Ogasawara Islands can only be reached by ferry.
After leaving the port and skyline filled with Tokyo’s skyscrapers behind, it takes 24 hours to reach Chichijima. Nowadays, his amount of time is enough for us to easily travel to the other side of the world by plane.
The ferry that carries both passengers and commodities called “Shin-Ogasawara-Maru”, runs only once every 6 days.
Our mobile phone reception quickly go out of range soon after we leave Tokyo Bay, and people on the ferry start putting down their phones. When we get closer to islands that are inhabited like Miyake Island, we suddenly get a signal for a very short time, causing a stir of excitement on board. If we open any navigation apps that show our current location, the arrows floats on the sea in the middle of nowhere. We cannot see anything but only the sea and the horizon; people read books, go out on the deck to look at the sea, talk to their friends – everyone spend time as they like during the time when we are not connected to the Internet or are cut off from other communication modes. There had been plans to build an airport on the island, but it didn’t happen in the end because it was clear that the runway would be too short even if land was reclaimed to build it, and it would also damage the environment that houses some of the most precious flora and fauna. (“Flying boats” are used during emergencies.)
The capacity for “Shin-Ogasawara-Maru” is 800 people, meaning that the maximum number of people who can physically travel to Ogasawara Islands is limited to 800 people. On top of there, there aren’t any signs of hotels similar to the ones you can find in other famous tropical resort areas – Okinawa, Saipan or Guam. Thanks to the limited capacity of the ferry, Ogasawara Islands have successfully avoided excessive tourists and as a result, we can still find an extremely rich and diverse natural environment and history, including remains from war that are real and vivid (something that we cannot normally experience in Honshu), allowing the landscape of Ogasawara to be filled with a special time element.
