The Quiet Ripple Defines The Pond

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.

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