The Quiet Ripple Defines The Pond

So that’s it. I now live in the best house in the visible universe. It is called “The House by the Sea.” I would like to have a Gaelic name but Google translate doesn’t do Gaelic. Must be “Tir na something.” If there are any Gaelic speakers out there – er you know.

Typhoon resistant and it has a palm tree

It is brand new and packed with gizmos as only the Japanese could think up. I will do a series of blogs on the aforementioned. The essential quality is its proximity to the East China Sea, which nearly comes into the front room.

It has huge door window things so that when open you are living outside when you are inside.

I spend the weekend unpacking. This I enjoy, fitting old stuff into new setting.

Unpack

I have been sleeping on the floor with a futon and  a tatami mat between  me and the cold, cold ground for the last 2 years. This I have very much enjoyed. However, due to size of bedrooms, proximity to bathroom, heaving beds upstairs and other pragmatics, I will now try sleeping in a bed.

Could be worse – nice view

I take a break from the set up and stroll along my backyard.

The backyard

I pick up  shells.

Local Hero

I could stumble along beaches picking up shells for the rest of my life. How can I go back to work?

Ladies wear them.

Shucks

Jeepers

Oh flip

Gosh

Golly gee

They asked, not me!

Holy Moley!

 

When I asked if I could take their picture, not one replied, “Beat it, you fat perve.”

They all grinned and said “Sure, life is great and we are beautiful.” er in Japanese.

When I was a student I worked in the steel factories in Sheffield, now defunct, er the steel factories not the city, in the two-week shutdown in the Summer when the workers went on vacations and bands of students came in to clean the place up. These weeks were called Stop Weeks. The money was fantastic. We worked 12 hour shifts and some years I worked very hard shoveling sludge from pits underneath huge rolling mills. Other times I did nothing at all, such as the year that I was  a welder’s mate. He, the welder, would lead me to some lost corner of the massive steel plant where we would sleep all day. Once we slept beyond the knocking off time, whereupon we claimed and were paid overtime. The steel factory we worked in was Steel,Peech and Tozer, affectionately known as Steelos. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steel,_Peech_and_Tozer

Anyway in Kyoto at a big deal meeting called STS Forum http://www.stsforum.org/ I am on a panel with a chap who mentions he was at Sheffield University.  He was sitting on my left. I mentioned Steelos and he had also worked on the Stop Weeks as a student! We spent an intense 5 minutes of nostalgia for the bad old days of pollution, soot and yellow and blue No 60 buses. He introduced me to the man on my right who had also been at Sheffield University!

We exchanged Sheffield shibboleths such as: “D’areet chuck?” – “Are you feeling well my dear?” and “Tint tin tin.” – “It is not in the tin.”  Very good time was had by all. The man of the left was Rich Roberts:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_J._Roberts

On the right was Jeremy Grantham:

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

Go Sheffield.

Anyway it was a great meeting with lots of old and current friends.

Mighty Cashmore

Jerry Friedman with another gentleman.

Jerry is one of the best. Check his interview with Ali G.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UU0vOThFXGA

Jonathan writ large

Yay! Carlo looking good

Cashmore gets ready

Good couple of days.

So after  a week of great intensity I get up very early to go get my truck, which has been graciously lent to me. I am moving my furniture to my new house that from henceforth will be known as the house by the sea.  I have to move my stuff today as tomorrow I set off to Kyoto for some days and I have to give the keys back on Friday and there is the inspection and so there has to be a final mega clean and so do you get it?   A happy band of people have agreed to help. It is a beautiful day and they stand in the back of the truck as I drive along the azure sea road.

They descend on my apartment like the wolf on the fold and the truck is loaded and dispatched to the new house 4 times in two shakes of a lambs tail.

Beatrice is one fine woman. She could rogue an acre of potatoes and milk the cows before the rest of us had filled even one creel. If you see what I mean.

We throw all the stuff into the amazing new place.

