Drains of the Oki Islands

Nakanoshima

Chiburijima

Nishinoshima

Okinoshima

Farewell to the Oki Islands

“Once more, homeward bound, I sat upon the cabin-roof of the Oki-Saigo--
this time happily unencumbered by watermelons--and tried to explain to
myself the feeling of melancholy with which I watched those wild island-
coasts vanishing over the pale sea into the white horizon. No doubt it
was inspired partly by the recollection of kindnesses received from many
whom I shall never meet again; partly, also, by my familiarity with the
ancient soil itself, and remembrance of shapes and places: the long blue
visions down channels between islands--the faint grey fishing hamlets
hiding in stony bays--the elfish oddity of narrow streets in little
primitive towns--the forms and tints of peak and vale made lovable by
daily intimacy--the crooked broken paths to shadowed shrines of gods
with long mysterious names--the butterfly-drifting of yellow sails out
of the glow of an unknown horizon. Yet I think it was due much more to a
particular sensation in which every memory was steeped and toned, as a
landscape is steeped in the light and toned in the colours of the
morning: the sensation of conditions closer to Nature's heart, and
farther from the monstrous machine-world of Western life than any into
which I had ever entered north of the torrid zone. And then it seemed to
me that I loved Oki--in spite of the cuttlefish--chiefly because of
having felt there, as nowhere else in Japan, the full joy of escape from
the far-reaching influences of high-pressure civilization--the delight
of knowing one's self, in Dozen at least, well beyond the range of
everything artificial in human existence.”

- Lafcardio Hearn, Glimpse’s of Unfamiliar Japan

My journey to Oki was a culturally rich experience.  It was my first time to venture out to the islands surround the mainland of Japan, and of all the places I could have gone, I picked one of the most remote and cultural distinct places in the country.

Once the 'islands of exile' in the 7th century to the 12th century, Oki continues to be isolated from the mainland, a place few Japanese have ever ventured. This isolation and preserved culturally rich traditions, such as Ama-cho’s Kinya Moniya Dance, and the famous dried quid that came be see hanging from the windows of local shops.

Very few things are imported from the mainland, due to cost and also the desire for self-sufficiency. There are no convenient stores, and almost all businesses are local. The building are made from wood, on islands where trees are abundant and importing raw materials would be costly.

The Oki Three-Day Walk is what I would call “athletic tourism.” This is a form of tourism that focuses on physical activity, but the highlight is actually being in the exotic place. In other words, you get a good workout, but it is still not so rigorous that you can’t enjoy the scenery.

Although I never participated in an organized walk, run, marathon, or any kind of athletic event, I observed some characteristics in the event style and participants that I feel are very different from my home country.

One very noticeable difference was the way women dressed. Although it was over 30 degrees, women covered every inch of their bodies. They wore long pants, long sleeved shirts, gloves, and wide-brimmed hats with detachable veils that draped over the face leaving only the eyes uncovered, as a niqab does. These clothes were not worn out of modesty, but rather to protect the skin from exposure to sunlight. Being pale is still the ideal for women, and they take extreme measures to ensure that not one part of their bodies are exposed to direct sunlight. This is very different from America, where women wear shorts and tank tops when the workout, whether or not they care about tanning. I too would rather just apply sunscreen than walk 60 K underneath a sheet.

Hats, long sleeves, and gloves in 100-degree heat

Back view of the Japanese face veil

Another interesting cultural item is the ubiquitous towel. Long narrow towels printed with the event logo are typically given out at every kind of athletic event. Businesses may also have their own printed towels to give to customers on special occasions. In America, these would be called “hand-towels” and we would use them exclusively in the bathroom after washing our hands. In Japan, they are worn like a fashion accessory. Most people wear the towels around their necks to absorb sweat, or they may tie them around their heads like a bandana. At concerts, people in the audience swing their towels in the air like helicopters. There is no escaping the towel.

