So I arrived on Aka Island last Tuesday. Aka Island is this tiny island in the Pacific Ocean and, as referenced in the title of this blog post, objectively the most beautiful place in the world. It’s very remote – just a small village with a petrol pump, a cafe, a few guesthouses sparsely dotted around, loads of deer, stray cats, and (surprisingly) a bar.

It’s a two and a half hour flight from Tokyo to Naha, Okinawa, then a quick ride along the monorail to the port, and finally a one hour ferry to Aka.

I checked in to Hanamuro Inn way before the allocated check-in time and the host Abe-san was happy to accommodate. He gave me a tour of my room (a pretty simple set-up with two single beds) and the shared bathroom, outdoor eating and drinking area, and the two bathtubs.

“Kind of like swimming pool,” explained Abe-san as he pointed to the tubs. Not really anything like a swimming pool but still fun.

Abe-san gave me a map of the beaches and I headed down to the closest one, Maehama. Abe-san told me I could find Nemo if I swam to the left. If I swam to the right, I would apparently find stonefish. I gave stonefish a quick google when I was putting on my snorkel. They’re these big ugly things that look just like stones but happen to be one of the most venomous fish in the world. Step on one of these bad boys and you’ll be dead in an hour. I was scared to go into the water after that.

A few hours went by. I was hot and sweaty from the sun. I watched a boy flap around on the rocks and then jump into the water fully clothed. He splashed around for a while and I decided if he could do it, so could I.

The water was clear. The light sliced through the surface, hitting my hands and arms in sharp bright lines. My breath was heavy and loud in my snorkel and all I could think about was the stonefish. I had to swim pretty far out to catch a glimpse of anything and although I didn’t see Nemo, I did see clusters of small zebra-like fish with thick black and white stripes. They were beautiful.

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I went back to the hostel to use the ‘swimming pool’ and Abe-san turned up with his kids and the homemade bento boxes that were to be our dinner. I sat outside with the other guests at the hostel and we ate taco rice, which Abe-san referred to as ‘Okinawan soul food’.

I’m going to digress from the chronological regurgitation of my holiday for a small taco rice appreciation paragraph. I don’t know if you guys watched Paul Hollywood Eats Japan, but in one of the episodes he goes to Okinawa and he eats taco rice. It’s a hybrid Japanese-American delicacy and a direct result of the Americans entering Okinawa during the second world war and setting up military bases and then never leaving. So yeah, Paul Hollywood went to Okinawa, ate taco rice and was kind of rude about it on Channel 4. It’s rice with taco meat, lettuce, cheese and, if made by Abe-san, a topping of crushed Doritos. Paul Hollywood infiltrated my mind and as such I had previously turned my nose up at this rice dish because it wasn’t a ‘real taco’. How wrong I was.

Abe-san’s taco rice was delicious. I didn’t take a picture of it, but here’s another taco rice I ate later on the mainland, sans Dorito topping.

Anyway back to my adventures on Aka Island. On day two, I walked for about twenty minutes to get to another beach called Nishibama. Another beautiful, beautiful place. I walked up a wooden walkway to an observatory with views of the beach and all the undisturbed mossy green islands around us.

The sea was a technicolour of blue with dark splodges of rock sprayed with turquoise water. There were so many islands, and birds and butterflies and lizards racing across the walkway. I watched as the High Speed Queen Zamami ferry tore its way from the mainland towards the port. I wanted it to turn around and go back the way it came because the best thing about Aka Island is that there is absolutely no one there.

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My days on Aka Island followed a similar pattern. I befriended an English guy called Charlie from the inn. Like me he was also living in Tokyo, though he was ‘working from home’ on the sly from Hanamuro Inn. On the third day, we walked down to another beach where we snorkelled and sunbathed and talked about the books, podcasts and TV shows we liked. In the evening we picked up a new guest called Yeonjin, a Korean girl who was also based in Tokyo. The three of us hit up the island bar, Yonamine House, where you can get cocktails the colour of the sea. Later we drank beers in the guesthouse and looked at pictures of weird animal penises on Yeonjin’s phone.

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On Friday, Charlie and I went to Zamami Island where he was staying for the next couple of days, and where it’s rumoured you can swim with sea turtles. We walked to Ama Beach, another white-sand/turquoise-water/hardly-anyone-around kind of set-up. We arrived at eight thirty and could already see one turtle frolicking around in the shallow end. We took our time getting our snorkels out, confident we’d see hundreds of turtles, and by the time we got into the water, the turtle had swum far far away. We snorkelled for a while but didn’t see anymore that day.

I returned to Aka Island where many new guests had checked in. There were three Japanese boys, who I couldn’t communicate particularly well with, a bearded American man called Patrick, a smiley Okinawan girl called Narumi and an American girl called Emma. Yeonjin was also staying at the inn for another night and all eight of us drank beer together and watched the sunset on the pier. We stayed for hours and watched the stars and played reggaeton off Emma’s phone.

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In the morning, the gang of eight headed to Aka beach where we snorkelled and this time we saw a big fat turtle. Two of the Japanese boys and I were far out in the water, splashing around and looking at the little fish, and suddenly there it was. The turtle just peacefully swam and swam and swam and the three of us followed it. It was kind of mesmerising just to watch and the best thing about turtles is that they swim even slower than I do, so I had no problem keeping up. We swam with the turtle for what felt like hours (probably more like twenty minutes) and were pretty disoriented when we surfaced so much further from the beach than we’d imagined.

The Aka leg of my Okinawa tour ended that day and I took the ferry back to the mainland. For my final three nights I was staying at the Okinawa Harborview Hotel, a fancy place with a shiny lobby and a pool. I had a long bath and conditioned my hair about three times to get out all the sand and salt and grease that Aka Island had put into it. Then I put on my complimentary pyjamas and slept very well that night.

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On Sunday I lay by the pool and in the evening I walked up to the shopping street Kokusai-Dori (as pictured above), where I did some souvenir shopping and ate a hearty plate of taco rice. On Monday, I met up with Akira who is now also living in Okinawa. He is based in the north of the mainland and I was in Naha, which is in the south, but we met in the middle, in the American Village. The American Village is kind of like Disneyland. It’s close to a lot of American military bases and it serves as some kind of a nostalgic entertainment complex for residents of the bases as well as an interesting diversion for the locals.

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We lay on the beach then ate smoothie bowls before going to a bar. It was the middle of the day, the prices on the laminated menus were in dollars and there were more fat white men drinking beer and playing darts than there were Japanese people in sight. It genuinely felt like some nondescript mid-town bar plonked on a tropical island, customers and all, which I guess is exactly what it was.

Akira carries all his belongings on his back and hitchhikes wherever he needs to go. As a result, we hitchhiked back from the American Village to Naha in the afternoon, first with the help of an American military couple and then with the help of a twenty-one year old singer on her way to her friend’s house to do a concert via Instagram live. Each of our drivers wanted to get a selfie with the two of us and we made it back to the city in rapid time. Beats the bus any day.

And then yesterday on my final day in Okinawa, I said goodbye to Akira and met up with Narumi, who I met on Aka Island. She works as a travel agent on one of the military bases but has a few weeks holiday at the moment. Narumi is so much fun. She picked me up from the hotel and we drove around Okinawa for the day. We ate sashimi for lunch, swam in the sea and then she dropped me at the airport before my flight. I texted her saying thank you and she replied saying that she loved my positive energy and wildness and now we’re best friends forever.

And now I’m back in Tokyo. It’s raining, my laundry won’t dry and my tanned skin is already peeling off my back. I miss the tropics.