The Quiet Ripple Defines The Pond

The school to which I went from the age of 5 to 13 displayed each hapless infant’s performance on huge boards.  My shame was visible to all. The ultimate tribute was a gold star. I never got one, until today.

I go to the Chatan kinda DMV  place to renew my driving license. It is early in the morning as I have a very busy day and hope to get the driving license stuff expedited before lunchtime. Notwithstanding,  before I leave I check the Plumeria and am rewarded.

First blooms of what I hope will be a sensational year.

Getting your license renewed is totally Japanese, no-one speaks a word of English.

I go to Station 1 and check in with driving license, my status is blue by the way, my residence permit and am rewarded with forms.

Yes Sir

I go to Station 2 where they check my eyesight. With necessary receipt I proceed to Station 3 to pay. The place is ultra crowded, by the way, with lines for each station.

I have totally paid

Station 4 and 5 I have really no idea what was happening, but I passed.

Station 6 was photo time and the best fun. The staff are very considerate and gentle.

” Neil san head up. Down onegaishimasu. Left choto.”

I then go to Station 6  and I pass I know not what.

After this Odyssey, I get to the place of devotion, a huge room full of fellow travellers, where we watch a movie of a driving instructor laying down the good stuff to a pupil.

After a lengthy pause, a sensei arrives and harangues us for 30 minutes about the fragility of human life. His talk is illustrated by loads of movies of car crashes.

Next,  2 cops stride in and ask those with numbers between 201450 and 201461 to form a line. Yeehaa! I am number 201459! We form a line; trembling, I am handed my new driving license and it is Gold! Achieving a Gold star in Japan makes up for so many failures in my youth.

Golden boy.

I rush back to OIST to entertain the Slovak Minister of Education, Science and stuff. This is the best fun as he is a very good and funny guy. He also has huge feet.

Upon a peak in Darien. Check his feet.

In preparation for the adventures of Summer, I have bought water shoes on EBay from China.  They are sent to my house in Maeda.

This is what makes living in Japan so pleasant. The card  that the postman leaves to demonstrate that delivery did not work has a telephone number for English speakers.

” We apologizes Sir, that your package was delivered at the wrong time. At what time would you like us to take it to you?

” Oh, I don’t know, bring it at 7:00 pm tomorrow, please.”

At 7:00 pm on Friday night, my man hands overs the goods.  Life is so easy in Japan.

Summer.

Okinawa has a season called the Rainy Season because it rains a lot. It more or less comes after the Tax season. So, we really have 5 seasons here: Winter, Tax, Rainy, Summer,  Autumn.

Last night it rained like crazy. I blame my parents. I was brought up to believe that sleeping in a room without an open window is a cardinal sin. I do not have windows in my bedroom but floor to ceiling glass doors. These I keep wide open to encourage air circulation and the ingress of snakes, centipedes and spiders.

I wake this morning to find my tatami mat floating around the bedroom floor with me on it. Is it Ok to close the window if rain is pouring into my bedroom, Mummy?

More rain than in the preceding month.

I also stumbled across my first IPhone. It is an original from 2007 and appears to still work. It feels more comfortable in the hand than the one I have now.

Well, you know.

So, maybe the Rainy Season has started.

Actually, I do not mind paying tax er that much. I do pay a lot as I have to contribute to the both Japanese and U.S. coffers. However I absolutely hate getting together all the documentation that is needed to file taxes in both countries. Now of course is the season of taxes, calling it Spring is wrong, it should be called Tax, as in Winter, Tax, Summer, Autumn. Anyway, like a visit to the Dentist, it will eventually fade into the past.

Let’s look at a butterfly instead of finding tax documents.

The university thunders on at a great rate.

Peter asks Abe for lots of money.

Let’s look at butterflies instead.

I get up in the morning, slaving for bread, sir and notice that someone has cut down the undergrowth that has been getting closer and closer to my front door.

Not good for butterflies.

The Road to the Isles. 

We start the next phase of expansion. 

https://www.oist.jp/news-center/news/2017/4/14/groundbreaking-ceremony-lab-4

Does he care?

Brilliant Emerald bug scratches its ear. She is worried about science funding.

Anyway, the Scaffie is ready. Tomorrow I launch.

North Korea bound.

I have lots of socks. Socks are cheap in the U.S.  I cannot resist buying them. The anxiety comes when, post washing machine, I have to pair them off. I only buy black socks. I do not know why. I blame my parents.

When did you last see you Father

Anyway, the last lot that I bought have a thin yellow line across the toe.

