The Quiet Ripple Defines The Pond

Sitting in a meeting today when suddenly the building starts to shake. Nobody says anything so neither do I. A bit later it starts again and this time it is really shaking, rattling and rolling. I am scared and feel we should all be under the table. I glance wild-eyed at my very elegant Japanese colleague and she pats me on the arm and says, “It’s Ok we get these in Tokyo all the time.” No one turned a hair. No one talked about it. We just got on with the job in hand. 6.9 on the Richter scale!

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqsww/Quakes/usb0006lpm.html

Duck and cover

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCBT7PfAEgc

It was much worse than anything I have experienced in California. Earthquakes are very rare in Okinawa er apparently.

“The picaresque novel (Spanish: “picaresca,” from “pícaro,” for “rogue” or “rascal“) is a popular sub-genre of prose fiction which is usually satirical and depicts, in realistic and often humorous detail, the adventures of a roguish hero of low social class who lives by his wits in a corrupt society. ”

This a surprise to me as I had always thought that a picaresque novel was the description of the trials and tribulations that  a  central character undergoes during a journey – take Tom Jones, Joseph Andrews, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, as examples of the genre. This post was meant to be based around a journey and thus I chose the title ‘picaresque’. However I would like to point out that I do not see myself as “a roguish hero of low social class who lives by his wits in a corrupt society.”

Reading further in Wikipedia I find;  “The English-language term can simply refer to an episodic recounting of the adventures of an anti-hero on the road.”  Are you still with me?

My journey did not start here but I like the photo.

George Formby

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfmAeijj5cM

Bon Anniversaire

Back to the road. Saturday night was Harry’s birthday celebration. We eat and alas drink. In very strict Okinawa the choice is get a Daiko, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8GnQrUmzFM   , long, complicated and for me shameful, or accept Alf and Denise’s kind offer of a ride home. A plan hatches. I leave the car at the restaurant and the next morning take Big Red down Route 58, take off her front wheel and stash her in the back of the car and then proceed to music festival in Naha, in which the Irish band, in which I play, are er playing. Are you with  me?

Today I set off but am soon sidetracked by a festival in Yomitan.

The boat in the parking lot

Acres of stalls, which go food,food,food, something else,food,food,food, pottery,food,food,food,food,

I bike down Rote 58, which is one of the main North South axes on Okinawa. I sing to myself:

” If you ever want to travel North,

Travel my way,

Take the highway that’s got worth

Get there straight on Route 58.

Oh it winds from Cape Hedo to  Nago

More than 60 miles  full go

Get there straight on Route 58.

Oh you go through  sweet Onna

Down past Nagahama

Okinawa City looks oh so pretty

Get there straight on Route 58.”

I get to the car, drenched in sweat as it is very hot and many miles have been sort of gone over the top of, but exulting in physicality I abandon my original plan and decide to ride my bike all the way to Ginowan, where lives Maho, from whence we will go to the concert. Are you with me?

Big Red outside Maho's house

Big Red inside Maho's house

We then drive to the University of Okinawa in Naha where there is a music festival in which we are playing. The journey is enlivened by a spectacular cloudbrst. Water jets vertically from the drain covers.  It’s the tropics. We drive through deep water, cross swollen junctions and finally get to our destination, where the rain  has put a bit of a dampener on the things.

Two guys are wrestling in the downpour.

Your Momma's is so fat that etc

Yo momma’s so fat, when she walked passed the TV I missed three commercials.

We are next and suddenly the rain stops and blue sky breaks through.

The best Irish band on Okinawa

Yo momma’s so fat she was in the middle of the highway I tried to swerve but ran out of gas.

The band after us are famous and rightly so. A mix of The Blues Brothers, Buddy Holly and Japanese stuff that I have no way to describe.

Yo momma's so fat if she got her shoes shined, she'd have to take his word for it!

It is very dark by the time I get back to Maho’s place to pick up Big Red. A further bunch of kilometers to the car, exulting in the cool night air, and so to bed. Picaresque? Never tire of the road.

Saturday morning after a week of turmoil and intensity; how better to spend the time than Turgenev-ish rambles through the countryside to see what the world will bring me? I hear the fierce screech of the Grey Faced Buzzard and spend the next hour tracking her down.

At first afar

Then closer in a wood

I finally got reasonably close. As I was about to press the button, old friends from California drew up beside me in their car. Would the bird fly away thus ending a long friendship? Nope I got the picture and chatted. Good augury.

I ,er, ramble on.

My first Habu

On the island of Okinawa, this species is heavily collected, primarily for use in habu sake. Actually not sake, but a stronger liquor called awamori, it is alleged to have medicinal properties. The production includes the snakes in the fermentation process and it is sold in bottles that may or may not contain the body of a snake.^[8]

Down to the shore to see what is going on.

