Art Imitates Life: Omiko Beach Adventure (Part V)

Last week I was reading a story to a group of 6 year olds when a strange sense of deja-vu came over me. The memory didn't apply to the reading of a story, but to the story itself. Each time I turned the page I was amazed to witness retelling of something that had happened to me just a couple of weeks ago during my trip to Shikoku. The story I was reading in class was called Pirate Adventure. I'll juxtapose some of the storybook pages along with my tale. I hope you'll find the parallels as amusing as I did.

Driving South along the coastline from Naruto's whirlpools, we arrived at Omiko beach well after sunset and set up camp in the darkness on a grassy spot separated from the beach by a small hedge. The next morning we woke to find "No Swimming" sings infringing on our little piece of paradise. We understood the icon well enough but couldn't read the information surrounding it. It was far too hot to just sit in front of the water all day, so we set about finding out why swimming was prohibited. If swimming wasn't allowed because of sharks or killer jellyfish then fine, I would oblige, but if this was one of those no swimming for no reason signs, I was going in. I took a picture of the sign with my phone and sent it to a trusty translator friend who texted back "it says: Danger No Swimming! - Tokushima Prefecture, Tokushima East Police Department. "

camp

Frustrated, I took my toothbrush in the direction of the bathrooms when I noticed a set of stairs carved into the mountain leading away from the beach. I was intrigued and ended up taking a detour and hiking the mountain for more than an hour. I should have brought the camera instead of the toothbrush, but Shoganai (that's life). Each set of stairs led to a small path overlooking the ocean and then an even bigger set of stairs. The beach was long gone after 15 minutes of climbing and the jungle was closing in as the path became narrower. The locusts in Japan are deafening in the summer and on a few occasions in Shikoku we also heard a new type of bug that sounded like chattering teeth. That sound gave me the chills while I climbed, as I imagined large moth like creatures with big white grins gnawing on tree bark.

My toothbrush and I climbed a lot of steps before the tree cover began to recede and I reached the top of the cliff overlooking the ocean and our campsite. It was about 7:00am and the sun was still rising behind me and chasing out the last remaining shadows at the base of the cliffs. As I looked down at the surf breaking on the rocks about 300 feet below my perch, I could just make out two people snorkeling a few hundred meters from our campsite. The sight gave me hope that we would be able to swim that day, after all, nothing appeared to be eating or stinging these guys. I quickly made my way back down the mountain and after finally brushing my teeth, I went to report back to the campsite with what I had seen. As I was telling my friends about the snorkelers they walked up from the water behind us. We turned to ask them what they knew about the swimming conditions, and I got my first clear look at who they were: Yakuza.

I had been warned about Yakuza from every adult student I have, much in the way everyone in Croatia warns you about the Serbians or the way the Mexican tourist groups warn you about the cab drivers. In Japan the crime rate is so low it is barely worth mentioning, except for among this notorious group. The Yakuza are Japanese mafia and have a hand in all sorts of things ranging from pachinco parlors to police corruption. This is about as close as Japan ever comes to Mexico.

The telltale signs of yakuza are huge tattoos, and even more famously, missing fingers. Tattoos are highly taboo in Japan as a result of the mafia affiliation. If you have so much as a lady bug inked on your ankle you aren't allowed at the onsens or swimming pools and are considered a rebel. The missing digits come from a long held tradition of penance after offending a boss by chopping off a finger and handing it over. This harkens back to old school Japan, when a missing finger would weaken one's grip on his sword, leaving him disadvantaged and more dependant on his clan for survivial.
All of this information roared in my head as the men walked up to us. TK asked them about the no swimming signs and as I strained to understand the conversation that followed, I picked out the following words: jellyfish, water, children, sharks, fish, alright, and a phrase that can mean either 'it doesn't matter' or 'it has no relation'. It's a good thing TK was there to translate because with only this short list of comprehensible words, I still had no idea whether I wanted swim or not.
The men began to walk away and before I could ask what was said they turned back to us and gestured for us to come with them. Our small group hesitated for a minute and looked at each other with a mixture of amusement and nervousness while the yakuza became more animated in their gesturing and began yelling to us to follow them.

