture. We're actually much closer to Taiwan than we are to Okinawa and definitely Tokyo. We're quite far out in the Pacific. Here's exactly where we are on the map. You can see me, that blue spot right near Taiwan and Japan just to the north of us.

00:00:26 John Daub: We're pretty deep into the Pacific Ocean. I kind of like it here. Ishigaki-jima (Ishigaki Island), you can see Naha on the top right there disappearing. This is an island that's such a beautiful place. Direct flights from Osaka and from Tokyo's Haneda Airport. It's about 2 hours and 45 minutes away. This is our getaway. This is my 50th birthday kind of escape from the city and don't do any work and now I'm sharing with you our departure live stream. And I'll take you through the airport and give you a quick overview of this little airport in paradise.

00:00:56 John Daub: Painushima is the name of Ishigaki's airport here and it's pretty easy to get here. Here's the port city which I did a live stream a couple of days ago which you can take a look on here. Yeah, so that's where we're going to start from and there's the sign. So this is where you arrive and you depart. The buses are over there. We caught our airport bus was just over there. You can get there's a taxi stand as well. And then here's the sign that says domestic terminal.

00:01:25 John Daub: I said, and here's the airport building and let's go take a quick look inside. They actually have renovated this. You can see the shisa (Okinawan guardian lion-dogs). These are mythological creatures from Okinawa gods and you'll find them in front of buildings, one with a mouth open and one with a mouth closed everywhere. You can see flights have just arrived and we're going to take a look at the arrivals and departures on the second floor there. There's an observation deck. I'll take you quickly up there. We don't have a lot of time and there's even an aquarium with aquatic life. Again, like we're on the Pacific so scuba diving is something that's really amazing here.

00:02:09 John Daub: Wow. I guess that flight just came. Oh, hey. Hello. Hello. Hi. Do you have a good trip? Oh, yeah. All right. Where's the birthday cake? It's underneath there. We should go in a couple of minutes, right? So our flight is leaving. See, there's a lot of flights that are coming in. Actually, every 15 minutes, there's a lot of flights that are coming in.

00:02:54 John Daub: So I want to take you quickly upstairs. Here's like an Okinawa food stand that they got here with kaisendon (seafood rice bowl) and Okinawa soba so you can get like a final meal. Wow. There's a quick look at the menu here. All right. I want to go take you upstairs quickly, take a look around. There's a Starbucks here. That's the only one on the island just for anybody who's a fan of that chain. We'll take you up to the second floor's observation deck. Here's where the chain is. It's a little bit more hidden from the outside.

00:03:43 John Daub: But the ideal check-in for the domestic terminals are right here. And we've already checked in. We're going to get to our airplane in about five minutes. But they do it a little bit differently in Japan. First you check in online and then they'll take your bags. And then you have to take your bags precisely yourself at domestic terminals outside of Tokyo and you have to have it. There will be security guard that will scan your suitcases for you and then take the bags off, and you can also say to and then you'll see a goodbye. They don't actually take your suitcases at the window. You have to, it's a little confusing. Hey, Vic Vic's here, how you doing? And WRX Turbo, WRX Turbo is in the house.

00:04:28 John Daub: Alright, here's the departures and you can, it's kinda neat, after you go through security, this is where we're going to be. And you can see people starting to get on the flights right now. Oh, here's the security to go through. Wow, it's kind of long. We're gonna have to get there. Ooh, Nagai. Nagai.

00:04:54 John Daub: Just kinda overview of the hotel, the lobby. It's kinda nice. I like it, like if you do arrive and you're waiting for somebody to come pick you up or something, you can get a drink and some food and kinda eat in a nice little lounge right there. Little hangout.

00:05:26 John Daub: Our flight's at 3:50, so we have, okay, we gotta move. Where's the observation deck? Well, there you go, there's some restrooms here. Let's go down. Did I miss, I guess the observation deck was the other way around. Well, I was assuming we'd have just a little bit more time, but because we have Leo, we need a little extra time to get on the flight. It's funny that ANA's on one side and JAL's on the other. So this is where you would check in for JAL on this side here.

00:06:06 John Daub: Before you get on a flight, domestic terminals don't have any food. So you might wanna pick up a can of Spam or something from Okinawa, they have a local ji biru (local beer) or awamori (Okinawan distilled liquor). And if you're gonna get a gift or something like that, you can grab a shisa from the store, and definitely some confections. They have some good stuff. Habushu (snake liquor), which is the alcohol with the snake in it. I don't know if you're all familiar with that. They also have some really cool t-shirts here in Okinawa. The Ishigaki t-shirts, we got one for Leo.

00:06:48 John Daub: The t-shirt was the ice cream maker. Does anybody remember what that's called? Okay. I think that Goyaiba [?] makes these Okinawa chocolate cookies with beni imo (purple sweet potato). Quite nice.

00:07:01 John Daub: And just a little bit of information that I thought was interesting. Royce, which is the Hokkaido chocolatier, Royce potato chips, those are my favorite. They also have an Okinawa style chocolate, and they make these chocolate potato chips, which are so darn good, with the salt from Okinawa, which is quite famous. And they only make it, they only sell it here, as well as like mango chocolate and a couple of other confections. I haven't seen it outside of Hokkaido. And here. So there's a lot of places to pick up some stuff here. And here's the lobby. Oh, there's another, there's another food shop here. You can get the Ishigaki beef. This wagyu beef is some of the best in Japan. And it is quite pricey if you're eating it at the hotel. The price looks pretty good, actually. 5,000 yen. And then you have the local soba.

00:07:59 John Daub: Asa. Do you see the asa? That's seaweed on the right side with the umibudo (sea grapes). So good. That asa tempura is my favorite. I don't know if you've ever had asa tempura. If you're in the area, you gotta get that.

00:08:16 John Daub: So there you go. This is a quick overview of the Ishigaki airport. We gotta go, but it's kind of fun to take a look inside and get an idea, because all the regional airports here in Japan are different. Take a look at the live stream. We did a couple of days ago to get an idea of what the town is like, the port here. And I'll see you back in Tokyo, everybody. Matane (see you later).