The Quiet Ripple Defines The Pond

After another visit to the dentist,which is how I spend my Saturdays on Okinawa at the moment, I have lunch in an adjacent restaurant. I point at a picture on the menu. It looks like pork ramen and so it turns out to be. Noodles, slice of pork, bamboo shoot, obligatory seaweed and shredded spring onion all swimming in very delicious pork broth.

Life expectancy on Okinawa is amongst the highest in the world. Anything less than a century is regarded as a tragically short life.  I put this down to eating lots of pork. You can get chicken and there is a token gesture towards beef in the supermarkets but pork is king. The pork broth that I am currently slurping out of a quaint artisanal-spoony-ladle- device is new to me. Do we do pork broth in Europe or US?  Maybe I can make a million bucks marketing it as the elixir of youth.

Go for the ton

When in Japan you eat rice. My idea of cooking rice is a huge pot of boiling water with a little oil. You wash and strain the rice and splosh it into the boiling water. You then watch it with eagle eye so that  you can snatch it off the heat at exactly the right moment so, once drained, each grain is separate and al dente.  God forbid that it be overcooked and so soggy and gluey and sticky-together.

Here is different. The rice is different. It is round and held, it appears to me, in great deference.  It is eaten pretty sticky-together but firm and  you don’t want to f*** up the cooking. So enter the rice cooker. I have never come across these devices before but here they occupy more shelf space  than any other appliance.

Look at the Panasonic on the end. It costs 79,800 yen. That is like $1000 - to cook rice!

I ask my colleagues  how to cook  rice. They reply  “Buy a rice cooker.”  “OK” I say  “But surely there must be a way of doing it without an electric device.” “Yes” they say “But you have to cook the rice very slowly in a little water, keep the temperature constant and it is very difficult. Buy a rice cooker.”

I go to the shop and embark on the well worn path of friendly confusion.  There is  a vast choice of rice cookers. I mean how can they be so different? Yet they range from the cheapskate versions, which I am looking for, to very expensive brutes. $1000 dollars to cook rice? Once again I am illiterate.  Maybe these things translate Homer, or turn water into wine, or base metals into gold, or have speakers and an Ipod connection, or peel potatoes, or have web connectivity so you can read mail while you cook.

I choose my cooker. It appears to be on offer. Instead of 9,990 yen it is 5,990 yen. Cool, I go to check out and the very sweet checkout lady charges me 9,990. I say ” Er , I am a nice guy but I cannot speak Japanese but if you come with me you will see that this cooker is marked as 5,990 yen.”  We go and look at the sticker and she says a lot but I do not understand. Another shop person arrives and says in English, “You want old?” and takes me to another part of the store where lo there is my cooker at 6,990 yen.  I interpret all this as follows: original price 9,990 yen, some kind of store club price 5,990 yen but they have a display model that is on sale for 6,990 yen.  But, hey, I could be very far from the mark.

I buy the display model.

My rice cooker in still life with can of local Orion beer and a lettuce

Next I go to another store to buy rice. It comes in 5 kilo bags, er that is a lot of rice. There is a very large choice but I have no idea what distinguishes the different rices because I am illiterate. I buy the prettiest.

Comes with a his n her set of Burberry tartan chopsticks

The cooker is, I hope, cooking as I write. I pressed a button and I will now enter into a period of clinical trials to establish how to use the thing.

Check out this site  – I love it. What is it about the Americans that makes them want to share? In San Francisco, indeed all over the US, you have Craigslist. You can get anything you want at Craigslist’s restaurant. I remember enthusing about it in my San Francisco blog.

http://spikekalashnikov.wordpress.com/2010/11/15/i-love-craigslist/

It works so well, everyone joins in, I have never been scammed, it is social, it is sharing. Is it a left over from pioneer days when you only survive with the help of your neighbors? In my previous place of abode there was a similar kind of thing called Top Annonces check it:

http://www.topannonces.fr/

There is much less stuff, a lot of it comes from dealers, there are loads of ads and if you use it, you are dogged by spam emails forever. It is not the same. It is business.

