Friday, April 8, 2016

The Longest Living People in All of Japan


Stone Monument in Ogimi Village

 

 

This stone is located alongside HWY 58, in the village of Ogimi.

Directly behind it, there is a small trickle flowing from a waterfall in the hills above.

Lately, I have been carrying a Garmin along, to add Geo-tags to my photos.

And, I really wanted to shoot this rock because, I heard it was special.

But, after traveling all over the northern hills, the batteries in the Garmin, wore out.

Two things needed to be done before, I posted this photo.

1. Figure out a way to get Latitude and Longitude, to add to the image EXIF data.

2. Verify, that to inscription on the plaque, said something about longevity.


Travelers May Want to Visit

  

The location happens to be at the Michinoeki (Road Stand) in Ogimi, Okinawa.  

There's plenty of parking spaces and, the waterfall is just to the right of all the shops.

Over at Google Maps GPS Coordinates, I punched in the address.

Then, hit "Get GPS Coordinates" and, they gave them to me.

Latitude: 26.690 Longitude: 128.108

That should be good enough for the Geocache crowd to find the location.

Then, I manually added the Geo-tags to my photo file, for the rest of the world to see.



Translation of Inscription


This turned out to be quite a chore as, I used my smart phone as an interpreter.

The Google Translate folks, haven't quite hit 30% accuracy, would be my guess.

After, I stopped laughing, I figured, they gave me enough, to continue researching.

The rumor, I'd heard was, that this stone had a poem about longevity written on it.

An article in Japan Times gave me this:

“At 80, we remain children.”
 
If death visits us at 90, we should say, “Wait until we are 100, then we might consider it.”


The best translation, I could find, came from the Ogimi Village website:

"At 80 years old, I am still a child. When I come to see you at 90, send me away to wait till 100

Let us keep going strong as we get older, and not depend too much on our children in old age.

Come to our village in your old age, and we will provide the blessings of nature and teach you

 the secrets of longevity.

We the senior citizens of Ogimi proudly declare this the longest-lived village in Japan."


"April 23rd, 1993 Ogimi Federation of Senior Citizen Clubs"

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