sunny carlton, pics are working

Well, I'm sitting out in Jodie and Simon and Kai's back garden in a T-shirt and it is actually so glary I can hardly see the screen. Yes, sun in England, who woulda thunk it?

Going back till last week and getting here, which is where i believe i last left you: the flight itself was kinda okay but it was long long long and by the time we got to Germany it was the next morning, i think, but only five in the afternoon and all a bit confusing. Huey and I decided to drink our last bottle of duty-free on our last night in Tokyo while we were packing, convincing ourselves that it would help us sleep on the flight, but o course the opposite happened and we were awake pretty much the whole time, drinking, mainly. Ah, gin. I love you girl. We paid for our 24-hour journey - well, i did, anyway - and didn't really sleep much for the next two days, which made me say strange things and feel very zombie-like. Better now and feeling normal again.

I'm in sleepy Carlton at the moment, which is a one-street village in the middle of England. Most of you know this but i lived here nine years ago when i was 19, and visited again in 2001 when i finished uni, so in some ways it feels like coming home again - everything's familiar and peaceful and GREEN. Our next door neighbours, Brian and Joyce, are a 60 year-old couple who love animals and have no children, and apart from Joey, Simon and Kai are my best friends here - surrogate parents and drinking buddies all in one. I went round to theirs last night and drank vodka and cranberry – their drink of choice, and also mine and Cliffy's – and sat there chatting and smoking and catching up, thinking to myself that i wouldn't rather be anywhere else in the world. I'm feeling pretty happy.

Up the road is a pub I used to work at called The Gate Hangs Well, and I haven't been yet but I'm looking forward to catching up with all the farmers, especially old Joe Cuthbert, who is 88 and plays still plays darts on Monday nights. I asked after him and Joycie asked Bob Edmonds (who is a wealthy old bachelor who owns Field Farm down the road), who told her about Joe being at the Gate on Monday. Bob is also the town gossip so he would have told everyone by now that I'm back. I've been walking Bernie the bassethound up and down but have so far avoided seeing anyone, which is cool, 'cause after the ceaseless lights of Tokyo I am enjoying the downtime. There's a World Cup party for the whole village at Field Farm next week and I'm gonna try and wait and catch up with everyone on masse.

Joey is now 38 weeks pregnant and – I'm not biased because she is my sister – looks absolutely beautiful. She is doing really well, still mobile and non-stressed, although i am a bit nervous because she hasn't packed a hospital bag yet and baby's due any day now... from my time in baby magazines i learned that you're sposed to have one good to go from 31 weeks.

Huey's in London doing his own thing for a bit and NJ's on a yacht in Croatia with his friend big Wal. I miss our gang of three. I'm not really sure what i'm doing yet... probably going on a holiday in late June with my friend Shelldon from Macc, near Manchester, to her folk's place in Portugal. NJ (i miss you) turns 25 on June 17 and if he's in London i'm gonna go down, and try and catch up with Dan and Carls and James and Nath and Si while I'm there. I also have to go to Amsterdam at some stage before July 3rd before my visa offer expires, so i'm just playing it by ear at the moment because a lot of it depends on when Joey has her little one. Me and Bri have ten pounds on the fact it's a girl, almost everyone else thinks it's a boy... we shall see, we shall see...

It's Simon's b'day today and we've been to the Farmers Markets up in Market Bosworth, out to a garden centre to spend Si's vouchers on plants, which Si and Kai are unpotting now. Later on we're going down to Si's parents Chris and Neil's for Sunday dinner - roast beef for everyone else and salmon for me - as you can probably tell, it's all pretty laidback and relaxing here in general and just the tonic for now.

I've got a mobile number here for text/calls. the other number will be on for a bit but not forever - given the title of this blog you can probably guess im not that stoked on the idea of two phones for very long. If you're in Oz the number you need for your mobile is +447900307219.

Right - birthday cake's ready – gotta go, hope everything's sunny where you are.

xE

PICS: no order*** figured out finally how to get them up using a PC
* joey, kai and huey
* birthday boy counting his cards
* bernie the bassethound
* my neighbour and best drinking buddy, bri - shaking his butty at me
* my other mate over the back fence. moo

leaving, on a jet plane...

