Japan Journal: Ie Island

For three springs now I've been trying to get to one of the outlying islands off of Okinawa for their Lily Festival and I can finally say I made it! The Ie Island Lily Festival takes place at the end of each April/beginning of May and is a celebration of over one million blooming white Easter lilies.

As the trip is kind of long, I've been waiting for the "perfect" day. Ie. the lilies are blooming, the weather is sunny and warm and I'm not teaching. These three things have not been willing to line up until Thursday, when I took the chance! Of course it helped to prompt me that my neighbor, Suzy, agreed to come along. We left at 9:00 am after dropping London at school with the intent of catching the 11:00 ferry (it's an hour and a half drive to the port). Well, I drove to the wrong port, and then after another wrong stop, we finally found the right port and watched the ferry pull out as we were walking up!

Oh well, we caught the 12:00 ferry instead and sailed under cloudy skies to the port on Ie. As we got off the ship, we felt sprinkles but ignoring those, we caught a bus to the lily fields.

Ten minutes later, as we stepped off the bus, the skies cleared, the sun shone strong and the beauty of the lilies and the ocean hit us full force. Gorgeous! I do believe I heard some angels singing.