Bus Schedules and Headlamps
The last light of dusk was fading fast. The shades of concrete gray at the Nago Bus Terminal on Okinawa Island began to blend into each other. My hopes of setting up camp before dark outside of the tiny village of Nakijin were fading as quickly as the daylight.
I did my best to read the timetable at the bus stop, but lacked the Japanese skills to figure out which days of the week they applied to. As we boarded a bus that arrived a full hour after I expected, I glanced at my wife and attempted a smile that would convey confidence. She didn’t smile back.
We stepped off at a rural stop, slightly overgrown with grass and vines. The bus disappeared into the darkness, and the dust it left behind settled to the ground. I fumbled through the top pocket of my backpack and pulled out a small headlamp. The dim beam that shone when I flicked it on did little to convince Tiffany that we would find the campground.
I had neither reserved a spot, nor confirmed that they were open. I found the campground on Google Maps, but nobody picked up when I phoned to ask about reservations. “We’ll just get a walk-in site when we arrive,” I told Tiffany, unsure if that was even a real thing.
An Awkward Arrival
After a 30 minute walk down a lonely country road, my head lamp picked up white paint on a wooden sign. It was shaped like a surfboard and bore the words “Okinawa Nakijin”. The campground had 4 raised tent sites, one of which was occupied by a couple with a heater pumping and a television blaring.
We threw our bags down on one of the tent platforms, then wandered around looking for the campground host. There were two buildings near the tenting sites. One looked like an office, the other like a living room.
“Hello? Konbanwa?” we said cautiously into the doorways. Lights were on, and it felt like someone was there, but nobody was around. We creeped into the building that looked like a living room, and found another room full of rental gear.
There was a toilet in the building. We relieved ourselves, and decided to set up camp and sort the rest out in the morning. I could tell Tiffany was uncomfortable with the situation, and I compensated by being overly chipper about everything.
“What a grand adventure we are having.” “Camping in Japan is so interesting!” “Can you believe those people brought a TV out here?” As far as our marriage is concerned, this was one of those times when we weren’t quite on the same page. I fell asleep with my fingers and toes crossed, hoping a new day would shed better light on our camping experience.
The Sun Rises on a New Day in Okinawa
The gods of Okinawa were gracious with me the next morning. The first hints of a new day grew into the spectacular sunrise that is featured as this post’s cover image. As Tiffany and I sat in our sleeping bags at the edge of the water, daylight revealed that we were camping in paradise. Tiny islands dotted the vista, and the nearness of coves across the water gave a sense of coziness. A faint smile cracked on Tiffany’s lips.
As the sun finished its ascent, I looked towards to office building and saw the silhouette of a man leaning against the wall. The campground manager looked bewildered. I suppose it was a bit mystical of us to arrive unnoticed after dark, a couple of kilometers from the nearest bus stop, with no vehicle.
Check-In
The campground manager and I pieced together the details of our check-in using his limited English and my limited Japanese. Then, we toured the campground.
He showed us where the toilets were. They were not the toilets we had used the night before. I realized that the building with the living room must be his house, and that I must have used his private toilet the night before.
I was embarrassed, and hoped that he didn’t notice that I had been in there, or the squares of toilet paper that didn’t quite flush. As the tour finished, and we walked back towards our tent, the campground manager shouted “botoru,” as though he had just realized something.
Bottle. I left my water bottle sitting on his living room table when I used his toilet. My cheeks turned a shade of red that had nothing to do with the sunburn on my face. I uttered “thank you” and “sorry” in Japanese, then shuffled back to the tent.
Lessons Learned
No matter how respectfully we approach traveling, there will always be moments where we are horrified to discover that we are the obnoxious foreigners we so dread. These moments offer the humility we need to continue to remember to be mindful of others as we wander throughout the world. They give the victims our our faux pas opportunities to show us cultural grace and good humor.
The campground manager turned out to be not only gracious, but an adventurous and interesting kindred spirit. Despite the language barrier, we would become friends by the end of our stay, and share good food and hearty laughs together in the little paradise in Nakijin that he calls home.
A Nakijin Shopping Trip
We started our day by walking a couple of kilometers to the convenience store. It was very hot for our Canadian blood, and the power of the sun was somehow amplified. The sun has a unique kind of intensity in Okinawa. The UV is wild, and the sunburns come quick. We found a couple of products that looked like they might contain sunscreen, and some food for the next couple of days.
