Tales of Worldwide Woe

Our keys travel through a temporal universe before returning the mother-in-law's bag 24 hours later.Getting to Miyako Jima, a tiny island in Okinawa prefecture a skip and a jump from Taiwan took a deal of scrimping and saving. For months I forwent foi gras and Bollinger and had beer instead, the coffers filled and the wife booked a dealio ticket with car and hotel for what we could afford.

For months Shizuka plotted and planned; maps were examined and hotels compared to the point where I was tearing my hair out. Just choose one! I basically yelled. I wanted to go somewhere quiet without too many tourists that was near the beach and where a baby could paddle.

Then Shizuka's mum said she wanted to come.

Which was awesome, because she is an extremely enthusiastic, happy and cheerful person with a violent temper, just like my wife. They do not cope well with small inconveniences or disappointments. Also, while having the in-law along for the ride meant losing tropical holiday sex, all our meals were paid for. I don't know whether this is good or bad. I think bad. I'm not such a huge fan of food.

So we missioned off to Kansai International Airport in the family limosine driven by chief outlaw Dad (he who must put the automatic car into 'park' at every set of lights, for no logical reason), and Hana was an angel all the way to Naha, the big smoke island in the tropical island chain of Okinawa. A wriggling, frequently moaning, contriband-eating angel.

Then an hour in the airport before changing planes for Miyako.

I bought a beer, even though it was one o'clock, and drank it and went to one of the smoking rooms and afterwards suffered numerous complaints about smelly clothing and breath later. These added to the pile already recieved about my intelligence and work ethic.

However Naha airport is a very pleasant place and I enjoyed hanging out with the family there. I felt relatively normal in the crowd. I mean relatively.

We went to a duty free shop to look but it was perfume and watches and bags and no booze or smokes. What a rip. Shizuka didn't want to buy anything even though it was her birthday. She was pissed off for most of the trip. I really wanted to buy something nice for her. I don't understand women at all.

Mikyako Island Airport's tourist information booth.Even the airport was pretty, the drift down to the strip gives you bird's eye views of coral atolls and sandy isles that are totally at odds with the main four Japanese islands: the first rule violated being that 'if it is solid, the climate is not impossible and there's a passable amount of traffic, then a bank of vending machines must be installed', even if it is 12km out in the ocean and liable to immiment submersion. Did you know there is a shop on the top of Mount Fuji?! Enough said.

Okinawa is reportedly a tourist trap so I wanted to go somewhere 'natural, away from the crowds, not touristy'. Hence our Budget Pass delivered us to the biggest tourist resort complex on the island on Miyako, a 35 minutes flight from Okinawa. When we arrived on the 20,000-strong island, we discovered the rental car people got a little tired of waiting around for the flight to land and just kind of wandered off home. It is a small island. So there we were, screaming baby in one arm, baggage dangling this way and that, tetchiness reaching nuclear proportions, and an empty stall with a tropical flower motif.

So after some phonecalls the guy turned up as I was outside, 12 feet away, smoking ('why you always run off when important thing happen!?') and he was gorgeous. All surfer and hair teased and Shizuka said his accent was 'gorgeous, so soft and smooth'. I didn't ask you about his ass, goddamn it.

I discovered that the airport was not equipped with on-site car rental, so off we popped, six hours into our trip of two flights of one hour and thirty minutes and thirty five minutes respectively in a ramshackle van to take possession of our rental car. And me carried along in some kind of disgruntled undertow created by two pissed off women.

The bags did not fit in the hire car.

About half an hour later, which consisted of me listlessly carrying Hana around trying to interest her in random objects in an office, we obtained a slightly larger van, to which our pre-ordered baby-seat was installed, with the rear seat folded down to accommodate the luggage.

Although a little short on luggage space, our hire car was very economical.Shizuka's mother is handsome woman with an outstanding personality. She is, though, a little wide abeam and I spent the 20km journey through the jet-black night hunched atop the folded seat, fingers grasping for the ceiling handgrip so I wouldn't end up in some kind of unseemly position in my beloved's mother's bust. Which is difficult when Shizuka's feet seem a little heavy on the accelerator. And it was pitch, pitch black and the road was narrow with sugar cane hanging heavy over the shoulderless road.