Towel in the package

Eating a Japanese bento everyday was also a delight. In America, if lunch were provided at such an event, it would doubtlessly be a sandwich, salad, or tortilla wrap. I dreaded company lunches and picnics in America for fear of these tasteless wraps. In Japan, lunch is always a bento, and it is also always delicious. There is always a healthy mix of meat, vegetables, and rice, with plenty of different flavors to keep the taste buds entertained.

Lastly, I will say that Japanese service really is unparalleled in the world. This extends beyond the expected demeanor and assistance of event staff. Superior service and hospitality can be seen throughout the community. Residents of the islands sat outside on their porches to wave and greet us as we walked past. Restaurants opened their doors to give us free cold tea and miso soup along the way. Rather than being merely tourists, we were treated as guests.

 

When the ferry departs Oki, local residents bid goodbye in a unique way. Colorfully streamers are affixed to the edge of the ship, and they slowly unravel, like a rainbow coming undone in the sky. From the ship’s deck we can see through the colorful streamers to the people on the coastline waving goodbye.

Colorful streamers fly from the boat's deck

Okinoshima-cho, Okinoshima Day 3

The sun setting as I approach Dogo

Okinoshima is the most populous of the four towns, at approximately 15,000 people. The entire population occupies the largest island of Dogo, as well as the uninhabited islets of Okinashima, Obanashima, Tsunameshima, Shijikijima and Ombeshima . This is obvious from the first arrival. The port at Okinoshima was the most prominent and developed of the four ports I had seen on Oki. The most discernable difference was this is was made from glass and concrete, unlike the wooden pavilions I had seen in Dozen.

The port at Dogo on Okinoshima

Over one hundred years ago, famed travelor Lafcardio Hearn was also impressed by the modern appearance of the port of Okinoshima.

“Saigo was a great surprise. Instead of the big fishing village I had
expected to see, I found a city much larger and handsomer and in all
respects more modernized than Sakai; a city of long streets full of good
shops; a city with excellent public buildings; a city of which the whole
appearance indicated commercial prosperity. Most of the edifices were
roomy two story dwellings of merchants, and everything had a bright, new
look. The unpainted woodwork of the houses had not yet darkened into
grey; the blue tints of the tiling were still fresh. I learned that this
was because the town had been recently rebuilt, after a conflagration,
and rebuilt upon a larger and handsomer plan.”

The ferry from Dozen to Dogo

The port also boasted an arrival platform similar to those in airports, where residents can early await the arrival of guests. I spotted my host there. He was easy to find, being blonde and over six feet tall. At the arrival platform I bid goodbye to my ship companions and hopped in the car with my host.

That evening we dined at the home of a local woman from Okinoshima. She was close to seventy, with a grown daughter and grandchildren in elementary school.　The menu was a Japanese-European fusion of croquettes, pasta salad, chawanmushi, and purin. We dined in traditional Japanese fashion, sitting at a low table on the tatami floor. The conversation hovered around the future plans of all foreigners at the table, including myself, who all planned to leave Japan in August. We also talked about our host’s family. The woman’s daughter had married an American man fifteen years ago and moved with him to the United States. She showed us their wedding photos and pictures of their children.

When we returned to the home of my foreign host, we ended the night by eating ice cream and watching an American movie. Just after midnight I made my futon in the guest room and fell asleep just before midnight.

An excellent home-cooked dinner

My bed on Dogo for the night

***

The next morning I struggled to awake even with the blaring ring of my alarm. It was the third and final day of my 3-Day Walk. I had only 12K to walk but I could already tell that it would be challenging. My feet were incredibly sore from the previous days, I had blisters on every toe, and I was drain from a night of restless sleep. I dressed and quietly slipped out of the house at 6:45 am, careful not to wake my still sleeping host.

The house where I stayed was a 20 minute walk from the port, about 1.5 kilometers. I left my suitcase at the house, where I would return to get it later, and quietly walked to the pier.

After reaching the pier I boarded a chartered bus that drove us to the starting point, which took nearly an hour. I napped on the way to catch up from last night’s lack of sleep. The starting point was in an open field in front of a camp site.  Based on the course map, this would be an interior walk through the island, and we would only be briefly near the shoreline.

