The Quiet Ripple Defines The Pond

So, the first thing is all the plastic bags you get when you go shopping. The check out person meticulously packs everything into a plastic carrier bag, reciting what it is you have bought and how much it costs. Butter, fish, meat, spam, spam, spam, veg, etc are put into individual plastic bags before careful placement in the mother plastic bag. The Japanese phrase I use most is ” Sumimasen, biniro bukuro gekko desu.” which I think means ” Go easy with the plastic bags brother.”

The second thing is the closed Post Offices on Saturday and Sunday. These means sending stuff, which tends to be an indicator of living abroad, becomes an activity squeezed in between meetings and gentle dozes in the office.

Today I rush off to send a Xmas present to one of my sons. It is a fragile ceramic object that is to travel across the world to Switzerland. Thinks of all the  mosses, waters, slaps, and styles and associated breakages scenarios that lie between us and Geneva. I am worried.

A Chinese Bulbul - by way of light relief.

OK they may be closed on the weekend but when Japanese Post Offices are open they are gelignite.

I show my object, the young man goes “Hai!!” He produces a box, a huge roll of bubble wrap, wraps the object, carefully pads out the rest of the box with more bubble wrap, shows me where he has carefully positioned the Xmas card and asks me for permission to close the box. Oh, ye who have grown tired of life, go to the Post Office in Onna son for a curative injection of milk of human kindness.

This is Kazuhiro san with my gift package

This is a line from the most high church of carols, Adeste Fideles or less pretentiously Oh Come All You Faithful. I have been singing since I was ~ six. I still don’t really know what it means but I think it is something to do with the Incarnation. It also sounded vaguely sexual at the age of 10 in freezing churches in Britain at Christmas time. Anyway it is Christmas time again but Christmas time in Okinawa.

This is December from the terrace.

Cantet nunc aula caelestium

5 minutes later. Gestant puellae viscera;

Verbum caro factum!

It is a perfect drying day, windy and bright so I do a lot of Xmas cleaning. I have always enjoyed washing woollen sweaters. Somehow I have become obsessive about this process. The drying of wool sweaters should be done of bright windy days preferably on a specially designed drying rack which I remember seeing in my youth in Scotland.

Aye, would you put a sheep in a dryer? Nay, abhor it!

Drying machines must be abhorred, unlike the Virgin’s womb. I also wash all duvet covers and sheets. I have always hated putting duvet covers back on duvets. I had no technique.

One more proof that Google has bought more joy to the world than any other invention is this site.

http://www.videojug.com/film/how-to-put-on-a-duvet-cover

So a couple of days ago I got a strange missive in my letter box.

Drafted

I have to have my car safety tested. This is a big deal in Japan. The procedure is called Shaken.

Before a test can be administered on a vehicle the owner of the vehicle must call up a shaken center and make an appointment by phone after which the owner must fill out paper work at the center.

I didn’t do anything like that I just drove to a garage and mimed change my brake pads please. The guy said “Hai! Shaken Stevens!”

Shaken all over

He gave me another car and mimed “Come back on Tuesday.”

The cost for the shaken is broken up as follows:

• ¥1,400 for paperwork and processing,
• ¥25,200 for the testing,
• ¥29,780 for 24 months of validity and
• ¥8,090 for the “Recycling Department” with fees being added depending on the vehicle and its intended use (business, personal, commercial, etc.).

A typical shaken costs between ¥100,000 and ¥200,000.^[1]

That’s  ~ $1200 to $2400!  Ouch!

If the vehicle is in good condition with no mechanical problems, the shaken costs about ¥60,000 for kei cars and includes 2 years of compulsory auto insurance. The higher costs quoted above are for regular automobiles, and the prices increases when the car requires repair or when extra fees are paid to third party companies to take the car in for the inspection.

In the US you can drive more or less anything, anyhow, anywhere. In Britain I remember the MOT. In France there was “La visite”. I do not remember either being very costly. The Japanese take roadworthiness seriously.

Anyway I now have a different car to drive around. It is an old Nissan Cube.

Shake me all night long

I stop off at my favorite fishing port to um buy some fish.

Is this Shaken Sashimi fresh?

Each piece is 60 cents

I get some Okinawan tempura – battered and deep fried in front of you. It is the best fast food in the world. I get two squid and two seaweed that are chucked scalding hot into brown paper bag.    You then stand on the harbor side and eat it.

I see the Japanese Bush Warbler for the first time!

