March 12-21
Apparently only twelve foreign yachts visit Japan each year. Somehow we managed to meet three of them during our week and a bit on Chichi Jima.
Paul and Francis, an Australian couple, showed up to the pier only two hours after us. They’re headed north from Guam on their way to cross the Aleutian Islands toward Alaska and BC. A few days later a French couple, Eve and Marie, joined the party. They’re semi retired doctors and finance their trip by working at French speaking countries along their route – Tahiti, West Africa…
Chichi jima is a tiny, dry island and looks not unlike southern California. Dry bush, agave, sandy beaches.. Its got an ecotourism thing going on and once every week a ferry brings a few dozen tourists the thousand kilometers from Tokyo. I can’t figure out if it’s the off season right now or what, but it’s pretty far from bumping. I’ve explored most of the island’s trails and rarely see anyone else on them. Not that I’m complaining. Funnily enough, Chichi Jima is technically a part of Tokyo, the largest city in the world. You’d never guess…
There’s this old bearded guy, John, who sits under an American flag on the main drag. He’s got this star spangled sleeveless shirt with an eagle pasted over the chest that’s pretty hard to miss. Other times he’s wearing just a plain ‘ole white tee but I haven’t seen him yet without his Vietnam war veteran cap. From what I can tell sitting is what he does and he lives to chat. Bit by bit he’s told me the history of the island. It was settled by some American whalers back some two hundred years ago. They made a living raising crops and goats, selling them to hungry and thirsty whaling ships. Sometime around the turn of the twentieth century, as the demand for whale oil dropped, the Japanese sent a bunch of settlers and the island became a part of Tokyo prefecture. In case you didn’t guess, John is a descendent of the original American settlers and is now the only white guy left on a very Japanese island.
One of the more interesting things he told me about was about this infamous Chichi Jima “incident”. I’d read about it before, it’s one of the first things that comes up when you Google “Chichi Jima”. What happened was that some starving Japanese troops cannibalized a couple American pilots who had crash landed during the Pacific battles of World War Two. George Bush senior, of presidential fame, was one of the pilots who had crashed but he was lucky enough to land further out at sea and was rescued by a submarine. Apparently he came back to the islands some years later and there’s a small monument to his visit. How different history would be if George Bush had been decapitated and eaten along with the other top guns.
Then there’s Mr. Karo, who runs the yacht club which, as far as I can tell, consists of nothing more than a guest book that each visitor fills out. He was kind enough to also let us use his laundry machine which was well needed by all of us. It had been over a month since any of us had last cleaned our clothes.
Well waiting for my laundry I got a language lesson from a lizard catcher, Rocolo, who was passing by on his skateboard. Thanks to Rocolo I can now tell a girl that she’s pretty, talk about how nice the sky is, and say that something’s cool or tastes good. Turns out that’s pretty much all you need to get by on this island.
I’d be crazy not to mention Shiro in my who’s who of Chichi Jima. Shiro runs my favourite bar on the island. It’s this tiny little place with only two tables and a few seats at the bar. I came in to have lunch one day and the place was totally empty with a John Coltrane record playing at just the right level. The walls are decked out with Dali prints and tucked in one corner is a mahogany, glass door cabinet displaying French antiques and porcelain dolls. Behind the bar is an impressive collection of jazz and rock n roll records complimented by a healthy selection of whisky and sake. I had a beer, fried rice with egg, and a salad. Shiro lived for three years in Paris so we spoke French well I ate my lunch and drank my beer.
The bar across the road is another contender for my favourite, not so much for its food but because Hirono, the woman who inspired me to learn how to say kimi kawayee ney (you’re pretty) works there.
Anyway, that’s the island for ya. The other side of Japan is a love of bureaucracy. We had a ton of difficulty buying diesel since they don’t take credit cards and ATMs have a super low limit. The Koreans (who we’re delivering the boat for) transferred some cash to the gas dock but got rejected because they wrote shima rather than jima in their transfer application. Finally, after extending our visa three times, it all got sorted and we’re off tomorrow morning (March 21) to Busan. It should take us between 5-7 days. The plus side of all or delays is that the weather in Korea has warmed up from nightly lows of -3 to a balmy 5 degrees!
Gnarly Travels 