Putting on Your Own Sunscreen: Part 8

Real-life Mamma Mia but the Japanese version (minus the three men & the accidental pregnancy)

It’s 10.30 pm on a Friday.

I’m sweating.

My knees are bobbing up and down near my armpits as I struggle up a hill on a bike made for someone half my height.

It’s pitch-black; the road ahead barely lit up by my shitty dying head torch.

Road signs of a glaring yellow-eyed cow warn me to watch out.

I’d heard mutterings of a demon cow roaming around.

My thick snow-white scarf streams out behind me like a snow angel’s wings.

A few kilometres later, I’m still hunched over the handlebars, trying to watch out for potholes and those demon cows.

An animal-shaped shape darts across the road, blurring into my vision. 

Heart beating triple time, I almost fall off the bike.

“Wtf was that? Demon cow? Are there panthers on this island? Bears? Hmm I must look this up when I get home.”

Have you ever found yourself somewhere, thinking to yourself, how the farkkk did I get here?

Well.

This is that moment.

And so begins my tale of 17 days calling a tiny Japanese island home.

I’d just finished my night shift at the guesthouse where I’d been working for the past week.

The other workers had planned a beach bonfire, a 30-minute bike ride away, and had left earlier. Or so I’d thought.

No electric bikes were available so I picked a trusty-looking manual and set off into the murky night, with screenshotted directions to guide me, no phone data.

I can hear only DnB blasting in one ear and puffing, gasping sounds in the other.

My head torch shutters. I honestly have no idea where I am.

In the distance, a butter-yellow glow illuminates the horizon.

As I get closer, the glow forms into a shape.

A rectangular shape.

It fills my vision.

I’m in the middle of nowhere and it’s a vending machine.

A working one too.

One minute and 250 worth of yen coins slotted into the machine later and I’m sipping on a coooool coca-cola.

Turns out the other workers hadn’t left yet, but we eventually all meet on the beach and cook cheesy sausages over our bonfire.

We swim through stars with bioluminescent dinoflagellates creating constellations on the ocean’s surface. 

The others applaud my dumb bravery for biking off in the darkness. 

I just feel relieved I didn’t get eaten by the demon cow.

Ojika Island is situated off the coast of Nagasaki prefecture in Japan. 

It’s home to just over 2,000 inhabitants.

Ojika and the now-abandoned neighbouring island and UNESCO world-heritage site, Nozaki were some of the islands settled by people known as the Hidden Christians who fled mainland Japan after Christianity was banned there in the 16th century.

On the island, there are around 12 konbini, aka. lil supermarkets.

Over the course of my 17 island days, I tried all available flavours of mochi, stocked up daily on mandarins, mini cucumbers and carrots, tried almost all flavours of chips and helped run the supermarkets out of their Japanese oreo stock.

Earlier in the week, my alarm goes off.

It’s 4.30 am.

My room is shrouded in darkness. Silence keeps out the day.

When you’re cocooned under four layers of blankets, departing from a futon is extremely difficult.

I’d been having one of the best sleeps of my life.

I snooze the alarm hearing no other movement or human rustling around me.

Next, it’s 4.45 am.

The light outside my room is turned on and horrible white light blazing through my window doors chases away the darkness.

It’s time to go fishing.

Bare feet on a tatami mat is something else. It’s such a soft way to start the day.

The guesthouse’s resident Ojīsan teaches us 60 years’ worth of fishing knowledge in 30 minutes as we shiver in darkness next to the ocean.

I am determined to catch a fish and make my Grandad in New Zealand proud.

For the next two hours, we consistently cast the line and reel in, again and again.

Yahoooo! A fish is caught.

Mission accomplished, I nod to the rising sun and jog back to my futon for 15 minutes of sleep before my next work shift starts.

A sweet gift of autumn and winter’s darkness is actually being awake for the sunrise, the crack of dawn a manageable time to be awake for, still getting seven hours of sleep.

Three times a day, I am treated to fresh sashimi. 

Vegetables are lacking though, to my distress. I eat my weight in cabbage, doused in sesame dressing. There are so many varieties of edible mushrooms here and they are adorable. They’re what I imagine fairies would eat.

My stomach is yet to handle fish in the morning though and I’ve been devouring peanut butter on toast. 

I also keep making the mistake of eating roe (fish eggs). I love eating and forever want to try new things but one-too-many times, in a moment of panic, I keep picking the roe item on a menu, which I am not a fan of. 

The portion sizes here are tiny. 

Everything in Japan makes me feel like a giant. I’ve never felt so intimated and insecure about my height!

My Japanese co-worker and friend states the foreigners in the guesthouse kitchen are like Tokyo skyscrapers.

I can’t close the door to the toilet of my sharehouse because my legs are too long.

I have hit my head on too many doorways. 

Funnily enough, though, I think my posture has gotten better than ever here. If I’m going to be a giant, then I will be a goddamn confident giant! I’ve been standing taller than ever and limboing under doorways instead of hunching over.

