The Quiet Ripple Defines The Pond

I want to live in Sandy and Zandra’s chateau for ever. I could hide Steerpikely in one of the top bedrooms and no-one would ever know I was there. I would sneak out early in the morning and snuffle around in the forest, rubbing loam and pine needles into my naked body. I would read and write and play with coloring books in the evening, sitting  beside a wood burning stove, drinking fine wine and gorging myself on the produits de la belle France and laughing with the Mac Gillivrays.

The little window top right would be my room

You may think it is a pool but in fact it is full of brine for steeping jambons

Zandra photobombed by badger

Minimalist

We go to buy food, we eat gloriously, we see a Bonelli’s Eagle.

Happiness and Joy

Selle de Chevreuil

Zandra is a ceramicist.

This one of her Bulls

Bliss

So I am in France, which is a very beautiful country to look at.

The Sweet Baby Jesus Gate in Rians

Huge Typhoon headed for Okinawa.

My hotel room

Annecy

Eat my lunch

Itinerant Cheese Woman

So this is turning into an epic. I have to be in the south of France for 30 minutes on Tuesday morning. I start by changing flights to avoid typhoon heading for Okinawa. I am now in Tokyo in the middle of the typhoon I was escaping from. This morning I head out for the station to catch the Narita Express train to catch my Paris flight. It is still pouring with rain but not windy. I hobble for miles through corridors,tunnels, underpasses and the like.  This is Tokyo so there squillions of other hobblers. I finally find an information desk, “Narita Express wa doko deska?”

“Oh good morning sir, I am terribly sorry that all trains to Narita have been cancelled due to the typhoon.” says impeccably made-up and presented young lady in surprisingly equally impeccable English. What typhoon? It is raining but no wind.

Anyway it turns out that if I go to Nippori there may be trains from there to Narita.

I stand on a platform that has Narita written on it for a while. Nothing happens. I phone Naoko who sends a text in Japanese explaining my problem. This I show to an attendant who says “Hai , Narita starship, platform 15.”  I get there to find signs saying Narita Starship cancelled because of typhoon.

Things are looking bad and even if I get to Narita, what are the chances of the flight taking off?

The cry goes up “Last train to Narita!” I scramble aboard wide eyed and breathless.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wg8DhjQOtzM

actually this is better.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMyNcMG7Ryk

Last train to Narita.

This seems to be a local train and stops at about a million stations but eventually gets to the airport.

I am now in the lounge with lots of others. All flights are either cancelled or delayed except to yes you guessed it Paris! I really am a very lucky person.

Hooray!

The Japanese of course are impeccably calm and smiling throughout this difficulty which would send most nationalities into baying for blood mode.

The typhoon that I escaped from is now approaching Tokyo. I awake to find that  is hosing it down. As I leave the hotel an old lady comes up to me with an umbrella. She  gifts it to me knowing that I will die without it.

I slosh my way to the subway, my jeans already wet to the knee. I vaingloriously pride myself on my ability to get around Tokyo on the complex but marvelous subway system. This time I blow it and slowly realize that I am not headed to Shinjuku but Braintree in Essex. I jump off on one leg and head back to the city. Unfortunately the car that stops in front of where I am waiting on the platform is a green car. These I now know are more luxurious and justifiably more expensive. A very polite lady eventually arrives and informs me that I am where I should not be. I am then taken off to the ordinary and packed normal carriage. It is like running the gauntlet. Everyone keeps their eyes down as I am guided dripping in disgrace to where I belong.

It is not cold but very wet

I arrive in Shijuku at 12:00. I have a hotel thanks to Naoko but what time can I check in?

Finding a hotel in Tokyo is only possible by taxi. I leave the subway station and stumble around in the pouring rain trying to locate my hotel before I finally get a cab. Even the cab driver has no idea where, in the maze of tiny streets that is East Shinjuku, my hotel se trouve.

We finally get there at about 12:00 and I ask, dripping and sodden when I can take possession of my room.

“Hai!! 3:00”

I skulk in shop fronts

It is lonesome on the streets of Shinjuku in the early afternoon on Sunday with no place to go and the rain pounding down.

The Japanese are masters of umbrella protocol

Why are they not wearing skirts?

So I am afraid that today was washed out.

So to my great surprise I have a weekend in Tokyo.

Hooray!

Where do go in any great city? You got it  – the Zoo.

Bears like carrots

Bastard bit my ear

F*cking climate change!

Turning point in Polar Bear evolution

Papa don’t preach

The harbour lights of auld Aberdeen
Are home, sweet home to me.

Bewick’s Swan.
I have seen these in KIntyre

Stellar’s Sea Eagles!

Lovely Stornaway

A trout

I then go to Asakusa to buy some brushes.

This shop has every kind of brush. Most of which are kinda vestigial – shoe brushes, clothes brushes, shaving brushes and, in my case, hair brushes.

Lots of coal giving lots of heat.

Drug me or jail me, Stamp me and mail me.
But get me to the church on time!

It is the final day of our Board of Governors meeting. This very distinguished group, made up of sages, wise men and women from around the world, meets twice a year to give us counsel. To my bemusement I am allowed to sit down with them. We have had a week of intensity.

