The Quiet Ripple Defines The Pond

I am going to Boston where they make Cod.

I check in at Naha. The ANA check-in-lady is, as always, demure and smiling.

“Passport please.”

“Do you have a Green Card?”

“Are you checking bags?”

“You have beautiful eyes.”

Sorry?

“You have beautiful eyes.”

This makes me feel very, very good as I cannot remember the last time anyone said that to me, if indeed anyone ever has.

Fly ANA.

Naha is a fun airport with fish floating around

Security fish

I have time for a quick soba before the flight, which goes Narita, O Hare, Logan. Discuss the Scots-Irish influence on American airports.

Happy Japan

Okinawa is a very tranquil place.

I am writing this in Narita.

I think this is the plane that will take me to Chicago. Thank you plane.

It has been a very good weekend. I go diving twice, fishing twice. The weather has been beautifully warm and sunny. My hibisci are doing well and all in all, all’s well.

February

“We all know interspecies romance is weird.”

I go for an evening stroll. It is an exceptionally  low tide, which makes my mind wander to Harry Lauder.

‘Tis when the sun it goes to rest,
that’s the time that I like best.
Oh  I’m chilling, roaming in the gloaming.”

Check it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7N4mxz02y-k

Old English glomung “twilight,” formed (probably on model of æfning “evening”) from glom “twilight,” related to glowan “to glow”

I wander around  my backyard and look at rock pools.

A sea cucumber’s bottom

WTF is that?

The tide is far-out dude, but the beach is cosmic. It is made from ground up coral and exotic shells.

The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation.

Intermediate egret fishing. What a terrible name for such a beautiful bird.

What a bitch

Yesterday, the Prime Minister of Japan came to the university. His name is Abe. Apparently this is pronounced like Downton rather than name of dead American president. I wish someone had told me.

Good old Abe with Jonathan

For many years I have not played the tin whistle much. I have concentrated on the flute, which is a stern mistress. Notwithstanding, in the right hands, the whistle is a tremendous instrument. Mary Bergin is legendary, here with Johnny McDonough,who is almost as good as she is.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-jTlWGwWyg

The whistle, although using the same fingering as the flute, is a completely different animal. The flute is very physical, demanding abdomen and stomach. This is Patsy Hanley who makes it look very easy, but it is not. Notice blue tape wrapped around his flute.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjLcfnY8-gY

I have not even owned a whistle for some years. However Gerard McKinley, an Ulsterman based in Okinawa and founder of Okinawa’s top irish traditional music band, the Islanders, orders a whistle for me. I get it last night at a performance in Naha.

Gerard plays the flute. I play with the new whistle

Anyway I am very pleased with my new whistle and intend to learn the subtleties of this instrument.

The only thing that I miss lately in all music is somebody that will put out a melody that you can whistle. It doesn’t seem like there’s anything happening like that.
Merle Haggard

So, I remember as a youth that one of the phrases that reputedly featured in English/French phrase books was ” My postillion has been struck by lightning.”

How often would you have used it?

In James Thurber‘s 1937 New Yorker article “There’s No Place Like Home”, a phrasebook from “the era of Imperial Russia” contains the “magnificent” line: “Oh, dear, our postillion has been struck by lightning!”. Thurber speculates that such a “fantastic piece of disaster” must have been rare, “even in the days of the Czars”.^[11]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_postillion_has_been_struck_by_lightning

Er, so  an expression that I came up with in Japanese class was “Watashi wa gasorinsutando gai sukidesu.” which you all know means “I love gas stations.”

This is true. The gas station experience  here reaches a level of joy that is unimaginable to Europeans and most Americans. Check out:

https://quietripple.wordpress.com/2011/09/17/full-service/

How often would I be able to use this expression in day-to-day conversation?

So, today I am asked to greet a group of Okinawan business folk

whom are touring the university. At the last moment I am told that they represent the owners of the gas stations on the island!

I am half way through my greeting, in English with interpreter, when I realize I can use,  “My postillion has been struck by lightning.”

I say “Watashi wa gasorinsutando gai sukidesu.”  to great glee and amazement  from listeners.

I can say little in Japanese and the odds against  placing something as bats as “I love gas stations” in conversation must be huge.

But I did it!

Big thank you to Aya sensei

Love is a many splendored thing

Er, I won’t go into the background to this photo but all in all it has been an unusual day.

I set off to clean my beaches but rush straight home again with my heart a pumping. I grab my camera and it is still there when I make it back to the beach. Yes, a Seagull! The first I have seen in 2 years in Okinawa.

Black Tailed Gull. Notice black and red tip to beak.

It looked very bedraggled.  I suppose it was blown in during the bad weather last week.

Why are there no seagulls on Okinawa?

A grey morph Pacific Reef Egret just beside the gull.

