My friend Mark, who is from Texas has the most remarkable cooking thing. It is huge, power is by butane and thorium and can cook a leg of lamb in  two shakes of a lamb’s tail.

He lends it to me for the Ciao Ciao Letizia party

Designed for roasting Armadillos

The thorium gives it that extra jolt.

Letizia is leaving, a great pity. Letizia apparently means religiously induced bliss, which is pretty much the effect she has had on us all. Her family name is Diamante, again most apt.

Joy Diamond

She loves Scottish country dancing. We have live music, two fiddles and flute, many nationalities, stripping the willow on a dark night in Okinawa.

Letizia organizes the set. Italy, Mexico,China, Bulgaria,Iran. Scottish dancing in Okinawa. OIST throws up the strangest combinations.

Matsuda sensei, the world’s greatest ceramicist at the party, loves Highland dancing.

So does Letizia

Mixed menu

No caption needed

Geckos love to strip the willow

I have a wooden chest. Not a wooden heart.

Elvis Presley has a wooden heart. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hlbu6SsjlSE

The bread oven

Inside the bread oven. Very old.

I found my chest deep in the cellars of the house as what I had in France. The house had previously been the town bread shop. The box had a specific purpose. They chucked the dough into it and let it rise. There is a name for this kind of chest in French but I have forgotten it.

Anyway, with great difficulty I extracted it from the cave

La cave. The tiled bit at the end used to be a reservoir for wine.

and spent weeks removing the many coats of paint as what had been applied thereupon.

The house in France. Very old.

Chest in Provence

Chest in San Francisco

Chest in Okinawa

I have neglected my chest. Today I applied teak oil and wax to make her happy.

It is oak and hundreds of years old

I like cleaning things.

Yep, that’s it; after weeks of dreary weather the Spring has arrived. Okinawa throbs.

I go to buy some petunias.

Cherry blossom

I buy lots of bedding plants to make my house look pretty. Each one is 45 yen.

Petunias, marigolds,nasturtiums, busy lizzies. Yay!

There is a big ceramics market going on.

A bucket of Shisas

Ceramic buttons

I wander into the Farmer’s Market to get some vegetables. Vegetables are still very seasonal on Okinawa. You eat what is like, er, you know, ready.

Lots of really good vegetables

Leek type things are totally in season. I love leeks. Butter, cream.

Get the boat out!

On the deck.

I plant out all my annuals. Fingers crossed. “In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt.”

The Scaffie moans

Plumeria, probably take 10 years to flower.

I am trying to grow coriander or cilantro for US folks

For the unlearned amongst you, the Juushichigen is a 17 string Koto.

One of the most enjoyable things I get to do is to guide the cultural program at the university. We do a lot of exhibitions and concerts and stuff.

Today there was a concert of Koto and Shakuhachi music. This is solidly Japanese and one wonders if it will be kinda reflective and strix, strigis F – the screech owl-ish.

Far from it, it is rock and roll-ish. Driving rhythm, amazing energy.

Dust my broom

All the musicians are under 25 and incredible. I have rarely enjoyed myself so much.

Smoke on the Water

Just let me hear some of that Juushicigen music
Any old way you choose it
It’s got a back beat, you can’t lose it
Any old time you use it
It’s gotta be Juushicigen music
If you wanna dance with me
If you wanna dance with me

I’ve got no kick against modern jazz
Unless they try to play it too darn fast
And lose the beauty of the melody
Until they sound just like a symphony

That’s why I go for that that Juushicigen music
Any old way you choose it
It’s got a back beat, you can’t lose it
Any old time you use it
It’s gotta be Juushicigen music
If you wanna dance with me
If you wanna dance with me

Brown Sugar

Back in the USSR

You Can’t Always Get What You Want

Groupie

What a hard day.

I have always wondered what it is like to have a perversion. Do you sit at the desk all day with every fiber straining to get home to put on the rubber suit, to set up the trapeze and crack the vial of amyl nitrite?

I now have a better understanding.

Last night returning from work I spotted 3 seagulls!  There are no seagulls in Okinawa. I work at a research university but no one can tell me why there are no gulls in Okinawa. Gravitational waves no bother but gulls are more complex.

I get up early and before work go gull-spotting.

Rubber

Yay! Black Tailed Gulls. They live on the coast of Russia and Korea and very occasionally are blown down to Okinawa. Why does every fiber strain?

