Thursday, May 28, 2009

So, it turns out Im a horrible person!!

Ha haaaa! So it seems that my goal of posting once a month didnt work out so well!!

Enjoy some information/stories of Miyake!!

well, there are some good things and some...not BAD things, but...cultural and language barriers arent easy to break through. Thing is, I dont really live "in Japan". I DO, geographically, but Im on an island called miyake-jima (look it up in google maps - make sure you use satelite...its SO cool - it might be called miyakemura the first two characters will be 三宅 - it means three-homes or soemthing) Every time I say "so this is what Japan is like" the locals say "oh, this isn't Japan. This is Miyake"...and it's true. Its not Japan - but Im betting it's better. It's not everyone's cup of tea, but I love it. The people here are amazing, and the ocean is beautiful, I cant really describe the place.
When I went to the other islands and said I was from Miyake, everyone asked 'Gas...daijoubu?' (Is the gas OK?) (Im not sure if they're mocking me...), and really, its fiiine. It SOUNDS a lot scarier than it is, and you really don't need a gas mask unless it's a level 3, which is rare, and even more rarely does it get to level 4. Besides, the school has a desulfurization thing, so you don't even notice the gas at work. Also, sometimes I cant even smell it in my room if my doors are all closed. The gas is only in one area of the island at a time, and that area depends on wind direction, and the level depends on the volcano's mood (no one seems to think that sacrificing a virgin will stop the gas...but no one's tried it, despite my suggestions, so we'll never know). The gas will apparently keep being emitted until the next eruption (which should happen in about 10-15 years).

First, the island itself (all the IZU islands, really) used to be colonies for criminals...like australia :P The volcano (Oyama, meaning old-man-mountain [I think]) erupted in 2001 - but it wasnt lava, it was sulfur and ash. Everyone was evacuated for 5 years, unknowing when they could come back or what life would be like once they got here. The whole island was destroyed from acid rain and toxic gas. The trees are all white and dead, and it looks like death...but at the bottom, there is a lot of green, and more grows every year - Even after one year, I notice there's a big difference between when I got here in August to now. Anyway, the population went down a lot, and now there are only 2900 people on the island. The school I work at went from having 150 kids to a whopping 46!!
Tsubota, the area I live in, used to be the most populated area, and now, its the most destroyed.

There was a famous man, named Jack Moyer who was an american soldier who found out that the americans were bombing a part of the coral reef near the island, found out that reef was endangered, so he stopped the bombing and eventually moved to Miyake. After the eruption, he killed himself in Tokyo. A very tragic thing and I know the locals regret that. I have tea with the woman who did his taxes sometimes. She owns a store/restaurant and sometimes gives me free stuff :)
There are also some ghost stories on the island, such as, the most gruesome one I know, the story of a little girl. 100 years ago (true story), during the Edo period, the people of Japan used to pay taxes with rice (yeah, only 100 years ago. I think that's partially why they're happy to accept the western-way of life), but there is no rice on miyake, so they paid it with salt. One year the salt went missing. A young girl was with her friends and sang a song about the salt being in her attic. Her dad ground her up in a millstone. Apparently if you walk through a certain gate in Kamitsuki (an area of the island), you can hear the girl singing. There's also a legless ghost that "runs" around a pond at the south end of the island, which looks for its legs - its legs are apparently at the north end of the island (it runs across the rooftops) looking for its body. Also the aforementioned pond is apparently a famous suicide spot, in that, there's a legend that visitors who go there get posessed and hang themselves off the trees.

There is ONE boat that comes to/from Miyake once a day, if the weather is good enough. It leaves Tokyo at 10:30pm, arrives in Miyake at 5am, then goes on to Mikura and Hachijo and back, arriving once again to Miyake, leaves Miyake again at 2:20 and goes to Tokyo. It arrives in Tokyo between 8:00-9pm, depending on weather and which ship you're on. The slow one, Camillia-maru, is older, smaller, and the "summer ship", because the Salubia (Salvia?) -maru, the faster, fancier, larger ship goes to the tourist-islands-chain, and does the Miyake chain in the winter because...either the waves are worse in the winter or better, and that ship deals with it better.
The other way is by plane, which only runs half the time because of the gas. Something that you don't know for sure until 5 minutes before the plane leaves the airport in Tokyo. If there is a west wind, the plane will be cancelled (there are websites that show the predicted wind for the next day, so usually you can figure out for yourself it it will be canelled). Whoever decided to put the airport on the eastern side of the island was kinda foolish...if it were on the north side, chances are the plane would fly more often. Actually, what they SHOULD do is build another airport, but I doubt theres the money for that.

anyway, that's all for now. Maybe...MAYBE I'll update again before I leave!!