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March 2008 ISLANDS.com AMOS NACHOUM 46

Ryukyus Japan Islands Magazine March 2008

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http://islands.com/freeissue ISLANDS magazine presents this spectacular trip to the Ryukyus, an island chain in Japan rich with culture and scenery. Find more feature articles in ISLANDS' digital back issues available in the ISLANDS Store at http://islands.com/freeissue .

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Page 1: Ryukyus Japan Islands Magazine March 2008

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Zamimi and its neighboring is-

lands in Japan’s Ryukyus may

hold the secret to long life.

S T O R Y B Y T I M N E V I L L E

An underwater city, a fountain of youth, a retreat for the gods — these are the legends of the remote islands

of Japan. A rare trip there uncovers the truth.

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the very end of japan’s typhoon season,

and the swirling arms of Typhoon Krosa have fi nally slipped far enough offshore that the ferryboats can venture out. For the past few October days, I’d been swimming in caves, ambling through palaces and enjoying pork soup in cozy restaurants while the winds whipped the sea into a seeth-

ing mess. But now that shards of blue slice the sky, the real adventure can begin. I meet some friends in the hotel lobby and we race to the docks.

The car’s wheels hiss over streets still black with rain as we lurch down a hill and let the briny air of the East China Sea whip through the windows. A monorail train zips overhead on a bridge. Red light: Giggling schoolgirls in crisp blue-and-white uniforms jump over puddles in front of a restaurant festooned with lanterns. Green: We gun it, and concrete buildings fringed with purple awnings become a blur.

So this is storm-addled Okinawa, at least the urban southern tip of Naha, which is home to 314,000. Most Americans know this slen-der island 1,000 miles southwest of Tokyo as the backdrop to some of World War II’s most vicious fi ghting. Some 50,000 American troops and their families are still based here, a reminder of the post-war years when the island fell under U.S. control in 1945. To the north stretch rolling farms and limestone coasts where Formosa palms and sparkling resorts are perched on white-sand beaches. But I’m here for what lies beyond Okinawa: the rest of the Ryukyus, a remote archipelago possessed of such intense beauty and charm that locals believed ancient gods would regularly come for visits.

I’d never heard of the Ryukyus. Then one day I pulled out an atlas, ran my fi n-ger southwest from Japan along the craggy fi ssures of the Pacifi c plate and noticed a string of tiny islands — places like Tokashiki, Ishigaki and dozens of others that popped out of the blue like dollops of green glass. For about 700 miles from southern Japan toward the steamy hills of Taiwan, the Ryukyus abound in intrigue. Some believe they may have once been the site of a lost city — a mysterious com-plex of temples, monuments and a stadium that slipped into the sea 10 millennia before Christ. Though 5.6 million people visited the Ryukyus last year, nearly all of them were Japanese mainlanders. To the American traveler, they’re virtually unknown. If the gods felt at home here, they were about to receive a guest.

The car stops in front of a salt-stained ferry depot. Lisa Slater, my guide from Open Coast Travel, races inside. “Grab the bags while I get the tickets,” she says.

After a week of no traffi c following the storm, the port in Naha, Okinawa’s largest city, is a zoo. “Gomen nasai!” young men say, begging our pardon, as they shuffle past. Men in loose button-up shirts mingle around vending machines selling cold coffee drinks. Taxi drivers jockey for parking as people carry boxes and suitcases up a gangplank. The engines of the Queen Zamami II, a 168-passenger high-speed catamaran, hum through a metal deck. This is the ride to our first stop, the Keramas, a collection of about 20 mostly unin-habited islands 20 miles west.

Tickets in hand, we jump aboard. The Queen slips past shipyards as we inch out to sea. I linger outside in the spray as the boat begins to buck violently in the waves. A seasick girl next to me looks pasty and miserable.

“It won’t be long,” I say. She can’t understand me. In the distance I spot silvery islands in the sharp, subtropical light.

It’sThe sights of the Ryukyus include soya bean curd, the historic costumes at Okinawa’s Shuri Castle, and the regal landmark itself in the city of Naha.

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for centuries people have made journeys like this one. poised

within easy sailing distance of Asia’s most rowdy ports, the Ryukyus have long welcomed merchant ships that came to swap Siamese rice for Chinese porcelain and goods fl owing out of the Mongol trade routes to the west.

As a result of those crosscurrents, the once-independent Ryukyu kingdom became a diverse mix of cultures. Chinese dragons still decorate Japanese-style palaces. The drink of choice here, awamori, is made with Thai rice, which makes it extremely potent. In a 20th-century twist, homes can look oddly American, with blue siding, gables and porches.

