Mr Moon comes out to play

We had the most beautiful full moon tonight.

At first it hid behind the clouds and made the sky dramatic and surprisingly colourful.

Then it came out over the city in all its glory. It was a beautiful walk home. I even walked out of my way to have more time to look up.


I hope with the time difference this gives you the chance to keep an eye out for it over your side of the world.

Beyond the resorts: another side of Ishigaki

Living in the heart of Tokyo, it becomes easy to assume that everyone in Japan is extremely rich. This city is the centre of economic, political and - to some extent - cultural activity in the country, and I see the trappings of that power around me every day. But such an assumption does not hold up to too much scrutiny. Sure, even Osaka - the second citiy - gives off a much more run-down image than the capital. Dad, you would have loved it: in my first hour there last month I saw like four things held together with duct tape!

So, it should come at no surprise that Okinawa finds itself very much at the other end of the economic spectrum to its big-city brothers and sisters. The prefecture is financed by tourism, agriculture, and - oh yeah - US military bases, but I'll leave that little hot-potato aside for another time. I was lucky enough to stay in a fairly swanky resort on Ishigaki, and much and all as I love that bit of luxury, I always try to take a walk away from the tourist centres whenever I visit a new place. My wanderings showed me that the farmers and fishers and other workers of the island appear to be living within some fairly restricted budgets.

Here is a typical house split up into rooms for rent. This is no holiday home.

Here is a less standard home; Ishigaki does trailer park.


The owners are inventive, I'll give them that. Some tight parking and they have themselves an extension.

Just like in the west of Ireland, you see lots of walls made of 'vernacular' materials. Are you proud of me for remembering that expression, H.? All that bloomin' thatch work wasn't in vain!!!

I guess part of this reasoning behind these structures is why pay for a brick when you have a rock lying in your field that will do the job.

Even the shrines on the island lack the sparkle and veneer of the mainland - but they have a brutal beauty, don't you think?

Unfortunatly, the shrines could easily be mistaken for the local public toilets!!!

You see, I told you Japan is a paradise for the small-bladdered.

I love this picture of the farmer who lives over her/his tractor.


Now that's some Massey love. Don't they have earthquakes here? I'm not sure how stable a home this would be. It brought to mind the farm I stayed in in the mountains of Northern Thailand. The people their (the Karen) build their wooden homes on stilts so that they can live over their pigs. Not only does the heat of the beasts underneath keep their homes warm, but they view the animals as givers of their wealth and deserving of as good a place to live as they give themselves. I wonder if that was going through this farmer's mind?

Anyway, please indulge me for still going on about my holiday all these weeks after it finished. I have nothing else worthy of talking about in my life at the moment. My job is one awful limbo-land where I don't know what the heck is in store for me. And it's affecting my whole attitude to life and everything is feeling kind of sucky.

Well no, that's not entirely true. I'm absolutely loving my german lessons. The teacher is great, the other pupils are great, and we cover so much in five hours - we're already starting to make simple sentences. It's a full on Sunday, though.

But really aside from that, with the job and rainy season on the way I'm really being a bit of a gloomy guss. I did, however, see a really nice plant on my way to lunch in Roppongi Hills yesterday. Mam, is it a hydrangea?



You see that's how exciting my life is at the mo; blistering!

A few clouds on my Okinawan horizon...

So there were a couple of tiny letdowns on my otherwise picture-perfect holiday: one small regret is that we got no sunsets. It's hard to beat sitting on a balcony watching the sun go down in a blaze of glory after a day of lazing about on the beach. But the weather would not cooperate, and it got muggy and hazy almost every night. There was one clear night where I got a nice photo of the first star coming out over the mangroves. But apart from that I was denied my skies.

Another small complaint requires a bit of back story: there is a strong militaristic vein running through Japanese society. This can be seen in - among other things - the Japanese love of precision planning, the rigid hierarchical structures of their schools and businesses, and their love (to the point of fetishism) of uniforms. Take a look at this photo snapped while I was waiting for my bullet train to Osaka there a few weeks ago - one fleeting moment encapsulates uniformed workers of varied ranks awaiting a scheduled arrival you could set your watch to.