We arrived at last and wow it was magnificent. Couldn't see a thing from the pebble-crete balcony but I could smell the surf and hear it washing against the shore which lay somewhere ahead of a large, glimmering swimming pool.

When we checked in, the concierge purloined our keys and whisked our car away. Which was nice, but in the fluster the keys were handed back to my mo-in-lo, who handed them back to me, and I handed them back to her, then they ended up in the top pocket of my Action Pants.

In an earlier time, if I saw myself wearing these pants I would have kicked my own ass, but there you go.

The hour being late, we deciced to dine at the the univerally accepted overpriced hotel dining suite, a kind of tiki hut built of expensive materials. It was the first of massively expensive and poor quality meals we were to eat in Miyako, but probably we were all very hungry and tired and pissed off -- for some reason my family found the quarters subpar but I cannot imagine why. Large beds, creamy sheets, a flat screen TV and the hiss of the ocean outside... I mean, who would complain?

And so, without exploring the grounds (despite my discovering of land-walking crabs), we retired to bed.

Once I went up to a disused room in the family home and saw a handsome alarm clock. 'I could use that,' I say, swifting it, only having to meekly return it once the prize was discovered. 'Dad uses that', says the missus. 'Mum snores, dad sleeps up there now.'

Snoring is caused by vibration between the manibles, collapsable airway and uvulva, and is best fixed with a punch to the throat'Snore?' I say, chuckling.

Her snores were ground-breaking in a non-metphorical sense. Air-splitting. Real Ggg-ooorrrr action. Every 20-minutes Shizuka would kick her (from her hotel bed; I spent mine on the foldout lounge), she would blather some incoherence and go back to snoring.

We were kept awake for hours that night, so exhausted but unable to sleep. Shizuka yelled at her mom the next morning, after she woke, hale, spry and hearty, at 5am, to go walking on the beach. She just laughed her crazed cackle and flipped on the TV.

So we awoke and took in the view. It was nice from the third floor: lawns, a pool, gardens and the white beach and green ocean. I watched people for a while, and when The Outlaw got home from her walk we took Hana down for a look at the beach.

After Osaka, which by Christ is hot and humid, Okinawa was like grabbing the remote and cranking the aircon as far as it would go in the upward direction. Without the protective curtain of pollution, I could feel the early morning sun savagely stabbing into my skin and eyes. The scene was bewildering: after walls of concrete and steel, to have nothing but blue sky overhead and white sand underfoot took a while to adjust to. So we hastened back to arm ourselves against nature.

Which took about two hours. When I was young, going swimming meant you took your shirt off and jumped in, and afterwards the only annoying thing was damp undies. With girls and a baby, getting ready for a quick swim is like preparing a large-scale land invasion of another country. There was a tent involved, by gad.

So down we trekked, my good self acting in my most comfortable role as a donkey. If I tried to pack or arrange or touch baggage I instantly fall foul of the Law for not doing something properly, so I washed my hands of any technical preparation and contented myself with simple lugging/baby holding duties.

The One-Touch: Erects as collapses in just eight seconds.The beach was lovely and the sun stunningly sharp and hot. My ten dollar glasses managed to filter the harmful rays into my retinas and humiliate me at the same time, which I thought was great value for the money.

Shizuka set up our 'one touch' beach tent, which proved 100 per cent accurate. Once you freed the thing from its bag, it leapt open with the eagerness of a small dog and sprinted down the beach on the breeze. Getting it back into the bag was substantially more difficult. More like wrestling with a large, sandy python.

We swam, and Hana was very uncertain about the ocean. She cried a good deal at first and then grudgingly enjoyed the water in her inflatable ocean boat. Which I blew up, thinking at the time about my six litre lung capacity and also that if I died right now and scientists discovered the remains of an inflated water toy far under the calcified strata, how foul the air inside must be after a longneck of local beer and half a packet of cigarettes.