At 8:30 promptly we started out walking to the coast, were I was met with the same solitary white lighthouse that I had seen from the ferry to Oki. Now I was on the land behind the lighthouse, looking out into the sea that brought me.

The course then had us turn around and walk back through the campsite. It was mostly a flat paved path that ascended only slightly uphill to end at a peaceful lake. The water was so still and calm that it perfectly reflected the green mountains behind it.

The perfect mirror

After walking around the lake, the path lead back down the hill and into town, where I crossed over one final bridge before arriving at the goal. There, my final lunch bento was waiting for me, and it was the largest of all. I ate outside by the shoreline while waiting for the bus back into town.

The bridge at the finish line

My large victory bento

The chartered bus carried us back to the port at 1:00 pm, but my walk wasn’t over. I still had to trek another 1.5 kilometers to my host’s house, shower and pack, then walk 1.5 K back to the port to catch the ferry to the mainland. In total, I walked 16K by the time I reached the ferry to Matsue. I was so exhausted that I grabbed a bamboo matt and fell asleep on the deck for entire 2-hour ride.

The sight of Shichiri Port in the distance only signaled that I was one-third of the way finished with my journey home. I still had to take a bus back to Matsue station, then a train back to Oda station, then drive 45 minutes to my home.

The sun was setting as I boarded the train, and it was dark by the time I started my drive. Along the drive home, my thoughts wandered to the Oki Islands, where the stars would be shining gloriously over a black sea.  

Manhole cover of Okinoshima

Nishinoshima-cho, Nishonoshima Day 2

After completing 24 K on the islands of Nakanoshima and Chiburijima, Nishinoshima was a mere 7-minute ferry ride across the lagoon. Nishinoshima is the largest of the Dozen islands, both in size and population. Over 3,000 people live on the island of Nishinoshima, which territory also includes the uninhabited islets of Hoshikamijima, Futamatajima and Okazuroshima.

I would be spending the night on this island, and completing another 20K there the next morning. Fortunately I had a host on this island as well, another one of the island’s only foreign residents, who picked me up in her car and graciously drove me to her house.

Along the way, we stopped at a local grocery store (I’m not sure why I am mentioning that detail since all grocery stores are local). I bought some sashimi, yakitori, seaweed salad, and a delicious cake from the baker outside. The evening was spent chatting and lounging around the house.　Around 8:00 pm we drove to an izakaya for a delicious dinner of ramen, eggplant, and other small dishes.

Ramen dinner to celebrate a hard day's work

My generous futon for the night

***

After a restful night’s sleep, I once again awoke without an alarm the next morning at 6:45 am

My host kindly drove me to the port the next morning at 7:35, where people were gathered in the parking lot of the tourism center awaiting the start of the morning’s walk.  This was the only day where we would truly be walking from start to finish. There was no ferry to board between islands, and no bus to take to the starting point or goal.

The group left sharply at 8:30 am. Yesterday I had been at the front of the race and one of the first to finish, but this morning I was one of the last to leave, and stayed behind the group almost the entire way.

The first 10 kilometers were along the main roads through town, of which I was already somewhat familiar.  After an hour of walking I was walking past my host’s house, then at her office. The roads ran along the coastline, providing spectacular views of the calm port, as well we scenes of rural life on the island. Still, I was feeling that even this was too urbane, with cars passing by every now and then, and buildings and paved roads in my peripheral vision. Reminiscent of the previous day’s hike in Ama-cho, I was again feeling the desire for the rugged wilderness.

The "urban" part of the walk

I hit the 10K checkpoint at 10:15 am, and that when the scenery changed completely. We started walking inland, and straight uphill. I would be climbing those steep hills for another hour, the road so curvy that it was impossible to see the end of it. Beyond every curve lay another uphill climb to the next curve. I didn’t hit the 15 K checkpoint until 11:30 am.

When I broke through the tree line I stood atop a high pasture overlooking the sea. As in Chibu-mura, the wind shredded through my clothes and although I stood in direct sunlight I was cold. With my view no longer obstructed by winding curves and trees, I could see the peak of the mountain facing an open sky. Though I was exhausted from climbing uphill , I was spurned on by the promise of a spectacular view.

