To get from Naha to Kagoshima you can fly or you can get a 25 hour overnight ferry. We decided on the Naha Kagoshima ferry option.

Naha Kagoshima ferry tickets

It cost ¥16,200 each for the one way journey, staying in a shared cabin with 8 bunk beds. ¥14,200 each was paid when we booked the ferry at the KNT travel agent in Japan. And ¥2000 each was to be paid at the ferry terminal as a supplement for having a room, rather than sleeping on the floor. We booked in advance, but you can buy tickets on the day as well. I think the ferry had plenty of free space when we went (early August) – especially in the cabins.

Our day started early as we had to be at the ferry terminal between 6am and 6:30am to check in. Naha has quite a few ferry terminals on this side of the island. Our ferry was leaving from Naha port near Asahibashi monorail station.

Inside we went to the check-in area.

At the check-in we had to present our booking confirmation and fill in a form (‘Boarding Application’) with our names and a few other details. We had to ask the person behind the counter for a cabin, and then we paid our extra ¥2000 each.

No one seemed to speak English here, and all the signs were in Japanese, so make sure you get here early so you can get everything sorted.

After we had filled in the form and we got our boarding passes. The bits at the front get us onto the boat. And the yellow bit at the back shows that we have paid extra for the cabin.

Boarding the A-Line ferry

Boarding was at 6:30am so we still had a little time to wait. There is a shop inside the port building if you need any last minute food or drink. At about 6:30am we queued up with the others to get on the ship.

It was raining and very windy so we had to make a run for it across the concrete to the ships stairs, and then get up the stairs as fast as we could!

This ship was the フェリーなみのうえ (Naminoue Ferry).

A-line ferry cabin

Inside we showed our tickets to one of the staff. He told us where the room was in Japanese, but as we didn’t quite understand he lead us to where it was. They don’t give you a room key, the room just stays unlocked the whole time. This is the inside of the room. Not visible in the picture on the ceiling is a control for the air conditioning, and another for the speaker volume. I recommend you set the volume to ‘1’ so you hear the announcements without being startled.

Here is a closer look at one of the beds. There is a light, a hook, a fold-up net shelf, a blanket, and a black leather looking box.

That black box is your pillow! It is fairly solid, and feels higher than a normal pillow. As it was quite hard I found that I couldn’t lie on my side as it squashed my ear! They do supply paper covers for the pillows for ‘hygiene reasons’, but I found it more comfortable to put the pillow in an old t-shirt. At this stage of the journey we were the only ones in the cabin.

If you don’t want to pay the cabin supplement then you get to sleep in one of the large communal sleeping rooms. Each space is numbered so you’ll know which one is yours.

Sailing from Naha on the A-line ferry

Then the ship set sail. There isn’t very much to do for the 25 hours. You can walk on the deck, there is an upstairs deck as well.

You can sit on the seats or carpet watching the sea.

Or you can walk around the two main floors. The upper floor had the cabins and a few communal sleeping rooms. The lower floor had the reception, ship, vending machines, some arcade games, and another sleeping room.

Food on board

Canteen style meals are served in either the main restaurant, or the breakfast restaurant. You can buy ramen, curry rice, udon, plain rice, tofu and salad.

You can also get food and drinks from the small shop and vending machines.

The overall food selection isn’t great so you might need to bring some of your own food.

Loading / unloading

Every three to four hours the boat would pull into another island. Once docked people would leave or board. Fork lift trucks would spring into action taking cargo crates on and off the boat.

Before the last stop of the day a member of the crew came into our cabin and told us that someone else would be joining us. Twenty minutes later a Japanese man came in and claimed his bunk.

I got quite a good sleep on the ferry, much better than my experience on the overnight Bari to Patras ferry that I took some years ago. From that experience I’d learnt that bringing an eye mask and ear plugs is a good idea if you have to share your sleeping space with strangers. Fortunately the Japanese man was very quiet, and the rocking motion of the ship sent me to sleep.

Arriving at Kagoshima

On the reception they update a notice saying when the ship will dock in the next port. Kagoshima was the last stop. The ship was supposed to get into Kagoshima at 8:30am and at 8:40am we were able to leave the boat. We had to give our tickets to a man on the way out – so don’t throw them away when you get on.

Outside the ferry was a paid shuttle but that took us to Kagoshima JR station.

One word of warning – after being on a rocking boat for 25 hours both of us found that we were a bit unstable on our feet for the morning and a bit into the afternoon once we’d disembarked. It was as if we were still on a rocking boat. Allow yourself a bit of time to adjust to solid land again.

More information

More details on the Naha to Kagoshima ferry route are available from the A-line ferry website. You might also hear this company being referred to as ‘Marue Ferry’ group. Specific information on the ship we sailed on can be found here. Using Google Translate may help to make more sense of it.

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Here are some photos of the three hotels we recently stayed at when we visited Naha and Ishigaki (both part of Okinawa).