So this is our last night in Tokyo, we are leaving about 8am Oz time on Wednesday morning (tomorrow), and door-to-door it's going to be about a 20-hour trip. Yuksticks. NJ and Hugh are discussing sleeping pill options at present. We are waiting for James to get home at 10pm, he is teaching. I taught another couple of English classes tonight and I am waiting for someone to cook me dinner (i've had offers, but no one is acting on them). I am currently getting dissed, again, about being on my laptop. NJ says it's based more on anger* than humour... thanks for clarifying that, bro.

When James gets back we are going to pop some champagne and have a toast looking out at the lights of Tokyo. Gonna miss being here with James, Tamaki and Alina. We've had a really full, rich Japanese experience and it's mostly due to those three. I would like to get out later and take some more photos of the love hotels for a story but the trains stop at 12 and I haven't packed yet, so maybe not.

I'll leave you with some random photos that didn't make it into any other posts. Mobile will be functioning again from Thursday morning, but for text only, please. See you in the U of K.

xLisey

* Ngs has further clarified, and says he said "frustrated". it's not a big deal either way.

sapporo sakura + last night

More cherry blossoms... in sapporo, which is as far north as we got.

Last night we had a BBQ down by the river with the fam plus NJ's new best mate Barry, a smashin' cockney geezer who teaches at Rivercity (who also once made it to number 10 in the German charts for a Jamaican reggae rap called "Won't hold back for the Union Jack"). Huey's new best mate, Nagata-San, who we met by the river, invited us back after we got rained out to his swanky drawing room in the apartment block next to ours. NJ and Barry kicked on (and on) and were both out for the count today.

Alina just keeps getting cuter and i am really going to miss her when we leave on wednesday.

cherry blossoms - hakodate

hey JK,

these are for you, honeypie. 'cause it's spring here there's all sorts of beautiful flowers in bloom everywhere, my favourite – apart from the sakura – are the tulips.

leecy
x

sapporo, hotel rio

Last night we stayed a love hotel. We ALL stayed in a love hotel. I was keen to check one out because I wanted to write a travel story about these uniquely Japanese facilities. Love hotels are found in most major cities in Japan, usually on the road in or out of town. They are identifiable by their neon lights and suggestive names, ie Hotel Z, La Mer, Blue Nights, Hotel Rize, or the somewhat unoriginal, Hotel Love. They are actually one of the best accommodation options for us, as they are inexpensive and you pay for the room rather than per body. Usually each room has a particular theme - like an underwater theme or Arabian nights or some other period piece... whatever you want really, depending on how much you're willing to fork out. You can pay for a 'rest' ie three hours, or for a 'stay' ie the night, and if you check in after ten or eleven it is much cheaper. They're very popular and we saw stacks of sketchies sneaking in to them while we were out looking for one.

The late check-in is in part the reason that upon arriving in Sapporo - Japan's fifth largest city - we decided to while away the afternoon in a park, called Omori, i think, that runs east to west through the city, separating the north and south (the city is easy to get around in because it works on a grid system). We took it in turns to go and update our respective blogs (mine was the bathroom mission) and had a few drinks and just watched people walking by. Omori is where all Sapporo's major events are held, like public gatherings and meetings, etc. No hippies, thankfully. There wasn't a great deal going on on this particular Wednesday except for this guy dressed all in black who was rolling around on the grass with his mate, much to the delight of passing schoolgirls. We were befriended by two Japanese girls, Non and T, who didn't know each other but both came up to chat. We all ended up drinking and talking there for about four hours, till we decided to go and get some dinner at about eight.

It was good going with locals cause they knew the way to this secret ramen alley - every city in Japan is famous for a particular style of cuisine and ramen is Sapporo's - where i chose a restaurant based on its paisley green and blue seventies' style seats, which turned out to be a mistake as they only served pork. So I had to skull a jar of sake real quick on the way out the door to a restaurant across the way. The ramen was really, really good, and we had fun with the girls at dinner, after which it wasn't quite eleven so we went to a bar, which was a One Coin bar, meaning just that - you can drink whatever you want for a 500 yen coin ($6). Actually, we could have drunk whatever we wanted for two hours for 2000 yen, but we were already well, well, on our way by then (I suspect I was the worst off, thanks to another jar of sake at dinner. Hey, i dont drink beer and your options are limited otherwise).

