FEBRUARY II
Okinawa Diary (19th-22nd February)
Great holiday. Leaving Tokyo for Okinawa truly was like entering another world. Somewhere in mid-flight a veil was lifted, and the relentlessly noisy, busy, dirty Tokyo atmosphere gave way to a much more relaxed, slower paced, almost Mediterranean lifeway. It’s hard to believe they are part of the same country! It’s like comparing Birmingham with southern Italy. I would say London, but even London is a much more relaxing place to be than Tokyo; Birmingham seems a more fitting comparison, as all I can think of are huge loops of concrete.
Naha itself is much less busy, the streets are wider and Kokusai Dori is even partially tree-lined (a rare thing indeed). The place I was staying was a traditional ryokan where they serve Japanese food in the morning. The Okinawans are very proud of their unique culinary heritage, but it still just looks like fish and rice to me. Then again, I am a British culinary barbarian! One of the ladies running the place spoke good* English. She said that she’s married to an American serviceman, and guessing from her slang (pure ebonix*) I reckon it’s a black serviceman. That would seem to fit with the place – there were loads of Japanese kids walking around with Afro’s, black music shops, black clothes shops…made a huge change from drab and dreary Tokyo! I’d expected some resentment of the American influence on the islands (given that there are 50,000 servicemen down here, and army camps up to yer eyeballs), but a lot of people are happy for the jobs provided, and Okinawans in general seem much more friendly towards and accepting of foreigners than Kanto people.
I went Scuba Diving on the second day. I found a place run by foreigners in the Lonely Planet. It’s run by a guy called Richard Ruth, who’s a very experienced diver and was diving recently at Yonaguni (where there’s a mysterious stone anomaly which some are claiming to be evidence of a pre-ice age civilization flourishing in the Pacific before it was flooded by the ocean). Scuba Diving is the strangest experience. I was hooked up to an oxygen tank, and though it was perfectly possible for me to breathe, my brain was telling my body that it was all wrong, and for a while it was like having an asthma attack under the water! Eventually though we travelled about 100m (?) along the sea bed to where the bay falls away to a depth of about 8 or 9 meters. It’s an incredible experience; there were a menagerie of tropical fish everywhere that I’d only seen before on TV, but were now close enough to touch! We fed them with a sausage shaped object and Richard took some pictures for your edification. The coral were soft to the touch, and some of them shrank away like snails when you got too close! Luckily we didn’t encounter any sharks or sea snakes or venomous box jelly-fish. T’was a great experience with very kind staff who picked me up and dropped me off from Naha. So if you’re ever in this part of the world, definitely give Fathoms Diving a call and try it out!
I went to a couple of beaches, which were almost entirely deserted. I haven’t quite figured it out – is it because it’s still officially winter? Certainly in some institutions in Japan there are set days for wearing short sleeves, for turning on the heat etc, which bear only a tenuous link to actual weather conditions! Furthermore, no-one was swimming anywhere – I saw signs warning about all the dangerous animals of the sea, and it was enough to put me off! Sometimes I think the Japanese are the most timid, safety obsessed people in the world. Everything is dangerous (especially foreigners, shhhhhh). Originally I was going to go to the aquarium on the third day, but I misjudged the distance just a little bit! I got off the bus in the middle of nowhere and walked to the coast. I found pristine beaches and incredible craggy volcanic formations that weren’t mentioned in the guidebook. Once again, no-one on the beaches. The only things around were flying fish (note: cool), real-live hermit crabs, and wild dangerous pineapples!
The other notable event was the old part of the town. That’s a bit of a misnomer – virtually everything was destroyed during the war, but the Shurijo-koen castle area has been painstakingly recreated, commercialised, and made into a World Heritage Site. The castle walls, red painted wood and soaring eaves are perhaps more reminiscent of China, and given that the Ryukyu kingdom of Okinawa took equal influence from Korea, China and Japan, its not entirely surprising. Anyway, there are some pictures in the gallery of all of this to check out.
I’m back in Saitama typing this up at work now. I can feel a cold starting, and I feel a bit miserable really. I could’ve stayed in Okinawa much more than 4 days, it’s a true paradise. Everyone I met, from the regulars at the Soba Shop, to the barmen, to the scuba instructors, seemed to be in good spirits. Ok, they were taking money off me, but I think its genuine happiness because it’s so far from the rat race. As Richard Ruth said “I’ve been to Tokyo 4 times, 3 times too many”. It was though, beginning to get a bit lonely. I mean, there were plenty of people all around to practise Japanese on, and who wanted in return to practise their English, but next time I’ll have to travel with company. Despite the crazy locals, it probably was about time to come back…for now. Check out the galleries(n.b. underwater photos will be added when Richard sends them to me!).
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