Cruising around Japan: ‘Small fishing ports on far flung islands became potential cruising destinations’

Little explored by international cruisers, Cameron Dueck experienced a warm welcome when cruising around Japan.

Far ahead on the horizon we saw the sweep of a lighthouse and the pin pricks of street lamps along the coast. We did some quick maths – the number of miles remaining in our journey divided by the number of hours until sunrise. The answer was that we were arriving at Ishigaki, the most southerly port of clearance in Japan, earlier than planned.

“We need to slow down the boat,” my partner and crew Fiona said with a tinge of anxiousness in her voice. “They said we should arrive at 0900, and exactly at 0900.”

We furled the genoa and slowly approached the island, marvelling at the pristine beaches and lush mountain landscape revealed by the dawn. But we still carried a knot of worry in our stomachs, because we were about to clear into Japan, and we’d heard all of the well-worn warnings and complaints.

We’d left our home in Hong Kong six months earlier to live the cruising around Japan dream. Instead of taking the most popular route into Southeast Asia via the Philippines, we sailed north-east, spending a winter in Taiwan before carrying on to Japan.

I was met with surprise when I told sailors in Hong Kong that we were foregoing the known delights of the Philippines for the unknown challenges of cruising around Japan.

They reminded me that Japan was very bureaucratic, and clearing a boat into the country without speaking Japanese would be a huge hassle.

There’d be obscure rules and pedantic officials, and once we were in the country, the lack of a cruising culture and infrastructure meant our time would be consumed with paperwork every time we exited or entered a port. Where would we moor? And wasn’t Japan very expensive?

I steered Teng Hoi, our Hallberg-Rassy 42F, past Ishigaki’s formidable sea wall and towards the pier we’d been instructed to arrive at. It was five minutes before nine as we secured our lines, but there were no officials in sight.

“That’s odd. They said they’d be here to meet us at nine o’clock,” Fiona observed as we scanned the port.

Then, just as our ship’s clock struck 0900, more than a dozen officers stepped out of their vehicles and strode down the pier towards us. They wore a variety of crisp uniforms – Coast Guard, Quarantine, Immigration, Customs – complimented by white hard hats on their heads and clipboards under their arms.

One by one they boarded the boat, each equally polite, organised, and efficient. They used a small digital translation device to ask a few questions, then carry out their task before thanking us, giving us a small bow, and climbing back up on the pier.

One officer asked to see our heads, rubbish bin, and food storage, apparently to ease their hygiene concerns. Another swabbed countertops and cabinets for drugs, and another made us dispose of all our grains and vegetables, while one was tasked with spraying the soles of all the shoes he could find.

Two hours later my hand was cramped from signing papers, but the last official was stepping off the boat, bowing and welcoming us to Japan. “That wasn’t too bad,” I said, feeling a wave of relief.

It was the first of what would be many revelations as we explored Japan by sail. Instead of a bureaucratic hassle we found friendly officials, a myriad of mooring options, and a level of safety and ease that few other cruising destinations can offer. And on top of that, the weak Yen made Japan more affordable than ever.

Cruising around Japan

It is true that Japan was once a difficult place to visit aboard a foreign vessel. From 1633 to 1868, during the Sakoku or ‘chained country’ era, Japan had only minimal, strained relations with other nations, and few foreigners were allowed into the country.

Despite the eventual opening up of the country, particularly after World War II, Japan continued to be a difficult port of call.

Even though it has more than 3,000 ports, only about 130 were open to foreign vessels, creating challenges for yachts that wanted to cruise the country’s 14,125 islands stretching more than 1,600 miles from the East China Sea in the south-west to the Sea of Okhotsk in the north-east.

Those difficulties ended in 2018 when Japan introduced a new system that allows foreigners to apply for a closed-port permit, which provides unfettered access to all the previously closed ports, at any time, without booking or, in most cases, payment.

Suddenly the many small fishing ports on far flung islands became potential cruising destinations, and voyages up and down the coast could easily be broken into day sails with nights in a harbour.

Foreign boats can also apply for a Naiko Senpaku, which exempts them from having to report to the Coast Guard and customs each time they enter or leave a large open, or clearance port. And, there are no limits on how long a foreign vessel can stay in Japan.

Yet few cruisers are aware how this has opened up one the most spectacular cruising grounds in the world. Most foreign yachts that do visit Japan use it as a transit point on their way to Alaska and breeze through in one or two months. We decided to take it slow.

On the fringe

Our Japanese cruise began at the southern end of the Ryukyu (Okinawan) Islands, which offer tropical weather, white sand beaches and warm, crystal clear water.

This is the most far flung hinterland of Japan, geographically, historically and culturally. The Ryukyu Kingdom was a tributary state of Ming China, ruling the string of islands from Southern Japan to Taiwan for about 450 years before annexation by the Meiji government of Japan in 1879.

