Hidden Paradise

I had been looking forward to this all week.
We both had the weekend free and Nanako, Hitomi's sister, invited us over to her holiday home in Kada. Oh my stars, I haven't seen her since New year so it was lovely to see her again. She's so much fun and always has such bizarre stories and its a great time to catch up on news.We would have arrived an hour sooner but I took a wrong turn somewhere in the labyrinth outside Osaka and by the time we were in Amagasaki I knew we had gone wrong. The turning for Wakayama was twenty minute behind us. We phone Nanako to explain our delay and then again when we were a little closer. She was waiting by the drive to the holiday homes complex with her ipod in her ears watching out for our arrival. We unpacked the car and had tea then took a walk along the bay view in front of the holiday homes that lead to the amusement park. This area is full of a rich taste of history and there are many gardens and temples here and many say the outstanding beauty of the area is alluded to in out most ancient poem collection, ten thousand leaves (万葉集). We headed for the beach, the breeze came in from the sea and kept us pretty cool as we cooked a selection of goodies that Nanako had prepared. Bacon and tomato, meats. capsicums and rice cakes. A few chilled drinks as we watched some children finding shellfish from the small pools. I remember how I used to love to do that as a child.

The evening was spent in a great little bar watching the sunset turn the bay orange and drinking the clone of Pepsi blue Hawaii turn my tongue blue. I note Nanako drinks Pernod which tastes like aniseed, a really weird flavor.

I went to play the video games and watch my coins disappear slowly into the slots and frustratingly still no Momo on the high score list, I am still two hundred thousand shy while they catch up on family gossip. There are lots of tourists here with more phrase books in more languages than there are seats at the united nations. I think this area is one of the most beautiful spots anywhere in Japan. I think I may have to come again.
Lucky Nanako and her man get to stay here for the week whereas Hitomi and I will have to wait until end of September until she gets her vacation time. I can take mine anytime and of course you all know I'll save it until she has hers and we will go off to Okinawa together.

But right now I need breakfast and it should be something soft and gentle since I used the tongue scrapper enthusiastically and over excessively when I cleaned my teeth to get rid of the blue color. Red is the color of the day and fresh strawberries sounds wonderful.

When we talk we should mean what we say and say what we mean. Every situation demands it and of course if you can't communicate effectively then no one will ever know what you really mean. We'll be doomed to wander the world as a mis-understood individual. So if our equals and our peers deserve our best efforts when we talk with them, wouldn't you assume that our leaders would offer us the same? Watching and hearing foreign politicians is laughable when questions are put to them and they never seem to answer it directly but instead talk about some set of statistics or fly off on a tangent story. Even our own leaders are now following this seemingly world trend. A little while ago there was an incident about a Chinese product that had caused food poisoning here. But this month is China's happy time in the worlds eye and so to avoid any possibility of insult, Minister Seiichi Ota said that the purchasers of the product who had suffered food poisoning were just to picky! He actually used the word 'yakamashii' which means 'fussy' and he tries to explain this away by saying that in the kansai dialect, the area now where we enjoy our holiday weekend, it means an expert with specialized knowledge. But since he said it on national TV and we know when politicians address a whole nation they won't use slang or local dialects, millions heard that he accused the victims of this product as, and I reach for my translation dictionary, 'people who always moan' Now we find there was evidence of a dangerous pesticide contamination in the product so it's not something easily dismissive as a needless complaint. Basically he said "Shoppers need not worry about safety aspects of domestic food, but since they keep on moaning about it, we will enforce stricter guidelines." Personally I believe he would be better off apologizing and admitting a public relations error with bad choice of words instead of this useless excuse, people would feel better about that. He continued and said "In a socialist country like China, you could hide incidents like this!"
Oh well, the opposition can take great comfort that the Prime minister supports his farm minister and I'll expect some gleeful satirical comments from the opposition and the press and I'll just keep trying to ensure that I say the right things at the right time, depending on my mood of course!

For now I'm content that my usual habit is saying just how I really feel and I try to say the right things at the right moments but I'm only human and sometimes just for the devilment, I say things jokingly to spread a little laughter and I'm happy inside knowing that something I did or something I said may have made someone somewhere so happy that they'd give me a smile. I take a lot of pleasure from that. Being a lover of nature, this afternoon we are visiting the bandokoro gardens that protrude out into the sea on its own little peninsula. This is a place of outstanding beauty all the way to the tip which used to be a naval watch station looking out for the black ships of foreigners.

On a clear day you can see forever.
On a wet day you see the rain!