Okinawa

The day after I returned to Kyoto from a lovely whirlwind trip to Okinawa, I was worn out from laundry and unpacking and a bad cold I’d come down with, so I was lying on my bed with a book. At 2:46 pm I sighed, shut my book, and looked at the clock. I rolled over and took a nap. I wouldn’t realize until nearly 2 hours later that the largest earthquake in Japan’s recorded history had struck the northern Tohoku area just then.

I’m finally starting to realize this happened in the same country—Kyoto is so unaffected, the disaster seems to be just something happening on the TV. At other times I feel so keenly for the Japanese people in trouble; the day after the quake and tsunami I would randomly get weepy. At church we prayed and cried together, and did our best to sing hymns. Then yesterday a dear friend and dorm-mate of mine, Carina, announced she would be going home to Germany in three days. Her parents had lived through Chernobyl; they weren’t taking any chances with the nuclear power plant situation here and wanted her home. That made me really depressed and I thought I might cry again, so I decided to make naan bread. Deep inside me is a very politically incorrect 50s housewife who finds great pleasure and stress relief in cooking for other people. Baking and feeding the results to Stacey, Carina, and Ela cheered me up considerably, and Stacey did something she always does anyway—made me laugh. So now even though a large part of Japan is in ruins and Carina is leaving, I’m at peace and in a much better mood, and think I can write a little bit about Okinawa.

I went there for 5 days with my friend Jenni who hails from Finland. Our plane arrived quite late in the evening but we noticed two things immediately: Okinawa smells good, even in the middle of the city, and the people are friendly (a boy with a long ponytail saw us looking lost and showed us where the hostel was, cars will wait for pedestrians when there’s no crosswalk). In the morning we got up early and met with Jin-san and Seiko-san, my Japanese professor Itomitsu-sensei’s brother and his wife. They were so sweet! They took us to the most beautiful aquarium I’ve ever been to, and down a narrow little village of traditional Okinawan homes, each surrounded by sturdy thick-leaved trees to keep out the constant ocean winds.

They were very patient with our childish excitement over our first Okinawan beach: “The water’s so clear! It’s so warm! Ooh, the sand is full of coral; look at this piece I found!” Seiko-san had come to Okinawa for the first time when she was about our age, and she had acted the same way, Jin-san said laughing. I enjoyed watching the chemistry between them. They were a very cute couple and would sometimes walk arm-in-arm, or share some little inside-joke the humor of which was quite lost on me. Jin-san seemed quieter than his older brother but no less kind. He had a habit of disappearing to get tickets or maps or drinks, and of quietly capturing shining eyes and smiles with his camera. Seiko-san supplied much of the conversation; she was very interested especially in Jenni’s homeland. I learned a lot about Finland and Finnish language as well! Usually Japanese people don’t know anything about Finland, except that the cute character Moomintroll comes from there, doesn’t he? Jenni, who is usually of a silent, Moomin-like presence herself became very talkative with Seiko-san. I was glad about that.




That night it poured, and the next day a blustering wind blew under grumpy clouds that spat rain now and again. I had to give up my dream of seeing red Shuri Castle under a broad blue sky, but we bundled up in almost all the clothes we’d brought and went there anyway. More than any impression of the castle itself I was struck by how much of Okinawa was destroyed in WWII. All that is left of the original castle are some dusty piles of rock that were its foundations. We did enjoy a lovely tea served at the castle, and little cookies that we learned hadn’t changed since the 15th century, when the Ryukyu kings served them to foreign envoys!