By the 19th century the islands were fi rmly part of Japan. Today the Ryukyuans, once fi ercely suspicious, are so welcoming that it’s humbling. Young women sit at our feet to check us in at hotels, and ticket agents line up on the tarmac to bow goodbye to planes taking off. Back at a lively restaurant in Naha, I order a simple bowl of tofu champuru, and the cooks, waiters, and dishwashers all thank me.

People begin to stir inside the cabin when the Queen’s engines calm to a murmur. We glide past purple sea stacks plying the green water into Zamami, an island in the Keramas. “Welcome, welcome!” says Hideyasu Mirahira when we arrive at the Patio Hotel, a place he started as a diving outfit in 1974. He’s bouncing around on wiry legs, tending to azalea hybrids, wispy sagari flowers and birds of paradise that burst from his garden. His arms are braided with muscle, his skin a rich caramel. People from this region of Japan enjoy the

longest lives on the planet: About 40 people per 100,000 live to be 100 years old. (In the U.S. it’s only 10 per 100,000.) I’m shocked to learn he’s nearly 70.

The accommodations, which include a western-style bed and metal armoire, are simple but comfortable. About a dozen rooms frame a patio that holds a traditional Okinawan boat built with bamboo dowels and a fl at bow. Hideyasu’s grandfather used to paddle this for 12 hours

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Today the Ryukyuans, once fi ercely suspicious, are so welcoming that it’s humbling.

The Ryukyus draw in the rare American

traveler with offerings both above and below water, from the dives

to the waterfalls to the people to the water

buffalo rides.

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The quiet Ryukyus have serene beaches

such as this one on Ishigaki, facing the

East China Sea.DA

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to Naha to take salted fi sh to market. Inside the dining hall I fi nd a snakeskin shamisen (a twangy three-string guitar) in the corner. It seems like everyone in the Ryukyus can play this traditional instrument, especially late at night after a few rounds of Orion beer. In another cultural contrast, Emiko, Hideyasu’s wife, shows us the fully automatic Italian espresso maker. She will serve us a breakfast in the morning of miso soup and grilled fi sh-paste cakes.

“I hear you want to go diving,” Hideyasu says. He explains how we can see a Japanese cannon destroyed in World War II, complete with coral-encrusted artillery shells scattered nearby. We opt to get our land legs fi rst and rent a tiny Daihatsu minivan for an island tour.

We roll along laneless streets, leaving the side door wide open. Kids with fi sh-ing rods wave as we slip past concrete walls covered in moss. We pop into a small restaurant over a school and slurp noodles while overlooking the bay where a few humpacks from Alaska wandered in last year. Back in the car we ride up to the

The vibrant colors of the Ryukyus

abound in the under-water ruins off

Yonaguni, the women hanging dyed yarn

and the bright Hirakubozaki light-house on Ishigaki.

My friends dispatch a woman to fetch me. A pox upon them. No one ever told the gods to leave.

island’s high point, a 500-foot rise on the northeast tip, and I can see lazy waves lapping beaches covered in confectioner’s sand. We pass 20 bikes for every car. An old woman (she must be truly ancient) ambles by with a bucket of fi sh, cats mewing at her ankles.

My guide, Lisa, eventually slips the car into park, and we pile out onto Furuzami Beach, a cuticle of white sand on Zamami’s southern side. “It feels more developed each time I come,” Lisa says pointing to all the parasols sprouting from the beach. I count a dozen yellow ones and 10

blue ones from a cove that takes a half hour to walk around — so few I suggest she’s crazy. Large companies have repeatedly tried to open a resort here, but the residents have repeatedly resisted. “It took locals years to let even a dentist in,” Lisa admits.

We’ve driven less than two miles and covered three quarters of Zamami. All around us springs a cluster of verdant islands, each even smaller than the next and so tightly clustered that you could practically backstroke between them. White boats fl ying green fl ags slip past.

Even after the typhoon, the water is surprisingly clear when I jump in with my snorkel gear. Parrotfi sh chomp on coral while butterfl yfi sh fi n along a sandy bottom peppered with black limestone rocks. I get so wrapped up with feisty clownfi sh and admiring fl ashing blue anemones that my companions eventually dispatch a woman from the beach to fetch me. “Your friends are ready,” she says, treading water.

A pox upon them. I bet no one ever told the gods to leave.

but if i had known why i was being so unceremoniously dispatched

— to more completely explore the reef — I would have responded faster. The div-ing around Zamami comes in dazzling waves. The World War II cannon is stuck in a coral canyon burgeoning with Moorish idols, jacks and a little orange fi refi sh the Japanese call hatatate haze. But our next stop on the isolated western fringes of the Ryukyus is what I’ve really been waiting for. We board a 737 back in Naha and wave goodbye to the baggage handlers bowing farewell. We’re skipping off to Yonaguni Island, a rocky outpost about 315 miles southwest of Zamami.

