Ishigaki Island
Ishigaki (石垣島, Ishigaki-jima?, Yaeyama and Okinawan: Ishigachi) is a Japanese island west of Okinawa Hontō and the second-largest island of the Yaeyama Island group. It is within the City of Ishigaki in Okinawa Prefecture. The city functions as the business and transport center of the archipelago. Ishigaki Airport is the largest airport in the Yaeyamas and Japan's largest third-class airport.
Much of the island and surrounding waters including Mount Omoto and Kabira Bay are protected as part of Iriomote-Ishigaki National Park.
Ishigaki Island, like the rest of Okinawa, is culturally influenced by both Japan and Taiwan ‒ as well as China ‒ due to its location off the north eastern coast of Taiwan.
A tsunami of record height hit Ishigaki Island in 1771.
Famous quotes containing the word island:
“I ... would rather be in dependance on Great Britain, properly limited, than on any nation upon earth, or than on no nation. But I am one of those too who rather than submit to the right of legislating for us assumed by the British parliament, and which late experience has shewn they will so cruelly exercise, would lend my hand to sink the whole island in the ocean.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)