We found a tiny rocky path leading down from the castle, I’d heard in the olden days it used to be the main road connecting the castle to the Naha port. We wandered down it along with schoolchildren returning home, and the odd Japanese tourist or two. We came across something that made me so glad I can read Japanese: “Jenni, what does that say…300 year old tree this way?” It was a tiny hand-written sign all smeared with rain. We followed a little path through a residential area to a magical place: A dense green jungle with one the largest trees I’ve seen, an Okinawan-style shrine and more hand-written signs telling stories of the place. The huge akagi trees had grown all over this part of Naha, but only a few survived the Battle of Okinawa in 1945. I imagined it had been sheltered by the great volcanic, vine-draped cliff it grew against. Leaving there we continued along the road and came across another curiosity: a traditional-style Okinawan house, that seemed a few tatami-mats large, with a sign, “Community Rest House, please use freely. Keep toilets clean!” We heard voices from inside and poked our heads in. Two little schoolgirls were there staring at us. “Hello” said the younger one finally. “Konnichi ha,” we replied. “Ooh, they can speak Japanese! Where are you from? Do you know what this is? It’s used in a festival. My dad’s carried one once. Look what I can do, a cartwheel. Can you do cartwheels? Let’s play hide-and-seek!” We spent an hour or so in the little house playing—or rather I did, Jenni, admittedly “not good with kids” sat looking rather confused at their antics and chatter.



The next day the weather was so fine, though I’d planned an itinerary I was tempted to just find a bus to the nearest beach and spend the day on the sand. We went to a very eerie and dark place, after all, the Former Navy Underground Headquarters in Naha—the place where the last resistance of the Japanese military holed up at the end of the Battle of Okinawa. I had had to decide given our limited time between there and the Peace Memorial Park, but thought rather than nice plaques in green lawns I wanted to see something a little more real. The tunnels were presented in a very Japanese style, with pleasant lighting and music throughout. However I loved the pen-and-ink artists’ sketches of what life (and death) must have been like in the tunnels, and the emphasis the museum had on the sufferings of the Okinawan civilians, who were basically enslaved by the Japanese military. But the soldiers suffered too. In one room I put my fingers into pock-marks on the plaster wall before reading the sign “Damage to walls from hand grenade of suicides.” The Japanese military had been indoctrinated to fight to the last man and when defeat was imminent to end their own lives rather than surrender, and the officers in the tunnels had done just that, right where I was standing, a lifetime ago.



After that harrowing place we headed to Okinawa World, a theme park of Okinawan culture. The best thing about it was undeniably the beautiful natural caves under the park—Jenni and I wandered slowly through them for almost two hours, me thinking just a little regretfully of the tropical sunshine above and how we had somehow spent most of the day in caves and tunnels of some kind or another. But we did see a very mysterious creature in a pool there—some kind of large salamander that was definitely not listed on the “nature you might see in the caves” section of the pamphlets we’d received. Duly creeped out, we hurried out of there to watch some traditional pottery-making and glass-blowing. In one of the workshops I tried my hand at Okinawan-style tye-dying. My fingertips were a bit blue for a few days afterwards! The bus ride home was beautiful—a lovely sunset over sugar-cane fields.



I had no plans for the next day, except dinner again with Seiko-san and Jin-san. Both Jenni and I wanted a beach, and to see whales—we’d heard it was their season. We decided on going to Zamami—a tiny island reached by ferry from Naha. The ferry was a small, high-speed affair; Jenni and I clung to the railing on the deck and laughed in sheer joy every time we bounced over a wave, getting amused looks from the apparently more seasoned Japanese passengers. I reveled in the salt spray, the sight of the ocean spreading to a purple haze at each horizon, the high puffy white clouds drifting over us. In under an hour we pulled into the harbor at Zamami, its waters clear and smooth as glass and blue as jewels where it was deep. Green hills rose behind a silent, dusty little town clustered near the harbor. It was just 10:00 in the morning, not a tourist to be seen besides ourselves! “Let’s go find a beach.”



Walking there against the verdant green hillsides, where purple morning glories grew thick in the treetops and black, yellow, and blue butterflies drifted and a Japanese cuckoo called alluringly, we passed a field of sighing sugar cane. The sun came from behind a cloud and its brilliant tropical light seem to hang in the air, having its own gleaming existence between one’s eyes and the surrounding views. “Oh Jenni, we’ve found heaven!”

