Nakaima, who was greeted by Mayor Mike Gin and officials from the Beach Cities Health District and the Redondo Beach Unified School District, heard several mentions of the “walking moai” program that has been launched as part of the Vitality City public health initiative locally.
“Where did you get this term?” Nakaima asked.
Nakaima may have been surprised, because moai is a term from his homeland. Okinawa has, in fact, become particularly relevant to Redondo Beach and the rest of the beach cities in recent months. The Healthways/Blues Zones Vitality City initiative – an ambitious three year program brought to the beach cities by BCHD that intends to create a national model for implementing community-wide healthier living – is based in part on research from Okinawa.
National Geographic explorer and Blue Zones founder Dan Buettner studied the island of Okinawa for lessons in human health and longevity. Okinawans, he discovered, reach the age of 100 at a rate three times higher than Americans, live seven healthy years longer, and suffer one-fifth the rate of heart disease. Women live an average of 86 years, and men 78.
According to Buettner’s research, the difference lay less in genetics and more in lifestyle.
Mayor Gin, in his remarks, referred to two key concepts from Okinawa: “ikigai” and “moai.” Ikagi is an Okinawan term referring to a sense of purpose, or reason for getting up in the morning; moai means “meeting together for a common purpose” and refers to a practice in some parts of Okinawa in which a group of children is bonded together for life at the age of five (Buettner found one moai that included five 102-year-old women who’d been friends 97 years).
“A sense of purpose and a sense of connection to our community – these are the types of things we want to learn from [Vitality City],” Gin said to Nakaima. “So we are particularly excited to have you here today.”
Gin, who visited Okinawa as part of a city delegation a few years ago, also noted that Redondo hopes to form a “sister city” alliance with an Okinawan city.
A third Okinawan concept is also part of the Blue Zones principles for longevity: “hara hachi bu,” a Confucian-based adage that means one should eat only until one is 80 percent full.
Governor Nakaima spoke proudly of Okinawa’s lessons in longevity, but he also said that things are changing – women still live long lives, but men are tending to die younger with the increasing penetration of more Western-influenced diets and lifestyles.
“After the end of World War Two, we had a relationship with America because we had a base in Okinawa,” Nakaima said. “And we have learned to eat McDonald’s and Big Macs…So I think we may need to improve this lifestyle, and we can do it together.”
He said Okinawa would watch the results of the Vitality City initiative closely and try to learn lessons about how to reintroduce its people to healthier lifestyles.
“I believe we have a lot in common, the people of Okinawa and the people of this city,” Nakaima said. “We have a lot to learn from each other.”
The lessons have already begun locally. Nakaima and his delegation left the Seaside Lagoon in the company of a walking moai formed by employees of Body Glove International. The walking moai program, in which people join together a few times each week to walk together, began with only two groups three months ago and has ballooned into 100 groups and more than 1,000 people. The program, which will re-launch on July 23 in an effort to further expand, began as a competition to see which group could spend the most time together. But it has grown into something more – a growing sense of common purpose and community among participants.
“People are not competing so much as they are just hanging out,” said Vitality City coordinator Veronica Flores. “It’s a great beginning.”
