The Quiet Ripple Defines The Pond

So today I finally do it. I have been planning to do it more or less all my adult life but the mystical planets that create opportunity in life were never aligned until I came to Okinawa. Here these planets are queuing up.

The process started by meeting up with Jan a couple of weeks ago to starting the training. Jan runs the school.

http://www.piranha-divers.jp/

He has a long confucian kinda beard pouring out of his chin and an enormous metal ring in his earlobe. I think he is 23. (This is wrong see comment below.)

Ear ring a bit like this

We did theory stuff and I passed! Last week we did shallow water stuff and today we went deep. We met on a sea wall in the middle of a very built up part of Okinawa, strapped on the gear I bought last weekend  and dove er dived.  Upstairs; concrete sea wall, concrete apartment buildings, gas stations, supermarkets, huge air force base; downstairs you are living in the most exotic aquarium you have seen in any Chinese restaurant.

It is astonishing.

You have weights that drag you down but the surprise for me is a waistcoat thing called a BCD. This is connected to your air tank such that you can inflate or deflate it so as to increase or decrease your bouyancy.  Once you get it set up right you hang in the water at the depth you want and use breathing in or out to alter your depth. Breath out you go down, breathe in you go up. It is a great feeling as you do not have to move your arms or legs at all allowing you to concentrate on what you are looking at.

What you are looking at is amazing coral, every color, texture and shape imaginable; the most exotic fish, from 18 color angel fish, little brilliant blue things, friendly sea snakes, to barracuda.

Incredible er thing that lives under the sea

There appear to be loads of these er things of infinite variety. I wonder what they are. Dead souls?

Jan is a great instructor, firm on the important stuff but essentially lets you get on with it.

Check out his Facebook page:

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Piranha-Divers-Okinawa/299357998089

We do  two  50 minute dives with a few drills but mainly cruising around the reef.  Said reef drops down like a cliff  and we go about 60 feet down. The cliff face is covered in soft corals that wave in the current and twitch and shudder when you touch.

Deep down

So at last I have done it. I want to do it again.

Pottery or ceramics are big around here. With the amazing good luck that seems to characterize the period I strut and fret my life out on the stage, I have got to know Yamada san. He is probably the doyen of the Okinawa potters. A totally charming man who has exhibited his work all around the world but works with strictly local materials er like coral and mud and stuff and uses the most incredible kiln.

“Today, three main kilns dominate Yomitan. Probably the most well known of the three is the central Kita Kiln (Kita Gama). Designed by master potter Shinman Yamada (who has a studio nearby), the kiln is a nobori-gama (climbing kiln) used for firing jōyachi (glazed) pottery. Built on a slope, the kiln consists of nine chambers called fukuro. It is fired only a few times a year, with each artist receiving opportunities to place their items in the kiln to be baked.”

So,

Light my fire

they only fire this thing up 3 times a year and I was invited to today’s firing. The thing burns for 3 days.

Fire, to destroy all you've done. Fire, to end all you've become. I'll feel you burn

“It ain't the heat; it's the humility.”

Generally when there's a lot of smoke... there's just a whole lot more smoke.

Check out the results

http://www.flickr.com/photos/16995525@N04/sets/72157623457492159/

“Dive, which was originally a weak verb, developed a past tense dove, probably by analogy with verbs like drive, drove. Dove exists in some British dialects and has become the standard past tense especially in speech in some parts of Canada. In the United States dived and dove are both widespread in speech as past tense and past participle, with dove less common than dived in the south Midland area, and dived less common than dove in the Northern and north Midland areas. In writing, the past tense dived is usual in British English and somewhat more common in American English. Dove seems relatively rare as a past participle in writing.”

Hmmm, always wondered what correct usage was but I suppose it is one of those ‘it’s up to you’  language things. Anyway that is what I have been doing this weekend. I dove, er dived.

All day Saturday splashing around in the warm China Sea with my instructor Jan. Jan is German, has a very big ear implant and is 23 years old. He knows what he is doing and we go through a series of drills that will eventually lead to me becoming a certified diver.  Underwater mask off, mask on , take off tank, put it back on again, hover underwater, rescue your buddy, give him air and all that kind of good stuff.  I pass the theoretical test and seem to be doing OK on practical. All being well I will ‘graduate’ next week.

Jan mentions that US military are moving and I might get cheap diving gear by looking on the-already-blogged-about Okinawayardsales.com – the world’s greatest web site, around here.

http://www.okinawayardsales.com

Dave is selling complete diving equipment for $300. Something fishy  as the equipment he describes comes in through the thousands door rather than the hundreds back entrance.