So this is a longish intro to my glee at finding:

http://www.okinawayardsales.com/

It is community. It is essentially people on the US bases in Okinawa buying and selling stuff. Prices are low, the tone is community, no ads. It has everything I want, Shrek Bowling Ball, Diving gear, a 14ft inflatable boat with a 25 horse Mercury motor, sofas, home gyms, TVs, Ipod speakers, Yeeha!

Don't throw it away someone else is still that size

Your husband called. He said "Buy whatever you want."

Tomorrow I pick up an iron and an ironing board! $15.

So the village where my place of employ is, is called Tancha and it has a long and lovely beach

As I walked out on the streets of Laredo

Last Sunday  was beach cleaning day. About 100 volunteers showed up, were issued with special bags and gloves and hit the beach. An hour later it was spotless. So, you can see what a owl has been eating by searching through its faeces. You can learn everything about a rock star’s lifestyle by going through his/her garbage. What did I learn about Tancha by picking up beach trash? First fishing is still very strong – a lot of the detritus was fishing floats both small and large. Next, these folks drink a lot of iced tea. Next, they do not throw gold and diamonds onto the beach. Next, I am looking forward to Spring so I can start swimming in the Ocean in earnest. Next, many hands make light work.

Miners for a heart of gold

“Oh, light is the burden of labour

When a man bends his back with his neighbour

So each for a-a-all We stand or fa-a-all

And each for all until we reach our journey’s end.”

Many thanks to Jonathan Smars for the photos. I left my camera battery at home.

Some of the swag

One  surprising facet of Okinawa is the popularity of French bakeries. One of my preconceptions about Japan was that the Japanese did not eat much bread. Not so, it appears. There are three Boulangeries within striking distances of my place.  Baguettes, croissants, pains au chocolat, pains aux raisins, Proustian madeleines and loads of patisserie. Who would have thought it?

Breakfast this morning

I do not know where my liking for fish came from. I do not think I ate very much fish as a child. What I did eat came in the form of fish fingers. There was however an exception -Scotland! We would stop by a strange house by Loch Fyne and buy kippers straight from the smoking house. Then there was Mackerel fishing. Long nights, florescence in the water, Gannets plunging and the primal shock of Mackerel taking the darrow.  Back to the cottage to eat 30 minute fished Mackerel at midnight. Thanks Dad.

Freshness has become an imperative. I cannot bear frozen fish. This is one of my few complaints about life in the USA. It is almost impossible, even in ocean-lapped San Francisco, to buy fish that has not been cellularly busted by freezing.

Frabjous day to discover the fishing port in Yomitan where I now live. They do not freeze. You stumble into the fish landing place and with the usual duh-sorry-i-am-a-nice-guy-but-unable-to-speak-sensibly-body-language. I buy a squid, fillets of some kind of fish and get the guy to slice some steaks from a big lump of fresh tuna.

Is that fresh? You looking at me, Pal?

$10

So I think I have arrived. I can buy very fresh fish just down the road at very low prices.

Haii!

Other stuff. I suppose it is the slimy weirdness of fish that turns people off

Delivery vans parked outside the shop.

The learned Geoff Carr points out that living in Japan gives insight into illiteracy.  For the first time in 55 years, I am illiterate. It really cramps your style. Try filling up at a self service gas station. There is a certain amount of graphic flow chart on the pump but this is just to lure you in. If you get past stage one, a screen illuminates with a question and that’s it. You are finished. You are illiterate. You have to find someone to help you: here  not a problem as the Okinawans are very helpful but imagine the humiliation in your own country.

I go to the supermarket and dodge around the shelves looking for signs, graphics. I  am sure my sense of smell is becoming keener as I sniff at tins of fish like a hound.

Sniff, snuffle- spot the clue

The supermarket is a mystery. What is all this stuff? OK some of it  is  foreign and thus I do not feel so bad not recognizing it but liquid in bottles – you would  like to know if it is lamp oil, salad dressing or boil remedy.

Firelighters?

Furniture polish?

Face cream?

I bought a router so I could have wireless in the apartment. I foolishly assumed that there would be an English version of the installation instructions. Not so. At first I thought I could work it out using the images. Not so. What is ‘IP address’ in Kanji or more likely Katakana?  Ho hum.