Should I reef the mainsail?

There is some strain today as I have to go on an international trip and as usual this catalyses the arrival of a typhoon. My flight from Okinawa to Tokyo was originally on Monday but this coincides with the arrival of the typhoon, resulting in cancelled flights, missed connections and general FUBAR.

I have to get off the island like now.

Naoko spirits up a flight on Friday night post meetings.

I hurtle home to throw stuff in a bag. I am away for a week and so take one pair of jeans, two T shirts, some socks, some underwear, a toothbrush.

It is already blowing hard and there is a muscular chop in the bay. I am very worried about Dileas, who is anchored in front of the house. Friends have agreed to bring her ashore on Saturday morning, for which much thanks, but will she make it through the night in my absence? Boats equal anxiety.

When I get home Dileas has gone. I sprint on one leg to the shore and sure enough she has dragged her anchor for the first time and is now only about 5 meters offshore bucking around on the anchor which thankfully must have held just before she was blown up onto a lee shore. I throw off my suit and plunge into the sea. It is dark, raining and very rough but who cares, the water is delightfully warm. I drag Dileas out to deeper water and put out a second anchor.  Will it be enough? The minutes are ticking away and I have extreme miss that flight anxiety.

Fast forward 4 hours of all the way the paper bag was on my knee, I land at Haneda. Naoko has booked a room in a Cabin hotel. I am trembling with anticipation. The hotel is part of the airport and only paces away from the gate thing from which you emerge. The reception is exactly the same as any high class hotel.

Big spender

I am given room Z01 which is a box with a futon, a TV, hi speed internet.

My cabin is on the left

The toilets and showers are down the hall.

Spotless

A bit like Pocklington

The door  to the cabin is a slide down screen that does not reach the floor and is not lockable. I understand that this would unnerve most western folks but after years in Japan I know that there is no way that anyone would break in and steal. I snuggle down and sleep like an angel. But is Dileas OK?

Fishmonger, whoremonger, costermonger, ironmonger, hmmm can’t think of any more. Anyway it is Saturday so I go to my er fishmonger. I use this term as it suits the enterprise well. It is essentially a staging post between the fishing boats, the fish shops and fish bits in supermarkets. Its main function is to make sashimi. I am very encouraged that it is all done by hand.

Sashimi ore

The guys spend a lot of time sharpening their knife on whetstones under a jet  of water from the tap. They then slice up the huge tuna with great skill and accuracy.

Sashimi Sid

I like it here.

Sashimi Simon

We eat a lot of this around here.

So the main goal of the fishmongery is to produce sashimi but they also sell random fish that also come in with the tuna.

You just buy what is there. It is different each time.

I get a couple of these.

You get a lot of these just in front of my house. On the sea side rather than on the road side.

This morning was trash collection – big boy trash collection – cans, bottles, both glass and plastic. There is an old lady who wheels a wheelbarrow in advance of the garbage truck snaffling all the aluminum cans. She is very old, very bent  and gnarled. She is snaffling my cans as  I carry out the empty bottles, which of course takes some time. I say “Ohayogozaimasu.” She points to my knee and says, “Daijobu deska?”  I say, “Daijobu des, aregato gozaimasu.”  She gives me a huge smile and says stuff that I do not understand but take to mean, “May yer lum keep blithely reeking” and wanders off to push her barrow through streets both broad and narrow. She clearly knew about my knee op. What else does she know about me? What else does everybody know about me?

Anyway back at the fishmonger I buy a wonderful octopus. If you get there early the chances of getting Tako are higher. They always have frozen but you know.

Just a small one today. I am slimming

A restaurant is part of the mongery. The food is the best in the world. I mean really the best in the world- not just the best in the world around here. Obviously this is a subjective judgement but I like fish just off the boat served simply, soup, sashimi, fried, with seaweed, tempura, black squid, cold tea. $10 no pretension.

The Whiskered Tern is bird that usually lives in India and China and even Southern Russia. As part of Okinawa’s drive to attract more overseas tourists, the island is offering special deals and this weekend the magical paddy fields of Kin were thronging with Whiskered Terns.

Package Tour

I get incredibly close.

Vamos a la playa

What shall we do now?

I think they are all jet lagged after their long trip from wherever they came from.

This one is going for a little paddle.

The phones are already ringing with complaints. ” Why has this tern got red legs and the others have black legs? You are a fraud and a danger to children.” Well er yes, I can only presume that the legs change color on the adoption of winter plumage.  Have a look at the first illustration from the estimable,  ” Birds of East Asia ” from Princeton. I mean my legs are brown now but will soon revert to the pasty white of my winter coloring.

Let’s check out the local talent.

Welcome to Okinawa Whiskered Terns.

Satoru san is at the university photographing brains. He is the world’s best photographer from Kochi.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C5%8Dchi,_K%C5%8Dchi

He brings me the very exclusive Kochi fish candy.

Only in Kochi could they make candy from fish.

This what it looks like. The language says, “Do not let it out of the bag.”

The candy comes with the traditional Kochi tooth hammer. The correct way to eat the candy is to hammer your teeth with the er hammer and then insert small piece of candy into the mouth. In this way your mind does not focus on the taste.