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!"