(We're on leg 2 of another 3 x 3hr train journey back to Tokyo. James says we're going to start looking like shinkansen soon, a comment we don't fully understand...)

So we left, and Nom's friends had left her in town, so we offered for us to stay with us, and T wanted to come back for a drink, so the five of us walked the short distance to the love hotel zone. I had an military-style strategy in place about how we were going to sneak everyone in there, which Huey thought was a little over the top, but anyway... read on.

The first place, Hotel Mer, was too expensive, so we split up and NJ and T and I went in one direction and Hugh and Nom in another. They found a place first, for 7000 yen, which is a good price for the three of us as it's normally around 3000-3800 each for an inn or backpackers. They had walked so far we couldn't find them for ages, but we did eventually and Nom came down to get us. Love hotels are known for their discretion, given the nature of the business (they have license plate covers if you need them), so we thought we should be able to slip in in pairs fairly easily, up to Room 701. Not so. Nom insisted I go in with T, which I thought was a little weird (she was probably sweet on NJ), so we went first, and about five minutes later those two came up. We got busted right away - the phone was ringing as we walked into the room - and the guy at the desk said words to the effect to Nom that he knew there were four of us (there were five), so we had to either pay for another room or get out two people out in five minutes. We called back and asked for a refund to go and try somewhere else, but he said something about us being in there for half an hour already.... so blah, blah, blah, the girls had to go. We felt really bad abut the abrupt ending to the night but T lived in town so Nom was going to stay with her, so it was all kind of okay. Harshed our high though, and it was a real shame we didn't have someone who could read hiragana with us because there was a telephone-size karaoke book, massive TV and two mics in there. Ack, well, you can't win them all, so we all crashed out in the king size bed. A strange end to a great day. Check-out was at a very civilsed eleven, so we got to shower and use all their free stuff before splitting and doing a quick sakura sweep on the way back to the train station. I'll do a separate post for all those ones, Jesse.

I sat and wrote a description this morning - after my gentle morning-show-guided tai chi - in case I do write a story about these hotels of love ... one i get paid for, I mean. :) I'll copy it below, with some censoring in the name of taste as my nephews read this blog...

HOTEL RIO: ROOM 701
Directly inside the door there is a king-size bed. At the end of the bed there is a massive TV - how big I don't know - maybe 100cm? Below it is a video player, and set into the side of the faux marble cabinet are two karaoke mics. There's a large karaoke book on the coffee table. There's also a huge stereo and two remotes which between them could launch a rocket into space, but we can't work. The walls are eggshell, with a green glitter pinstripe. The bedhead is two-tone suede: blue and mauve, and on each side there is a ... lamp. The overhead lights are white and red and spotlights. On one side on the bed, near the window, there is a bedside table. On it are ... plus a telephone, and a writing pad with loose sheets rather than a whole pad you can steal. There's a pen and lighter with Hotel Rio's dodgy logo on them.

On the other side of the bed there is a small two-seater blue vinyl couch and in front of it is a faux-marble coffee table. On it is an plastic binder folder with an extensive food menu, also in Japanese. Behind the coach on the opposite wall are two cupboards, one containing a microwave and small bar fridge. The microwave is empty. Inside the small bar fridge there are 14 separate compartments each containing a drink of some kind. Can't read most of them because it is written in hiragana, but can see ice tea and coke and lemon coke and something called Calypso. I can't make out what are in most of the freezer compartments but I can see a Haagen-Dazs Crispy Sandwich, which looks vanilla.

In the other cupboard there are some coat hangers, a couple of shelves holding some tea cups and a couple of elaborately overdone glasses on a stand with a gold corkscrew, and an urn. There's a basket with coffee and tea stuff, and nuts and nibblies. Below it, is a small vending machine named Fashion Shopping which contains curry noodles, baby oil, nail polish, contact-lens cleaner, a 1000-yen phonecard and some breath mints, among other things.