What awaited me was probably the most famous image of the Oki Islands: Matengai cliff

Matengai cliff

“The luminous blankness circling us continued to remain unflecked for
less than an hour. Then out of the horizon toward which we steamed, a
small grey vagueness began to grow. It lengthened fast, and seemed a
cloud. And a cloud it proved; but slowly, beneath it, blue filmy shapes
began to define against the whiteness, and sharpened into a chain of
mountains. They grew taller and bluer--a little sierra, with one paler
shape towering in the middle to thrice the height of the rest, and
filleted with cloud--Takuhizan, the sacred mountain of Oki, in the
island Nishinoshima.

“It is the mists that make the magic of the backgrounds; yet even without
them there is a strange, wild, dark beauty in Japanese landscapes, a
beauty not easily defined in words. The secret of it must be sought in
the extraordinary lines of the mountains, in the strangely abrupt
crumpling and jagging of the ranges; no two masses closely resembling
each other, every one having a fantasticality of its own. Where the
chains reach to any considerable height, softly swelling lines are rare:
the general characteristic is abruptness, and the charm is the charm of
Irregularity.”

-Lafcardio Hearn, Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan

The climb downhill was almost as challenging as the climb uphill. The path was so steep I had to descend sideways, which slowed down my speed considerably. This is when things started getting wild. Nishinoshima had both the obstacles of Ama-cho (hairy caterpillars and huge bees), as well as the obstacles of Chibu-mura (cows and cow dung).

At the bottom of the hill more luscious scenes were waiting to seen. Auburn rocks of the coast evoked a wild desire from me. Alone at the face of a jagged coastline, I somehow felt more human than I ever have in the cities. I lingered a while to savor the view. Then I marched on. I opted to take a short 15 minute break at a campsite just below the hill. I had less than 5 K to go but even that seemed like too much for my weary body.  I trudged along the remaining meters at turtle pace and was one of the last to arrive at the port at 1:10 pm.

The day’s bento was again smaller than expected, and mainly made from rice, which was not nearly enough food for me. Fortunately one of the women on the island was selling fish burgers, and gave one to me for free. It was covered in mayonnaise and looked like beef burger and tasted like the ocean, but I loved it.

I had several hours to pass before the ferry left to Dogo at 5:15 pm, so I returned to my host’s house where I showered and rested for a short time.

The ferry departed from the same port where I arrived. At this point I was very familiar with the area and had no trouble getting a ferry ticket or finding the platform. Unlike the small boats we had taken between the Dozen islands, the ferry from Dozen to Dogo was the size of a ship, the same ferry that carries passengers to and from the mainland.

I had been warned that a ride on the ship could be treacherously nauseating, so I prepared myself mentally for anguish. Before mounting the ship, one may mistake it for a cruise vessel. It was glamorously white and pristine. However, its age showed from within. Faded carpets and yellowed wallpaper. They hadn’t bothered to maintain its interior in all its years of voyage. And that was as bad as it got. The sea itself was calm and cradling, gently rocking me to sleep as I lay on the outside desk. The whispering of waves caressing the edges of the ship.

I expected to grab a bamboo matt and sleep on the floor of the ship again, but something more interesting happened. One middle-aged woman and her teenage son noticed I was sitting alone and started a conversation with me. We were then joined by an elderly lady who was sitting in the vicinity and curious about chatting with a foreigner. The woman and her son lived in Dogo, on the largest (and only inhabited) island of Okinoshima.

 Our conversation ranged from my personal life, my unconventional long-distance relationship, to traveling and working abroad. Having to speak only Japanese got tiring for me after a while, but just as I thinking that I couldn’t take it anymore, the sound of music began to play from the intercom, a signal that we were about to arrive at the port. A whole hour and a half had flown by while I conversed with my companions, and I was suddenly very thankful for their presence.

Manhole cover at Nishinoshima, a squid mascot