Silent night
Christmas
What a year. The ground beneath our feet turned to quicksand. Grim news everywhere we looked. I am more than happy to see the end of 2020.
Still, the theater of life goes on; as much as they can, the rituals that serve as our anchors continue, encouraging markers amid the turmoil of this current life. In the village, the kitsch Christmas decorations appeared weeks ago, playfully lightening the mood, alluding to a normality we once took for granted.
And amid the grim news stories, there are glimmers of light in the world as the sun prepares to rise on a new year. Here’s to a better 2021.
Coasting
There is nowhere else I’d rather be, nothing else I would prefer to be doing. I am at the beach looking west with the continent behind me as the sun tracks down to the sea. I have my bearings.
— Tim Winton
Kei
Kei jidosha. Micro cars. A quintessentially Japanese product that dates back to the end of the war, the kei car is small in dimensions, low in power, in price and in running costs — but offers big savings in taxes and insurance premiums as well as on petrol bills.
Though they began life as cheap alternatives to motorcycles for a relatively poor populace, through the decades there have been some impressive offerings among kei cars, such as the Mazda R360 coupé (1960) or the convertible Suzuki Cappuccino (1991) and the Honda S660 roadster (2015), but today the go to vehicles for kei buyers are micro vans like the Honda NBox, Daihatsu Move, Suzuki Palette and Nissan Cube3.
Statistics state that more than 30% of cars sold in Japan are kei. I don’t have formal data on Okinawa, but empirically — stand on any street corner or walk through any car park and look at the cars — the compact kei van is the vehicle of choice for a great number of local drivers. To each, his or her own, and there are of course economic imperatives that underlie this state of affairs, but for me, it’s dispiriting to see the place teeming with soulless cookie-cutter metal boxes on wheels.
Some years ago, on a trip to Okinawa, I found myself in the basement car park of the hotel I was staying at, where I came across a wonderland of parked vintage cars, some fifteen or twenty of them: old Ferraris, Porsches, Aston Martins and the like, all in pristine condition; enthusiasts’ cars gathered for an event of some sort I guessed. Stumbling upon such a concentration of design ingenuity and beauty — and rarity too — was delightful. It was as close as most of us get to cars like this. But that doesn’t matter. For the brief time I spent admiring them, I was like an excited kid in a toy shop, totally absorbed, a smile on my face — and I left that car park feeling pretty good. Those old cars, designed with care and passion, and consequently cared for and loved by their passionate owners, have delighted people for decades. So different to all the disposable metal boxes that will end up at scrap yards. Not all cars can be Ferraris or Porsches, but even at the other end of the spectrum there have to be better driving solutions than these.
Found objects
I do not seek, I find.
Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.
Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once they grow up.
— Pablo Picasso
American Village
There are islands and there are islands. There are places of postcard perfect Instagrammable beauty that take your breath away:
Santorini in the Aegean Sea with its cascading whitewashed cliffside villages of Oia and Fira;
Boracay, a gem among the thousands of Philippine islands, with its flawless tropical white sand beaches;
Kauai, Hawaii’s garden isle with its its lush rainforests and spectacular canyons and cliffs.
Okinawa is not that kind of island. It doesn’t come close. Yet it does have its charms, even if they are man-made.
Mihama American Village is a tourist precinct that looks like it was created and built by the Disney art department — it could easily be mistaken for one of the company’s satellite theme park attractions.
The area was farm land before World War 2, then used by the US military until it was returned to the Japanese in 2003. Work on the commercial and entertainment precinct and a respectable collection of neighboring sports facilities began soon after.
The village comprises a number of multi-storey buildings sandwiched between the East China Sea and a series of open air car park lots and the island’s main highway, Route 58. The place is a warren of paths, passages, staircases and terraces, that connect eateries, bars, cafes and stores. There are countless places to sit, many with sea views. A couple of compact resort hotels flank the neighborhood, while an amusement center, movie theater and Ferris Wheel complete the theme park ambience. On weekend afternoons musicians play sets on the promenade and at night the place is lit up like the magic kingdom, crowned by weekly fireworks shows.
Residents and tourists alike flock to the village. It’s a cartoonish, fabricated place that should be soulless and cheesy, but it’s not. Despite the name, businesses are almost exclusively local and, refreshingly, chain stores and global brands are notable by their near absence. It’s in turn laid back and lively, a kind of fantasy land that puts a smile on visitors’ faces. This constructed island oasis is a rare example of a tourist development done right and by my reckoning it’s a huge improvement on what was here before.
November
November. The stinger nets have been gathered and stored. The jet skis and inflatable amusements will soon follow. Cleaning operations are underway. The beaches are officially closed. Japanese like to tell visitors that their country has four seasons, and the culture places great emphasis on marking their arrival – think of nation-wide hanami cherry blossom viewing parties in the Spring and late Autumn koyo pilgrimages to witness the kaleidoscopic colors of forests of dying leaves. This is a land of many customs and rules; often the two are interchangeable. There’s a great respect for them, a rigidity and lack of flexibility when it comes to them. And so, though the weather in Okinawa may still beckon beach-goers, it’s November, the time for swimming has passed, and — keeping in mind that exceptions can be found and rules will be broken — the beaches must be closed.
Okinawa Wallpaper
Early this year I began making digital polaroids during my outings around Tokyo — fragments of walls, windows, signage, graffiti, and the like; details that drew my attention. Details that captured the character of the place. These individual images gradually developed into the series Tokyo Wallpaper.
Happy with the results and wanting to develop the idea further, I saw the potential of capturing details of different places using the same tools and aesthetic, expanding the Wallpaper gallery. To that end, I’ve just added a new series — one in which the digital polaroids capture the character of my current surroundings — Okinawa Wallpaper.
6:22
The skies over Okinawa are spectacular: ever-changing canvases painted by wind and cloud and sun. The cloud formations are endlessly fascinating, whether monumental sculpted cumulonimbus masses, smudged impressionistic stratus layers or wispy painterly cirrus streaks. The skies are of course at their most dramatic as the sun is setting, the blue and grey vistas charged with gold. By the shimmering sea is the best place to witness them and the first impulse is to photograph them.
I stood on the beach and did just that, framing a section of the sky over the sea as the sun was low over the horizon. I took a photo — the photo above — and immediately wanted to take more. I decided to make a series of similar photos, to capture and highlight the changing skies. It’s far from an original idea, but I decided to take a photo each day, for a week, framing the sky above the sea from the same spot and at the same time as that first photo: 6:22.
Each day, we’re gifted beautiful variations on a theme, but the best part is the encore that comes after the sun slips below the horizon. On a good day, if the clouds are right, the sky is transformed into a series of breathtaking canvases tinted with a spectrum of crimsons, oranges and pinks that gradually fade to black.
Nowadays
Nowadays I love riding my bike. In the city it wasn’t always so: sidewalks thronged with pedestrians and cyclists going every which way, roads packed with cars but devoid of bike lanes, city air, long riding distances between destinations in such conditions, and parking was difficult. My bike didn’t see much action; I usually took the train.
Nowadays things are different. Living in a small town that is scaled to human proportions, cycling is a joy.
Nowadays parking isn’t a problem. In the backstreets there are few cars or pedestrians or even other cyclists to contend with. Along the seashore the air is clean. The place is easily navigable; I can get most places I need to go within fifteen minutes. The Okinawan climate ensures I always work up a good sweat, but here, where there are no trains, a bicycle still seems the perfect mode of transport.
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