“Are you going to be OK?”, asked the Okinawan woman, in blunt Japanese. Yui and I were finishing our lunch in the southernly village of Chinen. My chicken curry dish had been uncharacteristically huge (by Japanese standards) and was left mostly unconsumed. Of especially concern to my caring hostess was the large amount of rice I was rejecting. Rice is more than one of the staple foods in Japan; it is the very “meal” itself.
” Thank you. We’re fine. It’s just that my husband doesn’t eat much rice”, explained Yui, attempting to soothe the situation as we paid our bill. I smiled and,nodded, not understanding the words but feeling the meaning behind them. As we slipped on our shoes at the exit, the woman rushed forward and pushed a package of Okinawa’s famous fried doughnuts into Yui’s hand. “My mother made these”, she said. A parting gift from the grandmother to the strangers who don’t eat enough. As a symbolic act it caught my attention – and moved my heart – especially as we were on our way to Sefa Utaki,an important sacred sites in the Ryukyu kingdom. You see, here on Okinawa, the local shamans are all women.
Entering the site at Sefa Utaki was stepping back in time, when it was the natural sites that held power for humans, not a constructed temple or church. The climb up the hill is paved with cobblestones almost impossible to walk on, twisting your ankles back and forth, resisting traction. It was initiatory just to climb to the sacred sites, as is often the case with the old religions worldwide. But we managed to make it to our first stop in ten minutes, to one site where the head shaman priestesses still perform their ceremonies. It was an ancient rock slab jutting out of the mountain, in a grove surrounded by trees and a few shrubs. I nervously took some photos, and began to approach the ceremonial slab for a closer look. But I had to stop, as the pressure inside my brain increased, and a quiet voice asked me to stand still. I felt the energy of the air around me shifting frequencies, washing through my system, a feeling both clearing and potent. Female spiritual energy is fundamentally different, in my experience, seeping its way into those parts of our energy bodies malnourished, ignored, passed over due to other interests. But here, standing opposite a rock face, in the presence of ancient spirit, I gave thanks. I waited. In those minutes of contemplation I ate my energetic “rice”, the meal, accepting the invisible nurturing that we Westerners reject in exchange for material comfort. When we finally left Sefa Utaki an hour later I was filled, contented, and sincerely grateful.
Tomorrow we leave Okinawa for Ishigaki, the main island of the Yaeyama Islands between Japan and Taiwan.