ヤップ島
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| Stone coin on Yap Island. |
My partner together with I visited
Yap concluding calendar week for 4 days. Yap is 1 of the islands of the Federated States of Micronesia. Yap is tiny: y'all tin move easily drive unopen to it inward a day, together with its population is most 11,000.
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| Stone coin symbol at Yap Airport. |
Yap is likely best known for its
stone money: hefty disks of stone quarried together with hewn mainly inward neighboring Guam together with brought hither to serve equally markers of wealth together with status. They tin move locomote seen throughout the isle inward sizes ranging from dinner plate to millstone.
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| Traditional household on Yap, alongside stone money. |
Yap's recent history is quite closely tied upward alongside
Japan's. After World War I, Yap went from beingness nether German linguistic communication command to Japanese, nether the auspices of the League of Nations. Then afterwards the cease of World War II, Nippon was relieved of Yap past times the USA which held it nether the auspices of the UN until 1986, when Federated States of Micronesia became a country.
There was a pocket-size population of Japanese on Yap inward the 1920s - no to a greater extent than than most 150, which swelled to most 4,000 during the Pacific War, inward the shape of armed forces personnel.
Mindful of this history, nosotros thus kept our ears together with eyes opened upward for bear witness of whatsoever Japanese influences that remain on Yap.
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| Chinese influence on Yap, posing equally Japanese. |
We were told that at that topographic point was a Japanese-owned dive store inward Maap, upward north, but on driving at that topographic point nosotros constitute that it, together with the other 1 inward the town, were closed at to the lowest degree for that day.
We saw no bear witness of Japanese nutrient anywhere, or Japanese names. I had read most the wrecks of a few Japanese planes unopen to the former airstrip on Yap, but an lx minutes of meandering unopen to the expanse inward our machine didn't Pb us to any. (Yap is no exception to the dominion that hardly anyone knows where anything inward the neighborhood is.)
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| Kaday Village Community Office, Yap, donated past times Japan. |
In fact, unusual influence of whatsoever sort seems to locomote rather superficial inward Yap, together with the former ways seem really much locomote together with well. There seemed to locomote an almost consummate lack of whatsoever yearning for things Western together with modern on the island, together with visitors were treated alongside the really same matter-of-fact courtesy, kindness together with good-humor that typified the everyday lives together with dealings of the locals: no extremes of cozying upward on 1 mitt or defensiveness on the other, merely practiced warm human contact wherever y'all went. Perhaps the most memorable bear witness of how rigid the civilization is inward the appear upward of Westernization was the sight of a bare-breasted former adult woman waiting for someone at the airport, together with non warranting a 2nd glance from anyone.
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| Sign on wall of Kaday Village Community Center, Yap. |
The exclusively concrete bear witness of a Japanese presence was the Kaday Village Community Center: a pocket-size edifice that was staffed past times a somewhat dour woman. I noticed a plaque on the building's wall that read:
The Project for Development of Small Scale Fisheries inward Yap
Granted past times the authorities of Nippon equally a token of friendship together with cooperation betwixt Nippon together with the Federated States of Micronesia, 1997.
I asked her most it, but she dismissed the inquiry alongside a moving ridge of her mitt maxim "That was a long fourth dimension ago," suggesting, perhaps, that the projection has lost its steam.
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| Steps of the Kaday Community Center, Yap. |
If so, it's likewise bad, because judging past times the province of things there, specifically the fact that virtually all of the really few restaurants close where nosotros were staying were out of fish spell nosotros were there, commercial fisheries is something the isle could produce with.
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| Kaday Community Center, Yap |
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