My name is Akimitsu Miyazato.
People call me Akki.
I'm originally from Okinawa Japan.
It's a little island, southern Japan.
Born and raised there.
Grew up going to the beaches and play sports and I was there til 18.
My parents are teachers.
They teach English and also my sister is also teacher and I have a younger brother.
They are always there supporting me.
That was really important for me.
I have a lot of friends I made.
Well, my room mate is from Australia so first got to meet him and learn a lot from him.
I live in a student lodge.
It's right across the street from my university and we have a lot of students in there.
Hello.
Hey Akki.
How you going?
Good, I'm fine.
I'm resident assistant.
I help people coming in and sometimes I help check in, check out.
If they need anything, any help.
Specially like, students students from Japan that comes in or people who can't speak English
much,
I talk to them, help them.
I'm studying James Cook University in Cairns in Far North Queensland.
I wanted to learn Ecotourism, you know, Australia is a leading country for ecotourism field
so ...
and Cairns has two world heritage which is the Great Barrier Reef and the rainforest.
So this is the best place I chosen for study for my study.
Down the street from where I live
Ssssh!
That's the wallabies, they're basically small kangaroos.
I didn't know about it but there are so many of them.
Check it out.
I come to the beaches, you know, read books and just be myself.
I usually surf, dive and I play the music too but I can't surf here so I just go to
the beach and swim.
I grew up in the water swimming in Coral Reef Sea, and you know, Australia has the Great
Barrier Reef.
It's you know, top of the world.
It's 2000 kilometres of the reefs and it's amazing and I really wanted to see that.
Good morning, Tony.
Hi
Tony.
Akki.
Akki, pleased to meet you.
Nice to meet you.
Akki, if you just want to go and see Erin, she's gonna grab you're first name, get all
your details, make yourself aboard.
Okay.
All right.
Morning.
Hi, everybody.
Just come aboard.
Throw your shoes into the blue tub here.
Don't need to worry about them today.
All right!
Yeah,
We are about to go to the Great Barrier Reef.
This is Port Douglas and we're going with a Calypso boat and I'm so excited about it
today.
So you're the skipper of the boat?
Yes.
Yes, yes, I'm, the skipper.
That's nice.
So could you tell me where we're going today?
We're gonna go out to Opal Reef ...
Opal reef.
Yep, which is out on the edge of the Continental Shelf.
It takes about an hour and half, big green fish up there, big Maori Wrasse up there.
That's great.
I have two things that I want to do today.
First is I want to swim with big fish and the second one is I want to try to find Nemo.
Now the site we're pulling up to is called SNO.
It stands for South North Opal.
As you can see we're just turning the back of the boat around so all the coral will be
right out the back there for you,
so all you have to do is head off down the back of the boat, jump in the water.
The coral will be right there.
My parents are born and raised in a small little, little tiny island of Okinawa.
And it's called Zamami and Zamami's very famous for diving
and I went to beaches and diving with my parents since I was a kid.
Well, you know, when I go dive, you know, hold my breath and go under the water and
swim with fish
I can see the coral and fish and just swim with them, just soothe me.
It's almost like I feel like I'm part of it, you know.
Woohoo.
That was great.
The coral was like a flower, it's different colours of a garden.
It's beautiful.
And did you see the big, big fish?
That thing is humungous, like this.
I'm going down again.
So, Jo, you work for Calypso.
Yeah.
How long have you been working?
I've been working for about two and a half years now.
Oh, nice.
So you are dive master or ..?
I'm a dive instructor.
Oh, instructor.
Wow that's top, up there.
Yep.
Oh, that's great.
Tell me about the reef.
It's broken into three main parts so you've got three different sections
and then there's a whole lot of little bommies on the inside as well.
So just little coral pinnacles which you can go visit as well.
Yeah,
It's quite a large reef.
Most people absolutely love it.
Most people have never been out before so it's pretty exciting for them just the first
time looking at all the coral, all the colours and fish and yeah, most people absolutely
love it.
What was your favourite part?
Well, that compact, small reef, you know, that we went to second, that was really good
because it had that wall of coral and we can go around it.
And you know, we had a lot of things to look at
so, that was great.
That was great structure.
Yeah
and lots of fish at that one as well.
Yeah, yeah, it's a beautiful, you know,
small fish and blue and yeah, different colours and the parrot fish is nice too.
I like the parrot fish, very colourful fish and actually in my home town,
in Okinawa, the southern part of Japan, there is parrot fish there.
Oh really?
Yeah, same thing.
Ah, cool.
So ... but we eat them.
We can't eat them here.
Today was great you know, when I saw the coral reefs, that was beautiful, beautiful and it's
huge.
Everything was huge.
And when I saw the big fish, that I really wanted to do, and that's called Big Wrasse
and that was huge,
and they really came up to me and that was an awesome feeling.
Did you find Nemo?
Oh, yes I did.
I found it right there, straight out and I took a photo of it.
Oh, very good.
Everybody loves Nemo.
Exactly.
Yeah, I wanted to take a picture.
Yeah, that was good.
So today, I did everything what I wanted to do so it was great.
It went so good.
I would love to do it again.
Yeah.
Thank you.
Thank you Calypso, thank you.
Thank you everyone.
That was Akki having his very own real life Finding Nemo experience.
Now I'm not much of a dancer.
I can only do one dance move, the Robot, but let's find out how much other Aussies love
to dance.
I'd say most of my dancing I do at music festivals and concerts and stuff like that.
I enjoy it but I've been told I'm really poor at it.
Would you like to partner me?
Yeah, sure I'd love to.
Let's do it.
And then ...
Oh no, wrong way!
And then the beat comes down and then it goes boom boom boom chi,
boom boom boom chi.
Boom boom boom ch.
I can do a little bit of this.
… wiggling my butt a bit
Do you have a favourite dance move?
Yeah, I do.
I always do this one because it looks fun.
That's great, yeah.
Let's do twirls.
And there we go.
That's beautiful.
That's fantastic Matt.
Thank you very much.
No worries.
It's been a pleasure.
Thanks for teaching me.
Well, our next guest, Saj, is a very courageous soul because he's going to try one of the
most technical kinds of dancing, ballroom.