Back to the garden where I optimistically planted potatoes some weeks ago. I must have put in 30 or more seed potatoes and this what has come up.

Two miserable plants alongside four henpecked cauliflowers

The other potato bed

The Beni Imo continues to flourish

The day I planted Beni Imo

I am disheartened by this feeble showing. Ah well, I suppose I will just have to plant some more.

Read this

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/How-the-Potato-Changed-the-World.html?c=y

I love to polish things. I think black leather shoes give the most pleasure but silver and brass come very close seconds. It is very rewarding as you get an instant payback for your efforts. What was dull is now bright and glistening.

Out of the strong came forth sweetness

This is a good thing as amongst my meagre possessions there is an inordinate amount of silverware and some brass. I also have one good pair of black leather shoes.

I think this unlikely source of enjoyment dates back to when I was at school. Our shoes were inspected every morning as we entered the dining hall for breakfast. Dirty shoes meant going back to the boot room to polish them, which equalled  being late for  breakfast by which time your ravenous schoolmates had eaten nearly everything. We were also obliged to be in the Combine Cadet Force, which I thoroughly enjoyed. This entailed polishing army boot toecaps and shining belt brasses. This we tended to do communally and many the happy an hour I spent in the boot room. As we were always bored  sitting around polishing boots at least gave us something to do. Thus when I have not much to do I find myself polishing stuff.

A good carpenter is known by his tools - Silvo is the only really efficient silver polish. I brought it to Okinawa all the way from England.

In my recent polishing frenzy I find a silver card holder that my learned friend Sandy gave me many years ago that had lain in the bottom of a drawer more or less ever since. Card exchange is a ritual of the utmost importance in Japan. I have noticed that most people people have fancy card holders whereas I hoick my card out of my top pocket. Now I am equipped.

Thanks Sandy

I use this title as I am visiting a world famous particle physics lab, KEK in Tsukuba. Being in an experimental facility I want to carry out my own little experiment. I used the title “Hiroshima” in a previous blog and there was an enormous spike in readership. Let’s see what happens with Nagasaki.

Great to be back in the realm of particle physics accompanied by old friend and colleague Youhei  Morita.

Science thing

In front of Belle

There is a vague buzz that CERN will announce a Higgs discovery on December 13. I doubt it.

Japanese accelerator facilities look like restaurants – immaculately clean.

IPhone Mount Fuji on flight back

As you will have seen from my previous posts, there is something wrong with my camera. To be more specific, something wrong with my Nikkor 18- 105mm lens. I cannot get it to focus properly. Saturday at the Temple was an ideal photo opportunity with wonderful sights, like awesome colors and totally unreal er like light. However nearly every photos is blurred.

I have to act.

I jump another subway to Akihabara where is found Yodobashi, one of the world’ s biggest camera shops.

wanna score some tripod?

It is a barn on 5 floors that sells everything electronic. One floor is entirely cameras. There are a million special offers and I get a 18 – 200mm lens dead cheap.

There are acres of this

I am very happy.

So time to have lunch. I am a complete beginner with Japanese cuisine  and because I cannot read I have no idea what the myriad of restaurants around Asakusa are offering. It is true that some display photos and even models of their meals but I somehow feel this is cheating.

In a tiny alley I penetrate a minute restaurant that has a plastic bag attached to the front so people can eat outside.

Stylish

There are about 4 tables and a bench attached to the wall, which is where I sit. It is very warm inside and a group of Tokyoyos are watching the horse racing on a huge screen.

Giddy up

What a great way to spend a Saturday afternoon – sit in a bar guzzle bear, I mean beer, and great food whilst losing money on the races. They get very animated as one of them has clearly done very well. Great atmosphere.

I order by mime

I will have some of that please

and get a wonderful lunch – salad,clams in sake, spicy beef stew with daikon and ice cold beer.

The bowls are hand made

One of the shops is a brush shop. It sells exclusively brushes. Hair brushes,nail brushes, coat brushes, wire brushes, shoe brushes, shaving brushes,

Wanna score some brush?

Not that I have any hair to brush

floor brushes, paint brushes, dog brushes, rush brushes, raccoon-hair brushes, horsehair brushes, boar bristle brushes, ritual brushes, toilet brushes, tooth brushes, you get the idea. I am entranced.
I try very hard not to buy stuff these days and by and large am very successful. Here I sin. There is something about the quality and individualisticness of the brushes that make them irresistible. I buy a shaving brush, a hair brush and another brush.

Your face is like the back of a brush