JAWing On – Life on Okinawa

Well it seems my assessment of how “friendships” and business on Okinawa work (West Wind, East Wind) was pretty much on the nose. The organizers of the Gate 2 Fest are people Taki has been associated with for many years. Each month they get together to discuss plans for promoting and advancing the street for all the businesses’ benefit. Yet when they planned not to include JET as part of the entertainment this year, not one of these so-called friends had the guts to be straight forward with Taki about it. After waiting until three days before the festival to hear from them concerning confirmation of the schedule, Taki finally called them and found that the band was not on the schedule! Even though JET will not be performing this year, as it has in the previous Gate 2 Fests, we still wish the organizers the best of luck in having a successful event where they can rake in the profits.

Here it is 3 o’clock in the morning Thanksgiving Day. It is the calm before the holiday madness. This is the beginning of the season of non-stop partying on Okinawa. It begins this weekend with the annual Gate 2 Fest which brings together Harley owners from all over Japan for the impressive parade of hogs and a continuous cornucopia of festivities. Next comes December, the time of bonenkais. These are annual year-end parties giving thanks and bidding farewell to the current year. In addition there are the Christmas and New Year’s celebrations. Finally come the shinenkais in January, which are annual parties welcoming the new year with hope of wealth, health, and happiness. So Happy Thanksgiving and Happy Holidays!

Taki and I received our replacement vehicle Sunday. We decided to take it out for a drive up North and headed for Miyazato Soba. The facility is a non-assuming place that looks like it was one of the many temporary tin huts built back in the mid-seventies when everyone was getting ready for the Expo. The walls are bare of decoration; tables have simple plastic tablecloths; and the chairs are plastic patio furniture. But there is plenty space in between tables, so the customers are not eating on top of one another. It’s a no frills type of eatery where you purchase tickets from a machine, hand them over to a staff member, and wait about fifteen minutes for the food to be delivered. The soba is unusual. In addition to the required noodles and pork, it also has kombu (seaweed) and one of the most flavorful stocks I have eaten in a long time. We each ordered the small size, which is about half the regular size and great if you have children. This allowed enough room for one of my favorite local dishes, obaa curry, which we split between the two of us. Although the golden yellow curry wasn’t chunky-style and didn’t have bell peppers, it was very tasty and just like I remembered. The whole meal only cost us one thousand yen!

It’s mid-November and all around the island bits and pieces of holiday decorations are slowly, but surely, being displayed. The commercial side of the holiday season is very big on Okinawa. Over the past three decades the retail stores have wisely increased the supplies available to the public from a few very questionable-looking trees to just about every decoration a person can think of. This is a time of year I especially enjoy because the various decorations remind me of a more relaxed time in America. A time before putting up decorations became environmentally questionable. Each year we gather our “family”, the dogs and us, and drive all over the island looking for the best of the holiday cheer. And we are never disappointed because each year some enthusiastic and creative individual always divises a new combination of the decorations that inspires and fills other islanders minds and hearts with joy.

Well I guess it’s time to explain something. As I said, I came to Okinawa as an AF dependent daughter, age 17, in my last year of highschool. I was one of the most rose-colored glasses people you will ever meet. All you have to do is read my senior yearbook to see that. Life> on Okinawa tends to drain all of that hopefulness, enthusiasm, and tendency to see things on the bright-side away from a person. You can spend years trying not to be the ugly American and doing it the “right” and “acceptable” way, whether logical or not. If you are unfortunate to be too good-hearted a person over here, family, friends, neighbors, just about everyone is constantly after you for what they can get out of you. Eventually all that takes a toll and you reach a culture crash (yes crash not clash!). And trust me, because I have been through it already, this is when all the leaches begin to strike. If one is lucky, they get past the crash and try to remain as open-minded and positive towards life as this culture will allow a foreigner to be.
If I were to describe the majority of locals that I have experienced since 1974 in two words, the words would be histrionic and salespeople. Because of the limited amount of manufacturing and other big business on the island, the majority of the islanders are entrepreneurs. Everything they do has some aspect of business in it. Although this culture is supposed to have been influenced greatly by Buddhism, they didn’t seem to grasp the “middle road” philosophy except when it comes to mixing business and pleasure. Almost everything else they do is to one extreme or the other. Another thing that seems to be lacking in the culture is responsibility for one’s own actions. Because of the social structure, what happens is one or two children in the family, hardly ever the oldest son anymore, end-up finacially supporting every hair-brained idea the parents and non-responsible siblings manipulate them into. If you come into all of this from total inexperience in the culture, you tend to be used to help in the family plot of schemes. Over the years all of those ill concieved plots begin to crumble and then everything comes flying back to those good-hearted children and their families. Over here, a person is always confronted with a pack of people just waiting for any opportunity to take advantage of a situation, usually for their own financial gain. It is almost like watching a pack of wild dogs go after injured large game.
I must add, there are some very nice people over here who are sincere, well-intentioned, and truely wanting nothing more than friendship, but it is a rare occasion when I stumble upon them.

