The Quiet Ripple Defines The Pond

The flight from Okinawa to Shanghai is delayed  but no problem I have a 3 hour layover. When I try to transfer to the Paris flight in Shanghai things start to fall apart. “The flight is delayed! Go to desk F! Go through Immigration! Get transfer stamp in passport! Fill in landing form!”

Thank God for the English language.  Despite the fact that people in Chinese airports speak in the imperative, at least I understand what is on the critical path. I feel for Japanese visiting Europe or the US. What are the chances of airport staff speaking Japanese?

However we are not in Japan now. At the check in desk chaos reigns as groups of people walk to the front of the line and demand attention. We eventually learn that the flight has been delayed to the next day and there is a maelstrom of angry Chinese and French wanting satisfaction. These are two cultures not noted for their patience and equanimity and the resultant atmosphere is bad and deeply offensive to my osmosed Japanese sensibilities. We need a hotel voucher – people push, shove, shout at each other. Long wait until bus arrives whereupon people run to get on first and snarl.

We drive into Shanghai and fight each other at the hotel reception to get rooms.

Where we stay

Anyway we get a meal and I go for a stroll. This is fun. Midnight in who knows where in Shanghai. People eating, hanging out and buying fruit.

Pizza

Spotted Dick

Shanghaians buy fruit at midnight

At 4:00 the phone rings but no one speaks. I take it to mean, “Get down here!” Bus leaves at 5:00 and we are back in the airport. There are a bunch of people by a desk and in my state of paranoia I am magnetically drawn. They are giving out 400 huan in cash if you show them your boarding pass. Very nice thanks.

This is what it looks like

This is enough to buy a liter of Ardbeg that has miraculously found its way from Islay to an obscure corner of Shanghai airport. I realize just in time that you can no longer buy liquids in mid journey as they will be taken from you at the next security check. The image of having to hand over a liter of Ardbeg makes me shiver.

The flight finally takes off at 7:00ish. I am in seat 69 J. I have missed my connection in Paris.

Not sure if East China Airlines are a future  option. Maybe the food will be good.

What do you think?

There was an overwhelming response to my post on Japanese car names. The number of readers tripled. Maybe I have stumbled across a new market? Those who gain gratification from looking at photos of Japanese car name badges. Maybe I should set up a specialized pay site and make some money. In the mean time, enjoy while it is still free.

Whoar not half!

Not half!

Wabbit

You bet I did!

No Red Port Wine Left

I try and I try

More later.

A thing that has given me pleasure over the last couple of years is taking photographs with a er camera. Little by little I have got to understand the process better and now I have decided to buy a new lens. I wanna a fixed 35 mm lens that  will I hope give pictures more like that which what I am seeing – see?

Nikon has a nice one which is $200 in the US but $349 on Okinawa. Japan is an expensive place to live. I decide to wait until I next go States-side. However I happen to look on my favorite web site Okinawa Boot Sales and miraculously there is the lens for half the price is goes for in the shops. Hmmm, tricky as I am leaving for the airport in a couple of hours. I phone Geoff, who is a marine. ” No problem buddy, I can meet you in the parking lot of Antidisestablishmentarianism Books as you swing down to the airport.”

This it

So we do the deal in the parking lot and I now have a new lens. Geoff is the nicest guy and is there with his boy Skeeter. Geoff clearly knows a lot about taking photographs with a er camera and gives me lots of suggestions as to how to use the lens like good. Thanks Geoff. We spend about 4 minutes together before I get back into the limo and am now waiting for a plane to Shanghai. I am generally very lucky. Things just seem to work out for me.

Bye Skeeter

The only  Japanese car name that appears to be global is Prius. All the other cars around these parts have the strangest names which I believe are endemic to Japan. For example my car is called a March hereabouts whereas it is, I believe, called a Micra elsewhere.

At least it only has one syllable, which is rare.

Most cars have  two-syllable names that have no meaning.

Nearly a faithful Indian. Sold as Kemo Sabe in Australia.

Why are they all written in Romaji – like English alphabet – and never in Kanji, hiragana or katakana? I mean, this is Japan.

A fine name for a car. Marketed as the Stab in Bielorussia

Maybe there is a law. ” No cars  names can be written in Kanji.”

Pleo is an animatronic pet dinosaur toy designed to emulate the appearance and (imagined) behavior of a week-old baby Camarasaurus.

Tea? Sold as the Paca in France

3 syllables!

Enema? Known as the Antidisestablismentarian in Ireland

A few rare singles.