Amyl nitrite

I go to work but my heart is not in it. My fibers strain.  At lunchtime I make a break and rush back to see if the gulls are still here.

Bondage

There are 3 adult gulls and a juvenile. Oh no!

Under age

This is so sick.

So, we had a big thing at the university on Sunday. To get in the right frame of mind, I polished some silver.

Polish – no really this stuff actually comes from Poland.

To celebrate the thing, we have a party at the house. The food is incredible but hardly Japanese.  Civet de Cerf au Vin Rouge, Saucisse de Cerf Fume,  Roties d’Agneau, Fondue de Poireaux, Potiron Facon d’Okinawa, Salade de Chou, Plats Divers, Gateau de Fromage, Beignets. Oichi!  Big shout out to Mark and Shizui, probably spelt that wrong, for providing raw material and much help. There are no deer on Okinawa but the meat was not frozen. Work it out.

Carmen

L’Assistance avec Chien Heureux

C’est Comme Ca

Yay!

To this favour you must come.

So, another hymn of praise to life in Japan. Today is a public holiday. Japanese Foundation Day (Kenkoku Kinen no Hi). It celebrates the foundation of Japan, commemorating the ascension to the throne of the mythical first emperor, Emperor Jimmu in 660 B.C.

See you Jimmy!

Tomorrow is Friday, which I have taken off.  4 day weekend! I have plenty of stuff to worry about but as I get older I find I am able to disassociate work concerns from enjoying life.

A 4 day weekend with projects in warm, springish, Okinawa. Yay!

Project one is to paint the mighty Hi Jet an inch thick. Okinawa by the sea is a terrible place for all things material and the mighty Hi Jet has developed a fairly severe skin condition of rust. I have no intention to do a good job but rather I intend to cover up the damage for a while.

“Now get you to my lady’s chamber and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favor she must come.” Well adjusted Hamlet is speaking to a skull.

But before that I buy food.

Where I buy food

Outside where I buy food

So I devote the See You Jimmy holiday to primping up the truck.

“I love the confidence that makeup gives me.”

“Beneath the makeup and behind the smile I am just a girl who wishes for the world.”

Imperfection is beauty, madness is genius and it’s better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring.

So, over the next few days I will slather white paint make up on the mighty Hi Jet. It will not be a cure to the rust, it will but skin and film the ulcerous place. It will lay a flattering unction on.

On the way back from Toronto I spend a day of meetings in Tokyo. You have to love Tokyo. Er, take my word for it.

Lunch in the sky

Lunch. I am on  a diet.

Shimibashi, Tokyo’s first rail station. I tell you, they have come a long way since.

Youhei and I do 4 separate meetings in different parts of town from 11:30 to 6:30. I am comatose throughout. We then catch the 8:00 flight back to Okinawa.

Ginza from a meeting room.

It is now 12:40. I am home and wide awake but uncertain which day it is.

The city in which I am in also boasts excellent Irish music. I go to a session in a bar called Dora Keogh. There is much academic discussion the the correct pronunciation of Keogh. Is it just ‘key’ or maybe ‘key-yoff’ or then again ‘cough” maybe ‘kay -er’ ?

I say  ‘KO’ but frankly try to avoid saying it at all.

Whose name will not be spoken

The inside of Irish bars look like penitentiary eating spaces.

Anyway  chez Nora hosts one of the great sessions. The night I was there it was 5 fiddles, box, pipes and mandolin things. All the aforementioned playing at the level where mutual congratulation is no longer needed. I played more reels than in the last 6 months in Okinawa.

The fiddler on the right plays with the Chieftains

Such fun.

Anything useful that I have learned came from The Children’s Encyclopedia which I read, all 10 volumes, several times, from cover to cover, when I was 9. Our set must have been published in the 1930s and it had wonderful sort of green black and white photos of sights in the colonies. One which stuck in my mind was of the hotel I am now staying in that in 1929 was the tallest building in the British Empire.

All you will ever need to know.

The hotel is no longer the tallest building.

From  my window.

It is a great place full of old style British themes.

You lose.

We are the champions

Arthur Mee impersonator

This is my Auntie Margie RIP, pinning a rose to Arthur Mee’s chest. No seriously, it is.

Boring talk? Look at the ceiling.