The Quiet Ripple Defines The Pond

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.

I rather like being an invalid. It is a justification for sloth. However, pleasingly for my self esteem, on Sunday morning I want to get up and go for a walk. It is a glorious day. June is busting out all over.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVqZOlt8AMA

There is a wonderful walk around Zakimi castle which features a wooden staircase that winds through butterfly loud glades. Flowers and butterflies are everywhere.

Coo!

Golly!

Gosh!

Morning Glory everywhere

So I sit in the glades and watch butterflies lead their lives. I do not understand what they are doing but it looks like fun. There are very large white butterflies floating around that I try to photograph in flight. I fail.

Sun through butterfly wings

Having a rest. This thing has a 5 inch wingspan

Looking up

This is a tree

The path leads to a pagoda on top of the hill that has a view over the sea.

I sit and look at the sea listening to In Our Time, a BBC podcast. Very interesting discussion of Ulysses.

This is a spider

This is a butterfly

So this post comes with a warning:

” The following blog contains images that might offend the squeamish, the delicate, the sensitive, the hypochondriac. If this might be you, please switch to the next channel.”

I go to Chubu Hospital to have large polyps removed from my colon so that they become not cancerous thus causing me to shuffle off the mortal coil. That sentence does not make sense really but I hope you get what I er mean.

Check previous history here:

https://quietripple.wordpress.com/2012/03/13/in-the-court-of-the-crimson-king/

and here:

https://quietripple.wordpress.com/2012/05/10/getting-to-know-you/

The people at Chubu are fun. I ask if it is Ok to take some photos for this blog. “Sure, why don’t you take  your IPhone with you and record the operation.” I cannot do justice in text to the joy this gave me. Nearly everywhere I have lived I could predict, “NO! – health and safety, regulations, my boss, where do you think you are, more than my job’s worth, snivel, slide, squirm.”

Okinawa!

Let’s frag them polyps

unusual cinema seat

Essentially Kubota sensei inserts something into your private club which has a tool kit including a camera, nail clippers, electrical wire, a swiss army knife, spare tire etc attached to it. You have a wonderful business class seat with individual screen that allows you to watch the whole procedure.

Has an IPhone ever take this photo?

Better than airline movies

A polyp, a veritable polyp. Let’s frag it.

” Do you want anaesthetic?”

Oh dear – by asking the question there is an implication that anaesthetic is not really needed. My education forces me to say “No, I don’t think that will be necessary.” Any other answer would be a defeat. Anyway it turned out to be the right decision.

Travel log along my colon. Getting ready to snip minor offenders. 48 shows electrical snare being wound around big boy polyp.

Kubota-sensei progresses up my colon occasionally halting to snip off some junior polyps until he comes to the big boy polyp. The technique is to inject what he calls ‘blue water’ in the tissue under the polyp and by so doing elevate  and expose the  the object of desire. An electrical snare is then wound around it and the offending growth is burnt off. The wound is then closed with clip things that are part of the tool kit.

Big Boy goes down. Click on photos for hi-res

I was enthralled. Most of the time I was on my back chatting with Kubota-sensei  about the next step. Very rewarding way to spend an afternoon.

You get a souvenir kit

I now have to rest up for a couple of days which as usual is both good and bad. Good, I have no guilt about slobbing around reading books all weekend. Bad because I cannot paddle in the Haari races tomorrow.

https://quietripple.wordpress.com/2011/06/05/hare-krishna-hare-krishna-krishna-krishna-hare-hare-hare-rama-hare-rama-rama-rama-hare-hare/

Jeremy left yesterday and so today is the first day for a month that I have not had people staying. This means I can return to the garden. Visitors are not entranced by afternoons spent grubbing around in the garden and rubbing red Okinawan clay into their scalps. I however love to do this.

It is Summer now and very hot.

Nice colors from my terrace

Ie Jima this morning

At last I am having some success in the garden. I planted goya, the well known Spanish artist, and he has flourished.

The Nude Maja

Charles IV of Spain and His Family,

I am so pleased that I have actually succeeded in growing something in Japan that I rush to the plant place and buy more goya plants. The people are delighted that a gaijin wants to plant goya and give me lots of advice, which of course is totally lost on me.

The new goya installation

It is very hot and I get sun burnt despite my new hat.

New hat

I go home to eat.

Goat, fish, little onion things,goya, spam, quail eggs