UNOFFICIAL GUIDE
YAEYAMA / A RAINY DAY
In an average year, more than 2,000 mm of rain falls on Ishigaki. Rain is a rightful resident of the island year — it raised these forests and fields. So that the rain on your travel day is never called a miss, here are the islands' rainy-day faces, drawn from public sources and this page's own eye.
THREE ISLANDS IN THE RAIN
The three sketches below are this page's editorial impressions; where a statement rests on a source, the text says so in place. Facts always belong to the sources; how it feels belongs to you. And yet there are faces of the islands you can only meet in the rain.
The white-sand lanes drink the rain and firm underfoot; the red tiles and stone walls turn deeper the wetter they get. Waiting out a shower under the eaves is part of the village quiet. When it lifts, the lanes slowly return to white.
Know Taketomi Island →Mangroves in the brackish waters, wetlands along rivers and coasts, primeval forest in the mountains — that is how Okinawa Prefecture describes this island. In 2021, Iriomote was inscribed as part of the World Natural Heritage property “Amami-Oshima Island, Tokunoshima Island, Northern part of Okinawa Island, and Iriomote Island”. What raised that forest is, above all, rain.
Know Iriomote Island →The cane fields and hills hold their colors down through the rain, then give the light back all at once when it lifts. Watching the sea change color from the hilltop is a view that appears only on the far side of a rainy day.
Know Kohama Island →THE SEA, IN THE RAIN
This compass began with a single sea: UMI, a lagoon drawn in image and sound. Its weather is a plaything — calm, wind, rain, downpour, storm — switchable at any time. If it is raining outside your window today, you can go meet the lagoon in the rain.
UMI's rain sound is not a single sheet of noise but a layering of single water-drop sounds. Rings open on the water; image and sound are drawn from the same drop.
In a downpour, curtains of rain haze the view, and the clouds diminish the sun itself. A lagoon sunk in lead-gray is another honest face of the island sea.
In the middle of any storm, one tap carries you out of it — to the real sky of this moment, or to calm. That is this work's standing promise. Watching the rain, and coming home from it, both rest in your hand.
HOW TO READ A RAINY DAY
This page forecasts nothing. When rain comes and when it stops always belongs to the JMA. What is here is only the climatological fact of rain — and the faces the islands wear in it.
Check the sky of your travel day against the forecast of the moment. This page promises neither “it will soon stop” nor “it will not rain”. Decisions about the sea and sailings, too, always start from official information.
Japan Meteorological Agency ↗By climatological normals, Ishigaki receives more than 2,000 mm of rain a year. Okinawa's rainy season runs on average from around May 10 to June 21, and winter's northerly monsoon brings days of light rain. Rain is not an exception — it is part of the normal year.
Ishigaki climate normals ↗No right answer for a rainy day is written here. Waiting under the eaves, heading for the forest, listening to the sea from your room — each is travel. And if you would rather choose a direction again, the compass awaits.
Find a journey on UMI YAIMA COMPASS →This page is an unofficial, independent work. The rain and climate figures (annual precipitation, rainy-season normals, the winter monsoon) summarize the JMA sources below, and the statements on Iriomote's nature and the World Natural Heritage inscription summarize UNESCO and Okinawa Prefecture, confirmed by 2026-07-18 (in part at the level of search-result titles and summaries). The three “rainy-day faces” and the passages on how to spend the day are this page's editorial impressions, not quotations. No forecasts or current conditions are included — always confirm officially at the time of travel.