Hyper Hotel Ishigakijima

First up the Hyper Hotel Ishigakijima which is near the sea and the main city of Ishigaki. It is about 15-20 minutes from the airport by bus. No English was spoken on check in and the man insisted on seeing both of our alien registration cards (normally Japanese hotels only want the ID of the person whose name is on the booking).

The rooms were clean and functional in a business hotel style with most of the usual hotel items. No fridge though.

The bathroom was very generic with a usual Japanese electronic toilet, shower and bath.

Free internet is available if you bring your own computer and LAN cable.

We got a room that faced the sea, but due to building works taking place across the road the view was less than sensational.

A basic breakfast of bread, and rice balls was included in the dining area on the ground floor of the hotel. The hotel also has a coin laundry, very useful if you are travelling light.

Search for hotels on Ishigaki… (on HotelsCombined.com)

Hostel Burney’s Breakfast

Hostel Burney’s Breakfast was an interesting place. As it was a hostel the rooms were cheaper than staying in a hotel, but they were small. The room was almost exactly the same size as two mattresses.

On one end of the room an old mattress placed on the floor touched three sides of the room. On the other side of the room was some modern looking lights and a computer. The place also has free WiFi if you bring your own computer.

The guy who was running the place was friendly, and spoke much better English than at most of the hotels we’d stayed at on this holiday. The check-in was very quick, and he didn’t seem bothered about seeing our IDs.

Instead of being numbered the rooms had letters. Some of the electrical, plumbing and building work in this hostel looked very DIY! See the electrical connection on the ceiling in the photo on the left.

Also in the room the curtain didn’t extend across the window. At least there was air conditioning. You can see where someone has filled in the gap in the window where the air conditioning pipe goes outside.

As well as private rooms they have a capsule sleeping area, presumably even cheaper.

There was a shared toilet and shower area, and laundry facilities were available too. This place is fine if you want somewhere cheap and want to be able to meet other travellers, but if you want something more luxurious you’ll need to pay more.

Search for hotels in Naha… (on HotelsCombined.com)

Hotel Rasso Naha Tomari

The Hotel Rasso Naha Tomari is another generic business looking hotel. The staff spoke no English, but we managed to check in with a little Japanese.

The Hotel Rasso Naha Tomari is about 15 minutes walk from the Kokusai dori, and near to the port area for visiting Tokashiki Island. Be aware that there are quite a few Hotel Rassos in the area, so make sure you find the correct one.

The rooms are smart and clean with free internet. There was no view, so the window served only to let in light.

They had a breakfast in their dining room downstairs of rice balls and bread. But get there early, once the breakfast runs out they won’t bring more!

Search for hotels in Naha… (on HotelsCombined.com)

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Ishigaki, Okinawa is reachable from Naha Airport via a one hour flight. The island is small and very drivable. Public transport outside the main city is limited so the best way to see the island is to rent a car. You can do a loop of the whole island in a few hours, but if you make stops along the way you can spend a day going round the island.

Near to the city centre is a botanical gardens (left) and a peace bell (right).

In most places the roads are wide, and flat, with very little other traffic. The other people on the road are polite, and don’t get angry if you drive slow, or hold them up by doing a three point turn.

We chose to go around the island clockwise, and follow whichever road was closest to the sea.

You will get great views from the car, but for some of the famous views such as Kabira Bay can only be seen if you get out of the car, and walk a few minutes.

Some of the beaches are designated as swimming beaches, and have marked out areas for swimming and snorkelling. These beaches do tend to have showers, but don’t tend to have coin lockers, so you’ll need someone to stay on the beach to look after your clothes and valuables. Or you could just risk leaving your clothes on the beach. Japan is very safe compared to other Western countries.

Here is the lighthouse at the very North of Ishigaki. You can climb up the small hill to get a great view of the sea and the nearby coast line.

Our Ishigaki rental car cost ¥7000 for 24 hours. We paid an extra ¥525 for insurance, and filling the car back up with petrol (‘Mantan’) when we had finished with it cost another ¥2100.

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Trusteer Rapport is a piece of security software to help protect your Mac’s internet browser against key logging and phishing attacks. It is being pushed by a number of large banks including NatWest, ING and First Direct. I’ve previously written about using Trusteer Rapport on a PC , and today I’m putting up some screen shots of what it looks like on a Mac.

When installed (you can download it from here you’ll get an extra icon next to your address bar. It will be green if the website is being protected, and grey if it is not. You can choose to protect a website that you log into by right clicking on the grey Trusteer arrow and clicking on ‘Protect this website’.

If you click on the arrow you’ll get an information box like this which will allow you to access the console.

The first page of the console should look a bit like this giving you the option to disable the Trusteer Rapport icon.

Trusteer Rapport for Mac has a lot less options than the PC version. On the security policy page all the options are set to the highest level of protection apart from the ‘Warn when login information is used in unknown websites’.

If you want you can set this option to ‘On my partner & my sensitive websites’, which will give you a warning if one websites’s password is entered into another website.

I have read one account of someone having problems with Trusteer Rapport on a Mac, but I’ve not experienced any problems with it on my MacBook Pro. If you do find yourself wanting to uninstall it you can get full instructions from Trusteer’s uninstall page.

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