Okinawa

Last Friday, a group of people, mostly university students, from Okinawa (Japan) came over to NUS for a seminar about Okinawa. They're a seriously energetic and driven bunch and I can't help but admire them for what they have that I don't.

Their main motive here is to promote Okinawa, as well as see if they can learn something from Singapore that they can bring back to Okinawa to improve the tourism there.

After their presentation, I really feel like going to Okinawa for my grad trip (if I have one) now! It's just such an amazing place. And it's rojak like Singapore in a sense that it's Japan, it's not, and it's also America at the same time. Even the students themselves said they don't know what Okinawa is anymore. This is because long ago, Okinawa used to be called The Ryukyu Kingdom, a country on its own (but also full of immigrants from nearby countries, China and Korea). Then, some warlord from southern Japan called Shimazu, under the order of the shogunate that was in control at that time, invaded the Ryukyus. Not wanting to see bloodshed, the king of the Ryukyus accepted defeat. After that, it was part of Japan. HOWEVER, not long after, there was WWII, and Japan lost, and Okinawa then became occupied by Americans. Some years later, the Americans retreated (although partially), and it became part of Japan again.

So you see, they are confused, too. Are they the Ryukyus, or Japan, or America? In fact, you can find all three cultures and artifacts in that one place! You can also find Chinese, Korean and even Javanese influences in their culture. In fact, the stuff they have there is actually quite different from the rest of Japan. How intriguing.

Well, apart from their super awesome and interesting history, they have really beautiful seas and beaches, their air is really good, and the weather there is awesome too, not too cold, not too hot! Water sports like water-skiing and scuba and non-scuba diving also seem to be their main tourist attraction.

Ok let's talk about the people. Five of them came, three guys and two girls. The two girls are super chio and pretty, and super confident! The guys are even more interesting.

There's this guy, he's not a university student like the other four. Currently, he's working as an assistant teacher. In Japan, they actually have this post whereby there's a main teacher and an assistant, who teach at the same time. So while the main teacher is teaching, the assistant will help around by looking out for weaker students and explaining stuff to them while the main continues teaching, or make people pay attention if he spots them losing their concentration. He also keeps the children in check if they start fights, or make noises or disrupts the class. For that, he keeps saying that he's a "fake teacher" lol. Well, but anyway. Before this job, last year, he used to work as an insurance salesman AND... AND.. guess what? A FARMER! Lol! I now know an (ex)farmer! How cool is that?!

Another guy, he explained to us that the education system in Japan has been really screwed up recently because the government just keeps employing teachers in huge quantities and the quality of education has dropped severely. Class sizes have also been huge and thus the attention they receive is not optimal. Seeing that, he has decided to be a teacher himself and went to study English in University so that he can be an English teacher. He has also told us of some of his plans to improve the standard of education back home. Ambitious! But that's the way youngsters should be, right?

The last guy talked mainly about the unique food they have there. They brought some samples and it was quite tasty!

One of the girls is very worried about the environment in Okinawa. Their beaches are clean and sparkly but garbage from China and Korea keep getting washed up onto their shores. She is trying to find out how to solve this problem, but unfortunately we couldn't give her any good ideas since in Singapore, what we do is pay people to clean up the garbage.

The last girl wants to improve the tourism of Okinawa. She has identified a few problems, like, although they keep wanting tourists to come, the people there cannot really speak English. Also, they are not sure what is good as publicity and tourists attractions, because their main tourist attraction aka beautiful seas and beaches, as well as diving and other water sports, can easily be done elsewhere (e.g. Maldives). Also, we helped them to identify that a huge pull factor that could help a lot in boosting their tourism industry is to HAVE DIRECT FLIGHTS. They don't have direct flights right now. You have to transfer from some other main airport like Narita airport in Tokyo.

Anyway, I really learnt a lot about Okinawa and Japan through this experience, as well as got myself a chance to practice my Japanese. As I see these young people who really want to do something to improve the conditions of their homeland, I think we really have to learn from them this spirit of loving where we come from, and wanting to see change, and actually DO SOMETHING to make the change and BE THE CHANGE we want to see. It's high time that we Singaporeans stop complaining and move our butts to do something about whatever stupid shit we are complaining about. I think we are just too pampered, really. Complaining about a bus that takes 7 minutes to come when in Okinawa, the bus can take up to 2 hours to arrive.