Pacific Rim Egrets amongst the seaweed racks

This bird, Pacific Rim Egret, comes in two colors - pure white or grey.

Great White Egret

Songs of the seagulls out on the skerry there as I gather carageenan

I go to work for a little while. Big week for us.

http://www.oist.jp/en/press-room/press-releases/150-2011/1206-new-sci-tech-grad-uni.html

It is growing

It is very pleasant to wander without much purpose as there is always so much to see.

November

The title of this entry comes from a poem by Robert Burns, which I have always much loved. The poets beseeches the stream – the Afton – to flow gently lest his sleeping beloved be awakened. It is so calm and unhurried.

Tonight I went to eat with an old and dear friend. We don’t have to impress each other. We know each other’s beauty spots and warts. We enjoy the same things but can argue with causing offence. Kampai Rachel.

We go to a restaurant that enhances the feeling of wellness. In typical Okinawan style there is excellence without pretension and friendliness without thought for future gain.

Of course we eat superbly.

Fish deep fried such that the crunchy head is as much a delicacy as the flesh

Aya, the owner,  just comes over and chats. She has little English, we little Japanese. Doesn’t matter.

Flow gently, sweet Afton! amang thy green braes,

Aya with more fish

Ruins of Goya Champuru with more fish to come.

Go here. Get there straight on Route 58

Flow gently, sweet Afton! amang thy green braes,
Flow gently, I’ll sing thee a song in thy praise;
My Mary’s asleep by thy murmuring stream,
Flow gently, sweet Afton, disturb not her dream.

Thou stockdove whose echo resounds thro’ the glen,
Ye wild whistling blackbirds in yon thorny den,
Thou green-crested lapwing thy screaming forbear,
I charge you, disturb not my slumbering Fair.

How lofty, sweet Afton, thy neighbouring hills,
Far mark’d with the courses of clear, winding rills;
There daily I wander as noon rises high,
My flocks and my Mary’s sweet cot in my eye.

How pleasant thy banks and green valleys below,
Where, wild in the woodlands, the primroses blow;
There oft, as mild Ev’ning weeps over the lea,
The sweet-scented birk shades my Mary and me.

Thy crystal stream, Afton, how lovely it glides,
And winds by the cot where my Mary resides;
How wanton thy waters her snowy feet lave,
As, gathering sweet flowerets, she stems thy clear wave.

Flow gently, sweet Afton, amang thy green braes,
Flow gently, sweet river, the theme of my lays;
My Mary’s asleep by thy murmuring stream,
Flow gently, sweet Afton, disturb not her dream.

There were excellent Irish cigarettes, which I used to smoke in my youth, called Sweet Aftons. I wonder if they still exist?

Tender young charms

So ‘hats off’  to Ken Dodd a 60’s British comedian. He sang  a song called ‘Happiness’ which was a big hit at the same time as,

If you under-stress the H and emphasize the ‘EE’ sound in Happiness  – you get A penis.

The lyrics went like this.

Happiness

Happiness, happiness, the greatest gift that I posses
I thank the Lord I’ve been blessed
With more than my share of happiness

To me this old world is a wonderful place
And I’m just about the luckiest human in the whole human race
I’ve got no silver and I’ve got no gold
Just a whole lot of happiness in my soul

Happiness, happiness, the greatest gift that I posses
I thank the Lord I’ve been blessed
With more than my share of happiness

Happiness to me is an ocean tide
Or a sunset fading on a mountain side
Or maybe a big old heaven full of stars up above
When I’m in the arms of the one I love

Happiness is a field of grain
Lifting its face to the falling rain
I can see it in the sunshine, I breathe it in the rain
Happiness everywhere

Happiness, happiness, the greatest gift that I posses
I thank the Lord I’ve been blessed
With more than my share of happiness

A wise old man told me one time
That happiness is nothing but a frame of mind
I hope when you go to measuring my success
That you don’t count my money count my happiness

Happiness, happiness, the greatest gift that I posses
I thank the Lord I’ve been blessed
With more than my share of happiness

Happiness, happiness, the greatest gift that I posses
I thank the Lord I’ve been blessed
With more than my share of happiness

Ken Dodd (1964)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ij08lEdA8hs

Anyway he was finally banned from the BBC for this joke:

“You know, men are hairier than women but women are hairier on the whole.”

This is a long intro to a happy day when Yamada san

https://quietripple.wordpress.com/2011/06/19/jamonjamon/

gave me a present.

Thanks

Strong Juju

Come in peace

This gift gives me great happiness. I admire Yamada san and I now own an original. Contemporary art.

So it is the very end of October. The weather is er very good. 24 degrees, sunny, low humidity.