The bathroom offers the chance of a Japanese-style bath with a small footstool, bucket, and shampoo, conditioner and body wash. The shampoo and conditioner are for damaged hair. There's the option of a showerhead or a tap. The bath is a spa, deep and with an option for a whirlpool. .... (we didn't have a bath). The tiles are a dull pink with a flower pattern border running through the middle, the type you would expect to see in the bathroom of an English pub. On the bathroom sink there's facewash, toothbrush holders and a basket containing two toothbrushes, a hairbrush, showercap, washcloth, razor, hair gel and hair wax, all wrapped in separate Disney-character-imitation plastic wrappers. There's a hairdryer, which doesn't work, and a curler which does - just about everything you could possibly need should you find yourself staying over unexpectedly. Except deodorant.

PICS: no particular order (there's no love hotel ones 'cause they all turned out too dark or too flashed out)

* crazy dancing man in Omari
* dusk in Omari
* Sapporo - Suskino - at night
* ordering our ramen... T is on Hugh's left, Nom on his right
* me, NJ, T and Hugh

hakodate to sapporo + pics

i'm posting this in a toilet cubicle next to the free wireless access that yahoo sapporo won't let us use in their building, so gotta be quick, but...

We made it. :)

We spent last night in Hakodate, a sleepy port city and stayed at the NiceDay Inn with a nice Chinese lady called Mrs Saito. This morning I woke at 6.30am, showered and woke the boys up at 7am, to go check out the Morning Market, which is right next to the 'Day Inn. I won't quote them, suffice to say next time I cop an earful of that I'll head out alone (actually NJ suggested I do just that). Lots of seafood hustle and bustle, a was a little underwhelmed for once, maybe it was the sight of all those crabs but I planned to eat a lot of seafood in Hakodate and found I couldn't.

After breakfast - we have eaten out of Lawson for three days now - we caught a streetcar up to Goryo-Kaku, a Western-style fort that is the oldest in Japan. Goryo-Kaku is shaped like a pentagon, with five points and a moat all around and you can walk up on the ridges behind the moat. Ambling. There, we saw sakura trees, 1500 of them. The sakura season finishes up there in the next few days, and it was a bit breezy off the water so there were petals flying everywhere, it was quite spectacular. Mrs Saito says Sapporo's sakura will be in full bloom, and even more beautiful.

Here are some pics... Oh, also, I forgot to mention that apart from the cherry blossoms everywhere, up north is really beautiful, rurally-good Japan. We are near Toya on the shinkansen at the moment and the ocean is to our right and mountains to our left. It looks kinda European and it's sunny and warm but biting at night.

Last night we arrived late and went down to the piers and had a few drinks. Not long after, a Subaru-WRX carload of 20-year-olds showed up. One, Aki, was dressed in her pajamas, which was an all-in-one Godzilla suit, with stilettos. There's not much to do in Hakodate at night, and neither group could speak the other's language but we chatted for a bit. I was trying to get them to drive us up to the lookout... but I don't think there was enough room.

Everywhere we go people - specially young people - want to chat... most of the time we oblige, but it is a bit weird. People laugh at everything we say, even in Japanese (no, especially in Japanese). Still, everyone is lovely. Last night on the last leg of our nine-hour marathon we were waiting at a station called Hachinoche and this twenty-something guy from Tokyo who was visiting his family came up and introduced himself and his family, asked what we were doing there etc. We chatted for a bit and then off he went to catch up with his family who had walked ahead - and about five minutes later he came tearing back down the escalators with two plastic bags: his mother had bought us dinner (i think she was impressed we were chasing the sakura, personally), some sweet rice, nuts, snacks, the local cloudy apple juice, coke for NJ and coffee for Hugh... it was amazing. Actually, I'll put him up here too 'cause he was lovely. I don't think I've said that before - how kind and generous almost every Japanese person we have met has been to us... there have been so many occasions. I've been sleeping on all the shinkansen and on the way down to Hiroshima I woke up and this tiny old lady had put her hand-knitted blanket over me to keep me warm.

Jesse - I'll hit you with full cherry blossom force when we get to Sapporo. Get set!!!

x

PS Dont know why these pics didnt work the first time - i blame yahoo. i've given up trying to number them cause this blog site always jumbles them up anyway...