When the plane touches down, we can immediately see that Krosa, the typhoon that thwarted the ferries in Naha, was far fi ercer here. It has

JAPAN

� DETAILS FLY to Okinawa on All Nippon Airways (� y-ana.com) and then board an inter-island � ight on Japan Transocean Air (about $900, jal.co.jp/jta). BOOK

a tour with Los Angeles-based Open Coast Travel, which spe-cializes in trips to the Ryukyus. They offer nine-day, seven-night starter packages to Okinawa and Zamami islands that include luxury accommodations in Naha and � ve nights on Zamami from $1,095 per person, with breakfasts and most transfers. opencoastravel.com OBTAIN an international driver’s license if you plan on renting a car. LEARN

all the rest you need to know at japantravelinfo.com and ocvb.or.jp.

� BEACH HOPPING The beaches on Zamami and in the Kerama Islands near Naha are by far the most stunning beaches we saw. Limestone cliffs frame gentle coves, some of which are so se-cluded it’s an adventure scrambling down cliffs to reach them. Particu-larly impressive is the northern tip of Agenashiku Island, about a mile south of Zamami, for picnicking, swimming and kayaking.

� TASTE MAKING Be sure to try umi budo, a type of seaweed that looks like miniature bunches of green grapes. Dipped in soy sauce, it’s crunchy, refreshing and incredibly good for you (and prob-ably one of the reasons people live so long here).

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(continued on page 104)islands.com/ryukyu

ISHIGAKI

YONAGUNI

OKINAWA

ZAMAMI

RY U K Y U

I S L A N D S

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104

Ryukyus (from page 54)

uprooted leggy pandanus trees, oblit-erated a windmill and shredded a fi sh-ing vessel that lies broken in a patch of scraggly grass. The island is just 17 square miles with less than 2,000 people, none of whom even blink at such storms.

“The last time we had a typhoon that strong was probably 12 to 13 years ago,” says Kihachiro Aratake, a local who runs SaWes dive shop in Kubura, a town with red tin roofs and sweet air, thanks to the awamori distillery nearby. “They’re a part of life.”

Aratake welcomes us with a gift, a keychain boasting a drawing of himself, before taking us out on his bright yel-low boat loaded with steel scuba tanks. The sea is still rough as we bounce past ragged cliffs lining Yonaguni’s southern shore. Unlike the Keramas, Yonaguni has few accessible beaches. Instead it has wild horses that roam grasslands near a central mountain range covered with dense forest about 750 feet over the sea. At noon, loudspeakers in town blast the song “Greensleeves,” the sig-nal for workers to take lunch. As far as I can tell from talking with locals, we are the only westerners on the island.

With long black hair and a bar-rel chest, Aratake is the reason most people come to a place like Yonaguni. “I helped put it on the map,” he says. Modesty aside, he’s not wrong.

With legs hobbled by polio, Aratake spent a lot of his childhood in the one place where strength doesn’t matter: in the water, where he swam with the ham-merheads that school in the currents. In the late 1980s he was searching for new dive sites when off the island’s southeast tip he suddenly came across a giant stone terrace that had what looked like steps, water channels and giant monoliths bearing strange markings. About 100 feet down, he noticed rocks piled neatly as if framing a road. “I got goose bumps,” he says. “It looked like an ancient city.”

The fi nd piqued the interest of Masaaki Kimura, a marine geologist at the University of the Ryukyus. At fi rst the professor thought the area was

natural, just the product of erosion. But after years of research, he grew convinced the terraces had been part of a fortress or temple, twice as old as the pyramids, that sank into the sea after an earthquake. This is by far the island’s main attraction, and glass-bottom boats depart regularly so non-divers can see it.

“We found stalactites that prove the area was once above land,” the professor says. “Those don’t form underwater. Some of the features can be explained by nature. Many of them can’t.” Later when I visited him, bare-foot in his home in Naha, he fetched a small bundle wrapped in a purple cloth and produced a cast of what he believes could be a charm or relic. It is a thin black stone about the size of a plate with holes neatly augured through the top and a small plus sign etched on the face. “Maybe they hung this on a wall to ward off spirits,” he says.

Many scientists aren’t buying it, writing off the idea of a Japanese Atlantis. When the boat stops, I strap on scuba gear. “One, two, sree!” says Rui Kuriki, our divemaster, and down we go.

Visibility is superb, approaching 100 feet. I can clearly see the western corners of the monument. The guide points out markings in a rock that sug-gest an arrow showing the way to an entry gate between two monoliths. We fl oat over giant steps that rise 4 feet high and rocks carved into a rudimen-tary sea turtle “monument,” its arms and head extended. Professor Kimura says he’s found fi ve temples, a stadium and tools. Unicornfi sh drift by neatly cut walls that are hairy with sea whips.

