busy, busy
July 26, 2005
With only about two weeks left on the island, I’ve been rushing around a lot lately. Some things I’ve done:
Jen came to visit from Fukuoka last week, and we drank in the bars and cafés of Naha, then came across to Izena for the first of the (five) summer festivals. We also went for what might be my last visit, for a while anyway, to a nearby uninhabited island on whose beaches I’ve spent several lazy afternoons in the last two years.
Last weekend a shakuhachi (Japanese flute) teacher came to visit the island, and I ended up strumming the chords to ‘Yesterday’ on the guitar while he played a haunting shakuhachi version of the melody against the sound of surf breaking on the beach. This sort of thing is why it’s very good to know a couple of standards…
Tomorrow my successor arrives, so I’m heading into the city to pick him up and bring him back to the island. We’ll overlap for the best part of two weeks, which I’m expecting to be strange but which might also hopefully be fun. We’ll see.