I phone and agree to meet early afternoon.

I am invited to breakfast. It is an offer that I do not want to refuse. We eat pineapple in Grand Marnier and  perfect cheese souflles, sorry about the accent. We look over the bay of Nagahama. There are 8 colors of blue, there are people wading in the low tide to collect seaweed, there are Ospreys floating overhead.

We go onto an art exhibition. I phone Dave to say I will be late. He mentions that he is 5ft 8 and weighs 240lbs and I get it. The stuff is so cheap because he is short and er stout so his equipment fits a limited public.  I go through the art show of Okinawan artists, excellent d’ailleurs, with the niggling feeling that I should go and have a look at the diving stuff . If the wet suit is dumpty, so what? as that price for a tank,  a BCD,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buoyancy_compensator_(diving)

fins, mask, snorkel, is still really good.

I get home at 5:00 and feel sluggish but force myself to go and see Dave even though I am 4 hours late. I find his place. He is ex military and, er, plump. The equipment is almost brand new

There must be something wrong

It all fits my statuesque frame and I press soiled bills into his hand before he changes his mind.

Still life with Gorilla and Cane Toad

So how do I feel about this incredible deal? I mean the bag it all comes in is worth $300. I feel that the common denominator of life is misery and pain and a lucky break like this is just a short period of up before life dumps a lot of down.

I increasingly sense that this British view of life – rain, endurance, understatement, misery and pain- that I was brought up to revere is in fact deeply flawed. So here is a big Yipppeee!!!  for having got such an amazing deal!!

Keep reading to hear when irresponsible joy is punished. Then snigger.

Ding, ding it is 7:00 am. I spring from the futon, pull on some shorts, a t-shirt and head out onto the terrace. Blue, blue China Sea, green, green Okinawa, fresh, fresh air and straight ahead the heavy bag.

Come here sister Papa's in the swing He ain't too hip now but I can dig that new breed babe; He ain't no drag He's got a brand new bag.

So I do repetitions of 60 seconds. I have 6 combinations like: left right duck weave, left right left hook right hook, left right  uppercut  uppercut, left right left hook straight right etc etc. The whole thing takes 6 minutes but I am panting and my arms feel as if they will drop off.

The cock crows and the blue rock thrush sings. I go make some tea and Miso soup.

He led with his head, he didn't head-butt

After an excellent meal, with a bottle of wine at a friend’s house. Said friend exposes a fantastic collection of Islay whiskies. He is way ahead of me. Terminology including, cask strength and quarter cask applied to Laphroaig goes beyond my sphere of reference. He also has 15 year old Bowmore. I mean, why did nobody drink it before it got so old? Anyway great night drinking Islay malts in the tropics.

Hmmm, drinking and driving is a no no. Worry not as Okinawa is very well set up for this kind of thing. You call Daiko and 10 minutes later a car turns up with two guys. One drives your car home and the other drives you home. You sit in the back seat wearing a “I am a drunk” hat. It is very efficient but I still feel guilt about having to be driven home.

Baby, you can drive my car

So the word ‘base’ has loads of definitions. Look it up in the dictionary. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/base But around these parts the significance of ‘base’ is very clear. It is where the US military are and it is a different world. You don’t get into this club unless you are a member. Luckily I have a friend who is a member and he and his wife organized access for me – many thanks Harry and Teresa.

So I went there last night. The guards at the gate are the usual impeccably courteous young Americans.

” Could I see a picture ID please Sir.”

“Whoa you gotta Californian license.”

“My brother lives in Bakersfield.”

“You have a great evening Sir.”

We drive past the football stadium, the pools, the cinema, the post office to arrive before the biggest shopping emporium in the world – around here.  I cannot remember the correct terminology but I think it is PX. Essentially it is a mega Walmart with no signage in the middle of Okinawa. It is really, really big. I have been in some uber shops in the States and this one is right up there with the biggest.  The parking lot is the size of Luxembourg. Inside it is an Aladdin’s Cave of clothes, meat, bedding, camping equipment, washing machines, lawnmowers, Head and Shoulders, towels, shoes, computers, fertilizers. It is like wandering around a Botanical Gardens. Plants and shrubs of so many species; you wander up a path and absorb the color and  smell and shape of the exotic stuff. Yet you never wander up all the paths, there is always a reason to come back.

