Along the Seawall

I've been walking. A Japanese woman told me, right after we moved, that if I wanted to meet Japanese people I should walk along the seawall. People walk their dogs, their children, themselves along the seawall that runs from the breakwater in front of our building for five kilometers north, past Araha Beach, past the wind turbine and the Justco shopping complex, to Sunset Beach. It's a good walk. You only have to venture into the street once, to cross a somewhat-less-than-two-lane bridge, and you can see the full spectrum of Okinawan life in those few kilometers.

In fact, once Indiana and I are past the narrow bridge, the first place we pass is a place its graffiti labels "Wadi Street." This is one of Wadi Street's few commercial establishments.You can tell it's a bar by the beer sign. Look at what it's built from.

The house on the corner has devoted years and all of its yard space to an Escher array of scrap metal, for no immediately obvious reason. Once we turn the corner, we're on the street where they fix cars. It's a street you can find from Appalachia to Amman, Ireland to India --- women with not quite all of their teeth watching the legs of boyfriends in oil-dark army surplus sticking out from under cars.

We cross a bridge and start down the Chatan Town beach walkway (in the middle east, they'd call this the corniche) --- it's wide, well maintained, paved with mosaic bricks instead of pitted concrete, lined with decorative plantings. I think this is the fruit a Japanese lady gave me at dance class; she told me it was called "Buddha's head" fruit (because it's bumpy all over, like the traditional representation of Buddha's hair).


At each sidewalk's entrance, a pair of lion dogs stands guard.





The owners of real dogs, however, are admonished by signs every 100 meters that it is their responsibility to pick up and take away any droppings of their pets.








Especially at low tide, we pass a lot of fishermen on this part of our walk. They aren't, of course, commercial fishermen (who were out in their boats at the first grey of the morning); I think that most of them are older men, probably retired, who spend some comfortable hours a day surf fishing or net casting for the fish lured toward the estuaries by the outgoing tide, which brings delectable strands of algae from the island's interior tumbling downstream.



Native Okinawans, unlike Asian tourists or short-term American transplants, have a very serious approach to sun protection. We've been here four months, and have gone through several bottles of SPF 50 sunscreen, and we're all (well, obviously some more than others, but yes even I am) noticeably browned. A lifetime of this is
clearly risking skin cancers and eye damage, not to mention that particular leathery aged quality that used to be the purview of peasants and farmers but is now apparent on aging American beach bunnies and tennis and golf enthusiasts. Okinawans approach this problem by swathing themselves from head to toe every time they leave the house. Women, in particular, are vigilant; I have seen women walking on the sidewalks in the grinding heat of summer wearing huge hats, cotton sweaters, and opaque tights. Women drivers wear opera gloves or cut-off shirt sleeves to keep the sun off of their right arms. If I were likely to look like a polished walnut by the time I was 50 from half a century under this sun, I'd be doing the same thing.

As we near the turn-around point of our walk, we pass Araha Beach. It's technically closed to swimming for the season now, and a bicycle policeman with a brass whistle patrols the seawall walkway, tweeting vigorously at the waders who have been tempted by the still-mild sea into reclining for only a moment in its embrace. On the weekends, though, even the most conscientious public guardian has to give way to the inevitable; he stops patrolling, and we all, in return, wear shorts instead of bathing suits and pretend that we're only wading. A Japanese friend told me that the cost of living in Okinawa is high, and that women in Okinawa can't usually afford to stop working and stay at home with children. In fact, when I see young children during our walks they're almost always with a grandparent. So these bathers (who are certainly not swimming, despite appearances) represent the wealthier few who can afford to spend their days at the shore with their children. Plus some grandmothers willing to sacrifice their skin condition for the amusement of restless children, and a few American women like me, unmoored from our regular lives, watching the tide.