November fifth is nothing to me anymore. I have seen the light – and heard the bangs. And they took place on the tiny Pacific island of Ishigaki. Scarlet and yellow hearts launched themselves skyward, followed by smiling faces and then swimming fishes, and my new friends Akone and Chica grabbed my arms tighter and tighter as each bloom exploded above a black velvet sea.
I had always wanted to visit Japan, and I’d always fancied lounging on a Far Eastern paradise beach. But it wasn’t until I started planning my trip that I realised I could do both at once. Scattered in the Pacific towards Taiwan, the subtropical Okinawa islands are just two hours by plane from mainland Japan, but the whole world seems to have ignored them as a two-centre destination. As I board the plane from Osaka, the only other tourists are locals, who all queue by the loos to change into their Bermuda shorts.
The Japanese come here in force because the islands are known for their healthy lifestyle – it’s a combination of balanced diet, warm climate and relaxed pace that keeps the locals chugging along well into their nineties, and has put the islands’ inhabitants at the top of the world’s longevity lists. And they know how to celebrate too. The fireworks display was no once-a-year extravaganza – it was the monthly fête, where everyone from knee-high kimono-wearers to sultry ladies in clinging black dresses congregated in a field to eat, watch dancers from the local academy and ooh and aah at the fireworks.
This love of grand spectaculars stretches right back to the 14th century, when the 36-strong Okinawa island group was ruled over by its own kings. Aware that their power was significantly less than that of neighbouring China, they played an elaborate smoke and mirrors game with costumed dances and soaring sanshin serenades, that helped keep the islands safe from invaders for hundreds of years.
It was only in 1879, when the Japanese invaded the eponymous main island, that the kings bade independence farewell, and had Japanese culture foisted on them by the ruling nation. But, two and a half hours from Osaka by plane and edging towards all those mythical South Pacific paradises, it’s hard to see where Japan’s famous hectic-ness has taken effect on subtropical, overgrown Ishigaki.
The day before, I had strolled around the misleadingly named Ishigaki City, disturbed by little more than the tinkle of wind chimes on rusty red roofs, the swish of a perfect sea glimpsed between palms, or the chirping that announces the island’s pedestrian crossings. Occasionally, the sweet lilting music invented by the Okinawa kings wafted out from a supermarket, melodies barely changed in 400 years. On the main drag, huddles of bars lazily touted for custom with slowly flashing lights, with each seeming more and more deserted as I wandered further from the little passenger ferries at the port.
‘It’s not tourist season,’ Akone told me. ‘There’s no one here.’ And yet, at breakfast that morning at the Nikko hotel, I had witnessed huge groups of Japanese, all dressed in Hawaiian shirts and baseball caps and poised for an adventure. I never found out where they’d gone, it was as though they’d been sucked up by the sea breeze.
But still, I had friends. I’d met Chica at the tourist office at the port, where she was dying to try out her English and translated for me as an old man pointed straight at my face and laughed. ‘He says you look just like Mary,’ she said and signalled to a tiny Canadian woman manning one of the desks. I was about three times her size and had brown hair to her ginger. It was akin to looking at Spice Girls Geri and Mel B.
