Dos and don'ts of living in Okinawa

Nine years of living in Okinawa has taught me a few dos and don'ts for building good relationships with local people. 

1. Treat total strangers like your friends of 20 years.

In 1995, we visited an Okinawan island called Miyako-jima on vacation. The first spot we visited was the famous Agari-Hennazaki cape. We rented a bike and rode it to the cape some 20 kilometers away. Halfway into our trip, we got lost in the middle of sugarcane fields. Fortunately enough, we found a farmer at work in the distance and asked him the directions. He was really kind. We said thank you to him and continued our ride. Twenty minutes or so later, we stopped to take a break. As we were looking around to enjoy the scenery, we found, to our astonishment, the same farmer sitting in a small truck 15 meters behind us. Looking a bit embarrassed, he mumbled something like he was worried, waved shyly, and slowly drove away. He had been following us all the way to make sure we wouldn't get lost again!

There are plenty of similar episodes. Just yesterday, we heard a very hard-to-believe story from a local person. In Ie-jima, another small island of Okinawa, people don't lock their cars so others can drive their cars whenever and wherever necessary. Basically, you can drive any car at hand. According to this person, local people in Ie-jima are a little "waji-waji (frustrated)" that newcomers to the island, mostly from the mainland Japan, don't know the unspoken rule and their cars are often locked when needed.

2. Be casual and less courteous.

Courtesy is an important virtue in the mainland Japan, but it isn't necessarily so in Okinawa. People are casual even when a little formality would be expected, like when serving customers. A mainlander by birth, I was surprised at first at the casual attitudes of many sales clerks in Okinawa, but I soon came to like the way they behave and now I behave just like them. As I found out, being polite and courteous can make you look a bit distant in a place like Okinawa where people are so relaxed and easygoing.

3. When in Okinawa, do as the Okinawans do.

I've heard some mainlanders complaining about Okinawan ways of doing things. Every time I meet such complainers, I can't help thinking, "What do you expect? Of course there are differences. Okinawa was a foreign country only a few centuries ago. Just shut up and enjoy the differences!"

Where a community comes together

In this rural part of Okinawa, a community wouldn't be complete without a "kominkan." It is a place where community members, young and old, get together to have a friendly chat over tea, have serious discussions about the future of the community, take cultural lessons to enrich their lives, practice "bon-odori" dances for summer festivals, or hold celebrations for senior members of the community, many of whom are amazingly vigorous in their 70s, 80s, and even 90s. A kominkan, often translated as community center, is an essential core that holds a community together.

Our area has unusual three kominkans because of a consolidation a few years ago of three adjacent communities. Each kominkan has distinctive character but the oldest one, a half-a-century-old wooden building in the form of a traditional Okinawan private house, is most unique and therefore my favorite. 

One of the first things you would notice as you enter the kominkan is an old wooden board with hundreds of names hand-written on it. These are the names of the people who made donations for the construction of the kominkan. The board is displayed at a very high and visible place as if it is an eternal tribute to those who offered, in an extraordinary cooperative spirit, their hard-won earnings at a time when Okinawa and Japan were not so wealthy as they are today.

There is a project under way in our community to build a new kominkan for the now-united three communities. Two of the existing kominkans are expected to be demolished to finance the construction but the oldest one will probably be spared the fate. I strongly hope it will. It is an invaluable reminder of the remarkable spirit of our predecessors and an inspiring symbol of unity and harmony for our enlarged community.

Free as a bird

Okinawa has its own version of kabuki plays. It is called "kumi-udui," and "Manzai-tichiuchi," a story about two young men trying to get revenge on a man who killed their father, is arguably the best and the most popular among all kumi-udui plays. At the beginning of this "Manzai-tichiuchi," the bad guy goes to a beach after a pigeon flew into his house and perched on the family alter two days in a row. He interprets the incident as a sign of bad luck and feels he has to cleanse himself. The trip to the beach, of course, becomes a trip to the other world, as the two youngsters get a chance to approach the man and kill him. 

Two days ago, a little white-eye flew into our house. The bird was an adorable little fellow and we didn't see it at all as a bird of ill omen. Rather, the bird looked the opposite, and after wavering for a while over what to do with it, we decided to keep it and asked the carpenter who was helping us renovate our house to make a cage.

As he was deftly cutting timbers and assembling them into a cage, two more white-eyes appeared from nowhere and flew around the garden, stopping frequently on the top of a basket we were temporarily using to keep the bird. The trapped bird responded to them by chirping and we were beginning to have qualms about keeping it. 

The cage was completed in no time and we put the bird in it. He seemed relaxed, which made us feel better about our plan. As we were placing food and water in the cage, however, the bird slipped through a gap of the ceiling, sat on the top of the cage for a moment with a confused look as if he wasn't sure if he was out, and flew away. All of this happened so quickly that the three of us didn't realize what happened immediately. When we did moments later, we burst into laughter, although my husband and I felt a little sorry for the carpenter. After all, the bird wasn't meant to be with us and there wouldn't have been any better ending to the whole episode. 

The cage soon found a good place of its own, by the way, hanging now from the biggest tree in our garden and waiting for little feathered visitors.