The Quiet Ripple Defines The Pond

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.

Brief Encounter

In  http://spikekalashnikov.wordpress.com/2010/10/12/platinum-status-furniture/

I wrote,  “So, the furniture comes from France. It is crazy really, most of this stuff has been around the world  3 times. France to US in 2001, US to France  in 2007, France to US in 2010. I have some of the best travelled chairs around. They have a lot of miles.”

So let’s add to that, San Francisco to Okinawa 2011. I feel a bit sorry for my furniture. So much time on boats. As Samuel Johnson remarked, “A man in jail has more room, better food and commonly better company.” Do my chairs feel neglected, my carpets uncared for, my lamps unloved?

A trifling sum of misery new added to the sum of our account

Ripped from comfort, wrapped up by rough handed laborers and sent off once again who knows where? The dull throb of the turbines in the dark,  the wretched cold, the sea swept across the schooner’s low decks, living off a few olives and perhaps a piece of Portugese ham sausage.

Nothing to sing but songs, Ah well, alas, and alack, Nowhere to go but out, Nowhere to come but back. I am sorry Big Red.

The furniture has reached safe haven. The anchor is down, the cargo discharged .

There is nothing so distressing as running ashore - unless there is also a doubt as to which continent the shore belongs

There is a world of difference between being outward bound by choice and homeward bound by necessity

Lor, Brer Rabbit, you don't know what trouble is. I'm de man what kin show you trouble.

And now me lads we’re all in dock. We’ll be off to Dan Lowry’s on the spot, And there we’ll shop a big pint pot. Jenny get your oatcakes done.

So, I am truly sorry my dear furniture to have put you through so much travail. But what is this I hear  from the chest of drawers?

“Come, my friends,

‘Tis not too late to seek a newer world.

Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in the old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are,
One equal-temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”

On Sunday I cycled down to the Fishing Harbor. It is only about a mile away  as the Large Billed Crow flies but can be reached by a series of meanders through the spring gardens that a larger number of Okinawans appear to be clearing of sugar cane, turning over with big cultivators and planting out with what I hope are Yomitan purple potatoes.

The road to the fish shop

Big Red likes it in Okinawa. She takes me to the fish restaurant/ market with no bother at all. This place serves meals but also sells fish. I feel that its main business is preparing fish for other shops and restaurants as everyone is slicing and gutting and only lay down their steely knives to come and serve you.

Flying Dutchman

I love this place. Everyone is very friendly and seem pleased that I buy weird stuff or maybe I just like to think that. I mean the second part about them seeming pleased. Be that as it may, I buy an octopus, a very large fish and three small fish. I have no idea what they are but I do know they are very fresh. The whole lot is $15. They also make deep fried snacks. You can get squid, fish or seaweed deep fried in batter for 50 cents US a hit. It comes scalding hot and has to be one of the greatest snacks on earth

Squid $1

I ride home along the shoreline.

Big Red in the East

I cook the fish for several meals. Fish makes good.

Octopus, bamboo shoot on rice. Salad with Okinawan prosciutto - about the only meat I have eaten in the last couple of months.

The big fish grilled with rice, bamboo shoot and slices of huge white Okinawan radish

I find it impossible to write a smart-ass post about life in Okinawa at the moment. My blog tends to be lighthearted but lightheartedness is wholly inappropriate given the current situation up North.

Okinawa seems to have been untouched by the earthquake and resultant tsunamis. It is the weekend and I have no social events with Japanese. I have tried to talk to people but I am rendered dumb by my inability to say anything beyond “Good Morning.”  Very, very few people speak English and those whom I have managed to connect with have been restrained.

My information comes from the BBC web site and radio and  English language versions of the Japanese newspapers. I listen to news from London to follow developments in the country I live in. How strange – I am in a country where there has been a terrible cataclysm but I see, hear, sense nothing.

Things up  North in Japan are terrible. I hear of hundreds of dead, an explosion at a nuclear power plant. Where do I get this information? From bbc.co.uk.

Although I live in Japan, I am very disconnected. I do not speak the language. I cannot read the newspapers and cannot understand the radio or TV.  The dentist speaks English. I ask if he has family in the North. He has. He says we are lucky in Scotland to have no earthquakes.  “Has anything happened in Okinawa?” “No, I do not think so.”

Okinawa. The morning after the earthquake.

Compared to the scalpel-like accuracy and speed of the international media, my attempts to find out what is going on here in Okinawa are clumsy.

This leads me to the nature of living away from your home country in our age. In the 70’s I spent 2 years in Algeria.  No web , no telephone, only letters in envelopes.  Two week old copies of the Daily Telegraph were devoured and passed around amongst the very small Brit community each time someone came back from Britain. People clustered around a radio to try and understand the World Service News despite the hum and crackle. Every thing I needed to know had to be wrung out of society in Algeria. There was no alternative.We were truly abroad.

Now I have live radio over on my computer. Email from the US tells me  that there has been an earthquake in Japan. I have any number of newspapers that update news by the minute. I listen to English language podcasts as I drive through the rice fields. I am in a cocoon. Although abroad, the experience will never be the same. The nature of travel has totally changed.

I feebly offer those who are  suffering in the North of Japan my support. Okinawa has been mercifully spared.