Spot the User Portal Login Info

So this  has left me with a  overwhelming feeling of comradeship with all of you out there who have difficulty reading, whoa! don’t even mention writing. It only takes a little displacement to render anyone illiterate.

So this is fun. In Okinawa and I guess in the rest of Japan, a thing you gotta have is an ‘Inkan’. This is your own personal yet official seal. To approve a document,  er like a budget thing at work, um a bank check,  you want to buy a car, things that in Europe or the US we would sign, here you seal. This is great. It reminds me of  a big splodge of sealing wax and  an angry King being forced by revolting Barons to plunge his signet ring.

My own Inkan, which I received after quite a lot of paperwork and much help from my employers, is discrete. I think it has my name in Katakana inscribed on it.

A brief digression on what I understand to be 3 different Japanese scripts. First is Kanji which is the same as is used in China – highly decorative. The second is Hiragana,which is sort of old Japanese used for concepts that have no direct Kanji counterpart. Then there is Katakana, which is used for foreign loan words and concepts. Apartment complex would be written in Katakana. A translation of:

“His knife see rustic Labour dicht,
An’ cut you up wi’ ready slicht,
Trenching your gushing entrails bricht,
Like ony ditch;
And then, O what a glorious sicht,
Warm-reekin, rich!”

would be written in Katakana.  So, my name, clearly foreign and having quite a lot of L sounds, not easily handled in Japanese, is transcribed into Katakana something like, ‘Knee-Dough Cor Duh.’

I think this is what is carved onto my Inkan. Japanese friends please correct me.

Incandescent

I rather wish I had asked for my Inkan to be in Kanji as it would have been much more decorative.

Action shot

I am terrified of losing it.

I lie on my futon looking out of the huge windows that make up 50% of the wall space in my bedroom. I contemplate the rising sun and wait.  At 7:00 exactly speakers concealed in trees, trash cans, disguised as telegraph poles and parked cars burst into action with an electronically jingly jangly version of:

7:00 from futon

Blue, blue, my world is blue

Blue is my world now I’m without you

Gray, gray, my life is gray

Cold is my heart since you went away

The sound quality is excellent. It’s not just in Yomitan but all over Okinawa, maybe all over Japan, that the world comes to life with  jingly jangly. I wonder if they would play the tune if they knew the lyrics? Here is another stanza:

Red, red, my eyes are red
Crying for you alone in my bed
Green, green, my jealous heart
I doubted you and now we’re apart

Just the stuff to get up full of joy to start a new day.

At 5:00 pm the same system plays “Greensleeves” Don’t they know any Japanese tunes?

View - fish, treasure and wrecks

So, as far as sites for a restaurant go, this has to be pretty high on the reckoning. Perched high on a hill in Yomitan, it has an unobstructed view over the East China Sea, which today runs from wine dark blue to clear turquoise. The big blue hammers against the reef that is about half a mile offshore and as the tide is on its way out I can see the different channels and rock formations all which must be pullulating with exotic fish, coral and treasure.

Beautiful, light-filled, dining room on the second floor, one wall being windows looking out over the sea. I order in a finger pointing fashion and pretty soon a US style salad and vegetable soup arrive, OK but disappointingly unexotic. Next is composite plate of spaghetti, rice, broccoli, a croissant, a shrimp, a bit of fish and a cocotte of macaroni cheese. Strong euro Italianate influence that seems to be pretty common around here, last night we ate Pizza! Finally black tea arrives in a very English cup and saucer.

Very pleasant lunch for 1100 yen, incredible views, great service but I want adventure. Gimme chicken hearts baked in seaweed or something.

Martha and James got me the toad in the Phillipines

I forgot the spring roll thing

I walked here from my new apartment, of which more later, following discrete signs marked only with ‘cafe.’ Once again I have no idea what the restaurant’s name is or how to describe where it is. There seems to be a practice of under-advertizing restaurants in Okinawa. Maybe there is a city bylaw against signs, or maybe it is felt to be vulgar to advertize. A good wine needs no bush.

Where are the Golden Arches?