BEACH KING

We'd had a swim and Shizuka had administered her magic, sending Hana to sleep under a blue towel when along strides Beach King.

Now, coming from Australia I am prone to have a tendancy toward anti-authority. I feel that the beach is a goddamn public place and one can and will do whatever one wants to, be it to pitch a tent or go completely fucking nude and do helicopters down to the water.

At this beach, this sort of behaviour would land you in prison, and I mean the pitching the tent part and not the helicopter part.

You know who he is, you know how he do.One must obtain beach towels from the Beach Hut by means of ticket, and, as is expected, rent a collapsable sun lounge for $15 each, trudge to the alloted beach umbrella, and sit meekly under it until one tires of the pursuit and wanders on back to the hotel.

We of course did nothing of the sort. We got our towels and performed some one-touch magic, placed our bags inside and had a swim. When Hana was asleep, along came Beach King.

Beach King is the Boss o' the Beach. He Runs the Hut. By his bountiful and generous hand do beach towels, kayaks and peddle-boats be bestowed on the wretched hoards of savage tourists. He decides where you sit, and whether or not you may meet his eye. Beach King.

BEACH KING!

Do you not behold my naked, deeply tanned and muscular torso? Do you not understand that I wear only boardshorts to work every day? And sunglasses? Small, rectangular rainbow reflector ones? Do you not see my tan, and your own blotchy white freckly touristness?! It is I! BEACH KING! Behold my magnificence as I strut down the beach, tugging a catamaran into position and remonstrating a youngster for playing too gaily with a ball.

Beach King told us in curt tones to move our shanty one-touch away from the hotel frontage because I don't know why, just because. 'It's not proper' was the response I got from the missus when I asked in outrage.

He told us to take it down past the hotel beach umbrellas and 'pitch' it there. I am talking, here, about the One Touch model. A mere strip of fabric set between high-tensile collapsable poles. Anyway, as soon as Hana awoke we (and by that I mean I) carried the tent to the outer verges. Repitched, we went for a swim.

Two seconds after I dived a loudspeaker, carefully concealed in a pot of tropical plants, started blaring. Despite being moved off the hotel beach, we were now being reprimanded for swimming outside the 'safe' zone. So we were forced out of Umbrella Central and now must commute to Beach City!? My god, who the fuck are these people. I was fuming. Fucking volcano furious. Fucking Beach King on the Mic. The sun went to the poor mang's head.

Anyway, it took a long time to pack everything up and go home. Oh, yes, now the fun started.

We were hungry. Hungry. It's quarter to two and no-one had beakfast and after showers and so forth we were ready to fire the van up and head into town and gorge ourselves.

Those... fucking... keys!'Where's the key?' someone asked.

I don't know, I said. The key for the car hand been handed to me, and the last I remembered it was in my shorts.

Jesus God, if you could have only witnessed the fallout. It was truly bitter and angry. I was on my hands and knees searching under bureaus and bed, in my pockets again and again, ripping back sheets while Shizuka fumed like a stick of magnesium on the bed, hotter and hotter.

'You know, this is all your fault,' she spat. 'You the one. You the one so irresponsible.'

It was truly awful. Hungry, salty, the hire car possibly stolen. She sent me to the front desk and then the restaurant we went to the night before, it was humiliating and just awful. I returned emptyhanded and she did not relent.

Finally, sexy ass-teased her hire car boy was summoned with a spare key: I was in absolute disgrace. It was 4.30 and nobody had eaten.

At this moment I truly considered suicide. I had fucked up... I knew the key was safe but as I fruitlessly went through pockets for the 20th time, I knew it was just around somewhere.

The cost for the lost key was $300.

'I'll pay,' I said miserably.

'Of course,' said Shizuka, to whom I hand my entire paycheck every week.

'You ruined my birthday,' said Shizuka in the supermarket, later on. I felt horrible. This long-planned holiday fucked beyond recognition.

I know now what happened. The key was passed to and fro, I put it in my pocket and, afraid it might slip out, put it into The Outlaw's bag at the restaurant.