View of the house by the sea

Some of the crew on the deck

More crew in the back yard

Moving, of which I have done a lot.

On the boardwalk. Notice typhoon burnt trees.

I move in for good next Friday but in between I am in Kyoto and the inspection has to be done and the air conditioners er conditioned and the like and so I had to move the furniture today. Do you see what I mean? I am writing this on a laptop sitting on an upended garbage bin in a totally empty flat.

Further on down the road

How many of you remember the GDR?

Anyway,  people from there made my barograph and the next time you need one I recommend you buy from them. Mine has worked perfectly for 30 years.

They may have made crappy cars but let’s hear it for their barographs.

She has worked perfectly but I could not say that she has been a very exciting companion. She measures atmospheric pressure which in turn is related to the weather – low pressure = bad weather, high pressure = good weather.

Her clockwork mechanism has driven the drum around and around for 30 years and the pen has left a line that has stayed between 1020 and 990 hecto whizz bangs. This was in a dull period of my life atmospheric pressurely speaking.

30 years of this

Then I came to Okinawa and the realm of the typhoon. My barograph is having the time of her life. “She also serves who only stands and waits.” she chanted to herself through 3 decades but now she is ecstatic. Twice in the last month she has gone off scale and once nearly. She has experienced an intensity, a frenzy that had been unimaginable in the first part of her life. Now the future promises years of ecstasy and fulfillment. I am so happy for her. My barograph and Okinawa = Getrude Stein and Alice B Toklas.

One month in Okinawa

Hey it’s the weekend and you know what that means – yep another super typhoon. When it comes to typhoons, hurricanes, tempests, cyclones and such, I now have a lot of ‘been there done that’ credit. This one is called Jelawat and has been a really good one.

This is a Jelawat. A what?

Good because it came during the day and so you can now er see its influence on normality and good because it came right over the island and was thus a typhoon in three acts.

The barograph has off course gone “off scale” resulting in 120mph wind gusts.

Off scale again!

Incidentally, I am writing this on the magnificent IPad, which is an essential typhoon tool as there is no power, meaning no computer, light, Internet, cooker, hot water and so on. The pad however allows me to write, listen to music and read.

Contemporary drama – ‘The Jelawat – You what? Narrative’

Act one – 3 hours of screaming and howling with much clockwise movement.

Act two – 1 hour of total calm.

Act three – 3 hours of screaming and howling with much anti clockwise movement.

I hope to do a solo act at Edinburgh next year, or maybe Burning Man.

I interpret the calm  as the eye of the typhoon passing right over my house.

How cool is that?

What a pleasingly unusual, well not really in Okinawa, way to pass a Saturday.

Gone and never called me Mother

Sea Snake blown up on the beach. I saved it but it did not say thank you. What a snake!

Hey, check out the video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TxiRqDDwmps&feature=youtu.be

The lighthouse which appears horizontally in the film is actually vertical and about 30 metres high. The cliffs upon which it stands are also 30 metres high. The spray was going right over the top of the lighthouse. The film in no way captures the awesomeness. The people in the video are my next door neighbors. I had no idea that they were behind me.

A nearby hotel has a very well-known dolphin show. I heard today that all the dolphins pools were destroyed and the dolphins escaped into the ocean. Rough intro into the free world. I hope they made it.

Juna Kurihara is a very nice person. I first met her when she worked with me at Stanford. She was  young and  an intern doing scientific illustration. She was very and still is very good at her job. http://www.science-graphics.net/

She was also petite, Japanese and quite quiet. Then I noticed that she was going out at lunchtime to play soccer with a bunch of corn and steak fed American guys. This was the first clue. I had a motor bike and Juna discreetly implied that she had motor bike experience.

Juna in California

“Have you been on a motor bike?” I ask avuncularly.

“Yes, in Australia.”

“Oh, you have been to Australia?”

“Well, I rode across Australia on a motorbike.”

“Wow! How big was the bike?”

“125”

“You must be kidding , you rode across Australia on a  125 cc bike?”