“I believe!” says Mitsue Abe, a Tokyo offi ce worker, after we surface.

I have no idea what to make of it. If it’s not a lost city, it doesn’t take much to imagine one. I dive on the site four more times. Hovering 50 feet down, next to a bizarre series of pillars, I stare at the sun-light. The waves crashing overhead look like clouds boiling in a biblical storm.

A few more days on Yonaguni and

the rhythm of the (continued on page 106)

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Ryukyus begins to sink in. My friends are often up before sunrise looking for photos while I linger in our pri-vate beach house, a four-story palace with teak fl oors and gleaming wall-to-wall windows overlooking a crescent bay. Today they’re back by 8 a.m., and we head out for a breakfast that I’m now used to: miso soup, lotus fl ower roots and the fried fi sh-paste cakes I’ve become addicted to.

In fact, I’ve become addicted to a lot of things. The Ryukyus have their own style of noodles: a fl at, soba-like pasta served in rich and spicy soups. No sooner do I fi nish one bowl than I start dreaming of the next. We sit with our shoes off at tables sunk into cedar fl oors and devour umi budo, a crunchy seaweed that looks like bunches of miniature green grapes. I can’t get enough of these horribly stinky yet salty-delicious squid chips. We con-stantly feed yen into vending machines

106

Ryukyus (from page 104)

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good eye, gets so excited to see us she fi res up the karaoke machine, sits at our table and belts out a peppy tune that gets the locals whistling. A man at another table takes the mic, and he too sings us a song, this one about a long-lost love. When we leave, Snack Mami gives us black lighters for gifts.

“Hey, live music!” I say as we wander past another bar just two doors down.

to down cans of Wonda’s After Shot coffee, Pocari Sweat sports drink, and Deepresso Espresso, which actually makes me happy.

Since we lost a week of our two-week trip to the storm, we’ve had to keep a fairly quick pace to make up time. We’ve spent most of our days diving and snorkeling, riding up to overlooks and tooling around towns where kids run up on roller skates to ask where we’re from. Looking to sample the night life one evening, we go wan-dering around Yonaguni and belly up at a place called Snack Mami, a window-less bar with Pepto-pink walls.

“Oishii! Oishii!” the barkeep says, meaning “delicious,” as she hands us a free plate of sashimi, the Japanese pub equivalent of peanuts.

Word has apparently been circulat-ing that some gaijin, or foreigners, are on the island. Snack Mami herself, an older lady with heavy makeup and one

» BRING BACK A favorite local drink is awamori, made with Thai rice and black yeast, making it more like a spirit than a wine. Shinko Kinjo, 63, has been making the strongest awamori around for the past 36 years. Stop by his Donan distillery in Kubura on Yona-

guni, and he’ll dip a bamboo ladle into a bin by the door to give you a taste. That burn? Call it a shot of 120-proof culture shock.

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We pop in to see a man dressed in a blue kimono plucking away on a shamisen. His partner, a woman in a red silk dress, hands out little castanet-type clackers we can use to play along. I’m terrible at it, and the islanders giggle in good fun as I bungle my way through the songs. “Good!” they say, being polite as ever. “More beer,” I joke.

Nachi Inada, a 27-year-old diver, and her friend, Miwak Otsuka, 32, wander in along with a few others, and we all sit around a sturdy wood table drinking Orion beer out of cold glasses. “Even for us this is all very different,” says Nachi, who is from the mainland. “You’d never see this back home, people playing instru-ments like this. It’s all very Okinawan.”

Despite the ease of Yonaguni, we can’t stay. As is, our typhoon-altered schedule now only allows for two days at our fi nal stop on Ishigaki, an island north of here with more than 45,000 people, man-grove swamps and waters twinkling with black pearls. Artists make radiant clay-and-glass jewelry with dazzling blues and greens that recall the island’s beaches and warm bays. There’s even a festival going on to celebrate the coming harvest and village health, complete with karate dem-onstrations, drums and fl utes.

We say goodbye, and Nachi digs into her purse and pulls out a gift: a dozen fermented bean-stick snacks. Despite their repulsively tangy odor, I fi nd them quite delicious. “Yum!” Nachi says.

There is still one thing I have left to do. We drive along the dark folds of the central highlands back to the beach house, and I head up to the rooftop in my robe. A huge tub made of smooth river rocks is perched here with a crow’s-nest view of Haneida Bay.

The night is heavy and limp; cica-das rattle the humidity. A ship wanders along the black horizon. I tiptoe across the damp roof and draw warm water across the stones. Tonight I’ll sleep on a tatami mat with paper-screen doors fl ung wide open, but for now I fl oat on my back and watch stars waft across the East Asia sky. This time, not even the gods can pry me loose. ^

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