As I slouch up one path, I turn a corner and there in front of me is the Grail. A heavy bag.

Those who read the San Francisco blog will understand. Here is a hint.

http://spikekalashnikov.wordpress.com/2010/12/11/thanks-roxie/

I bought it. I am equipped.

Hi Roxie!

This store  is not  Japanese but it is part of Okinawa.

At last.

Where I work, er, basically people work longer than I do. They stay at their desks until 9:00, 10:00 night after night. I do not admire this but it unfortunately grows on you. I feel guilty going home before any of the people I am supervisor, er, of.  So I leave work quite late. But just to prove that every cloud has  a silver lining, when I stop by the fish shop that is one my way home I find, by experimentation rather than language, than food is half price after a certain time. I do not know at what time the phase transition takes place but it is before I get there.

Sorry to keep writing about food

Tonight I  get, two scallops in a cream sauce, deep fried squid, a crab and believe or not some meat in the form of a chicken leg. A couple of days ago I got a lobster. Tonight’s lot cost 700 yen. Worth staying at work for.

So this is about my bed.

I feel slightly embarrassed about publishing such personal stuff but as it such a principal change from US/Europe type living I suppose it is OK.  The concept of the bedroom i.e. the room where the bed  is in English, or Schlafzimmer, room where you sleep in German, or Chambre a Coucher, room where you lie down in French, does not really exist in Okinawa. There is a room where you do stuff that you transform into a sleeping place when you feel the time is right. When you are done sleeping you stash the sleeping stuff in a wardrobe and the room becomes a room where you do stuff again.

So imagine the next bit as an animation starting with room where you do stuff through the intermediary stages to return to room where you do stuff again.

Room where you do stuff

Tatami mats!

Futon!

Duvet!

Pillows and IPad

The wheel of fortune

It is Saturday morning so I set off to the fish shop. I ride along the coast line occasionally stopping off at beaches to watch people collect seaweed in the rock pools.

Tranquil

I make a halt at a pottery. The potter speaks a little English and is delighted when I tell him I come from Scotland. I await the usual, “I love to get ripped on Lagavulin!” but this time it is different. “I played Rugby when I was young – Scotland very good!” He must be quite old.

When I get back to Big Red there are two very fashionable Japanese looking at her. “Is this your bike?” “Hai”  “So cool  – 1980’s Bianchi!”   It is a great morning that only gets better.

I buy fish at the shop-depot-restaurant place and order lunch.

Look on my works ye mighty and despair.

The service system is taken from Starbucks. You order your meal from a blackboard and the guy, who has left off slashing up tuna to get your order, says, “Name?” – “Needo.”

I sit outside overlooking the fishing harbor and a couple of minutes later a hatchway opens and a smiling lady shouts out, “Needo san!” I go get my lunch.

About as good as it gets

Sea grapes, fish eggs, octopus, squid, tuna, other fish, prawn, on plain rice. All raw, er except the rice, and all just pulled from the deep. There is a bowl of seaweed in fish broth to go with it. It costs 900 yen. Wonderful bike ride along country roads beside the South China Sea in warm sun, terminating in world beating fish lunch in the simplest of settings for very little money. I lke it here.

But then I think of the terrible events going on up North – mourning families, homeless in the snow, nuclear threat and I don’t feel so good. The learned Judy Jackson reminded me of this poem by Auden.

“Fall of Icarus” by Breughel

About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters; how well, they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer’s horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Breughel’s Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

I feel like the torturer’s horse scratching my innocent behind as a  dreadful martyrdom goes on in the background.

Japan is a cash society. I do not own a credit card. I do have an ATM card but it can only be used for getting cash out of the machine. You can’t actually pay for anything with it.

ATMs are the most important invention of my lifetime. I remember having to calculate how much foreign currency I would need before trips abroad,  going to the bank to get travellers’ cheques and messing about trying to get reluctant foreigners to change them. The calculation of how much money I would need was always wrong. Now in the wildest reaches of the world you slip a piece of plastic into a slot and money comes winging from your bank at the speed of light.

Anyway, I don’t know how but I have inherited my Father’s wallet. I find it charming as it is totally inappropriate for modern US or European usage. There is nowhere to put credit cards and other plastic. In Okinawa that is no problem cos you don’t need any plastic – just cash.

Ancient and Modern

It is made from calfskin, has a little pocket for stamps,  is very slim and is probably 40 years old. I feel good using it.  It does not create a pacemaker-type lump in my jackets.

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