I often wonder what the islanders think of this gaijin in a mini skirt with a belly button piercing. 

On a day trip to Sasebo, I get asked by three different people if I’m cold - wearing a singlet crop. It’s 20 degrees. 

The guesthouse chefs’ favourite word for me is kawaii, which I will absolutely take as a compliment.

My Ojika Island life feels like real-life Mamma Mia. Especially when I’m wearing my dungarees.

There’s a karaoke bar next to the guesthouse. It’s also a laundromat. One day, drinking pineapple beer, I notice a man come in to do his laundry. At 11 pm.

It’s hard to imagine winter is next month. Most days so far are coloured with sunshine. I’m attempting to tan so I look good in the onsen (lol).

And I swim almost daily. A few sneaky skinny dips here and there too. I’m yet to shock a local, thankfully.

With a diet of fish and seafood, I am well on my way to becoming a mermaid. 

There are fascinating characters on Ojika Island. My favourite person is a man, dressed in all shades of pink, including neon-pink sneakers, who bikes around on a pastel pink bike.

One day I run past him in my pink t-shirt. We nod in acknowledgement.

That’s something that has been so special here. Every morning, on my six-minute walk to work, I nod and smile and say ohayou-gozaimasu to everyone I pass. And they reply. It’s a sweet sense of community.

One warm afternoon I take an e-bike on an adventure.

For some reason e-bikes make me giggle to no end. I giggle my way around the island, crossing the ocean via bridge to zoom around Madara Island nearby.

The views from the top are extraordinary. And they remind me of New Zealand’s own Bay of Islands. It feels so nice to be so close to home. Only half a day away via plane. I’m now only four hours behind the daily lives of the people I love best. 

Watching the sun move away to greet my loved ones on the other side of earth, the wind caressing my skin, I ponder how one can never really be alone. We silly humans are a part of nature.

Surrounded by the trees, the little nodding flowers, bird song delighting one’s ear, we are never alone. We belong in this earthly community.

I see my first sighting of a white heron. In Japan, the elegant birds symbolise peace and good luck.

After months of solo travel, I’ve learned I will always crave a shared adventure but for the first time in forever, I have learned to love solitude. 

My mind is like a laptop, with thousands of internet tabs and different applications open and running at the same time. It’s often overwhelming. 

But I’ve found through time alone, I find peace. I can process and reflect and dream. It’s a golden gift that takes you back to your core.

I’ve always been an extrovert, fueled by human connections. And I still am. But I find my best self and put her forward when I make time, daily, to relax into my own presence. 

I trust this time alone will be but a blink of an eye in my life and so I must enjoy it while I can. Relaxing into the moment, savouring it. 

An O bāchan said I was “ohanabatake.” 

This is the Japanese word for a flower garden or field of flowers.

I could not be more chuffed with this comparison. My phone screensaver is a film photo of my Mum dancing through a field of flowers in Switzerland when she was my age. The vibe is something I aspire to be, always.

This year has been bloody hard. Agony and ecstasy. Heartbreak and bliss. Loneliness and soul-deep connections. So many mixed emotions.

Travelling holds a mirror up to you. You see what you like, what you don’t like, what you want to change, what you want to see bloom within yourself. 

They say you’re an average of the five people you spend the most time with… Well, when you’re moving around and people come and go so often, the five people you’re spending the most time with are well, all you… And so you really figure out who you are…

And I am a clumsy-crazy person who loves with all her heart, mind and soul.

One thing I’ve learned this year, something which I will keep with me forever, is to ban the word hope from my vocabulary.

I’ve always been hoping. Hoping for things to work out, to be one way or another.

But you see, hope is a desperate, clutching thing.

Instead, I trust. 

Unclenching and releasing one’s grip over any idea of control we imagine ourselves to have. There is so much magic in the unknown.

Coming to Japan is a risk. In numerous ways. It’s another monumental change. 

But it’s also me choosing love over fear. Something we should do, always. 

Let your heart feel risk. Keep it wild. It is a courageous thing to live your life with a spirit of adventure, to live large, to be bold and spontaneous.

No surface-level shit, just deep dives and living for good, life-changing, world-moving conversations and connections.

Life’s all about keeping your perspective fresh. Choosing the uncomfortable. Filling your days with vibrant, rich colour, making art from the way you speak, the way you move, the way you love.

The day before I was meant to leave Ojika, an angry Kaze dragon blew in. The ferries were cancelled.

Walking back to my sharehouse, I spotted the white heron.

The next morning, a brief respite from the wind. 

And I made it to my ferry. 

After weeks of sunshine, mist enveloped the surrounding islands, the waves picked up a hectic dance, and rain fled from the sky, serenading the air.

Waved off by my Ojika-French-Polish hybrid family, I sailed into the next adventure, into winter’s cosy arms.