It is a 30-minute drive from Ishigaki Airport. Once you arrive at the port, take another 30 minutes by liner from there. You will arrive at Kohama Port on Kohama Island between Ishigaki Island and Taketomi Island. From there, it is another 5 minutes by free shuttle bus to “Haimurubushi”, which takes a lot of guts to get there.
It is a long-established hotel established in 1979, but it is still a wonderful resort hotel that continues to evolve even after more than 40 years since its opening, with new guest rooms being created through renewal.
Point 1: The collective cottage-type rooms at “Haimurubushi” are too good to be true!
There are nine different room types at Haimurubushi, ranging from standard (47 m2) to ocean view bath suites (60 m2), all of which are cottage type with several houses in a group.
Three of them are garden view and the rest are ocean view. Among them, we recommend the Ocean View Bath Suite, which opened in April 2018!
After all, the bath you can take while looking at the ocean is in your room, which gives you a different sense of openness.
In addition, the Ocean View Suite was renovated in February 2020 and the Ocean View Deluxe in April 2017, and other rooms are constantly being maintained and renewed so that they do not look old.
The design of the guest rooms is not eccentric, but rather, as if in keeping with the tradition of resort hotels from the good old days, beige and brown are the basic colors, with a hint of Okinawan ocean blue used as an accent color.
Furniture and other furnishings are of a type whose quality can be recognized at a glance, and although they have been used for a long time, this gives them a sense of value.
Prices are expensive even for standard rooms during the high summer season, but in the off-season, you can stay for about 40,000 yen for two people including breakfast.
The official website may be a good place to start, especially since there is a large difference in price between on-season and off-season.
Point 2: The dining room at Haimurubushi is too full!
Haimurubushi has several restaurants where you can have breakfast, lunch, and dinner, as well as open cafes, bars, and even izakaya (Japanese style pubs).
Therefore, you can enjoy the food of Yaeyama without leaving the premises.
For example, breakfast is a buffet-style meal that mixes Japanese and Western food using local ingredients, but it is not a typical breakfast buffet, as there are some dishes that make the most of Okinawan ingredients, such as seafood rice bowl with sea grapes and rafte curry.
You can also have a fermented food breakfast for an extra charge.
Many people who are squeamish about eating foods that are good for their health when they come to a place with rich nature like Kohama Island may want to try it.
It is also flexible, so you can swap breakfast for lunch, or take it out to the park in a lunch box and eat it on a picnic.
You can also have taco rice or pasta at the café for lunch, and for dinner you can have BBQ, shabu-shabu, sukiyaki, or a set menu at the grill dining room, or a course meal at the club dining room for an extra charge, but there are so many choices you will be lost.
Point 3: There is a wide range of activities at Haimurubushi.
The site of “Haimurubushi” belongs to the Iriomote-Ishigaki National Park and covers a vast area of 400,000 square meters. In the center of the park, there is a center building where island songs are sung live, and accommodation buildings are scattered around the park, along with a large bath with a view, yoga room, ground golf, animal petting area, buffalo pond, and beach terrace.
Guests travel around the spacious grounds in carts, go out to eat, and enjoy activities.
Activities include marine sports, yoga, fishing, ATV tours, kayaking & canoeing, island culture, nature experiences, and a large bathhouse with a view of the ocean.
Yoga classes are offered from morning and sunset yoga to private and SUP yoga, and Lotus 8, a leading yoga studio in Japan that produced the magazine “Yogini” in order to offer yoga classes at “Haimurubushi”.
As you can see, “Haimurubushi” is a hotel where you can experience so much more than you can experience in one night. We hope you will stay a few nights and wash your life away.
