Can you believe I took these photos in mainland Japan?

The Japanese archipelago is located on the eastern side of the Pacific Ocean and is composed of many islands. The names of the main islands are, from north to south, "Hokkaido, Honshu, Shikoku, Kyushu."

This photo was taken in Owase, in the southeastern part of the Kii Peninsula in the middle of Honshu.

If you visit the city of in mainland like Osaka or Kobe, Kyoto, 

If you like scuba diving,

I recommend the southern area of the Kii Peninsula as the traveling destination. It is a coral paradise where you can go by car.

Although Honshu is in the temperate zone, the under the sea of this area is instead the subtropical zone because the warm current, called "Kuroshio," flows along the southern coast of the Kii Peninsula.

So, you can see colorful corals seascape that like Okinawa, Micronesia, or the Philippines even if you are in Honshu of Japan.

There are two types of corals. One is hard that looks like rocks. Another one is soft that looks like flowers. 

Both of them are invertebrates called cnidarians. 

Hard coral is a colony of small sea anemone-like shape polyps living in a calcium carbonate apartment. 

Because they grow and build a coral reef, they have another name of the reef-building coral. 

Soft corals are a group of corals that do not have a stiff body that creates coral reefs. For example, sea fingers and sea whips, Sea fans belong to them.

At Kushimoto, Wakayama, located at the southernmost tip of the Kii Peninsula, you can see stone corals like the table coral. At Owase, Mie, you can enjoy the underwater flower garden of soft coral. 

This time I will introduce an artificial reef point. You can take a diving boat from a small fishing port located about 10 minutes by car from Owase station.

Near this harbor, there is a diving service called "Sea Dream" where you can arrange diving boats and rent diving equipment.

From this port, you can reach 11 distinctive points. Among them, this time, I will introduce  "Gyosho-Point," meaning the Artificial fish reef.

You can reach the point about 10min boat ride. When you go down along to the anchor lope about 18m (60ft), you get the summit of the fish reef—this reef built of a lot of concrete blocks. A concrete block is a cube made of pillars with a side of about 2 m, and you can swim through.

Owase city dropped many blocks on the sandy sea bed about 40 years ago. Over the years, concrete blocks have been covered with marine life and become part of nature.

The sandy seabed is about -23m (75ft). 

Dragon moray eels often show their faces behind the blocks, and migratory fish like amberjacks swim away in front of your face mask.

The surface of the blocks is covered with colorful soft coral and looks like a flower field. 

A school of cute Sea Goldies is dancing around the marine flower field, like butterflies. As your eyes get used to it, look at the roots of soft coral. You will find small sea life like sea slugs and seahorses. 

"Gyoshou-point" is the place where you can enjoy shooting both wide and macro. Please be careful about the dive time as you will be absorbed in it. Depending on the season, Longfin batfish may see off at the time of a safety stop.

Temp: In Midsummer, the surface is often over 28℃ (82℉). The underwater is 24-26℃ (75-79℉). So, an even 2-3mm wet suit is OK.
In winter, Even when we have snow on the land, The underwater is not going under 14℃ (57℉). In the winter season, I wear a dry suit.
Recently, the water temp has been getting up. I dived there in late October, the land was under 20℃ (68℉), But the water temp was 25℃ (77℉). The wet suit (5mm) was comfortable under the sea. 

The visibility: It is changing every day. Sometimes over 20m(66ft), sometimes under one meter. Ordinary, winter is lovely. The Spring season is not good, that a lot of planktons are appearing.

Access: From Osaka to Owase is 2hours30min, from Nagoya 2hours by car.

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