The Quiet Ripple Defines The Pond

I am a little jaded with tourism. In fact I think there are few countries I can go to. The main reason is that I am made very uncomfortable by people trying to sell me things or services. I say “No thank you very much.” but they do not go away. They go on and on, getting increasingly invasive. I just want to go back to the hotel and read my book.
Children are the worst as they take obvious pleasure in baiting me. They see me coming and descend like a cloud of flies. I am helpless and have to go back to the hotel to read my book.
Today I had an exquisite tourist experience. In the flight magazine coming over from Okinawa I read about part of Tokyo called Asakusa. I have a free morning and so go there.

Big Golden Thing

You go there too if you come to Tokyo. Temples with beautiful gardens surrounded by narrow streets of fascinating little shops and intriguing restaurants.

Stuff

Yes I have no bananas - MGN Taylor

The main route to the Temple is lined with tourist shops but nice tourist shops selling quality, interesting stuff.

This bodes some strange eruption to our state.

We'll dib, dib, dib.

My camera has had it.

Edwina Currie

No one hassles me, no one shouts at me, everyone gets on with their own enjoyment. Although the place is very crowded, courtesy rules and  pickpocketry or robbery is er not going to happen.
The weather is beautiful, the temples are red, troupes of elderly dance in the street.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y76-WpKCkf8

The shops  in the streets around are sort of half stalls and are dead good.

Purple and turquoise poodle

As I loiter on the subway platform in Tokyo I notice that my fellow travelers are forming well ordered lines, the position thereof being marked by yellow lines  on the platform. When the train arrives, exactly on time, the door position corresponds exactly the yellow line. No,not exactly  but slightly to the right so that the people getting off can do so without fighting through a scrum of people waiting to get on. Complete silence on the train with 90% of passengers both listening to and looking at various IPhone things. The other stand out is that absolutely everyone is Japanese. I am the only foreigner on all the subways I have travelled on. I am writing this on the Pad on the subway just coming into Asakusabashi station. The train totally clean.

Eat your breakfast from the floor

Panic! I am fiddling with the camera at  a station when I hear the cry, “Asakusa!” This my stop.  I leap off the train just as it is about to move out. I am very pleased with myself as without concentrating I had recognized the name of the station. This may not sound like much of an achievement but Japanese pronunciation of words written in English is frequently different from the anticipated. I wander out feeling very smug to find what Asakusa has to offer on a sunny Sunday morning.

So I go to an English Bookshop to try to buy a coy of the Economist. I somehow believed that the newspaper has a secret network of delivery gnomes who drop off copies in every bookstore in the world on Fridays so the faithful can read the magazine over the weekend. This belief comes from buying a current issue on a Friday  from a hole in the wall bookseller, where St Paul also got his newspapers,  in Antioch. Not so Okinawa City – they had issues but regretfully some weeks old.

So I had lunch in a Hiroshiman Restaurant nearby.

unprepossessing - is that correct spelling?

You get noodles and egg and little slices of pork – all cold. This you dip into a hot sauce before ingurgitation.

I still can't get my camera to focus properly.

Delicious

There must be a million restaurants on Okinawa.

I have always admired the Economist. The people who work there, when our paths have crossed,  have always  been very bright, funny and  fast at writing stories. I lost sympathy somewhat during their backing of the Iraq war version 2, but at least they had the grace to say that they got it wrong later.

Anyway the newspaper has today  published an article on OIST which it was a joy to work on.

Hooray

http://www.economist.com/node/21540228

This is what I am really doing on Okinawa beyond eating fish and taking photos of butterflies.

Not so here where November is delightful. Yesterday was a holiday:

Labour Thanksgiving Day (kinro kansha no hi):
A national holiday for honoring labour.

Hooray. A beautiful warm day. Humidity has gone and the weather reminds me of Spring in Provence. I do my usual day off activity which is to ramble around on my Big Red looking at stuff.

Autumn

Gunpowder treason and plot

"No warmth, no cheerfulness, no healthful ease, No comfortable feel in any member - No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees, No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds - November!" - Thomas Hood, No!