* Aki - chick in Hakodate zipping around in her boy's WRX on a tuesday night in her all-in-one Godzilla PJs and stilettos
* Nice guy whose family bought us dinner in Hachioche shinkansen station (we had just eaten out of Lawson again, too)
* Scallop porn
* A cool 'older' person at the Morning Market (did you like that, mum?)
* Sakura, at the five-star fort

starts here + more pics

So you probably caught the desperation in my last message about the cherry blossoms being in full bloom and us being nearly three-quarters of the country away from them. There is an online cherry blossom (sakura) forecast that is updated every few days, which tracks the sakura blooming dates. the sakura flower in order from the bottom of Japan to the top, depending on when the weather gets warm. The sakura season is generally march-april (early spring) but last winter here in japan was one of the coldest in decades, so here in the middle of may, we still thought we were in with a chance for catching them up north at the top of japan. the sakura are pretty unpredictable as it all depends on the weather, and once they bloom are only around for 7-10 days, then that's it till next spring.

in our first week here we were checking the forecast every day and we originally planned to spend a few days in tokyo and then head directly up to sapporo in the north. but the forecast was saying they would bloom up north maybe may 14-22 (we'd missed them in tokyo by a couple of weeks) and we are here till the 24th, so we thought we'd head south first to kyoto, osaka and hiroshima and then do the cherry blossoms last, as a perfect ending to our japanese experience. it wasn't to be. the three of us split on sunday... i went home to tokyo with my cold, NJ nearly got booked in kyoto (for what, he is not sure) so he followed suit later that day, and huey was in kusatsu with yukari and her family. somehow, between the three of us, we forgot about the sakura. about midnight last night i thought i'd check in and see everything was on track and found all the forecasts had been removed from the sites we were checking, ie, party's over, folks, nothing to see here.

we got very despondent but yesterday morning we woke up sober and somewhat hopeful. our most gracious host yukari, for whom i dont have the words to express the thousand kindnesses she does for us in a day, was up at 8am researching possible ways to get up there ... check this link below, it is FAR...

http://www.lonelyplanet.com/worldguide/destinations/asia/japan/ - click on the map

check it - kyoto to hakodate today, hakodate to sapporo tomorrow morning

... so then yukari called up a hotel at random and the receptionist confirmed that yes, the sakura are in full bloom, right now. so we thought and deliberated and drank coffee and then thought some more and decided - we gotta go for it. for me personally, i wanted to go less for me than for my cool-as-funk nephew, Jesse, who has been writing me lovely messages about seeing the flowers. so i thought, yep, jesse, i'll get you those damn pics, even if it does mean 12 hours of train travel....

i should mention also (we are on the train for our first three-hour leg of the trip, lets face it, there's time), that one of the factors we had to take into consideration in making our decision was whether or not we could survive 12 hours travelling together. we are, in a sense, one big happy family, but things came apart yesterday in spectacular fashion, the build up of a few weeks... stuff. it started off nice enough: huey and i spent the day in kyoto together, walking around mainly gardens and one temple, huey says 'seen one temple, seen them all', and i tend to agree) and we went and met up with NJ at 3.30pm at kyoto station where he was arriving from tokyo, having recovered sufficiently from his near-booking experience to give kyoto another go.

we caught a bus over to gion, where we spent the afternoon walking the streets, geisha spotting. i saw what i thought was the japanese paparazzi in one of the back streets so we set up a small camp by a river and watched what they were watching. i had the sense something big was going to happen - the boys, not so much, but we beers by this point so they were happy. anyway, after about half an hour i saw this geisha coming down the street and i did a running walk (nobody runs here) up to some bushes and crouched expertly behind them, camera poised. after a minute or so i realised that she seemed to be POSING for photos, so i went up and took a few (see below). now, i dont want anyone to take this the wrong way, but that geisha seemed a little ... well, plump, for a geisha. but she had the full gear on,and i was pleased enough with my scoop so off we went down to the main river, where we drank some more and ate some delicious snacks from Lawson (a convenience store that has successfully figured out KFC's not-so-secret recipe) and watched this street performance artist doing some weird interpretive dance thing. we called her crazy geisha, and not-so kindly, the geisha that john west rejected. see also the photo below and you will catch our drift. we found out later when we got home, that geisha no. 1, was not in fact a real geisha, but just someone who had hired all the gear and was made up for the day, which you can pay through the nose to do here if you desire. no mind. anyway, it was a great afternoon, gion had a great vibe and we headed home just after dark to yukari and the promise of learning how to make my favourite japanese dish, okonomiyaki.