The whole time we were searching through my pathetic sack of clothes, she never even looked in her own bag. Which is where the keys were. Discovered the next day.

Artist's impression found in the menu at Miyako's sole Italian restaurant.Under a storm we went searching for a restaurant but there were none to be found open. Finally we settled on a barbecue place, then the women insisted we move because the service was to slow. By now I was praying for a gun, and it wasn't me I was planning to kill.

After a very medicore meal at an Italian place, we got back in the car and Hana screamed and screamed and screamed all the way home.

That night I flipped on the TV. By which I mean I located the remote, and spent some time pushing buttons, at first with the detached, cool interest of a scientist, then with more concentration, trying swift combinations. My experiments were fruitless and the screen remained blank. I tried to remove the batteries and examine them, but the back was screwed down with screws, probably because this happens so often.

Suddenly the TV sprang into life and once the tube warmed, I was surprised and delighted by the sight of an animated young naked woman performing fellatio on a man. I am not kidding.

'We have free porn!' I yelled, overwhelmed. 'This hotel is fucking awesome!' Shizuka glared at me on my makeshift lounge-bed from her four-poster. 'Turn it off. We have to pay for that.'

Her mum was having a shower, so I was safe. 'No way. Normally you have to press heaps more buttons to get this shit. It's free. I want to see if he finished cleaning the pool.'

'You idiot!' she yells. ' You pressed the pay button!'

'Look, this is just a regular remote. There is no pay button. See?' I held it up for her inspection. 'I could be a small child and see this. I just pressed this one...' and the remote was snatched away as The Outlaw wandered out in a towel, and the vibe in the room became more subdued. 'I know which button it is for later,' I threatened.

You can just make out our One-Touch at the top right of the picture.The next day was better. We went down to the beach and the packing was more organised and slightly quicker, only two hours this time. The beach was gorgeous and this time Hana really dug swishing around. The sun was brutal though, I basically bathed in 50 plus and still came out like a half-cooked lobster. Having a baby in this environment is hard, but she didn't get burnt thanks to my vigilance steering her ocean boat away from the glare and... well okay, it was all Shizuka.

I saw Beach King again and after the joy of Hana in the water, and after our encounter the day before, the following scene was easily the highlight of my trip. I was laughing, man, laughing it up like a man who is dangerously close to hysteria.

A couple... they sat next to us at breakfast, an older not-bad looking guy and an attractive middle-aged woman, they looked in love... strolled along the beach to hire a catamaran. The wind was tufty and garrolous, bending our One-Touch on its ear.

This is probably what Old Guy had in mind when he parted with his $100 per half hour.Older Man was not daunted by the conditions, and he looked like he was a pro when taking possession of the craft from Beach King. He pointed out things on the boat, speaking in confident, almost arrogant tones. I thought Beach King would at least give him a run-through about the art of sailing, but even he seemed quelled by Older Guy's confidence.

And so the boat was pushed off the beach: I felt for them having the entire beach-full of people watching them curiously from the shade of their tents and their $15 chairs.

The rudders at the stern were pointed skyward, and one of the gusts that painted the green water dark blue grabbed the sail and sent the boat hurtling over the swimming area safety ropes and into the crowd of swimmers. My mirth grew and grew as the Older Man scrabbled about, the boat knocking bathers in the head. Old Guy was frantically tugging on ropes at the front of the boat while his girlfriend sat in the stern, apologising helplessly to the swimmers rubbing their heads in their wake. Beach King was helpless as the boat sailed gaily through the crowd of swimmers.

In a panic, Beach King dived in and struck out in pursuit of the errant craft, but by that time Older Guy realised that the rudders were up, had drifted over the ropes and into the safety of the bay, tracing graceful 360s. Beach King swam back, glasses crusted with salt, which for some reason gave me immense pleasure.

The rest of the holiday was fairly uneventful. We ate mediocre meals at overpriced restaurants, toured the island in the car, I saw a snake, and then it was time to go home.

The end.