The Okinawa drink is Awamori. It is distilled from long grain Thai rice that has contracted the unique local black koji mold. You drink it cold with ice or to disguise the taste you can mix it with fruit juice or er coke or er Irn Bru http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mt_rU-Sh15g if you can find it.

Hai!! Zanpa!

Anyway just down the road from my partment is an Awamori distillery churning out gallons of the famous Zanpa brand.

Here are some tasting notes

“Clear with a platinum blue cast. Dried wildflower and honeyed wet grain aromas follow through to soft, silky entry leads to a lightly glycerous, dryish light-to-medium body of very subtle flavors and a hint of perfumed pear. Finishes with an almond oil and mineral water fade. Very lean, light and delicate.”  I would take that with a pinch of salt if I were you.

Anyway today I go visit.

Outside

Empties

European awards

Superior Awamori - distilled to honor the 50th year of the University of the Ryukyus

So after a quick sniff around I feel I should buy a bottle. However a bottle of Zanpa at the distillery is 850 yen. 500 meters away in the supermarket it costs 560 yen. I point this out to the sales ladies using elaborate mime and pig noises. They laugh and grin in classic Okinawan style. I end up buying a Tshirt.

I think this says "Drink Zanpa! Brewed in Okinawa from unexploded shells."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Awamori

Discuss.

It is very true that too much bird watching is a dangerous thing. Obsessive attention to detail of beak shape – wing tip color – flight behavior – song – tends to obviate the surrounding loveliness. Not so yesterday when I spent an afternoon at Zakimi Sho trying to spot and photograph the Japanese Sparrow Hawk. I had been tipped off  by elderly Okinawan gentleman that a pair nested in a certain tree where there was certainly a nest. It looked kinda abandoned. I found the best observation spot – set up tripod and camera and waited.

Big Red chews the cud

I watched this stone grow

I sat and waited and watched and listened. Nothing very much happened.

These were above my head

These were to one side

Throughout the afternoon Okinawan families and couples wandered up to visit the Castle. There was no shouting – no loud voices – no music. The serenity was only broken by children laughing.

A passer-by

Never saw the bird.

We go to a  small local restaurant. I order “Butter scorched fish.” The lady comes out with a tray on which are two fish – one respectably sized the other an OTT barracuda thing. For me there is no choice but I believe that I will only get a section.

Wrong

A day’s fishing.

This planet is covered with sordid men er or women who demand that he er or she  who spends time fishing shall show returns in fish.

We as a group rent a boat and head out onto the grey sea. It is rainy season and so is warm and wet and grey and windyish. The bait is interesting. Tiny prawns are packed into a plastic cylinder that is much perforated. This with a weight is at the bottom of the line. Above is a string of hooks- the idea being that prawns gush from cylinder and float up around the hooks. The fish in feeding frenzy mode strike the hooks amid a cloud of shrimp.

What whales eat

We fish and some people catch a lot of fish. Not the silver darlings we are used to but multicolored tie dyed fish.

This fish eats coral and the excreted fine sand apparently makes up the white beaches of tropical isles.

Young woman kisses golden fish

The hand that feeds

A bad day of fishing is better than a good day of work.

Spot the fisherman

The only frustrating part of the trip was the two other people on the boat not of our party. They caught more than the sum of our efforts. Maybe they paid more?

Golden Week is a big Japanese pause for breath in May. By taking a couple of intervening days vacation you can get 10 days straight no work. Not the case for your correspondent but very much the case for majority of colleagues. So it is Golden Week now but alas alack it  has also heralded the start of the rainy season . The last couple of days have been wet and warmly Scottish. What can you do?  Go diving and eat so here is a visual narrative of a Golden day.

Doesn't rain underwater

Fresh Fish and Goya

Fish with Okinawan veg

White sauce. Fantastic cocotte made by Ruth McDunn

Mashed straight from the ground potatoes

Okinawa Fish Pie

Sashimi salad

So – as with many things here in Japan – I have to reassess the concept of a bread shop. Bread here is as much a gastronomic item as fish or  a pig’s ears. It is made presented and eventually wrapped with exquisite care. It is not er like just bread. By the way the comma key no longer works so  you will have to impose your own rhythm in these sentences. A wonderful bakery has just opened up  a 5 minute stroll from my apartment. As with most bakeries here it is also a cafe providing drinks and light meals. I go for breakfast.

traditional?

The bread is very inventive. The classic croissants and pains au chocolat are there but then du nouveau with rice bread and my current favorite goya rolls. Goya is a bitter knobbly cucumber thing that is very prevalent in Okinawan cuisine.