” No, I just sat on the back.”

Those of you who have not done long distance trips on a motor cycle may not understand the implications of that answer. It basically means that Juna is special.

Anyway she did a great watercolor of the research yard at SLAC and she kindly gave me the original, which I have kept since. Recently it has been taped to my bathroom wall.

Fall in Palo Alto

Anyway Juna is now in Tokyo, married with a beautiful daughter. Our paths crossed and she and her husband Carlos and beautiful daughter Kanoko, spent time in my apartment in Okinawa. She noticed her painting taped to my bathroom wall and today I received a mystery box at work. It was a frame from Juna with instructions of how to use it.

Small acts of kindness.

Finally! The respect it merits

Thanks Juna!

So I go to like sign, but more seal, the rental contract for the house by the sea. The rental people are the model of restraint and patience. We are immediately served with cold tea but this time with optional syrup – new touch for me.

Green tea with syrup made from distilled cockle sweat

Long discussion on finer details. Many thanks to Naoko san who speaks the  language.

Who repaints the deck?

Finally the moment comes to sign and seal. I have grown to to love using my hanko but it is only a little one. I want to have a big bulging Kanji hanko. Apparently I can get one but it is a little complicated necessitating lots of registering documents. Your hanko is your proof of being you so you do not change it lightly.

Contractu

Finally we complete the deal by all three parties, owner, agency and me sealing the overlap of the  top page.

My hanko is in the middle. Pitiful n’est ce pas?

So that’s it. I move into the house by the sea on 12 October.

Wakarimashitanokitatanakagusuku!!!!

I have watched birds since my mid twenties but in a sort of desultory way. I had binoculars and kept a list but I was a lazy birder in that when it came to really putting in the work and adopting the discipline needed to distinguish between different pipits, warblers, shorebirds etc, I would have a little lie down instead.

Today I had the great privilege of going a birding with the real thing – Tom and Dan two top-level birders.

Great guys – Tom foreground.

They take me to the Kin paddy fields. It was bliss. Read Tom’s summary.

“Dan Smith flew in from Yokosuka last night so we decided on a birding foray to the Kin Town paddies this morning,  We met up Neil Calder, a relatively new birder living on island, who hails from Scotland.  In his words, “What a fantastic morning at Kin!”  We ticked 18 species of waders to include:

Black-winged Stilt

Pacific Golden-Plover

Little Ringed-Plover

Common Snipe

Whimbrel

Common Redshank

Marsh Sandpiper

Common Greenshank

Green Sandpiper (2 @ Yakka paddies)

Wood Sandpiper

Grey-tailed Tattler

TEREK SANDPIPER

Common Sandpiper

Red-necked Stint

Long-toed Stint

SHARP-TAILED SANDPIPER

RUFF

RED-NECKED PHALAROPE

Other birds of note: 10-Eastern Spot-billed Duck; 2-FOS Eurasian Teal; 1-CHINESE POND HERON; 20-Whiskered Tern; 2-FOS Brown Shrike (1 @ Yakka); 200+ Barn Swallow; and 20+-Eastern Yellow Wagtail.”

The capitals indicate seriously rare birds.

Large billed crow

Cattle Egrets with traces of breeding plumage

Little Ringed Plover

Whiskered Tern

Common Redshank

Ruff

You get the idea.

I get 4 hours of excited concentration in  hot paddy fields thronged with birds and occasional industrious Okinawans doing stuff to rice and tarot. Exotic.

Tom and Dan were perfect company, patient with my ignorance and generous with their vast knowledge. Thank you

Another night in Smugglers in Naha with the best Trad Irish band in Okinawa – The Islanders. For the first time for er some time, we have a full line up. 2 fiddles, 2 flutes, strong guitar and stronger percussion. It is a demanding performance as we play from 8:00 until 12:00 in 30 degree heat. Check the video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJcXczey77U

String section

Maid in the Cherry Tree

I get home at 2:00!