After graduating high school, Yokoyama left the island to study design at a university in Tokyo. While there, she developed an appreciation for the art of letterpress, a business her family had been in for three generations on Ojika. When she informed her father that she would become the fourth generation, he adamantly opposed her, telling her there was no future for letterpress on the island after he retired. But Yokoyama was undeterred and returned against his will anyway, setting up shop next door to her father in the same building. While her father maintained the long-time customers of his letterpress shop, Yokoyama built new customers by combining her design and letterpress skills. Today, both businesses co-exist side-by-side, and her father relented in his opposition. Yokoyama is also a mother of a young daughter, perhaps the future fifth generation of letterpress artists on Ojika.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She is also active in shaping the future of Ojika through the arts. Like her grandfather before her, she has become involved in community groups fostering the arts on the island, setting up art exhibitions, and inviting artists from other parts of Japan and overseas to exhibit their works on the island.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Years or Decades Later: The Call of Ojika is Still Irresistible<\/h2>\n\n\n\n Cafe Totona is a charming little restaurant tucked away in the streets of Ojika’s downtown area. Its owner, Misuzu Tamura, is another U-turnee to Ojika, but her circumstances were very different from that of Yokoyama. Tamura also left Ojika after high school and worked in national politics in Tokyo, serving as a long-time assistant to a national politician for four decades. About six years ago, he passed away, and in the same year, her mother also passed. That year, she returned to Ojika for a school reunion and realized how she missed the lifestyle here. She decided to open a restaurant focused on her love of cooking, and one of her relatives offered the building where Totona is currently housed. Tamura created the interior design by herself, and the restaurant has become a popular spot to enjoy a delicious Japanese-style breakfast or a lunch set. She says she never regrets her decision to return to her hometown<\/strong> and enjoys this new season of life seemingly timed by fate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nIt’s hard to miss the Yokoyama Shop along one of Ojika’s main streets, with its huge “YOKOYAMA” sign stretching across the storefront. The store primarily sells stationery supplies but also provides other valuable services to the local residents. It has earned its place, having been in business for over 100 years, and is now in the capable hands of Eiji Yokoyama, who took over running the shop from his mother. Another U-turnee, had no intention of returning to the island after graduating high school, but after a few years away with no particular prospects, he returned to help his sister with her business. His mother was also running the stationery shop alone, so he began to help out. His desire to stay in Ojika was finally ignited when he joined an interest group centered around acting and found real community here in his hometown. Since then, he has become an active community member, well-known and respected for his service in the community.<\/p>\n\n\n
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Ojika Residents are Investing in the Island’s Future<\/h2>\n\n\n\n You can’t miss Harutomo Egawa, with his bleach-blond head of hair pulled back in a tight ponytail, driving around in his company truck that simultaneously proclaims “Love Beer” and “Love Ojika.” Egawa runs one of Ojika’s small grocery stores, an integral part of everyday life for local residents. Egawa is another Ojika U-turnee, but he left the island for just two years to study a trade. He remembers it being a lonely time, and when he finally returned home, the feeling was, in his words, “liberating.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n\nOver five years ago, Egawa became tired of the endless tide of garbage dumped by commercial fishing boats in international waters that washed up on his favorite Ojika beach. One day, he woke up at dawn, drove down to the beach, and picked up trash for an hour before starting work. The next day, he did it again. And again. For five years, rain or shine, he cleaned the beach until it was usable and attractive again. He was so single-minded about cleaning the beach, his wife began to refer to it as his mistress. It was my favorite beach growing up, he remembers, and I wanted people to be able to enjoy it again. Near his grocery store, he has created a playful modern sculpture, ironically made from garbage collected from the beach, that reminds visitors of the damage humanity can wreak on nature and how one person can work to overcome that damage.<\/p>\n\n\n
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It is no surprise that Egawa became a popular figure in Ojika. When he ran for public office last year, he won a seat on the local council. Now, he is single-minded about a new cause: making Ojika a place where there is equality and tolerance for everyone, a place where people from all over Japan want to come and live, not only U-turnees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We had conversations with locals in almost every place we visited on Ojika, learning more about their lives than can be shared in a short article like this. With each story, our lives were weaved into the fabric of Ojika, connected with the lives of new acquaintances and friends. Long after social media has faded away, these people and their stories will remain in our hearts and draw us relentlessly back to the peaceful island paradise of Ojika.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n“The journey changes you; it should change you… You take something with you. Hopefully, you leave something good behind.”<\/em> \u2014 Anthony Bourdain<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\nOjika Island: Where it Is and How to Get There<\/h2>\n\n\n\n This has been a travelogue about Ojika Island, where I spent three wonderful days doing, well, practically nothing. Ojika is an island of Nagasaki Prefecture, most easily accessed by speed boat or ferry leaving from Sasebo Port. There is also an overnight ferry leaving from Hakata Port in Fukuoka that arrives in Ojika around 5am.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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