The Quiet Ripple Defines The Pond

Wandering through a pharmacy looking for goose grease to rub on the boils, I have a very strong madeleine moment.

My mother had a beautiful dressing table. It had a large mirror and a glass surface on which were her silver backed brushes and hand mirror, her jewelry box, and always a beautiful round tin of Nivea cream.

I had not seen one of these tins for decades. I had seen various Nivea products, indeed I bought a big plastic bottle of what I took to be Nivea cream but after rubbing it into my skin for a couple of weeks I was told it was shower lotion.

Anyway there in the pharmacy in Yomitan, Okinawa were tins of the original Nivea cream.

Ageless graphic design.

It made me think of my Mummy.

A Swiss photographer whom I had apparently employed 25 years ago turns up in Okinawa. He takes the usual selfie with his Iphone.

This is what he sends to me. I understand why he is a successful photographer.

This is fun.

It is the start of the plumeria season.

Pink ones

Yellow ones

I will go and dab Nivea cream on the end of my nose.

I was always very bad at those ‘spot the difference’ games. You know, two pictures that look the same but have lots of subtle difference, like the cow in one picture is black and in the other it is white. I could rarely spot these things and the games made me even more surly and bad tempered.

looks the same to me.

I was thus particularly pleased to notice that the dead tree in front of my house had been lumberjacked.

Notice dead tree

Old buddies of mine came on Wednesday to cut it down.

I have spent a lot of time with  these guys exchanging chain saw stories.

Don’t you love chains, hawsers and winches.

New garden

Boat safe and well.

Rescued orchids

Well, today I am 65 years old. This is usually considered an important milestone as I now gets cheap travel, reductions on coco and carpet slippers.

Indeed the great Shinto gods, who understand, did not want this day to pass unnoticed. First they strike me down with Bronchitis and I have spent the last 2 days choking up chicken on my rancid sleeping mat. Then they sent the heaviest rain of the year.

The orange is caused by earth washed into the sea killing coral and seaweed. The boat is hiding behind the tree.

This is now 135 millimeters of rain.

They then send me the great test. The sea is very rough. The rain has filled the boat with water thus making her very heavy and more likely to drag her anchors. If she does she will end up on the shore, her rudder will disappear and I will be back to square one. I feel terrible and posses a plentiful fever. The wind is very high and it is lashing down with rain.  But there is nothing for it really. I put on a Vermont hunting jacket and a sou’wester, neither of which I have previously worn in Okinawa, and wade out in the howling storm.

I bale the boat. She is already full to the seats. I check the mooring, which appears to be holding well. I then wade back and return to my foetid sleeping mat to swallow more antibiotics.

Thanks for the Sou’wester, Ian. I knew it would come in handy one day.

Not much of  a  65th birthday party really but I do have a great sense of wellbeing from having done the right thing.

We are booked to play the Naha Haari Boat Festival, http://www.naha-navi.or.jp.e.ni.hp.transer.com/magazine/2227/  as part of our 2017 tour.

It is incredibly hot.

Sound check. Notice the no shade orientation of the stage.

Our warm up dancers. The young lady kneeling center stage is particularly arresting as she has 3 feet.

We play and the crowd goes wild. Young women sit on their boyfriends’ shoulders waving cigarette lighters.

Violence breaks out in the crowd. Jagger Altamont style we cry, “Cool it!”

It is no good. The Angels that we hired for security are going beserk.

We play on, but we know that this is a turning point in the history of Irish traditional music. The flower power era is over.

After the show we party like crazy, happy to have got off that stage alive.

Anyway, on the way home I marvel at the flowers growing wild by the roadside.

Oh Amarillo, what you want my baby for?

Later we have an excellent dinner to mark the beautiful Laura’s departure.

Someone makes a rude smell. Spot the culprit.

Good times.

By midnight on Sunday my new yard is  ready to go. She has been fashioned by Opinel, rasped and sanded but she maintains a very rustic appearance. I have made her more robust than the original yard as I feel it is inevitable that she will be stood on. I apply 2 coats of wood treater stuff and then 2 coats of varnish. It takes forever for each coat to dry and I pace up and down the beach kicking conch shells and watching the sunset.

Is that a Korean missile?

I apply the last coat of varnish at midnight and er go to bed.

At 7:00 this morning, I bend the sail to the new yard. It all seems to fit.

UV damage to sail. I was thinking of buying a new one but they are asking 100 quid to ship it from England. It only weighs  a couple of kilos.

So, off I go under a very pleasant breeze. I keep an eagle eye on the rig anticipating I know not what but doubting and fearing.  It is a glorious day, I am on vacation and heading straight out to Ie-jima.

I had my DNA er decoded in the hope that my Jewish origins would be revealed. I have always wanted to be Jewish. They are an exceptionally amusing bunch. Unfortunately the results claim that I am 98% British with no obvious evidence of ancestors from traditionally Jewish areas like Palo Alto .

