The Quiet Ripple Defines The Pond

So I am now an advanced life form having completed the final test for my Advanced Open Water Diver qualification. This evolutionary leap takes place at Sunabe, where you move from Gas Station forecourt to incredible soft coral reef in 20 metres, from convenience store to sea snake in a blink of the eye. Jan the man guides me through compass diving, which is pretty straightforward if you can do mental arithmetic. – I can’t.

I don't like Sponge Cake

Sunabe is distinguished for its incredible growth of soft coral, which resemble permanent firework displays er under water.

Soft

I cannot think of a word in english that means float downward but this is what I do on a  60 ft pyramid of soft coral. As I study the ever-changing flora and fauna I cast my eye to the left to distinctly hear  a large purple- jawed Moray eel say, “Youse looking at me or chewing a brick?”  I float upwards.

Doux

So I write this at 9:30 pm. The temperature in the room is 30 degrees with 75% humidity. Summer is really here in Okinawa. The temperature essentially does not change- it hovers around 30 degrees day and night.

9:45 Yomitan. Callin' out around the world, are you ready for a brand new beat? Summer's here and the time is right for dancin' in the street. Dancin' in Chicago (dancin' in the street) Down in New Orleans (dancin' in the street) In New York City

At night I leave all the windows open but with insect screens carefully drawn to prevent huge, horribly bejewelled, bugs flying in during the night to perch on my cheek. Not to mention the mosquito.  A breeze wafts through the flat, keeping it reasonably cool, er, sort of.    I refuse to close all windows and switch on air conditioning.   I sleep on the futon without any cover to wake up with the dawn at 5:15 to a cacophony of cicadas. Then I get up. Very different from my european  mornings.

The sea is warm. I dive sans wet suit. My garden dries out very quickly and huge butterflies that look like kleenex with green spots flop around in a non free will existence. You have to watch the garbage as it stinks about 3 minutes after you put anything in it. You get into the car and by the time the AC kicks in you are drenched in sweat and your light blue shirt is now purple.  The heat is a physical entity that has to be taken into account in planning. Walk over there? Hmmm, probably not ‘cos it is too hot. Bike ride? – no way, too hot.

Hot town, summer in the city
Back of my neck getting dirty and gritty
Been down, isn’t it a pity
Doesn’t seem to be a shadow in the city

All around, people looking half dead
Walking on the sidewalk, hotter than a match head

A far cry from Loch Awe.

Another important crop in Yomitan is the purple sweet potato (紅いも beni imo^?), if not for its value as a cash crop then as part of the local culture and tourist industry; the town promotes itself as the “beni imo hometown” (紅いもの里 beni imo no sato^?), and holds a Miss Beni Imo (紅いも娘 beni imo musume^?)contest each year. Sweet potato cultivation first reached Japan via Okinawa from present-day Taiwan, predating rice cultivation, and either Yomitan or neighboring Kadena can lay claim as the first cultivators of sweet potato in Japan.

So where I live the vegetable de rigeur is beni imo. I have a vegetable plot ergo I have to grow it.

Look like saucisson

However when I go to plant store, garden center sorts of place and say “Beni Imo kudesai hai!” People look at me with the all too familiar we-would-love-to-help- but-there-is-a-profound-misconception-here look. So no beni imo plants or seeds or whatever it takes to plant in my little garden.

This morning I am on the road to the plot by 6:30. It gets light about 5:15 and hot about 7:30. I strap my fork and rake over my back along with trusty Google bag. Not far from home I spy a gentleman in a beautifully prepared field laying out cuttings.

“Beni Imo?” I query. “Hai!!” says he and, understanding immediately my predicament, hands me an armful of cuttings.

What to wear this year when planting beni imo

Pleased, I progress to plot and plant.  Alas I have no dibber but find in my bag a C whistle that I have had since 1978. It does very well.

Still life - Beni imo cuttings, C whistle and rake

I have no great hopes for my beni imo plants as I think you should really plant them in raised drills (see photo above). I am too idle and it is far too hot even at 8:00 to do the work.

I also plant  beans, carrots and massive white radish called Daikon.

I will arise and go now, and go to Kina Banjo, And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made: Nine beni imo-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee, And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

Stay tuned for horticultural updates. I cycle home with sweat staining the road as I pass by.

So as time goes by one wonders from time to time if one has lost the touch. Has your moment  passed or as the bard has it:

That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou see’st the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west;
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death’s second self, that seals up all in rest. 
In me thou see’st the glowing of such fire,
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed, whereon it must expire,
Consumed with that which it was nourish’d by.

Akela had this problem. On the council rock he thought of the time when he would miss his buck and the young wolves would turn against him and bite his legs off.

We will do our best

I sometimes see myself like the old grey wolf who soon will not pin his buck.

Not yet though.

Check

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v474/n7353/full/474541b.html

and

http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110629/full/474553a.html

So eat dirt young wolves.

"Nay, nay. Red Hunters all: grown dogs of their Pack, heavy and strong for all that they eat lizards in the Dekkan."

I await the dhole.

I previously played music in a bar in Marseille where there were sometimes 5 banjos. The banjo goes, danka, danka, danka, clanga, clanga, clanga, danka, danka, danka
danka, clanga,  dank, clanga, clanga.  5 together made me lose my will to live. No slow airs, no wailing as you pull bracken. That said, Kina Banjo in Okinawa is a great place. It was a meeting point on the road to the north of the island and Commodore Perry had a cup of tea here in the 1853. It was of course totally destroyed during the Battle of Okinawa in 1945. Now reconstructed it gives an impression of what Okinawa was like prior  to the war.