This is a search and rescue helicopter

So, I go fishing as the sun goes down. I had been out earlier and had a huge bite. Obviously a monster fish that I played expertly for some time until the line broke. I suppose it could have been the reef  but lets pretend not. Anyway I get out to the reef and it is quite rough  with big breakers crashing onto the coral. I anchor a bit further out but frankly it is too rough to fish so I head for home.

A bit too choppy to fish.

As I approach the shore I notice there is a police car with lights a flashing in my parking lot. Indeed there are two policemen waiting for me on the beach. Apparently someone phoned in saying there was a kayaker in danger. They stay an hour and are very thorough.

I then go to a party where most of the people are tremendously drunk. We stand around a bonfire but have difficulty hearing ourselves speak because of the search and rescue helicopter clattering up and down scanning the water with searchlights and the thuds of huge, drunk Americans keeling over.

I wonder if  all that fuss was because of me?

I have decided to save money and lose weight. The latter so I can be accustomed to the skeleton-like physique that I will own in destitution and the former as an attempt to delay destitution.

I have adopted two strategies. The first is to stop shaving, thus saving money on razor blades. The second is to feed myself from the sea. Just outside my door is a lagoon full of food. I am determined to raid it and have been daydreaming a lot of sitting on the kayak in the warm sun leisurely reeling in my breakfast.

It is simple. I paddle out to the reef where I know from various diving adventures there to be loads of fish. I sling my hook, or anchor, and bask in the golden rays and fresh air as the fish bucket more or less fills itself with fresh squid, tuna, mackerel, parrot fish, snapper and that kind of thing.

I have the gear

Irresistible to squid so I am told

Alas, the weekend arrives with high winds and high seas.

Anyone for tennis?

Where I was planning to anchor the kayak

I am so frustrated but I suppose delaying reward due to danger is some kind of definition of intelligence.  In addition daydreaming is in my experience nearly always more fun than the real thing.

I go watch birdwatching.

Cattle Egret

Chrysanthemums are a big export crop for Okinawa.

I lift up a pile of dirty clothes to find a huge spider. It gives me a very poisonous look. I immediately rationalize that I should leave it alone as it has as much right to be in the house as me. This is of course cowardice. I can visualize its huge fangs pumping leprous venom into my delicate skin  as it stares into my eyes with dark, secret, love.

Boris  4 inches across

However I also realize that if I do not remove it then the venom pumping might happen on my eyelid as I sleep.

The answer of course lay with the BBQ gloves that Rosy and Barry sent me for Xmas. I put them on and feel invincible. I succeed in trapping the monster in a Tupperware box using the mirror that James gave me for Xmas. Thanks all for the very useful gifts.

The spider now roams free in the undergrowth howling for a mate.

Post Scriptum

I showed a photo of the spider to the my admirable cleaning lady, Tsuha-san. She reassured me that the spider was not dangerous and was very worried that I had killed it.

During the recent trip to Baja we cooked exclusively with a dutch oven. These are wonderful devices. If you do not have one, buy one now. You never know when it might come in handy. They are the perfect camping companion as long as you do not have to carry them. We had the mighty Range Rover.

Ospreys love dutch ovens

You can cook anything in them from Crepes Suzette to Coq au Vin.

Here is a culinary record of the trip.

Crevettes au Feu du Bois

Boeuf Bourguignon

La Poule au Tecate

Ragout de Boeuf Mexicain

Saucisse et Lard Caramba

Des Oeufs Plats a la Couvercle

“Thoughts are slow and deep and golden in the morning.”
― John Steinbeck, Tortilla Flat

Anybody’s guess – maybe Virginia’s Warbler.

Here is some more info on dutch ovens:

or

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_oven

The principal goal of the adventure was to go see the cave paintings in the canyon in the mountains. They are well hidden in the nearest place to nowhere. Bad, bad road to squalid mountain village with bits of goat hanging from the washing lines.

Your to goat to be true
Can’t take my eyes of you.

Beam down on me Baby.
We’ve always been together

She was just 17

5 hour mule ride down very, very, very steep track down into the canyon. It is terrifying.

Check out the videos:

http://youtu.be/9t63dbKE9KA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spQY2FbCUtM

I don’t like sponge cake

Yay! Manuel. He sure knows mules

Sausages

Breakfast – Tortillas and Coffee

Sleep out all night with saddle as pillow before scrambling up the canyon side to get into the caves.

Old

Mene mene tekel upharsin

No change for thousands of years

Two of my sons

Rouge et Noir

This is not a trip for the fainthearted. No, “Have you ridden a mule before?” nor “Here is your safety equipment.” nor, “I’d like to explain our evacuation plan if you fracture your skull falling off the mule on the way down.” nor, “This is the camp site with hot showers and counseling.”

We saw 6 other people during the whole trip.  Do this trip. The paintings are stunning.