Sometimes just running around the internet doing research or just for fun can lead to some interesting surprises. Once again I have come across a website about Japan that very clearly expresses the surface of the culture on Okinawa. Maybe the two cultures, although different, aren’t as different as they think? Anyway, this weekend I happened to have been asked, again, why our beer prices were so high (the $5.00 price at a Live Music Bar is considered to be reasonable over here). This website has a very good explanation for that and many other aspects of the “Japanese” culture. So check it out, you’ll be surprised by the frankness and detailed explanationsWhy Are Prices In Japan So Damn HIGH?? I should add, this is obviously written from a male’s experience.

Well here it is Halloween time again. This particular holiday has really begun to take its hold over much of the island. Until about three years ago, I would almost never see retail stores with Halloween decorations. But with more and more international events and establishments on island, the retailers have seemed to have caught-on to the market value of the holiday. However, I have not seen evidence of the mainstay trick or treating for the little ones off base. This, as with most of the other holidays, is mainly another reason for young adults to go out and party. I hope you all have a safe and Happy Halloween!

Okay, so you fall for the typical image of Okinawans being a mystical, quiet, timid, easy- going culture. Well so did I thirty-one years ago. But my experiences have taught me that they are no different than any other culture, just less forward about their activities. A saying that I have heard often over here is “…no evidence….” In example, I have had an ongoing situation with my land development neighbor. We bought our house about fourteen years ago. It is old military officer’s housing built after WWII. When we bought our house it had a beautiful scenic view of the ocean. Well the locals decided they liked the view as well, after forty years and began building new homes basically on top of ours. And they had every right to build their homes.
The problems began when they waited until we weren’t home and then climbed a fence in order to make a property mark, with red spray paint, on the top of our house. Following that, another land developer built in back of us and thought he had the right to use our land to build a road to access his home which took all of his own property. He waited until we went to work and than built a wall partially on the land we pay rent for each year. Then he tried to have the telephone/electric company place the pole in my husband’s parking space which would have prevented my husband from being able to park there. Luckily, my husband wasn’t at work. He woke up and caught them after they had already dug the hole. What gets me is the workers didn’t even check to see if the person who made the request was authorized to move the pole. Soon there were more new homes and more people thinking they had the right to turn our rented land into road. We had dump and cement trucks tear up our car port, flower beds, cut our trees, etc. Not a single one of these people asked us, even if we were home, if we had any problems with this. Once it became obvious we didn’t want to give the land to an ever increasing population of new home owners, they would wait until we weren’t home to do their dirty deeds. Most of this came to an end about seven years ago when they finally finished building a new home right in front of our carport. Although the law states that to build a new home there must be a five meter access road and these people told my husband that they were just building a prevention wall to keep cars from a dangerous drop. What we ended up with is a new house within three meters that totally blocked our ocean view. Over here the rule seems to be, once it is there, whether legal or not, you can’t do anything about it.
About three years ago, workers came again. This time our water line was supposedly improper and outdated and they needed to change the pipe to a hose. Once more we had digging on the property due to a request from someone other than the owner without a proper authorization. This only tore the carport entrance a little, so no big deal. Well, this morning I opened the front door to find water company personnel out in our front area checking out the pipes again. Once more the land developer had made some request to have the pipes replaced (this time from hose back to pipe), which would have led to more digging on our property. And once again, even though we were home, the workers didn’t check to see if the person who made the request had the authority to request digging on someone else’s land. Now this land developer told my husband that he just found out that the water lines that extend from our carport supply his water. And he has been having a problem with water pressure. I’m sorry but that is just a little too much for me to buy. First, his daughter just built a new home next to his about six years ago. With him being a land developer, one would think that he would have easy access to all documents containing information on water lines, power lines, sewer pipes, etc.
This same man had our in-laws’ rented land torn-up, without their permission and while they were at work, so he could install a street light and has repeatedly tried to “widen” the road that provides access to several new homes, including his daughter’s. The thing is, the road was too small to begin with (it was only big enough for one way access). Then these people came in, built all these new homes (in which all of their land is used), and increased the traffic flow from three households to nine households. When they built the home in front of ours with less than three meter access, it made the road even more difficult to navigate. Part of our rented land is parallel to that home. We have trees and bushes on it as a measure of privacy and to help block some of the car fumes that now permeate our home because of the increased traffic flow. So now it is back to the situation of how obsessed is this man and will he have the workers come when we are not home again. If so, how much will get torn-up and reorganized this time?

Previously, I discussed the role of the hostess bars and the trickle-down effects on Okinawa. One might ask if they know what is going on why do the men still go to these establishments. As Donald Trump put it when Jay Leno asked him why he does what he does, “…the scorecard ….” For men, that’s usually what anything is about. It’s all just another game. Is he going to be the man who gets that illusive woman to break her pattern? Knowing that, the women over here figure why not make a few bucks off of it. The men figure it’s worth spending a few bucks on the pleasures of chasing women. And so on, and so on, and so on… What’s really funny is this so-called difference in men and women comes to a screaming halt when men meet a woman who won’t play the game. Usually what happens is the rules of social behavior take over. They gather together in a group and are as obnoxious, catty, and gossipy as women are in an attempt to show their disapproval and manipulate that female into playing the game. Bonus points to the group who can get that female to enter the game, and fifteen minutes of fame if it’s an individual! And all goes quiet on the Eastern front, as the information of another successful social conquest is passed through the island grapevine.