War, huh, yeah What is it good for Absolutely nothing Uh-huh War, huh, yeah What is it good for Absolutely nothing Say it again, y'all

Yamada sensei pot third from right

Anyway this is a long lead in to my little bit of land. Thanks to esteemed colleague Natori san, I have the right to grow stuff on a piece of land  just beside Kia Banjo. I love

Nothing so becomes a man, er or woman, as horticulture

to grow vegetables and I feel that a bit of horticulture in Okinawa will be a deeply educational experience. As you can see, the land has not been worked for some time.  By the way, we have just had another smallish typhoon and the soil is drenched. I clear and dig over a patch but do no planting as I think it will be better to let the soil dry  out a bit.

Il faut cultiver nos jardins

I intend to plant a lot of Yomitan purple potato. Loads of butterflies watch me dig.

Inna gadda la vida

Thank you

I eat this

780 yen

here – in a break between digging.

So fine

The soil is a little clayey and interestingly orange in color. I think it will be carrots, onions, beans, salad, radish, big white Okinawan super radish and tomatoes.

So I am now an official member of the band “The Islanders” Okinawa’s top Irish Traditional Music combo. We are 5 – Maho incredible fiddler and the best front end in the business – Yokay, also on fiddle and smile, Guitar Tommy, Gerard from North of Belfast on Flute whistle,guitar and vocals and me. We play in the Smugglers in Naha on the last Saturday of each month – be there.

Lament for Limerick

It is a party. We play very fast with lots of howling. The colleens from Naha dance and howl too.  We get free Guinness. Okinawa, Irish bar, drink Guinness, play “The Bank of Ireland” to ecstatic crowd, who would have guessed it?

I feel like Keith Richards

This is how Lady Gaga started

Sunday after lunch is time to go for a walk. Not the overcoat the umbrella, the wellington boots but the tank of air, the fins, the mask.

I walk out to where the dark blue line is.

Just a couple of minutes from the apartment I have located a secret beach. Actually there are thousand of little beaches like this but this one has much proximity.

Mine all mine

So if I wander out from this beach – how much wandering and how much swimming depending on the tide- I come to this.

OK Coral

In this there are many many beautiful fish.

Hmmm

Not deep

Truly amazing

So you get the idea. There huge clumps of coral, beautiful reefs and constantly changing underwater  life that my puny camera can in no way capture. It is all so easy.

I mentioned in a previous entry that one of my first recollections was a ferry trip from Campbeltown to Greenock. I can vividly remember the excitement. Sister Rosie sent me a photo of that trip.

I am still troubled

So through good luck I stumbled into the world of Shinman Yamada.

https://quietripple.wordpress.com/2011/04/06/harry-potter/

We organized an exhibition at my place of work of ‘Hamon’ – ‘Ripple’ in English, his take on life entering the primeval sludge. These are 11 very heavy pots which to me look like pods exploding. They are science fiction, amazingly coloured, different from every angle and each light. Yamada san is a great man.

Splurt

Rotarua

Installation

Plop

toenail

The noise you get when you pull your finger out of your cheek

Sputter, splat, squirt, snort, snuck, sniff, smack

There are loads more but you get the idea. I love this stuff.

Yamada san with beautiful daughter

So yesterday was the best day in my life recently. Many best laid plans did not gang agley and there were surprise events that injected unexpected happiness and joy.

A visit to my place of work by the illustrious senior staff of the University of the Ryukyus sprang a real surprise when their learned President handed me a bag. Inside was this.

Gosh

Yes, a bottle of University of the Ryukyus special Awamori but joy of joys a bottle of 1977 Ardbeg. Ardbeg is of course the greatest of the Islay whiskies, frequently referred to as  The Queen of Argyll.

Gentlemen it is my duty
To inform you of one beauty
Though I’d ask of you a favour
Not to seek her for a while
Though I own she is a creature
Of character and feature
No words can paint the picture
Of the queen of all Argyll

On the evening that I mentioned
I passed with light intention
Through a part of our dear country
Known for beauty and for style
In the place of noble thinkers
Of scholars and great drinkers
But above them all for splendour
Shone the Queen of all Argyll

To be given a bottle of Ardbeg that was distilled some 35 years ago on a cold, grumach Islay day  in the middle of a hot afternoon in the East China Sea was too much. My shoulders shook, my eyebrows swat, my liver cried out, my low serotonin made me cry out for instant gratification. How did such a bottle end up in my sweaty hands in Okinawa?

The Queen of Argyll with the Empress of Okinawa.

Now here is the rub.  Where is the driving rain, the scream of the Herring Gull, the rotting creels, the holed clinker boats, the cry of the lamb who has lost its mother, the sob of the old women beshawled in the ditch, the stench of rotting seaweed, the clatter of empty Irn Bru bottles rolling around in the skip, the  grey, the purple, the dark brown ?

This is an ex Ruddy Kingfisher

Here it is the turquoise, the wild amaryllis, the smack of the Ruddy Kingfisher against the window, the squeal of children splashing in the sea for fruit, the perfume of the prickly pear, the screech of the monster fruit bat and the deal clincher sunshine.

I cannot drink ancient Ardbeg here.

I will have to wait until Winter creeps over the windowsill

Starts on Saturday evening when I rent two tanks.

Up very early on Sunday morning and off we go to Cape Maeda – 5 mins from the apartment. It is a perfect morning, blue, sky, calm, warm, blue, sea, sun. By 7:30 I am under water and this is what you get.

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Yellow fish

Fish

Not a fish

Fish

Fish with stripes

Stop off at French bakery on way home and at 9:00 I am having coffee and croissants on my terrace.

Thank you Okinawa.