this is where the story takes a turn. the river was right by the subway, and i suggested (hugh says insisted) we take the subway back to kyoto station for our local train to kusatsu. we got on in the opposite direction but figured that out after a few stops, no big deal. then, we alighted at kyoto station but it wasn't the same kyoto station where the local trains go from, apparently. i maintain that it was, but my navigational skills are pretty dodgy, so i cant argue that point too strongly. hugh set us off out of the station and on this super sketchy under-the-bridge-downtown kind of journey, which was about a kilometre AROUND the edge of the station, which we could not see for most of the time. hugh kept saying, trust me, and i started stomping (we had been walking all day, mind you) and he took revenge by drinking my last drink. uhuh-huh-huh-huh. perhaps i should skip ahead here. we found the station eventually, just as hugh said we would, when nj said he was just going to duck up to the bathroom before we got on our final train home.

20 minutes later, still no nj. hugh and i split up to look, and to spare you some details, when all finally met up again, some harsh words were spoken, between nj and i, and hugh and i. funny, they didn't fight with each other. (nj just corrected me, he had harsh words with hugh too, before they found me). so the rest of the trip home was silent, and the rest of the evening, a bit tense. then we found out about the cherry blossoms, and that pretty much brings you up to speed. we all agreed this morning, it was all just a MIScommunication, and we are all friends again now, but you can understand why we were a little nervous about a 12-hour train trip. but it'll be fine, there's plenty to look forward to up north, and if nothing else, we will get to sleep some of the way. we can't be sure the sakura will still be there tomorrow - such is their fleeting beauty - but we have our fingers and toes crossed. there's a couple of brewery tours up there and some good onsen (japanese hot springs), so it's all gonna be okay either way.

i should also mention that we found this amazing second-hand store the other day in nagahama (halfway between kyoto and osaka, where kim and yukari drove us on sunday - will catch up on kyoto when we get a decent internet connection again) and i bought the most beautiful light green tea and bowl set in light green for 700 yen, or $8), and various other items. we had planned to go back to tokyo in a few days and drop all this off, but as our plans have changed, i am now lugging the damn thing around with me, along with my backpack and laptop. but i won't complain... i promised.

xE

kyoto

We're in Kyoto, staying with Yakari and Kim and Junior. We took our eyes off the cherry blossoms and they have bloomed up north, now just considering whether or not to haul butt up there tomorrow (we think it'll take about a day from here), or ... dunno, really. I am gutted, in denial, hopeful, living on a prayer, etc.

x

Been trying to call home but having serious issues with dialling codes and phone cards. Sorry, mum.

back in toyko... sniffle

hey sportsfans,

I'm back in tokyo for the night 'cause i caught NJ's stinking cold, slept all the way back on the train and then all this afternoon. I'm feeling a little better now - going to meet back up with Hugh and Yukari in Kyoto tomorrow morning (just three lazy hours on the shinkansen = more sleep).

Hiroshima was beautiful, glad we went. Last night in Osaka on the other hand, not so much. I'll write that one up when I get my strength back.

The funniest thing that happened to us in Hiroshima, apart from NJ and Hugh getting mobbed by schoolgirls, was meeting this odd lady in the Peace Park. She came up to us and kept pointing and yelling excitedly at NJ for ages, till i figured out she was saying "Jude Law, Jude Law", and she then decided that Hugh looked like Josh Hartnett (who is that? the name is familiar). Then she said, "Peace, peace for all" or something like that and we all nodded and then she said, "Bush, you know Bush? I hate Bush" and we nodded again and then she suddely goes, "Bush! I kill him!"* and we looked around nervously, let her take a photo of us and scarpered the hiroshima out of there.

*Hello, FBI. I am only quoting someone, these views are by no means my own. For the record, she did not look like she had the means to carry out her expressed desire.

Later that afternoon we caught a ferry out to Mirajuma Island (sp?), where they have that famous red gate thing you see in all the tourist brochures. It was a pretty touristy place but still kinda cool and I had my first Japanese bath, which was delicious.

