The Quiet Ripple Defines The Pond

The last Saturday of each month is music at the Smugglers.

The poster

It is always fun mainly thanks to the natural exuberance of Okinawan women who just love to dance.

The Naha Lasses

Fiddle genius Mc Yosuke

I sleep in very cheap hotel and am on the road home at 7:00.  I first go to watch birds as one morning last week I stopped by a damn and there were families of Great White Egrets, little ones in dull plumage, and loads of Black Crowned Night Herons. Today nothing.

Fush

However I stroll down the stream that exits the damn. It is full of fish. I photograph them and in so doing knock my lens cover into the river.

What should i do?

My immediate instinct was , “Rats, but I will just get another.” Then I thought, “Er, this is a very beautiful little river and chucking bits of plastic in it is probably not good especially as the Olympics have just begun.”

So after a longish trek I find a place where I can get into the stream and start to wade back.

Wading up rivers is the best fun.

It is quite – I mean quiet, usually shallow but with some fun deeper pools, very hot, fish nibble my coral wounds, turtles flop off stones, kingfishers flash by, bejewelled dragonflies copulate.

Ken the Kingfisher

I recover my lens cap and go home at last.

The view when I got home

I must have been about 7 when I saw David Lean’s version of Great Expectations. The opening scene has stayed with me forever. Little boy running past a gibbet to put flowers on his mother’s grave. Suddenly the figure of years of nightmares grabs him – lo tis “I’ll have your heart and liver out” Magwich!

Huge, swollen, grotesque nose, mad eyes and above all the convict’s shaven skull.

Check it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXyo68s-f1E

Magwich then forces Pip to steal his family’s Xmas pie. This struck me as a truly awful dilemma when I was 7. It still does. It wasn’t fair. Anyway Magwich has been with me ever since but I did not realize the proximity until this morning.

Those of you who have actually seen me know that I have little hair. This is actually an advantage as I do not have to er style it and stuff like the mem-log do. It also saves me a significant amount of money as I have not been to a barber for decades.  I have a dog clipper set and every few months I just run the clipper, with appropriate height control thing, through my pitiful remnants and Bob is your father’s brother.

Sassoon

Careless, I trim my hair on this bright Saturday morning only to realize too late that enemies have changed the height control thing to the convict special level.

I look in the mirror and I am Magwich. Quel destin.

I do OK when I get to Australia

Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pound ought and six, result misery.

I am reluctant to go outside as  I will scare little children.

So I am on a diet. I look OK from the front but pretty poor from the side. God knows what I look like from behind but I suppose I cannot be a complete narcissist as I have never tried to find out. My diet is no carbs, which has worked before but is actually very difficult in Japan. Every meal here  comes with rice or noodles and due to the amazing bakeries on Okinawa, I have been eating a lot of bread and croissants and stuff.

I do not care about my health or anything. The reason for the diet is simply so I look good or that I perceive that I look good or I think that other people think I look good  and on and on.

I eat a lot of sashimi,a lot of salad but I mainly eat elaborate soups.

Ingredients

In Japanese supermarkets you can buy fantastic stock for which the Japanese is something like ‘Daschi.’  It is really good and comes in of course a plastic bag and in several flavors – Pork, Fish, Vegetable, Beef, raspberry etc.

In the stock I place mushrooms, tofu, bean sprouts and previously prepared lump of meat and voila Soba sans Soba. This a I savour with salt.

Salt!

Salt is different on Okinawa, maybe all Japan. My take on salt coming here was  hard arteries, no good, don’t do it.

Here salt is like organic. It is pure and healthy. It gives you all kinds of fringe health benefits.  To be cool you have to be able to talk about different varieties as in France you would be expected to talk about different wines. Far flung parts of the island have different salts whose tastes’ differ depending on what kind of detritus and decay products are in the ocean.

This is the salt I have at the moment.

It is good for you

Check this video which is amazingly in English.

http://okinawahub.com/en/salt/#/zukanIndex/

Smoke, smoke, smoke that cigarette.

Eat Salt

I having been going to the dentist nearly every week for the last six months. All for treatment on the same tooth. It was root canal and crown. Tonight the crown was lowered onto the stump not by the Archbishop of Canterbury but by Mori sensei,  my best friend  I have probably spent more of my free time with him over the last 6 months than any other individual.

My buddy

So why does it take about 17 appointments to do the job? Is he ripping me off? I do not think so as each visit costs a paltry $11.87. I like to believe it is exquisite attention to detail and extreme care. Our joint language skills are not sufficient to find an answer to this question. Anyway he is a great guy and has a mohawk.

Hasta la vista Mori sensei.

Maybe you can detect the lighter blue channel in the foreground where you are supposed to get out. I missed it.

“Let’s be honest. Coral cuts can be really cool, but only when the pains gone and the cut’s heeled up. A badge of honor.” Surfer blog.

I return to Cape Zampa to dive. The sea is still boisterous but I am with companions who leap in  sans souci. Amazing dive etc  until it is time to get out. There is a deep water channel that you glide along until you spring penguin-like onto the shore. I miss it and end up on a bank of coral. As I struggle to my feet a wave crashes into my back knocking me over and rolling me along the coral. With typical lack of forethought I am wearing a short-legged wet suit and no gloves. I old-man-like try to get upright in the maelstrom – not so easy with tank and fins and stuff –  but here comes another roller and I am grated over the coral like a lump of parmesan over a cheese grater. Anyway I finally make it to the shore with well lacerated legs and hands innit. I bleed like a mxxxxxxxxxr to the glee of the sightseers who have come to visit the famous lighthouse.