Not quite as blue

Basically the summer was a gardening washout. Er no, that does not describe the baking sun that burns everything to a frazzle very well.  My tomatoes peppers and aubergines all did very badly.  The only thing that prospered was the benni imo, purple sweet potato, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink/foodanddrinknews/5718283/Purple-sweet-potato-new-superfood-to-prevent-cancer.html, which is impervious to typhoons and does not seem to need any water.

Very large seed potatoes

At my local agricultural cooperative place I blunder around trying to work out when I should plant stuff as there is clearly a different cycle from even  very southern Europe. However I have noticed a sense of excitement over the last couple of weeks. Planting season is, I think, coming to Okinawa – October is April. Last weekend there were trays of onions plants. Yesterday it was potatoes. Hooray these I know how to grow.

After many years of preparing beautiful drills and then banking up the earth, this time I decide to simply dig a little hole and drop the seed potato in. We shall  see.

Pratie in the pratie hole

So I put in a bunch of potatoes and will await developments with great interest.

Potatoes to the left of them, potatoes to the right of them, volleyed and thundered.

So I have a big event approaching for which I will have to wear a suit.  Those I have balloon around me satisfactorily due to weight loss. One recommends me to go to a certain store. It is packed with, you know, suits but no people. I am made very welcome.

“If honor be your clothing, the suit will last a lifetime; but if clothing be your honor, it will soon be worn threadbare”

Charming assistant speaks no English and my Japanese lessons have not yet reached the “how to buy a suit ” chapter. Mime works and soon I am trying on suits that are too small for me. Finally we find one that fits, as far as I know,  and I cry, ” Hai!! Aregato gosaimasu.” I hate shopping and have to get out of there.

Things now get strange. The charming assistant suddenly turns into an in-your-face sales-harpie. She keeps bringing out suits and trying to force me to try them on. I am panicky. I want to leave. I do not want to buy another suit. The poor lady is almost tearful on account of my negativity and demonstrates many times on a calculator what a great deal I will get.

Finally  – thank God before I become abusive – I realize that I am in a 2 for 1 deal.  Having bought one suit, I get another for free. This seems very non Japanese but what do I know.

“But as for me, when they were sick, my clothing was sackcloth: I humbled my soul with fasting; and my prayer returned into mine own bosom.

It also turns out that I get two pairs of trousers with each suit. Expecting to leave with a jacket and a pair of trousers, I, in fact, leave with two jackets and four pairs of trousers.

Have I been ripped off? Do I care?

You can put a goat in a suit but it is still a goat. This costs more than I paid.

http://www.tvdance.com/shop/halloween-costumes/ideas/mascot/billy-goat/

Some words about horse.

Intro

A good week working with old friends on building THE website. Final night, you gotta eat horse.

Great Restaurant

Check the website

I did not know that the Japanese ate horse but Kevin did and Japan expert Michael tracks down a horse restaurant in Naha. Go there. We did.

Choose your dobbin

Left to right - Rib meat, fat from just below the mane, just under the tail meat. All raw of course.

Then

Not horse

Then

Whale - Sorry

Then

Soup

Then

Fish deep fried such that the head and backbone are crispy crunchy and totally delicious.

We drank

Awamori on the rocks

This was a really good meal. You have to love Japan.

So the Fall comes to Okinawa. Not in the religious sense but in the seasonal sense.

I look at my thermometer, humidity measuring thing and to my astonishment the temperature is only

Parky

24 degrees and there is a miserable 55% of humidity.  Mind you I am writing at 9:00 at night. It has been 30 degrees  and above with 80% humidity since June. Does this mean I will have to wear a wet suit when diving?  Quelle souffrance.

Dusk

So we break the ground on a new residential complex at the university.

This involves a shinto ceremony that goes like this.

First call gods/ spirits/deities, broonies down to us by using a shinto priest who sings. Then ask for forgiveness for the disturbances that needs must light on the construction of  a big building. This is mimed by representatives of the construction company cutting down a tree with wooden axe crying Ha! Ha! Ha! digging a hole with wooden hoes crying Hoo! Hoo! Hoo! driving in a stake crying Hong! Hong! Hong!   This takes place in front of an elaborate shrine and we stand up, sit down, bow a lot. I just follow what everyone else does and try to look as little stupid, red faced and ugly as I can.  It is very hot in the marquee. The poor priest looks to be in some dscomfort in his magnificent but thermally efficient robes.  He fixes this by walking around the site sprinkling rice, salt and bits of paper.

Retro satanus!

After some laying of branches on  the altar, the priest then tells the gods/ spirits/deities,broonies, that they can go home now.

Nice shoes

Please excuse my lighthearted account. The ceremony was very dignified and moving. I was delighted to be asked to attend.

The Broonie's seat

Thanks to Juliette for the photos.