We followed them up the path to a large picnic area where there were about 9 other tough looking tattooed guys and a smattering of women and children who were busy preparing food and smashing watermelons, respectively. We were invited to sit in the circle of drinking men and each given a beer. Within a few minutes, dishes of grilled food began accumulating on the table.
Pieces of information began to slowly make their way to me, either by TK and Joe translating or by my own understanding of idiot level Japanese and obvious sign language. This all began around 8:00am and by 10:00 we were well beyond buzzed and all speaking Japanese at least twice as well as we had been just two hours earlier. TK had gone from advanced to native speaker, Joe went from intermediate to advanced, I went from beginner to intermediate and Thi went from none at all to chiming in with phrases here and there. This happens when you drink and speak a new language. You lose your fear of sounding like an idiot and start just spitting out your entire repetoire until you are understood, and the crazy thing is, it works.

Over a breakfast of spicy squid, grilled pork, marinated eggplant and 5 or 6 beers, we got to know our unlikely new drinking buddies. The most outgoing of the group, Go-Chan, was a big soft teddy bear of a gangster and seemed more like an over-grown kid than a part of Japan's most feared company. He told us about his tattoos, how long each one took and about the old fashion method used to create them: no gun, just a needle, a hammer and some ink. He had gone straight a few years back and now worked as a tattoo artist in Osaka. To pay his way out of the mafia, he handed over the pinky finger on his left hand. "I did it myself" he said miming an hacking action with his chopsticks, "didn't hurt too much." As we winced, a big smile spread across his face and he held out his truncated hand and said "Touch it! It's alright!"
Jun was a wiry guy with glasses who seemed more likely as a mailman than as a member of the mob, but he had a commanding energy about him and the other guys addressed him as 'boss'. The story was that they were all ex-mafia members and now worked construction locally, but I wasn't sure if that was actually true, or true in the way that Tony Soprano worked in waste management. I certainly wouldn't have asked even if I knew how to.

At some point our attention turned to an apparatus next to the picnic site that had labeled markers at varying heights to officiate a contest for short school kids. I taped the action as Joe schooled the tough guys in the art of drunk jumping.

Jun

T.K.

Jumping Contest

As the day wore on, we asked again about swimming. Our hosts insisted that the signs were meant for unsupervised children and that the only thing wrong with the water was that it was extremely cloudy and had a fair few jellyfish. Now, I've seen enough Shark Week to know that cloudy water is a major factor is almost all fatal cases of shark attack, so I had my own theories about about the reasons for the signs, but when I asked, the yakuza insisted that the sharks all hung around Shikoku's capital city, Kochi. Kochi was maybe 100 kilometers from our beach, so they saw no reason to be concerned. With all due respect to our new friends, I like to take my shark advice from people with a bit more reservation about losing appendages. By noon however, the sun was blazing and we were well beyond the beer and mostly through the sho-chu (Japanese Whiskey) so when the yakuza said "Let's go spear-fishing, come on, we'll teach you" we all stood up and walked to the water without much hesitation.

Jun took Joe into the water first

And he's ready

Thi and I stuck close to the beach and went for smaller prey.

That day on Omiko Beach was the day we accomplished the least and the day we will remember far more than the others despite the booze. That kind of day is why life is worth living. There is nothing better than looking at your friends and saying "Can you believe this is happening?!?" The Japanese people as a whole are very helpful and polite, but ironically the friendliest people I have met so far in Japan were the dreaded Yakuza. When they left us at the end of the day, they gave us their email addresses and phone numbers and invited us to the party again next year, even offering us a place to stay at their homes.

"I like Yakuza," said Gail.