Okinawa Island is the largest island in the chain, and Yonabaru Marina on its south-east shores is a popular place for visiting yachts to clear into Japan and enjoy an affordable lift out.

The unique Ryukyu culture is still present in local dialects and cuisine, such as the indigenous liquor Awamori, distilled from long-grain rice, and cuisine that leans heavily on indigenous culture as well as Chinese influences. This nuanced identity also includes a strong South Pacific aspect, with colourful Hawaiian shirts a common sight on local streets.

The islands were only returned to Japanese rule in 1972, while the Americans still keep 30,000 active military personnel on the island – a sensitive point with local residents. Today, the southern half of Okinawa is a largely charmless suburbia while the northern half sports lush parks and dream-like traditional villages.

From Okinawa we sailed to the Kerama Islands, a small archipelago just 20 miles east of Okinawa Island. We made the trip in pouring rain. First we were beset by 35-knot squalls, and then had to motor through windless grey seas.

We were caught in the start of the spring rainy season, known as the Baiu, which starts in Okinawa in early May and lasts about a month.

The Kerama’s were tranquil and empty, with few other yachts. We dropped anchor in a sandy bay and spent several days exploring the colourful reefs, accompanied by sea turtles.

We spent the next several weeks sailing north through the Ryukyu Island chain, where the swell of the Pacific Ocean was our constant companion. We kept our passages to 24 or 36 hours, stopping in quiet anchorages with vivid reefs and sea life, or in small fishing harbours shielded by massive concrete seawalls.

The spring migratory cyclones and anticyclones, which drift eastward, brought constantly changing conditions, from strong breezes to calms.

We sailed on to Kyushu Island, the first of the main five islands of the archipelago. Hirado and Nagasaki, two neighbouring ports on the west coast of Kyushu, were Japan’s main trading ports for centuries.

We arrived in Hirado on a brisk wind, sped along by a flood tide just as the sun was setting. It is a snug little port guarded by an island that turns the strong tidal currents into tangles of waves and whirlpools just outside the entrance. The surrounding hills are dotted with centuries-old Japanese and European homes, temples, shrines and churches.

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Ming dynasty

Hirado is the birthplace of Zheng Chenggong, also known as Koxinga, the Ming general and pirate who drove the Dutch out of Taiwan in the 17th Century.

The port was used for trade with Korea and China for centuries before the first Portuguese ship arrived in 1550, marking the first interactions between Japan and the West. Then the Dutch sailed into port in 1609, building Hirado into one of the major international shipping ports of its day.

We moored on Hirado’s free public pier in front of the museum, a replica of the warehouse the Dutch built on the same site in 1639, making it the first western-style building in Japan.

But Japan’s Tokugawa Shogunate grew nervous at the growing might of the maritime traders, demolished the trading house and forced the Dutch to move their operations to Dejima Island, a man-made island in the heart of the port of Nagasaki.

By the time we sailed into Nagasaki nearly four centuries later, land reclamation had swallowed Dejima island. However, careful reconstruction and refurbishment of several historical buildings had turned the trading fort into a lively museum telling the story of Japan’s love-hate relationship with maritime trade.

The warehouses smelled of tarred hemp rope, and ornate parlours and dining rooms told the story of how bored Dutch traders were kept isolated from the rest
of Japanese society. Through the bleary leaded glass windowpane I could see our yacht tied up on a nearby pontoon.

Wild sea of Japan

As we left Kyushu we had to make a choice. We could turn east into the Seto Naikai, a well protected inland sea with major cities such as Hiroshima and Osaka on its shores and arguably Japan’s most popular cruising ground, or we could continue north along the Japan Sea coast.

If Okinawa is Japan’s frontier, the Sea of Japan’s coast is its rural boondocks. Agriculture, mining and forestry have helped shape the landscape, but large expanses of wilderness remain. The shores and its sprinkling of outlying islands were the last to be developed.

We were seeking wild nature and adventure, so we chose the Sea of Japan. It meant we’d be more exposed to the weather, which was beginning to transition from prevailing north-westerlies to the summer monsoon winds from the east, and we were also beginning to keep a sharp watch for the summer typhoons that sweep in from the Pacific Ocean.

We enjoyed a gentle reach up the coast to Yunotsu, a hot springs town dating back to the feudal ages with several traditional guest houses. Public baths exist in nearly every Japanese port, but some are more famous than others based on their mineral mix – the precise details of which are commonly displayed at the entrance.

While we soaked in Yunotsu’s mineral-rich waters, our boat waited alongside the free fishing pier in the town’s harbour, a narrow cleft in the rocky coast. Cruisers have four mooring options in Japan.