I’ve got a lovely bunch of coconuts There they are all standing in a row Big ones, small ones, some as big as your head Give them a twist a flick of the wrist

Life is short, wear tropical shirts.

Butterflies are self propelled flowers.

Happiness is a butterfly, which when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.

We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty.

November – in fact the end of November.

Trucks in Okinawa are highly decorated. Loads of chrome and individual styling.

Willing

I found this one parked just by house.

Buck up or stay in the truck. Sarah Palin

The tanks in the background are full of Awamori

https://quietripple.wordpress.com/2011/05/07/awamori/

Beaujolais Nouveau was a fad in the 80’s founded entirely on marketing, which preyed on the desire for sophistication. Thin sour wine. I think it has more or less disappeared in France but in Okinawa it is big time.

Et in arcadio ego

This was taken in a convenience store – hmmm, Japanese store that sells what you need open 24 hrs a day- perched on a cliff top near my apartment. The Duboeuf is 2480 yen about $32. How did it get here? Do Okinawans really spend that kind of money on sour wine?

A Christmas tree too! What is going on?

So we had a very big week er last week. Meetings of governing bodies and inauguration of the university involving hosts of  celebrities in a scientific sort of definition i.e. no rock stars or talent show contestants but lots of Nobel prizewinners.

On Sunday we had a staff BBQ to celebrate which was a blast.

Ami Chinen who is in IT and also semi professional classical dancer

We got together and the staff put on dance and song and general fun.

Higashionna san from Student Affairs

Fun

We play

A touch '68 San Francisco

Anyway great event with simple fun, no alcohol, and pleasure of people being with people. Not what I am used to but which Japan is teaching me to enjoy more and more.

Jatta!

By the way my camera or at least one lens seems to be busted. It does not focus properly especially on the peripheries of the shot. What I dread is that I have inadvertently set an er setting which is doing this and I will never be able to track it down. I apologize for sub standard photography.

So off I go to Naha  as the band is playing in yet another festival. Okinawa is alive with music and the Islanders are de rigeur at any self respecting event. Naha is the main city of Okinawa and  a population of 700K means that half of the people of Okinawa live there. It is an Asian city, very high density, lots of activity. It frightens me as I always get lost  and can never find anywhere to park. However little by little I am begining to find my way around or so I thought.

I park my car in an amazing place. It is a high rise building that essentially contains two car elevators. You drive your car into the elevator and get out. The doors close and your ride is whisked up into the upper reaches of the building. Note that your car faces the front of the elevator when you drive it in.

I wander around a little before we play.

She played Bach on my flute.

Amazing traditional punk rock vocalists playing in the street.

And I went down to the demonstration To get my fair share of abuse Singing, "We're gonna vent our frustration If we don't we're gonna blow a 50-amp fuse

We play.

We play diddley diddley diddley

We eat.

Ramen!

We play with Iphones.

Tommy, Yosuke and Maho

I then try to find my car. Not good. It is now dark. All the streets  and buildings look identical. I roam around the center of Naha for 20 minutes getting more confused and a little panicky. I do have a card from the parking place and to my delight a passer by understands as I show her the card and blurt,”Sumimasen, Parking dokko desuka?” I speak Japanese!

With typical kindness she escorts a strange man, late at night, to his car.

The attendant presses the button, the elevator heaves in to action and when the doors open my car is facing in the opposite direction from that  in which I parked it. I am too tired to work out how.

How?

Beni Imo is an amazing plant. You just jam a bit in the ground and it grows. Typhoon may come and typhoons may go but Beni Imo goes on forever. It, like the Dude, abides. You may remember me planting some cuttings back in May I think.

I did not think any would survive

After baking sun that killed everything else and a mega typhoon, it now looks like this.

Fie on’t! O fie! ’tis an unweeded garden, That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature Possess it merely.

It is unstoppable.

Fresh from Okinawa

I have actually got a little produce.