So anyway, the trouble was that this regimented authoritarianism even infected my beautiful, relaxing beach time. Come 10am and 2pm every day a message from the Ishigaki City Office would blare out from the loud haler (you have to have public address systems everywhere over here in case of earthquake);

"Let's enjoy a safe golden week. Do not engage in the following activities: One, do not go swimming alone; Two, get enough sleep before enjoying watersports; Three, do not swim outside the designated areas...blah, blah, blah..."

And this would go on for about 5 minutes! It used to drive me mad. The European in me wanted to stay up all night and go skinny dipping alone in a prohibited area just to break as many of the regulations at once as possible. But my Japanese friends thought that this was the most natural thing in the world and that that was what the city office was there for.

My final little tiny moan was that there was one day of rain during my week of sunshine. Let me tell you, when it rains in Okinawa it really rains. Appropriately enough, it was the day we did the 30 km hike through the wetlands. But I was absolutely soaked, and got back to the hotel exhausted, starving and looking like I'd been dragged through a bog backwards. I will say, though, that even in the rain, the place has a dense, fertile beauty.



And it's thanks too all this rain that such an abundance of plant life can prosper. I nearly lost the group on several occasions hanging back to take photo after photo of the local fauna. So many weird and wonderful flowers. Here a just a few -



And who knew the Dharma initiative had set up a regional station - The SugarCube - in the hills of Ishigaki.

L'il Bro, two more episodes left and I gotta say I'm feeling a little let down. I know that there was no way they would ever please everyone, but I feel they focused on too many of the uninteresting characters and lost focus on many of the most intriguing storylines. What say you?

Another nail in the coffin

I got told today that there is only a budget allocation for my interpreting course for another two months (i.e. until the end of this term)... grim, grim, grim.

Still, not every cloud comes without a silver lining: my heart truly hasn't been in this course. I mean I did all my assignments, and turned up for class, but only the absolute bare minimum I could get away with. I really had no motivation for it and sometimes dreaded having to go.

But now that I'll be free of that obligation, I can give myself over to my new 'Lieblingsbeschäftigung' (favourite pastime) - ah, the old Deutsch just rolls off the tongue, doesn't it!

Der Krisenplan

Well, the benefits of the holiday have well and truly evaporated.

I got called in by my boss for a talk there on Friday and found out that they're thinking of moving me to a sales position before the year is out. This has been bandied about before, but now seems much more concrete: I've been asked to wrap up some projects early and to prepare a change-over plan, and then today there was a meeting about recruitment in November to which I was cordially not invited... Things look grim.

But, new job, new challenges, new excitement, right? Well, the thing is, I like what I do now and I know I'm good at it. And that's a pretty rare combination. Plus, hello sales! I don't really like 'people', I abhor competition, I hate having to meet targets, and I have a phobia of speaking on the telephone. Yeah, I'm the ideal candidate to handle client relations???

Even worse, the rumour is that I will be moved to the department of death. This is the one area of our company where sales are tanking and morale is at a fairly low ebb. And I'll be the new guy again, at the bottom rung of the ladder, with no experience and no idea what I'm doing. Just peachy!

The thing is, this is a Japanese company, so you don't get asked about transfers, you get told. That's probably what's upsetting me the most - the feeling of powerlessness and that this bright future that I thought I had seems to be being taken away from me, and I have no control over the situation.

Well, this weekend I took a step to take back even a little bit of control; I decided that I needed an exit strategy, a Plan-B in case the next year or two of my career don't really work out for me. I won't go into details, but suffice to say that I start intensive german classes in the goethe institute next Sunday. I already have my textbook and am struggling with my 'ders' 'Wohers' and 'ypsilons'. But it's all exciting and is giving me something better to focus on than how I've been kicked in the nads by my company.

