There are places on Ishigaki Island where the air feels different.

Sometimes they are hidden within the forest.
Sometimes they sit quietly on a cape facing the sea.

At first glance, they may seem like nothing more than beautiful natural landscapes.

Yet, when you step into them, something shifts.

Not dramatically.

Just enough to make you pause.

I am not particularly sensitive to spiritual things. I do not strongly believe in ghosts or supernatural phenomena.

Still, after living long enough, I think most people have experienced moments when a place seems to hold something beyond what can be seen.

Years ago, I stayed at a hotel in Tokyo where I felt an unusual heaviness in the atmosphere. Later, I learned that the area had once been connected to old battles and conflicts.

Perhaps memories and time leave traces behind.

Perhaps places remember more than we realize.

But what I feel in Ishigaki seems different from that.

It is not fear.

If anything, it feels closer to nature itself.

Take the island’s sacred places, for example.

In Yaeyama, they are often called on.

They are not always marked by buildings or gates.

Sometimes they are forests.
Sometimes ancient stones.
Sometimes a stretch of coastline facing the open sea.

Even Uganzaki, the cape visible from the windows of our restaurant Arun, is said to have long been regarded as a place of prayer before it became known as a scenic viewpoint.

Perhaps people here were not praying to structures at all.

Perhaps they were responding to the wind, the sea, the land, and something they felt within them.

When I enter places like these, I sometimes feel as though I am being quietly observed.

Not by a person.

Not by anything I could name.

It may be the trees.

The stones.

The wind moving through the leaves.

It feels as if nature itself is gently returning my gaze.

For those of us who have spent our lives on this island, that feeling may not be especially unusual.

I have long carried a simple thought:

There are places like that on this island.

About twenty years ago, I had the opportunity to guide Dr. Andrew Weil around Ishigaki.

While visiting one particular sacred site, he quietly remarked that he felt a strong presence there.

As our local guide spoke about the spiritual connection between that place and Mt. Omoto, Dr. Weil listened with genuine fascination.

I still remember that moment.

What I remember even more clearly is that I was not surprised.

I simply thought,

Yes. There are places like that on this island.

Places like these have always carried a certain distance.

People do not rush into them.

They do not disturb them unnecessarily.

They do not take more from them than they should.

These were never simply rules.

They were expressions of respect.

When people speak about overtourism, it is easy to place responsibility entirely on visitors.

But I sometimes wonder whether we who live here also have a responsibility.

Have we done enough to explain why these places matter?

Have we shared why people have approached them with such care for generations?

Language and culture may be different, but the effort to communicate those things is still possible.

Perhaps that, too, is part of the purpose behind Yaeyama Insight.

Not to consume a place, but to understand it more deeply.

Not simply to photograph it, but to spend a moment feeling the atmosphere that lives there.

Even today, somewhere on this island, these sacred places remain quietly where they have always been.

Close to everyday life, yet somehow beyond it.

Familiar, yet connected to something difficult to put into words.

Places that seem to stand at the boundary between the world we know and something just beyond it.

There are places like that on this island.