The beach was empty. White sand stretched to impossibly blue water. A pile of black rocks, crowned with green spiny plants, was a home to schools of tiny silver fish. Jenni and I combed the beach for a few hours, enjoying the variety of shells and corals we usually only see in shops or National Geographic magazines, and then decided the clear water was too much to resist a swim. It was not cold, but the wind on our wet skin was! We stood in the waves up to our thighs, shivering and dreading plunging in all the way, which had to be done at some point. “We are…” began Jenni, and I interjected with “S-s-stupid!” but she didn’t hear me and finished: “…swimming in the East China Sea!” I had to laugh, and plunged into the water at last. The water was so salty, it was easy to float and bob on the waves while gazing at the sky, or just paddle out deep and grow scared at far you could see to the bottom. We got chilled after a few minutes and waited for the sun to come again from behind a cloud before dashing out into the cool wind. We lounged on a pile of rocks to dry. At last I sighed and said regretfully “I guess we should put on some clothes.” We got decent none too soon, the beach wasn’t deserted long and as it was now afternoon a few couples started showing up.



We wandered back to the town to find a place to eat. We’d found a little tourist map listing all four restaurants on the island, all were closed except one, which consisted of a little shed, a green lawn with an awning and three picnic tables covered in neat red-check clothes, and a pretty middle-aged lady who made by hand the two choices on the menu: a pizza or a pasta dish. Also eating there were a very talkative older Japanese gentleman, a Japanese boy who looked about our age who alternated between smirking at the man and toying with an expensive-looking camera, and two foreign girls I assumed were fellow Americans (it turned out were also from Kansai, and what’s weirder, were exchange students from Lewis and Clark University! It was so strange to have met them on a tiny island off Okinawa. I did feel a bit of Linfield pride surge when I realized their Japanese was at a beginning level and heavily accented). The old man was greatly enjoying himself, rattling on in bad English about Zamami’s economic and education problems and how we should all come back here after we graduate to teach English and promote foreign tourism. We laughed and feigned interest (while I suppose the problems faced by the tiny island are real, the old man’s blunt enthusiasm was a bit much!) He made grand plans for us and Zamami while keep our wine glasses full of the lovely Chardonnay he’d treated us all to. The boy Keisuke, who turned out to be a recent college graduate from Osaka, kept silent but every so often I’d catch a gleam of his very pretty, honey-colored eyes from across the table. At last we were released from the old gentleman by the impending arrival of our ferry home. Keisuke walked Jenni and I back to the harbor, where we sat on a warm cement wall and chatted until the ferry came all too soon. He did have such nice eyes.


On the ferry ride home we saw our whale! Just his spout, and broad barnacle-crusted back.

We enjoyed a last sumptuous dinner with Seiko-san and Jin-san. This time the conversation flowed freely and merrily, and by the end I felt I’d made new friends. But the next day we had to catch our flight home. However, our plane didn’t leave until 12:30 in the afternoon, so we slept in and then around 10 went to a gorgeous, Chinese-style garden that was near our hostel. The gleaming reddish-brown wood of the pagodas contrasted so beautifully with the green water of the many ponds and lush Okinawan plant life worked into the scheme of the garden.



We had found that flying within Japan is quick and easy—no need to arrive hours early for long lines at check-in or security! We got to the airport just half an hour before departure and even had time for a last-minute toilet and conbini run before boarding. And then it was farewell to Okinawa—a lovely place I longed to stay and explore longer. Someday, I thought, I will return! Especially to Zamami. Like Nikko, it was a small town of mostly old folks that depends economically on tourism, but visiting in the off-season we found it especially quiet and welcoming, really heaven.

And then I came back to Kyoto, to the TV, to my Facebook page and email on fire with inquiries from close friends and people I haven’t spoken to in years—all wondering if I was alright after the quake. I remembered a saying I’d heard while in Okinawa: nuchidu takara, “life is a treasure.” The Okinawans, who besides natural dangers of island life, experienced the loss of the Ryukyu kingdom and culture, and later the devastation of the Battle of Okinawa, would certainly know a thing or two about life’s preciousness I suppose. Life is a treasure. It can be snatched from you or your loved ones in a moment. This Tohoku Earthquake and tsunami will probably color the rest of my year of study abroad here in Japan. A lot still remains uncertain and I’m already so tired of watching the news, of seeing that dirty muddy tsunami swallowing up neat farmland behind my closed eyes at night. But I am sure of one thing: nuchidu takara!