Here are some pics. You're right Jord, I doubt I'll be able to keep this pace up, but I think I'm still winding down into holiday mode/unemployment. :)

Night y'all.
xx

PS Mum, I'll write you tomorrow.

PICS
1. huey and NJ on some famous bridge just behind the Peace Park which i have forgotten the name of. behind them on the right is the A-bomb Dome, which was pretty much destroyed by the bomb (as was indeed, the whole town) but they rebuilt a little to serve as a reminder of the horrors and as a call for peace in the future. The museum was extremely heav, I'm not going to write about it because I'm sure it's different for everybody.

2. NJ and i chillaxing in the Peace Park - NJ was suffering a little that morning

3. These manky deer were everywhere on Mirajuma island, they are super tame. I patted this one just off the boat and later on Hugh and NJ saw one eating out of an ashtray.

4. The gateway to Japan...

5. How's the serenity?

dewa mata, tokyo

Still on the shinkansen, headed towards Hiroshima. It takes four-and-a-half hours from Tokyo, which is extremely impressive given that it is almost 1000km away (imagine a four-hour hour train ride to Byron? No, don't). We bought ourselves three Japan Rail (JR) passes before we left Sydney, which is an essential investment if you are coming to Japan. For example, we paid about $530 for a two-week pass and with this trip and our one back to Kyoto tomorrow, we will have just about spent that (for what it would normally cost a Japanese person). It is just about the only bargain you can get in this country (apart from polaroid film and digital cameras). I think that they offer JR passes to ryokosha (tourists) so that they can track where we go in the country, NJ and Hugh are less paranoid and say it's to promote tourism. I'll let you decide, but yeah, you should get yo'self a JR pass if you plan to travel anywhere out of the city you fly into.

The service is typically Japanese; amazing, A-number-one, top of the heap, etc. There are ladies with delicious food coming up and down the aisles every 15 minutes or so, the seats are like business class on a plane and the attendants are impeccably polite - whatever you need, they will do whatever they can to get it to you. They put those Virgin ("There is a serious side to the flight, but we're a joke") slags to shame. We are in a non-smoking carriage, due less to our consideration for NJ and more to our shitty Japanese (kitsu en sha wa?), so we just walked from carriage number 7 to number 16 for a ciggie. The train is belting along now and it is a smooth ride but walking in the opposite direction to a train going 350k's is a disconcerting experience. My knowledge of physics ends with its name, but physically, it does not feel good. The smoking carriage smells disgusting and we've decided it's going to be non-smoking all the way (with NJ in mind this time).

So, Wednesday in Tokyo. Hugh and I were planning a special date but Tamaki's friend Graham arrived in town (not that we minded, of course), so James, NJ, Graham and me and Huey set off for the Imperial Palace Gardens. Stunning. It was so good and much needed to get away from the city for a bit (while still being right in the middle of it), and even though there were stacks of (Japanese) tourists, it is a perfectly tended tranquil space that seems to stretch forever and we bought a map and wandered around for a few hours. It could only have been better if they let bikes in. After that we went to the Tokyo Contemporary Art Gallery on the other side of the park and spent another hour or so looking at a special exhibit to honour (it's all about honour here) the 100th anniversary of the birth of one of Japan's most famous artists, Leonard Fujito. Granted, he was an ex-pat who spent most of his life in France, but the Japanese are really proud of him - as they should be - his style was an amazing blend of European themes with intricate Japanese detail. I am starting to feel stupid writing this so I'll stop, but the only other thing I will say is, the gallery was absolutely crammed and more than a little claustrophobic. Graham - who is a Kiwi but lives in Paris - said if we're going to Europe, we better get used to it and I say poo to Europe and their crammy galleries. NJ made the excellent call that you'll never stand in a queue outside a gallery in Australia. Which is both cool and a bit of that ole cultural cringe thing. i promise i won't become one of those gaylords.

I just saw a lady wearing a pair of gold Coco Chanel sneakers... she found my laptop bag under her seat. They're both terrific and hideous, you can't look away. Gonna sign off now and try to get some sleep for the last few hours. I'll see you in Hiroshima after the Peace Museum.

