Sorry for long silence but we have just been through one big Typhoon, which amongst other stuff cut the internet connection for several days. This was a schoolboy dream as at 11:30 0n Thursday there was an announcement at work telling us all to go home as the typhoon was a coming.  We go back tomorrow – Monday.  Amazing rain, check:

http://newsonjapan.com/html/newsdesk/article/91267.php

Incredible wind, check Ben’s movie for full insight. Standing out in that wind was like riding a motorbike at 120 mph – watch the fat wobble:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FTJTQ_8LjY

Destroyed my garden

Okinawa is the best place to own a barograph. After 30 years of around and around you get this.

More about MacWhirr :

“Had he been informed by an indisputable authority that the end of the world was to be finally accomplished by a catastrophic disturbance of the atmosphere, he would have assimilated the information under the simple idea of dirty weather, and no other, because he had no experience of cataclysms, and belief does not necessarily imply comprehension.”

Don’t you love Conrad

So son Ben comes to stay. Straight off the plane into the sea and he completes his open water diving training in record time. He is like a, er, fish to batter, um snail to garlic, like lobster to creel, you know,  a Zulu to Ukweshwama, a Scotsman to the MacBraynes’ bus.

 

Congratulations Ben

So I set off for the airport in a big  “I am going to miss my plane ” rush. I remember that on leaving Okinawa nearly all the French community and Jan the Man, with the wild eyed look of Ben Gunn begged me to bring back cheese.

I screech into a handy cheese shop and buy two beautiful Camemberts,

two delicious Munsters

and three like  totally awesome Banons.

 

I get to the check in/security check with seconds to spare but I am busted. “you can’t take those cheeses onto the plane.”

“Why not?”

“Because they are liquids.”

“Say what?”

They take my beautiful cheeses and bin them.

I have to say that this is Marseille. The people involved were French and there was  mutual recognition of the tragedy of the situation.

We hugged, cried on each others shoulders and went away sadder and wiser.

A brief stay in France to try to tie up the many loose ends that were left over since my departure last year. Anyone who has been around me recently will have noticed how I drone on relentlessly about how awful the French are. Well, I take it back  er some of it.

It starts really badly in Aix when I wait for 15 mins in a Cafe before being served. The waiter is talking to his friends, doing the crossword, brushing his hair, picking his nose until he finally decides to come to my table. He puts one hand on my table, leans forward and raises his eyebrows. This is his translation of, ” Hi, how’s it going? What can I get you?”

Today however I head towards the lavender fields of Valensole. It is warm, windy and big white clouds slide across the blue, blue sky. I stop for lunch in Le Grand Cafe in Valensole. As soon as I sit down a man comes over and greets me. It is Laurent who  owned a restaurant I used to frequent in St Paul Lez Durance and is now the patron of Le Grand Cafe. He seems genuinely happy to see me. We chew the lard for a while until my meal arrives.

The service was excellent, the food had been cooked rather than microwaved and what’s more it wasn’t Pizza.  The starter was homemade terrine, followed by canard avec ratatouille, tarte tatin, cafe, cafe, un demi de rose – sorry no accents.  The wine was cold, the weather was warm, the sun was bright and I was invaded by a powerful sense of wellbeing. My table was just beside the road and I looked up to spy a very beautiful women with shades cruise by in a brand new, white, BMW. It all made sense. Paying my bill and chatting with Laurent someone taps me on the shoulder and lo it is the beautiful woman from the BMW. She kisses me on the cheeks and all the men in the bar go “Shnurt.” I used to work with her. She had seen me as she drove by, parked her amazing car and come to see me. Shucks – sun, fine food, cool wine, old friends, beautiful women, all in an obscure resto in a tiny town in Provence.

This is the restaurant. Go there – it is what France is best at!

http://www.valensole-grandcafe.fr/

If you can’t go there then send Laurent an email thanking him for being a great guy and for cooking such wonderful food.

le-grand-cafe@valensole-grandcafe.fr

I then proceed to lavender and sunflower fields.

 

So you will probably guess fairly rapidly that I am not in Okinawa. I will leave you to guess in which country I am. Some clues; 23 hours travel from Okinawa, limited diving, people hacked off, police and politicians either in resignation or denial mode.

Big family wedding celebration at the extraordinary home of my sister and brother in law. It is the perfect English country house with the perfect English country house gardens, at their best on a damp July day.

The dampness initially causes trepidation but as the afternoon progresses the precipitation decreases and blue sky breaks through. The English really know how to put on English country house weddings. Champagne, hors d’oeuvres on the lawns, piper leads us to the speech marquee,

inventive and sincere oratory,

dinner marquee in the paddock and attached to the barn, check the menu,

fine wines a gogo,

singing, Scottish country dance band, much dancing, Fish and Chip van turns up at 11:30.

The wedding is a Anglo/Danish mingle

and the Danish guests are excellent. There is good sprinkling of babies which causes grandparental yearning amongst the older contingent.

What a great event! Congratulations to Lara and Thilde! Many thanks to Barry and Rosie for their superb generosity and hospitality.

This is how it should be done.

Is the noise that a can of ice cold coffee makes as it tumbles into the dispatching zone of a drinks dispenser.

Okinawa is the land of a thousand drink dispensers. On nearly every street corner there is a machine that will kerklunk cold drinks. Out in the sugar cane, beside the diving access, next to the tomb, yea there thou shalt find me.

The one above is just across the street from my garden. After a hard session rubbing soil into my scalp in the suffocating heat I tend to wander over there.

 

So I like Okinawa as it is a  backwards gateway to childhood culinary delight. What I mean is that folks here eat a lot of SPAM and Corned Beef without shame. In grey, green, greasy 1950’s Britain where I spent my early years both of these were staples. I loved them. I do not think there is much to beat Fried Spam and Eggs. Then there is Splosh which is a carefully crafted mix of Corned Beef and mashed potatoes whose name derives from Onomatapoeia.

Then there was Westbourne Stew  – delicate mix of canned peas, beans, SPAM, meat paste and canned soup – tomate de preference. My Mother would balk when implored to prepare it, claiming high expense as defence.

Now I am so rich I can eat Westbourne Stew  every night. I have made it.

I went to a banquet the other night and was served an Okinawan delicacy of scrambled eggs, goya and SPAM.

Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;	10
Or like stout Cortez, when with eagle eyes
He stared at the Pacific—and all his men
Look’d at each other with a wild surmise—
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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