I sail out a few miles with the Scaffie demonstrating her wonderful seaworthiness. She is very dry, meaning waves do not crash over her bows and dump themselves into the boat. She diplomatically shrugs them off. Actually, there are no waves to speak of but there are occasional gusts. She does not heel dramatically but just tightens up all round and goes faster.

I am not happy with the masthead set up. The yard is about 6 inches from the top of the mast due to sloppy rigging.

I am determined to get the sail as high as possible and having sailed back to the mooring, I start to rejig. I redesign the system for connecting the main sheet to the yard using a tight harness made from wire and attaching the sheet using an anchor hitch rather that the original bowline. I also strengthen the lashings to the throat and peak of the sail. I take her out for another major sail.

Tight!

Overall, thanks to the new horse set up and new yard, the sail is much higher than in the last 2 years.  The power increase is er significant. Honest. Anyway, as I write this I feel the exquisite pain of mild sunburn, general exposure and weariness that comes from a day out on the East China Sea.

How all occasions do inform against me to spur my dull Scaffie launch. She has been ready to go for the last 3 weeks but I snapped the yard, the tides fell wrong and the weather was bad. Then the unbelievable happened. Someone stole my anchor!

This was a very fine anchor.

I placed her some 3 weeks ago in anticipation of a speedy launch. I can only think that an Okinawan matron, stumbling around the shallow water slaughtering octopi, came across it and thought, “What is this doing here? Poor wee thing, I’ll take her and give her a good home.”

Anyway I rush off and find a very strange looking anchor in a fishing tackle shop, which is big and heavy and I think will dig into the sandy bottom.

There is another anchor at the end of the second chain.

I have 2 anchors and 5 meters of heavy chain as a mooring. Fingers crossed.

So now I can launch. I set off very early and have a completely wonderful launching experience at Chioya harbor. I haul the boat up to Chioya behind the Truckette and the Police do not catch me. I back the boat down the narrow slipway on the the er 56th attempt. Backing a boat on a trailer in limited space is not easy; except for Ben, who does it with exquisite ease. The Fisher folk look on and do nothing to stop me. I feel wonderfully accepted.

7:30 Saturday 29 April 2017

I sail home. The new high rise traveller makes a big difference. The sail is much higher and so I believe more efficient, but what has  really changed is that I can see below it. Previously the sail blocked all reality to leeward but now I can see all kinds of amazing stuff. The new rudder works just fine.

Rudder meets water for the first time.

Happiness and joy.

Has that always been there?

I pick up the new mooring elegantly, swim home and cycle back to Chioya to pick up the truck and trailer.

Amazing bike – too good for me.

I stop to admire the amazing Diego flowers.

Red, white and blue and er some green and brown.

I go out in the boat again but as I heave my carcass over the gunwhale, I stand on the yard and it predictably breaks where I have just fixed it.

Notice kinky yard

It would have worked fine,  had I not trod on it.

I immediately set to work to fashion a new yard.  I find that by far the best tool for shaving my length of Okinawan cedar into a serviceable yard is an Opinel that James gave me.

Great knife.

I work late into the night as I am desperate to get back into the boat.

Short break to marvel at sunset

On the event of anything in Japan, kind folks send wonderful orchid displays. These hang around until the blooms fall off and then they are junked. This has appeared too cruel to me. It makes me think of Black Beauty.  I have, over the last couple of years, rescued such bin-destined orchids, and taken them back to my hidden garden. There, they have a choice. Should I stay or should I go? A lot get over the disdain of their youth and come back to flower.

Once I was lost

But now I am found

Was blind but now I see.

Golden Week, the ultimate demonstration of Japanese civilization, is upcoming. I look in the fridge but alas there is no lamb.

I immediately order a half lamb carcass from: 

The lamb is delivered at 8:00 pm to my house. Those of you who do not live in Japan, please understand that your lives could be better.

Happiness and joy

Oh my! I have a fridge full of lamb, a frisky sailing boat and 10 days holiday. Has Earth anything to show more fair?

It is Saturday morning, so I go down to the Octopus Shop to get my prescription filled. It is my favorite place. https://quietripple.wordpress.com/2014/09/27/fishmonger/

To my dismay I find that all has changed. A big new building has been underway next to the revered Octopus Shop, which I imagined to be a new harbor office or something but no, it is a new Octopus Shop.

I want grime.

The old place was cramped, with bits of fish all over the place.  In an adjacent sleaze pit, a fish market was held each Thursday and Saturday morning. During my first years I was the only non Okinawan to frequent. Lately there have been lots of er Chinese people  there. It must be in a Chinese travel guide. Chinese people have many attributes but restraint, courtesy and sotto voce expression are not always among them.

Now, there is a gleaming new building with stainless steel surfaces. Now, the fish market takes place in pristine courtyard in front of said building.

They even have TV crews.

Like every other fish shop

This not good. What is more they have no octopus.

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.