Which brings us to the unfortunate Kevin Maher – ex head of the State Department’s Japan Desk – who I feel must have  drink taken when he asserted that the Okinawans were now too lazy too grow goya. Check out the article. This has caused a major fuss.
http://www.eurasiareview.com/smearing-japan-oped-20042011/

His words  surprise me as I have always been very impressed by US diplomats’ extreme politeness and skill in avoiding confrontation. Poor Kevin – he is now ex.

I am sorry to keep writing about bags. I don’t really know why this should be but it is. Check out:

http://spikekalashnikov.wordpress.com/2010/11/10/my-bag/

https://quietripple.wordpress.com/2011/04/23/one-of-the-lads/

Here is another bag. It was given to me by my learned friend Barbara Warmbein which means warm leg. What a wonderful name. I don’t think there is an English version. Anyway Barbara was an intern in the Communication mill at CERN. It is a very deceptive bag. It is very attractive with an embroidered logo of a nerd reaching towards a sign floating in the ether which says “Science on Stage”. Do not trust this bag.

Innocuous but deadly

This bag has no less than 11 separate compartments – here lies the danger.

Switch scene to San Francisco in December 2010. Another intern the very  very learned Davide Castelvecchi now an editor at Scientific American. I lent this bag to Davide who was in town for a conference. Just before leaving SF he realizes he has lost his Raybans – expensive as prescription.  We both search. We both search the bag. Nada.

Today I use the bag for the first time since I have been in Okinawa and decide to clean it. I therefore empty out all the the pockets- compartments- pouches- secret stationery slits. I find misplaced earphones various important letters and Davide’s glasses.

Still Life: Raybans and Gorilla

Beware of bags with many pockets.

I get up with the sun and cycle over to Zakimi Castle. This 15th Century site is only 5 minutes from where I live and is surrounded by a park where everything is covered with Morning Glory and butterflies. The latter refuse to stay still for photography

Yes in my back garden

Wise warrior keeps spear in cupboard

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zakimi_Castle
One wonders how such an amazing site survived the war as the Americans landed only a couple of miles away. Methinks it has been extensively rebuilt. Sitting in the trees near the castle is an slightly older than me man with a huge telephoto lens pointing skyward from the camera mounted on his tripod. I think, following much mime,  that he was trying to photograph the Japanese Sparrow Hawk. He pointed out the nest and we smiled and grinned and shook hands. Forget not that I am an illiterate idiot. However I now look forward to a peaceful morning in the trees also trying to get a shot of the bird.

Rare

Then I went diving.

Spot the happy bag

Strolling down a street in Oran, Algeria in 1975, I screech to a stop in front of a shop that sells sports stuff. In the window there is a yellow ‘Spirotechnique’ diving bag. It looks incredibly cool and somehow I feel it will make me look incredibly cool if I sling it over my shoulder and boulevard around the place. It is also amazingly expensive. Anything imported was crazily expensive in the struggling economy of pretty newly independent Algeria. I don’t have the money. I wait until the next pay day, terrified that someone else will buy it and steal my cool.

I have had this bag for 36 years. I don’t think I possess anything else that dates from that era. The bag is incredibly tough. It  carried everything I owned for several years and then babies played in it,  it transported books, toys,  guinea fowl chicks, but never hardcore diving gear. It never did what it was made to do. It was always on the outside. It was never one of the lads.

one of the lads  (British & Australian informal) also one of the boys (American informal)

Ally McCoist: I can’t be one of the lads anymore if I’m to be the manager

Being one of the lads is very important in British culture. You belong, you are supported, you are right. My bag was none of these things until today. Filled with hardcore diving gear, heading out over the East China Sea, after 36 years, my bag became one of the lads.

At last!

Paul Gascoigne

Saturday – it is all planned, we go by boat to the Kerama Islands, about an hour sail from Okinawa, to do 3 dives. The  reef around the isles churn with turtle and other monsters of the deep, silver beaches, swaying palms, bright blues and  turquoise. Hmmm not to be. Saturday morning I awake to driving rain and howling wind. I go to the port anyway and there is Jan with other divers loading up the boat. It is early morning, there is a strong lack of enthusiasm. However off we go  into the waves. Slam crash bang slam bang crash splash, wham kapow we glide on towards our tropical paradise. Spray breaks over the bows while the boat pitches and wallows. We remain very gritty with no one  suggesting that maybe this isn’t the right day to go diving. Two young Chinese women are especially gritty, grinning and joking to keep our spirits up.

Sea always looks calmer in photos

The further we go the worse it gets. “Turn the helm Mr Helmsman, lee ho!” cries the Captain. “Hooray!”  cry the passengers.

Hooray no diving! Man on right is so happy he needs the toilet.