Chrome yellow

This line allows me to identify partner socks. I feel great shame going to work with mismatched socks so this simple line of yellow has done a great deal for my general wellbeing.

So, it is April in Okinawa. So much is happening .

See what I mean

This Oriental Turtle Dove is cooing hence distended neck

Iron hard trees suddenly spurt flower

No leaves or buds but straight into crazy flower stage

Can you do this?

Terrible photo of amazing Azalea display

Picture of a cow I painted in California

This a flowering stem of one of my Plumeria. Great joy.

Contentment is wealth

New rode

I like your yellow striped socks

Never enough varnish

Stuff from beach.

The sap is rising.

I realize that I have an entirely free Tuesday afternoon and because of my vast professional experience I immediately take it off.

I want to take my sail to a local sailmaker to find out if he can make me a new one. My sail has suffered much from intense UV exposure and I am worried that it will rip. As I unlace the sail from the yard or gaff, which is the length of wood at the top of the sail, I notice that the yard is strangely bent.

Spot the Gaff (Yard)

I try to persuade it into a straightish posture whereupon it breaks in two pieces.

I think I must have stood on it at some point.

Oh dear, I now have a completely different and unexpected problem. I have to manufacture a new yard. No worries, I take the truckette down to the woodyard of eternal delight that I have recently written about. My brother is moving massive tree trunks around on a forklift but comes to help. I show him the broken yard and he gets it. We have a Japanese conversation. “Do you want mahogany?”  “Hmm, says I in mime, I think mahogany might be too heavy.” ” Yeah, you are probably right. Let’s try cedar.”  “Cool”  I mime by clasping my arms to my sides and shivering.

4 metres of 4×4 cedar.  4 is my lucky number.

Has Earth anything to show more fair?

When I get home I look carefully at the busted yard and realize that I can probably make a fairly convincing repair. Like a fractured leg the two end of the bones slot back together fairly well. If I can immobilize the leg and strap it up it might grow back together.

Wood glue

I then apply a pretty good round lashing.

Thank you Mr Pritchard

I then drench the lashing in yacht varnish – not sure why.

I then cover the whole fracture site in a black leather plaster.

I am quite hopeful that this will do the job as I think there is rarely great strain on the yard. That said, I am determined to make a new one just in case. I mean I have a beautiful 4x4x4 length of Okinawan cedar to molest. Who could resist?

I unleash my my beloved Japanese plane.

Nautical terminology is abstruse. Every part of the boat has a name and it is an entire education to know them all. The Scaffie has two bits of wood sticking out at the stern between which the traveller is rigged. When I bought the Scaffie these were missing and so I made some.

Short and thick

So, you can see them in this classic photo of the Scaffie in Ie Jima. I  fret that these bits of wood whose correct nautical name I do not know, are too short. The result is that the clew of the sail, see what I mean about nautical vocabulary,  is pulled down low. I believe the boat will sail better with the clew higher. New project.

I go to my much beloved wood yard.

Most of Okinawa is covered with forest.

I know these people as a result of a series of boat related wood needs. Being Okinawan, they are friendly, helpful and fun.

Aladdin’s cave

The guy cuts me two billets of what he calls mahogany but I think it is some much more exotic Okinawan hardwood. He charges me 100 yen, which is 80 cents American.

Here we go

I spend the weekend sanding, applying wood treatment stuff and gently painting on varnish to all the woodwork on the boat. I also spend delightful time  cutting and rasping the bits of wood, whose correct nautical name I do not know, so that they fit perfectly.

Pretty boat

The weather is sunny and windy. A remarkable spectrum of people stop and chat. Most of them speak Japanese  but it does not seem to matter as there is a common understanding that getting a boat ready for a summer of taming the wild and wistful ocean is a good thing.

High traveller

I can’t wait to find out how this will change the performance of the Scaffie. Probably not much but you never know.

Do not feel obliged to read this. It is really an archival document related to the the great rudder project.

I spend all day sanding and applying wood treatment stuff to the Scaffie. This is a very social occupation as people passing by stop for a chat and folks as what I know, poop their horn and shout abuse as they drive by.

I sand like crazy and treat the woodwork with therapeutic treatment stuff. This year I have chosen a darker shade.

The weather is very pleasant and I have a wonderful time.

The bottom pintle is placed

She is mounted

Hooray!

So, Greta moves on. She has been with us as a Science Writing Fellow for the last 6 months during which time she has sprinkled happiness and joy, like fairy dust, on us all.

