Japan Tourism
On The Tracks To Ise
A Tale Of Travel From Tokyo To Toshijima
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| Yoshiko Nakamura, a former ama, cleans eels outside of her Toshijima home. PHOTO: PACIFIC MAGAZINE |
At the busy train station I get my tickets ready. They’re in Japanese and I can’t understand what they say but I am prepared. How could I not be? Rieko Hayakawa, our young looking 43-year-old Japanese program coordinator with the Sasakawa Pacific Island Nations Fund, had briefed us the night before.
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“Stick close and walk fast,” warns Floyd Takeuchi as we try to swim our way though the currents of people rushing past us in every direction. Floyd is the publisher of Pacific Magazine, and our program trainer. He’s an American of Japanese ancestry who was born in the Marshall Islands and raised on both Majuro and Saipan.
You would think he would be like the rest of us islanders. You know the kind, laid back, relaxed with a “tomorrow’s-another-day attitude.” He’s not. He’s detailed oriented and orderly. He’s also worked in Tokyo, so the sights and sounds are familiar to him.
We’re heading to Ise, a one-and-a-half hour ride on the bullet train to Nagoya then on to a smaller commuter train for another 45 minutes. Ise is the center of Japan when it comes to Shinto shrines. The two main shrines there have been a magnet for Japanese pilgrims and tourists (and hundreds of thousands of foreign visitors) for centuries.
We’d been in Japan for two days conducting back-to-back interviews all-day and writing through the night until the early morning.
I check on my colleagues, Moffat Mamu from the Solomon Islands and Agnes Donato from Saipan. They’ve fallen asleep on the gently rocking local express train.
I’m awake, reading about the history of Ise and its role in developing the modern day Japanese travelers. Using the excuse of a religious pilgrimage, people from all over Japan traveled to Ise. Some were on the road for as long as five months (they walked across Japan in those pre-industrial revolution days) and here I was feeling bothered and annoyed for having to sit on a train for almost three hours.
We are met at the Ise station by Chizuru Hamaguchi. I learn later that she is actually a professional ama, a female diver. They are famous in Japan, and it is a traditional role for the women of Toshijima. Hamaguchi free dives for abalone, sea cucumbers and seaweed. On her time off she and other women (most of whom are also ama) of Toshijima are working to promote tourism development on their tiny island, which traditionally has been a fishing community.
I don’t speak Japanese but from her mannerism I sense that she is excited to meet us and eager to get us to the Shrine where we will be met by a volunteer guide.
We finally arrive at the Ise Shrine and the scenery is amazing. A forest of tall trees dwarf us—a contrast to the tall buildings of Tokyo. Instantly, I feel calm and forget about the monumental task I have to accomplish before the end of the week.
The volunteer guides are retired and as they share the history and stories of the Ise shrine (actually, a collection of 123 shrines, though two are the main attraction), I feel a sense of their pride for their long and proud heritage.
Every 20 years both the inner and outer Ise Shrines are moved from east to west and rebuilt completely to spec. The logic is practical as our guide, 64-year-old Tetuya Ito, explains to us through our translator: “To avoid wood rot and as a means to transfer skills to younger generations.
“This has been the practice for the past 2,000 years,” he says. It reminds me that I am at a place that has attracted Japanese throughout the ages. I feel overcome with a sense of awe and humility.
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| A train conductor checks a passenger’s ticket. PHOTO: AGNES E. DONATO |
As the ferry pulls up to the Toshijima dock I see all the fishing boats in port and the buildings and houses along the harbor. By my standards this island hardly looks like a rural area.
But as we step off the ferry we run into Hamaguchi’s friend and fellow volunteer tourism official, Kanako Yamamoto. She’s got a big smile as she greets us holding a 15-pound fish in a bag. It’s dinner, which she has just picked up from her husband’s boat.
Watching Yamamoto and Hamaguchi “catching-up” instantly reveals that the closeness of the community. I realize all too quickly that my earlier assumption was wrong and within seconds I understand that Tokyo is not necessarily “Japan.” In fact, as foreign as this community appears at the outset, as soon as I step into it, I realize it is similar to my own. I feel like I have come home.
With a population of about 2,500, the community of Toshijima is rural and close knit. What I feel now is comparable to arriving on an outer island like Wotje in the Marshall Islands, where the locals already expect you and are only too eager to acknowledge your arrival.
We stay at the Teiyoo Inn, a modern version of a traditional Japanese inn, or ryokan. We are taken to our traditional room, which smells of fresh straw from the tatami mats that cover the floor. It’s simple and bare but it takes my breath away. I’m an excited and feeling comfortable about this new experience— even though I am told that there are no private showers, only a public bath, one for men, another for women.
Dinner is a spread of freshly-caught seafood. It’s extravagant and delicious. Rieko quickly points out. She too is amazed at all the food. It’s “oishi” (good).
The following morning Hamaguchi and Yamamoto take us through the neighborhood for their “official” tour. They don’t speak English well but they’ve arranged for an Australian man, who’s married into the community, to translate for us.
As we weave our way through the narrow lanes we are greeting by locals. The tour is too short and we have a quick bowl of Ise-style noodles at a residence-turned-restaurant. We have to leave Toshijima but none of us wants to.
The departure is bitter sweet and on the train ride back to bustling Tokyo, and for the remainder of the week, we find ourselves longing for Toshijima.
