The Quiet Ripple Defines The Pond

As you know, I don’t like sponge cake. The delightful folks as what I work with, take this to heart and  present me with the best birthday cake.

Thanks Naoko and Mino san

It is a beautifully cooked and decorated Spanish omelet, still hot as it is brought in to the room.

I try to blow out the candles

My wish is that I can always work with such kind, gracious people.

I do not know if they still need me but they certainly still feed me – now I’m 64.

Tomorrow I will be 64 – will you still feed me? etc.  Next week is a series of Board meetings and dinners and I doubt that I will be writing much. Today I have the best fun in the Scaffie. Great weather, fine wind.

This last night

This, this morning

I stepped on an oar and busted it. I put on  a new blade before setting off. You do not want be oarless in Onna.

Huge grasshopper. It is interesting how many insects are damaged. This one only has one feeler thing

Getting ready to cast off from mooring.

A speed boat tries to keep up

How many more years?

I have to go to the university to welcome people but rush back just in time for a sunset shot.

Pretty damn good. Note how quickly the sun is moving away from Zampa

Bye bye 63.

Sunset tonight. I sit out on the beach.

It has been a cloudy, generally unremarkable day. 6:15

I sit and wait and watch and listen.

Whoa 7:10

What shall I eat tonight?

Dudes fish

Although sunsets are the ultimate cliche of photography, I do not care. I look forward to a period of the Okinawan year during which each evening is an exhilarating sunset adventure.

Okinawan pineapple. You can untimely rip each segment out by hand

How I spend my time. Regrettably I cannot read music.

As I live on the western shore of Okinawa, every night when I return from my place of work, I stare out. The sun always goes down, but in a glorious period this happens in full view of my deck. That period is now.

I saw summer sunsets  and hoped for more

I am afraid this blog is going to become rather, which in any language other than middle class English means very, boring. I hope to record the setting of the sun in a kinda obsessive, boring, way over the next few weeks. This is important to me as I have a very clear indicator of the seasons’ passage and hence the onward march of time, right at my backdoor. The more the sunset moves away from Cape Zampa the more we move towards Summer and glee. Suddenly in the midst of glee, the sun starts moving back again and Autumn stirs the pot.

Anyway, tonight is a big deal for, for the first time this year, the sun slams into the sea noticeably beyond Cape Zampa.

While greasy Joan doth keel the pot

So I wander down to the beach and sit and watch the sun going down. It is amazing. So many changes in hue in such a short time.

Under the bridge

So, at this time of year the forest of Okinawa erupts. Trees that had previously generally blended into the Jurassic Park vegetation that surrounds the university are sudden covered in beautiful creamy-white blossom. Blossom? Not sure that this is this best word, as for me, blossom frets and struts its life out over a short time. Iju  flowers? hang in for weeks. Anyway I love it and now pant in expectation  each year. The flowers herald in the rainy season and then the Summer.

Check it: http://www.tabata-tumugi.co.jp/fuubutu-e/backno/fuu0806-e.htm

This year the displays are particularly spectacular. Learned Tomomi informs me that this augurs a bad typhoon season. Hooray!

Typhoon

Conrad

Mt Kurz, he dead

I have 5 Mac keyboards. 4 wireless ones and one a with a snake-ish usb connection.  None of them work. I interpret this breakdown as a result of the heat and humility of the Okinawan climate. Aghast, as I cannot use my computer and so am dead, I consult the Oracle as to how I can get a wireless mac keyboard. I dread an endless excursion, trying to find a highly lighted, very loud, frenetic, store where nobody understands my mime for wireless mac keyboard. The  Japanese Oracle says “Yo, dude hit up Amazon .jp.”

Humility

So, here I have to wonder. I have lived in Japan for 5.5 years. The idea of going to a web site to order stuff, I mean any stuff, in English was impossible when I first debarked. It took me 4 years to get a Japanese credit card. I assumed this was normal. Maybe not? Maybe  this was here from the beginning but I was too happy to fall into the quaint belief of everything has to be paid for with cash in Japan  that I had created for myself.

Amazon .jp english allows you to buy anything, I mean anything, on line.

Is this a recent thing or has it been here all the time but my stupid misinterpretation of life in Japan has disguised it from me?

Two days after I hit the web site

I mean what I am trying to say is that living in a foreign country opens a vast vista of opportunity for misinterpretation.  You,or at least I, never really completely understand what is going on. This is why I get angry when people talk about countries they have never lived in. They really have not got a clue.  I think it is linked to the era of imperialistic, colonialist self belief that I grew up in. Friends, only talk about your own country. Otherwise you are making fools of yourselves.

Yay!  New keyboard, lens cap, futon cover and camera bag.

Aregato Gozaimasu Amazon.jp

So this is for me. Just a series of photos that record how I spent 8 May 2016. I will look at it in the future in some cold, dank room and the treasure I have anchored to my soul will cure me, if you know what I mean.

Up she rises er early in the morning

I love my new thwart

Tide goes out. So blue

The tide is very low, which makes for good snorkeling. This is what the lagoon looks under the water.

I am in 3 feet of water

warm

silver

yep

What is going on here?

Family of clown fish in 50 cms of water

Too soon it is time to watch the sunset.

Turner

A Pacific Rim Egret watches with me

Work tomorrow

Thank you Okinawa

So it is Saturday, I buy new bedding.

New futon

Flowers are everywhere.

Lilies by the road

New hibiscus

The tide is far out!

Check the Scaffie

When the tide rises, I go sailing out over the reef as the  sun goes down.

Raise that sail

I sail out to the Reef and snorkle

I then sail around the lagoon and back and forth over the reef. It is warm.

I love my boat

Setting sun is nearly past the cape. 

I anchor and cook fish for my evening meal

Yay! I love fish.

I have noticed as of late that the very few people as what visit my beaches pile up flotsam above high tide mark in a laudable effort.

She’s so high  above me

It is a drag to er drag all this sea junk back  to the  road. So I move to a new level of beach commitment by purchasing a wheel barrow.

Loaded

Anyway I am on vacation.The weather turns real  bad. Plans for major sailing adventures turn awry.

Alas poor Scaffie

I had dreamt of realms of gold but am marooned in the house  by wind and rain.

Scaffie frets at anchor

This is not a confession of alcohol abuse but rather a narrative of boating misadventure. It is windy but more importantly it is very gusty.  The Scaffie is a bit of a handful, healing dramatically when a gust hits. I really should have put in a reef but you know.

Running with strong wind behind, moments before things change rapidly

I am not really paying attention and the wind gets behind the sail which whips over to the other side of the boat. The side I am sitting on. This is called gybing. The combination of my huge mass, the the huge sail,  the huge wind make like that the Scaffie heals far, far over and the sea pours in. Because of the extreme angle I slowly but inevitably flop backwards into the raging ocean. It is actually calm but as I have said extremely windy.

What grace. Notice sea in boat.

I get back in, take down the sail and start bailing for lo the boat is full of water. Once I have got most of the water back where it belongs, I raise the sail again. This is a comedy of errors mainly due to incompetence but compounded by the gusty conditions.

It is amazing how everything gets tangled when you least need it.

Beginning to make sense

I finally get the boat back into working order and we career off.  The Scaffie loves wind and the sailing is  wonderful. The wind is of course coming directly off the land and I beat back and forth making  steady progress back to the mooring. Good adventure.

Home again.

There is a family of clown fish just under where I moor the boat.

Hello