There are many excellent and affordable marinas, and in every one we visited we found their staff to be exceedingly helpful in offering advice, contacts, and assistance.

You can also anchor, as we did in the bays of the southern islands, but this is not a common practice around the main islands. Anchoring should only be done in remote bays, with extra caution and lights at night.

Local fishermen are unaccustomed to seeing anchored yachts when they go out fishing at night, and many bays are set with nets.

Japan also has a network of sea stations, modest docks catering to visiting pleasure boats. These are much cheaper than marinas, but offer fewer services, may require pre-booking, and are often geared towards boats under 40ft.

We spent much of our time in the fourth option, Japan’s ubiquitous fishing ports, to which we had free access thanks to our closed port permit.

Fishing ports are basic, and the smell of fish can become bothersome, but coastal towns and villages are built around their ports, putting most services within walking or biking distance. And, because these are working ports with an active fleet of fishing boats, you can always find fuel and mechanics.

The downside of fishing ports is they require yachts to tie to a concrete sea wall or pier. With considerable tides and a possible swell, we quickly learned to use oversized fenders and fender boards to keep the barnacle-encrusted concrete at bay.

We were also adapting to local custom in terms of navigation, using the New Pec smartphone app to guide us along the coast. The Japanese navigation app provides higher detail charts of small fishing ports than Navionics, and it shows where fishermen have been permitted to lay nets.

It also includes granular weather forecasts, excellent tide data, and AIS tracking of traffic – though we were repeatedly caught off guard by the many yachts, fishing boats and even large commercial vessels that did not transmit via AIS.

Northern frontier

Summer was upon us. We continued up the Sea of Japan to Hokkaido to escape the heat, arriving in Hakodate, on the island’s south coast. Our arrival, running ahead of 30 knots of wind on a sunny day, put us in a giddy mood, as we’d now completed the sail from Japan’s southern frontier to its northern outpost.

Our far north was Otaru, a herring boomtown in the 1860s, nestled in Ishikari Bay. The picturesque Otaru Canal and its warehouses were restored in the 1980s, with their patina of the Old Meiji Era stone creating a perfect backdrop for their new life as shops and restaurants.

We left the boat in Otaru as we explored inland, going on high treks in the remote Daisetsuzan National Park, car camping in rich agricultural valleys, and getting our fill of icy cold Sapporo beer, named after the island’s capital.

In September, when the prevailing north-westerly wind gave us a good push south, we began our return voyage down the Sea of Japan. We made 36-hour hops down the coast, visiting majestic old shrines and mooring in island fishing ports so clean we ate sea urchin, or uni, plucked right off the harbour walls.

In many ports the Japanese Coast Guard visited with their clipboards, keen to know where we’d been and where we were going. They were quick to offer information on where the best restaurants were located, and in one port they even took away our rubbish for us – a uniquely welcomed relief as Japan has an elaborate and strictly enforced disposal system that often makes it difficult for cruisers to get rid of waste from the boat.

The hospitality we experienced as cruisers surprised and humbled us. Mooring on public piers invited curious onlookers who were keen to say hello and welcome us to Japan. Often they returned with gifts of vegetables from their garden, a bottle of sake, or a box of fancy cakes. Countless people offered help, secretly paid for our meals in restaurants, or offered us rides.

The warmest welcome came in Sado, an island off the coast of Niigata. Formerly an island of exile, and then the site of a wartime forced labour gold mine, it now attracts creative urbanites seeking a quiet rural life. They’ve built a vibrant community of organic farms, sake breweries, chic restaurants and bakeries.

We pitched in to help with the apple and rice harvest, joined a noodle making gathering, and enjoyed a ‘moon rising party’ while sitting on tatami mats in a century-old wooden house – with Google Translate bridging the language gap. When we finally left harbour our new friends came to the pier and beat a giant drum in farewell.

A late season typhoon was threatening us from the south, so we pushed hard for the protection of the Seto Naikai, 450 miles to the south-west. The winds were just starting to build as we slipped into Kanmon Kaikyo, or Straits of Shimonoseki, the narrow winding channel that led us to safety.

Here the winds were diminished, and there was no swell, but we still had to deal with 3-4m tides, powerful currents and some of the biggest whirlpools in the world, requiring careful passage planning and timing.

After months of exploring Japan’s most far-flung islands there was an unmistakable sense of entering the heart of the nation as we sailed into these protected waters, where we saw more activity and better infrastructure than anywhere else we’d been. Here, each island and village was a cultural and historical jewel, and we caught ourselves thinking about how much more of Japan there was yet to see.

Distances were also shorter, allowing easy day sails of 30 to 40 miles so we island hopped towards a small marina on Shikoku, the last of Japan’s four main islands. The seas were flat, with steady 10 to 15 knot winds carrying Teng Hoi to her winter port.

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