Oki Life

I’ve been living on this beautiful island called Okinawa for 1 year now. It has been one of the most challenging choices I’ve made to move to a country that I do not know the language or the culture, but luckily for me the locals are very friendly, tolerant, and patient, and often understand english.

Looking back over my time here, I regret not making more of an effort to learn the language, something I plan to address very soon, but I’ve also learnt a lot about Japan, and Okinawa and the people that make this place so enchanting.

This post is just to share some of the photos of Okinawa, which capture my time here and also to assist me in reflecting on the allure of this island.

These represent but a fraction of my experience here, but are all windows to times I’ve felt happy, wonder and at peace.

I’m not sure how long I’ll be here or where I may go next but these photos remind me that beauty can be found everywhere and anywhere, you just have to open your eyes to it.

I expect that I’ll pause here a while longer, as I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.

The land of Elves and Vikings

It has been a long while since I posted anything. What can I say, life got busy.

I’ve moved to another country for work. Whilst this is not the first time I’ve worked in another country it is the first where I’ve not had a firm end date in mind. Also to make it even more scary its a country where I don’t speak the language, so no idea how that is going to work out. but audentes Fortuna iuvat…

Anyway as I read over some of my previous posts, cringing from the horrendous grammar and punctuation, the OCD part of me wanted to re write it all. But the lazy, don’t give a crap part of me, as often does, won out and I’ve decided to accept my ineptitude.

As I considered what to write next as I have dozens of half formed posts, I realised much of them are about IT or wine and not many are about books or travel which are some of my other interests. I think I generally shy away from these topics as they reveal me more and I’m just a shy guy.

But riding on the courage of my recent move to another country I’ve decided to post a bit more about travel and my experiences and of course about some of the wine, whiskey and sake I’ve enjoyed along the way.

These posts will be in no chronological order, as again I am too lazy thus will start with a recent trip I made to the land of ice, which turned out to be very green.

Iceland
I spent a week in Iceland and I must admit, it is like no other place I have ever been. Although to be honest this is my 2nd time to Iceland the first was spent in a hotel and office with brief but exhilarating car rides between, thus I feel that first trip does not count.

Iceland was cold, no surprise there, but what is perhaps a little surprising is the lack of ice. The country (admittedly the half I saw) is covered, in most part, by bright green moss, which grows fervently over the volcanic rocks.

Much like this:
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It is bad form to walk on the moss as this be the domain of elves, but otherwise it is occasionally used from flavoring in alcoholic beverages to an ingredient in bread, medicine, skin care or in an emergency as a food source.

I didn’t try it myself in its purest form but many products in Iceland contain it.

Another noticeable thing about Iceland are the waterfalls. They are dotted around the country in many forms and shapes, but all hold some wonder, like where does all that water come from? errr maybe the gigantic glaciers as seen in the background in the above photo, perhaps?.

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The capital and largest city of Iceland is Reykjavík, which is as colourful as it’s inhabitants.

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Whilst the climate is much to cold to grow vines and produce wine, it is not too cold to produce beer which tends to be adorned with some visage of the Icelandic’s proud (if you don’t think to deeply about it) heritage of vikings.

This beverage is enhanced with what turned out to be a local favorite cuisine, otherwise known and hotdogs. But I must admit these are not quiet like any other hotdog I’ve had elsewhere and are very good.

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When I had my fill of the local beer and enough to eat I took a nice stroll along one of the amazing beaches, made of black sand (volcanic sand) where I finally came across some ice, perhaps not exactly where I had expected to find it, but it was nonetheless beautiful.

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Finally, and probably what most people come to Iceland for, the awe inspiring Northern Lights or Aurora Boreali. Unfortunately not having a decent camera on hand the photos I took cannot do it justice. But I would whole heartily encourage everyone to make the trip to see these breathtaking lights in the sky!

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More trips to follow!

Whiskey in the land of the rising sun

When I first came to Japan in around 2006, it was for just a breif 4 night stop over on my way back from the US. I was young and even more naive back then (now I’m older but probably just as naive) and I did not appreciate whiskies as much as I do now. However I had read about some Japanese whiskey and was keen to try some whilst in Japan. Also back then finding aged Japanese whiskey was relatively simple, it could even be found in the local electrical goods store?!

At this point my experience with whiskey was largely limited to those produced in Scotland and Ireland, and given my budget, I tended to drink what was perhaps not the best representation from these locations.

Whilst I do not think that whiskey needs to be aged or expensive to be good, just like wine, there are some very good cheap, young examples, however given my knowledge on the subject I’d perhaps not yet had the understanding to seek these examples out.

Anyway, as I mentioned I was in Japan for a few days and intent on trying some of the local whiskeys. I didn’t have it in mind at the time to buy any bottles but rather wanted to find some little hidden bars where I could sample a variety of what Japan had to offer. To my surprise the bars offered some very good aged local whiskey at a very reasonable price. The rest is slightly blurred… with time obviously.

On my next visit to Japan a few years later, recalling the great experience I had, I decided to buy a couple bottles of whiskey, which from memory were the 21yo Nikka Pure Malt and a 18yo Yamazaki, which I believe cost me around $100 to $150AUD at the time.

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After drinking these in Aus with some friends, also along with some good Scotch, it became apparent how good these Japanese whiskies were. On subsequent trips to Japan I always tired to take some time to explore and find a bar, to try some local whiskey. I also discovered that the owners of these bars, who were typically the same person serving the whiskey, were very interesting characters. It somehow seemed possible to share our passion for whiskey despite the language barrier, perhaps after a few glasses it became easier, or just perhaps the primal incoherence of whiskey addled humans is universal.

More recently, from around 2014 Japan whiskey was very popular globally and unfortunately finding those cheap ages bottle became very hard, and typically very expensive. However for those of us, determined they can still be found in some small bars which still pour great old whisky for a reasonable price.

A recent example of this, is my last couple of trips to Japan were I found these on offer. Which are obviously not local but when Japanese whiskey is not available some old and unique bottles of Scotch can still be found such as these:

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Japan has a warm place in my heart, and not just from the whiskey, but as a place were a little dark bar which only seats about 10 people, can be found situated in the middle of the city, on a crowded streets filled with lights and high rise buildings, and the owner is still pouring whiskey at prices representative of what they were when he bought the bottles many years ago.