Congratulations if you made it to the end of this whine. More upbeat programming will resume shortly.

Lion-dogs, tombs and sweet potato pie - Ishigaki culture

Okay, I promised you some culture, so here goes.

The シーサー（shiisaa - a kind of lion-dog gargoyle) is a recognisable emblem of Okinawa's indigenous Ryukyu culture. It wards off evil spirits and is usually found on the roof, on the door, or at the gate of Okinawan homes and businesses. They had some great examples on the island.


But one workshop I visited went all out, and their entrance way looked like it had been conjured up by the mind of Jim Henson on LSD.



The shiisaa they made came in all shapes and sizes and were fabulous, but SO expensive. Let me know if anyone wants one for their home - I could probably order it off the net and get it shipped as they're pretty famous.

Another distinctive aspect of Ryukyu culture is the funeral tradition and, in particular, the graves and tombs they use. You can see that the graves are built like little homes. This is so that relatives and friends can gather there once a year and hold parties with food and drinking and music, right under those little roofs.


Some of the tombs are really over the top and are truly little pavilions. This tomb here, though, is in the Chinese style.


It's a memorial to some Chinese slaves who mutineered off a ship and were taken care of before their deaths by the people of Ishigaki. It's supposed to be a symbol of the kindness of these island people, but it is also a reminder of how strongly the Chinese influence can be felt in the ancient Okinawan culture; the links between the Ryukyu and China predate the links with Japan proper.

The 島料理 (shima ryori - island cuisine) on Ishigaki is delicious and puts an interesting twist on Japanese standards with the inclusion of weird and wonderful fruits, vegetables, fishies, and meat. Ishigaki beef is a big draw, and a large part of the land space of the island is given over to dairy farming. The tropical seas provide bountiful fish, with a grilled dish of a bright royal-blue fish (seriously it looks like someone has taken a Sharpie to it) being one of the weirder offerings. There's a quite nice soba noodle dish too (八重山そば - yaeyama soba) that comes in a clear, spicy soup flavoured with the island's peppers and chili oils, rather than with the standard soy or miso of the mainland.

Here you can see one of my breakfasts from the week. The whole thing really illustrates the Japanese basics with a twist idea.


You have rice and miso soup (Japanese), mozuku (a deliciously slimy vinegared seaweed - Okinawan), kinpira (stir-fried carrot and burdock - Japanese) and papaya champuru (stir-fried papaya - Okinawan) and tofu (Japanese) with wild berries (Okinawan).

The purple salad you can see above is made from 紅芋 (beniimo - a purple sweet potato), and really this was the main deal for me. I have told you before about my veneration of the sweet potato and I made it my goal to have it in as many different ways as I could.



So, you can see I had beniimo cheesake, beniimo tart, deep-fried beniimo and even beniimo ice-ceam. So good.

I have loads more to tell, but I think that's all I can bring myself to write. I'm getting depressed at the thought of all the beauty and wonder I had to leave behind. I mean, who wouldn't - this was my view at one lunchtime last week from a restaurant on the beach where I was staying.


One funny quickie before I go. I really did do my best to forget about my work and my stress all the time I was away, but the gods conspired against me and tried to make this task much harder. Look at the bloody poster they had hanging in the lobby of the hotel.


It's for flipping Appi Kogen! That's the ski place in Iwate I have to visit regularly for all those training sessions and study tours with the newbies - the source of a good chunk of all my career-related worries! The poster shows, though, that far away hills are truly green - if you live in a tropical island paradise, I guess it's not so strange to sometimes long for the snowy slopes of the far north.

Twitchless

I have loads of stories to tell you about hiking, and being out on the water, and food, and flora, and culture, and all that good stuff. But the internet connection here is super slow and uploading photos is taking forever. So, for now these photos should tell you all you need to know:

The beaches...

The boats...


The walks...


And the water...


All have me de-twitchified.