Cool

I don’t know what is wrong with me but I enjoy this sort of stuff.

I go off very early on Sunday morning to explore.

6: 00 in Okinawa

I am on a quest for secret beaches and coves that are only get-at-able to those who seek trawthe. Big Red sniffs the morning air and carries me along the coast from Yomitan to Cape Zampa.

It is spider time. Huge webs are stretched across every path  in the centre of which are grotesque spiders.  The weak knight blunders into the web and feels the spider crawl across his face.  The knight seeking trawthe is not dismayed.

This is like 3 inches across

I find a path that seems promising and the signs, unless my parents taught me augury in vain, are good as a Barred Buttonquail scuttles across the track.

Never seen one before

The path is true and leads to the sea. I snurkle. I snurkle more often these days as it is less complicated than the fetish gear scuba.  The weather is amazing, it is 30 degrees  and blue. The water is clear as can be and the temperature of blood.

Only true Knights get here

I spend 2 hours cruising around scenes of indescribable beauty. I doubt there is anywhere better for snurkling in the world. Big Red then takes me to the Cape Zampa . A thunderstorm is brewing.

There is a name for clouds like this

The sea becomes rough.

Go snurkeling in this?

I am afeared, but female Bushido Knights come to the water’s edge and jump in gleefully.

Their trawthe is strong

Strange creatures look on.

Your quest is too hard

Anyway I then turn homewards and it is lunchtime. I come to a cafe which is perched on the cliff edge. It is amazing but not really Japanese. Well yes it is Japanese in as much as you take your shoes off and the staff are smiling and attentive but everything else has a European bent.  I suppose if you want to be chic in the West you assume Japanesey style and likewise here you run  cool Frenchy/Italiany eateries.

View from my table

This is actually a private house but they open it at weekends as a restaurant as a kinda hobby

Salade du Saison

I don’t like sponge cake

Okinawa!

My learned friend Sandy asks,”But what does this BRING to the world…besides butter?”  This being the Higgs.

Here is the reply.

I wonder too.

Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace : according to thy word.For mine eyes have seen : thy salvation,Which thou hast prepared : before the face of all people;To be a light to lighten the Gentiles : and to be the glory of thy people Israel.

I spent a long period of my life in a very close relationship with the flighty Higgs boson, a relationship which I never really consummated. However today CERN announced that a new particle had been found consistent with the Higgs.

http://press.web.cern.ch/press/PressReleases/Releases2012/PR17.12E.html

This is amazing, a historic moment in  physics.  Not just for physics but a time for humanity to be proud of itself. Thousands of the most brilliant minds from every region of the world, representing every political system, most religious tendencies, got together over a period of 30 years to harmoniously design, procure, construct, thousands of complex elements. They brought them all to CERN with immense difficulty. They screwed them together and it all worked! We have never done anything so majestic before. If you are looking for evidence that there is goodness and genius in humankind, look no further than particle physics labs.

125.3 Gev plus or minus 0.6

I watched the presentations live from CERN in an auditorium in Okinawa. It was very emotional. Dampness in the eyes watching Fabiola perform so authoritatively; spotting elderly folks in the crowd who are my close friends and former colleagues; not recognizing anyone under the age of 40.

Simeon

Let’s hear it for everyone at CERN and the worldwide particle physics community!

I get up at 5:30

Russet mantle clad

to catch a plane to Tokyo.

The flight magazine is all in Japanese but there is an article about Islay – of course.

Check: https://quietripple.wordpress.com/2012/02/12/et-encore/

I mention this to the flight attendant and ask if there is an English version. She shakes her head. Just before arrival, she sits down beside me and begins to write laboriously. This is what she wrote

Aira

I don’t know – the Japanese are just very nice people.

We had a Press Conference at the Cabinet Office.

You do not have to wear a tie after May in Japan

We go to a hole in the ground bar with journos post press conference. They have all the Islay whiskies. We drink Caol Ila.

I fly home.

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

It is a beautiful day. This is it. This the tropics. I take Big Red down to my favorite little beach that is exactly 7 minutes from my apartment.

The tide is like far out

Is there any more pleasurable pastime than ferreting around hundreds of rock pools?

My beach. Big cave at the back.

I am trying to take it easy as I feel a little exhausted following very busy week following the colon operation. I watch beach life.

Beach butterfly

There are hermit crabs scuttling around everywhere

Happy crab

I decide to go snorkeling. Snorkeling in many way is just as much fun as scuba diving. Obviously you can not hang around under water but you can cruise around on the surface without all the paraphenalia. Lots to see.

4 feet of water

Coral

These Xmas tree things are er, sort of animals. You get too close and they zip back into the coral.

I come out of the sea and spend a delightful hour exploring the rock pools.

Pond

Loads of hermit crabs crawling around

Time for a snooze

I settle on my towel and listen to This American Life on my iPhone. About 30 seconds later I am asleep.

This is really good.