Great is on the extreme right.

She has gone over the Okinawan border to spread her conquests further. In fact she got the plum job as Communications person at the zinging new, incredibly cool, Crick Institute in London: https://www.crick.ac.uk/

Robert Burns wrote a poem about her in 1792, which shows what an amazing poet he was.

O saw ye bonie Greta,
As she gaed o’er the Border?
She’s gane, like Alexander,
To spread her conquests farther.

To see her is to love her,
And love but her for ever;
For Nature made her what she is,
And never made anither!

Thou art a queen, fair Greta,
Thy subjects, we before thee;
Thou art divine, fair Greta,
The hearts o’ men adore thee.

The deil he could na scaith thee,
Or aught that wad belang thee;
He’d look into thy bonie face,
And say-“I canna wrang thee!”

The Powers aboon will tent thee,
Misfortune sha’na steer thee;
Thou’rt like themselves sae lovely,
That ill they’ll ne’er let near thee.

Return again, fair Greta,
Return to Okinawa!
That we may brag we hae a lass
There’s nane again sae bonie.

Anyway we had a greta party.

Tomomi with wonderful Iranian woman, whose name I have forgotten, slice it.

Yoko makes Takoyaki

Beautiful women

We eat incredibly well and throb to the wins -every -time rhythm of Strip the Willow and Screaming Pyramids

Good times.

Nearly there

Yay!

Thanks Greta.

I start this long weekend with a visit to the Toya fish market, which is just down the road.

This Tuna is huge. Trust me.

Totally. amazingly, fresh octopi. I like this stuff.

I buy big Octopus in anticipation of future  social gatherings.

So, an entanglement of rope has arrived on my beach. I am much affronted.

How?

There are at least 10 different strains of rope in the entanglement, ranging from little rope to big, big, mooring for steamer, rope. My question is, how did they all come together in the wild and wistful ocean?  Can rope communicate?  Dolphins and whales can,so perhaps rope that is lost on the briny deep,can send out messages to attract other rope. A bit like a flotsam rope dating service.

Likes gardening and outdoor activities.

Anyway, I have to cut it up into chunks and wheel barrow it back to the house. Garbage collection around here accepts; burnable, glass, cans, PET plastic bottles and jetsam. I like this. Each has a separate bag. Wrong bag = no pick up.

Isn’t it a joy to have a big slab of plywood? Some will remember the breaking of my rowing thwart in the worst of times. https://quietripple.wordpress.com/2016/10/06/but-in-battalions/

Well, today I cut a new thwart from my slab.

The truck bed is such a good work surface.

I love this stuff.

I go to Hiroshima on Monday afternoon and come back on Tuesday afternoon.

10 minutes

This is a boarding confirmation. If you can see the small print you will see, “Please be at the gate 10 mins before departure.”  I am still amazed how the Japanese can board a hundred or so people onto a plane in 10 minutes,  but they do. One thing is that they are very responsible about carry-on bags. No one tries to bring on big bags – they check them in the knowledge that they will pick them up on the carrousel very soon after arrival. Then there is the greater happiness is more important than the individual happiness syndrome that is so prevalent in Japan. Anyway I love and respect the way Japanese get on planes.

My room in Hiroshima. Notice there is no bed.

A choice of beds

In the bathroom. I think this is shaving soap.

I have to rush back to Okinawa and having done my thing I set off on a great voyage to Fukuoka airport. Hiroshima University drive me to Higashi Hiroshima station where I get on a Shinkasen to Hiroshima  main station. As I wait for my train to arrive, Shinkasen are ripping through the station at amazing speed. It is very exciting.

I take my train to Hiroshima and then catch another Shinkasen to Hakata, which is the main station that serves Fukuoka Airport. This is not the time for paranoia. I do not know where I am, I only have a name as to where I am going, I have no geographical idea of where it is. If I make any mistake the whole trip is blown and I have major complications.

Which train should I take?

My Shinkasen arrives as another whams through the station at a trillion kpm

Anyway I make it to Hakata and emerge into an, er, bustling Japanese transport hub. There are about a million people, all blessed with an understanding of where they are going. I do not. I have to get a subway to the airport and let me tell you friends this was not easy, there is no English  signage and no one that I stoppeth in Ancient Mariner style spoke English. But hey I am in Japan and I should speak Japanese. The little I have, was sufficient to guide me to the right platform. I made it to the airport and flew back to Okinawa.

I actually like the fact that banal travel assumes the mantle of Burton and Speke.