We’d usually try to eat more fresh foods and local noodles, but we were in one of those awkward travel situations where we were running out of cash and having a hard time finding an ATM in such a rural area. No big deal, we just channeled our former broke university student selves and picked out some instant meals.
As we walked back, the noon hour passed and the sun intensified. We must have been quite a sight, me with my scarf draped over as much skin as possible, Tiffany looking more and more like a roasted beet. All this during the middle of winter in Okinawa, locals clad in winter jackets and curious, concerned faces.
Salty Air and Juicy Oranges
The smells on Okinawa are delicious. Small orange groves and blossoming cherry trees dot the landscape in February, and the salty ocean breeze is a constant antidote to the sun. As we trudged along, we walked past a small SUV with its trunk wide open. A woman popped up out of the orange grove nearby and hurried over to us.
It was one of those moments where language barriers don’t matter. She spoke kindly to us, noticing our sunburns. She motioned for us to wait while she went to grab something out of her car, and came back with a grocery bag full of at least a dozen ripe oranges. After she wished us well in Japanese, we expressed as much gratitude as we could, and then we continued walking.
After turning a corner, we each dug into an orange. In our sunburnt and nutritionally deprived state, they were divine. Luscious. Sensual even. We each had another, and finished the walk back to Nakijin campground with sticky hands and happy hearts.
We spent the afternoon relaxing in hammocks with good books and vending machine drinks, then we cleaned up our campsite and started to think about dinner. The campground was quiet. Aside from ourselves, there was only one other occupied site, a couple, and they were out for the day.
Dinner with New Friends
Tiffany and I made do with some instant noodles and more juicy oranges. It wasn’t much, but it was our last night in Nakijin. We knew if we set out early the next day, we’d be able to catch an early bus and get back to Nago. ATMs and restaurants that accept credit cards are much easier to come by in Nago.
As we cleaned up after our makeshift dinner, our fellow campers pulled back into their site. They fired up a tabletop grill and pulled several bags of groceries out of their van. The campground manager wandered over to their site, and the three of them waved us over.
They invited us to sit, and it finally hit me that they wanted to share their feast with us. I think they had planned the whole thing just to delight us. Either that, or they were alarmed by our low standard of living and were doing it out of charity. Either way, a feast was had.
They didn’t really know English, and we didn’t really know Japanese, but we had a great time anyways. We laughed about the difference between English and Japanese pronunciation of Disney character names, and tried to figure out what everyone does for work. Our campground manager was from Kyoto, and told his story of moving to Nakijin and opening a campground.
We passed around a bottle of whiskey, and I realized that we hadn’t been able to find the campground manager the night before because he had been drinking and having a good time with the campers. Our camp neighbors kept the grill full of veggies, meats, and seafood.
At one point, they asked if I like beef hormone. I didn’t know what it was, but I tried it anyways, learning many months later that beef hormone is cow rectum. For the record, and I am typically a pretty adventurous eater, it was NOT very tasty.
Goodbye Nakijin and One Last Kindness
Long after sunset, we slipped into our tent and fell into a glorious food coma. We woke up and took down our camp. Our neighbours were amazed when everything fit right back into our backpacks. They refused to let us leave to catch the bus and insisted that they could drive us back to the hostel in Nago.
On the way from Nakijin to Nago, they surprised us with a stop for some breakfast noodles at one of their favourite local spots. They laughed when I took a picture of my bowl, and we joked about “Instaguramu”. As I’m typing this, I can still taste the rich flavour of the broth and the fresh bite of the noodles.
A Final Lesson
Like so many people you encounter while traveling, our friendship was a fleeting two day affair. We didn’t exchange contact information and will probably never see each other again. But, whenever I think back to our time at the campground on a beach in rural Okinawa, those two will be a part of my memories.
And I think that’s kind of the whole point of traveling. Connecting with other people and helping people make their way through the world is so core to who we are as humans. Leaving a bit of any experience up to chance creates possibilities for this type of Okinawa magic to happen.
By the way, if you asked my wife today, I bet she’d tell you our time camping in Nakijin was her favourite part of that trip to Japan.