Incredible though it may seem, people give me money to pay the flute. Japan is a very strange country. Yesterday we played at a shopping mall.

Irish music at a Japanese shopping mall…… because why not. I stole this caption from Tara.

Anyway there is something very different  having used bills shoved in your hands to the number you see on salary slips. It is like real money and I feel I can spend it on whatever.  I get enough to buy new tires for my truck.   Up early and  I am the first person at the tire shop in Ishikawa. There is some confusion as the guy wants to charge me what I believe to be too much.

The right ones

Some discussion reveals that he thought my car was the swanky one with big wheels near my truck. It is rare for non-Okinawans to drive HiJets. I feel like a working class hero. Good thing that we got that sorted out before I strolled off,

New tires! I can go really fast around corners now

otherwise some poor person would have come back to their car to find all the tires had been changed.

I then practice towing the boat. This is a lot of fun.

The rig in front of the house

I really love to have a project and this one is coming close to fulfillment. I have the boat. The boat is registered. I have the truck with tires and a hook to tow the boat. I have a dream island fishing port just a kilometer up the road.  I do not yet have permission to launch from there but things are looking good. This where I head with truck and boat.

I make it to the harbour

I then spend the afternoon trying to reverse my boat around bends and into parking spaces. It is very difficult. I used to drive tractors and trailers in my youth but I appear to have completely lost the ability. I hope to have got enough hours in so there will not be too much humiliation  when I have to do it for real. There is a very expansive open space beside the port that is perfect for jack-knifing a boat and truck. There are also birds.

Blue Rock Thrush mocks me

Golden Plover is indifferent

Kentish Plover thinks home thoughts from abroad.