What you get when you drive it I suppose.

This I believe is also sold in the US. Very cool here.
a backronym for Leading, Environmentally friendly, Affordable, Family car

My favorite!

Who makes up these names? I do not think it is a human. I think a computer churns out a mixture of meaningless phonemes which Japanese car companies then slap on the back of their products.

Mind you I think most European and US cars  are now just called sequences of letters and digits.

I get to Tokyo. I am sick. I go straight to my hotel and straight to bed at 12:30.I sleep all day. I awake at 9:00 the next morning.

My visit to Tokyo

The limo picks me up. We go to the Cabinet Office. I give my presentation. The limo takes us to the airport. The typhoon has passed. I fly back to Okinawa. I go to bed at 1:00, still sick.

I see my first Olympics passing through the airport

What a strange trip.

There is a typhoon coming. We have to go to Tokyo for a meeting with the Cabinet Office on Monday. We fly on Saturday as word has it that all flights will be cancelled on Sunday.

First mistake, instead of taking the limo and going through the VIP no hassle path with colleagues, I, for a variety of reasons, take my own car. I get to the airport in plenty of time and look at the screen. My flight leaves at 16.45 and there it is – gate 35. Things start to get odd at security. Naha is usually a quiet little airport full of orchids and happy people. Today there are long lines of very stressed looking tourists. I realize that everyone is trying to get off the island before the typhoon arrives.

I finally get to the front of the line put my ticket on the scanner thing and it goes red and strange kanji appear. I am at the wrong gate. There are two flights to Tokyo leaving at 16:45, one JAL, one ANA. I am on the JAL flight but trying to get through the ANA gate.

Oh,oh!

I rush to the the correct gate, of course at the other extremity of the airport. Long lines and also by this time a general feeling of sickness have overcome me. I have been fit as a dog for 2 years but suddenly my stomach is queasy and I have a fever. I get to the gate but too late – I have missed the flight.

I go to the JAL ticket desk to find a mass of people trying to change tickets. Oh well I will just wait and listen to current book on the IPhone. A little piece of cardboard has got into the earphone jack and I cannot get it out. I wait for 90 minutes feeling awful, sweating horribly and finally manage to get a seat on the 10:35 flight next day going to the wrong airport in Tokyo. It is the last ticket and there is no guarantee that the flight will leave due to the typhoon. There is a real feeling of apocalypse as families desperately try to get  home. The screens display lines of cancelled flights.

misery

I feel quite proud of myself as with luck I should get out. I head for home. The phone rings and it is my amazing assistant saying don’t move as she may be able to get me onto a flight leaving that night. I pull over and sit in an isakaya and eat a fish with zero appetite. I feel dreadful.

Sure enough I should have left everything to people more competent than I as a better flight has been found, still the next day, but earlier thus with a better chance of leaving. Notice this is now 6:30 on a Saturday evening. Thanks Naoko, thanks Yoko for your kindness.

I head home again. It is dark ,windy and raining heavily. I take the wrong entrance onto the only motorway and thus spend a waste 30 mins trying to get back onto the North lane.

I feel very low by the time I get back to the flat some 6 hours after I initially set off.

The wind is howling and I spend a restless night before getting up at 5:30 to head to the airport again.

Typhoon at airport

Naoko has sent  my new reservation by email. I open a link which brings up a bar code thing on my phone. I just put the phone on the scanner and that is all there is! No ticket, no check in, no boarding pass just an iPhone.

My ticket

I am writing this on the plane just before take off. Strong wind outside!

I am still fascinated by the richness of Okinawan flora and fauna. Today at lunchtime, mainly due to the fact that all lunch options at the University include rice, noodles and so anathema to my no carbs diet, I stroll off to look at crawling things.

Down by the sea I have noticed the strangest creatures. They are fish but when they feel like it they scuttle up onto the land an eat a few crabs. I have no idea what they are but they are clearly Darwinian.

How we came from the swamp

They seem to spend their time crunching up these little Fiddler Crabs.

“Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what’s for lunch.”

As I walk back to my car, a beautiful and very large butterfly cavorts.

The Higgs boson-like particle whose discovery was announced on 4 July looks significantly more certain to exist.

Olympic badminton players face charges over lackluster matches

After work I stop off at my favorite dam, damn. There are baby Black Crowned Night Herons.

A man who is eating or lying with his wife or preparing to go to sleep in humility, thankfulness and temperance, is, by Christian standards, in an infinitely higher state than one who is listening to Bach or reading Plato in a state of pride.

The small stuff is important.

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