Hope you have a good weekend, everyone. Also, can someone send me an email, as well as the comments. I AM interested in what's going on at home and you. I hope Mel and Kochie do time, cause they annoy the hell outta me, sanctimonious pricks.

xx

PS I don't have the photos from yesterday 'cause Huey left his laptop back in Toyko, so go to http://magicowboy.blogspot.com and have yourself a gay old time checking out the Gardens.

PHOTIES
* JR pass. it begins
* shinkansen, nozomi no. 27
* if there's a river in it, it's hiroshima, the view from our room in the aster plaza, $35 a night, opposite the peace park

tuesday, tokyo (skip to the photos if you're busy)

So us three are sitting on the Nozomi No. 27 express shinkansen (bullet train) just about to leave Tokyo station, bound for Hiroshima. I am not keen to go there, given my strict rule of avoiding any potential emotional trauma in life whenever possible, but NJ is keen (Huey pointed out last night that I can't have it my way all the time, which I tend to forget if not reminded). Anyway, I'm sure it will be an experience and I am going there with an open mind. The train is taking off, it feels pretty fast, but we are yet to reach the speeds of 350km/h which I think is what it gets to. There is even wireless internet on this train, I am just waiting for the ticket guy so I can get the password to log in.

I had a quick look at this blog this morning and I realised that there were lots of photos of us being silly but not that many of Toyko itself. So as we say sayonara to the mania for five days or so down south, I'll leave you with some images of the places we have been so you can get a feel for toyko. I have calmed down enough about the spending to be able to tell you that on our first day I bought a 12" iBook G4 Mac laptop, which is already my new best friend. I love you, little guy. NJ and I also bought the same digital camera, which is the newest version of the model Huey has, a Canon 530, which my sister, Trace, also has. It's a good camera and we paid about $250 for them, which is really good for the quality and its size (5 megapixels). I also bought a hundred bucks worth of Polaroid film, which is an extravagance but I love my Polaroid so much and I've already put it to good use. (Film costs $20 for 10 shots in Sydney, so really, I'm saving money in the long run, right?)

We've been here for a week so far and every day has been full, full, full. I have been waking between six and seven and walking around, emailing you guys and waiting for the boys to wake up. I can' t remember what I last wrote but I think it was a few days ago... what day is it? Thursday... ah, so, Tuesday morning I asked James if it was okay for me to cut my hair on his balcony (22nd floor) and he said I know a great place and I need a haircut... 'Let's go now' (James says that a lot). So we got on our bikes and pedalled down to Ginza again, which takes six minutes. This barbershop turned out to be a distant cousin of the Soup Nazi.

You cannot pay the barbers directly. There is a machine inside the door which only accepts 1000 yen notes and 50 yen coins and you have to have the exact change or it's no deal. The machine gives you a little ticket and you then sit on their little bench and wait for one of the two barbers to signal to you. I indicated to my lady barber how much I would like off and she set to work, at speed. About halfway through I realised I was getting the standard Japanese boy bowlcut so I tried to save myself by indicating I would like a reverse flying V fringe, to which lady barber replied, hai, hai, kono, kono, and I thanked her profusely and I ended up with a young Japanese boy bowlcut. The boys now call me Yoshi, which I don't mind too much because it is my favourite Japanese boys' name. The coolest thing about the haircut was the fact that they vacuum your head and face afterwards, from this long hose coming from the ceiling. It felt nice.

The train is going really fast now and I have discovered that wireless only works at the stations. No mind.

Later that day me and the boys caught a couple of trains to Shibuya, which is a teenagers district and good for clothes shopping (we were supposed to go to Harajuka, which was the next stop but I got antsy and we got off). Shibuya was a bit tough for me. I hate shopping at the best of times and I was hungry and tired and ended up throwing my first tantrum (first proper one, anyway). The boys wisely set off on their own and I wandered around trying to converse with shopkeepers, without much luck. It was a blow to my cockiness re: language skills because although I know about twenty phrases, I soon learned that that is of little use to you if you can't understand one word of the response. I need some new jeans as I shredded my only pair on the bike chain, but that experience was a little depressing also because the biggest size anyone seemed to have was a 30. Damn those cute little Japanese chicks who look good in everything. I gave up and wandered around listening to my iPod till it was time to meet the boys again, by which time I had chillaxed and was ready to play again.

When we got back I had to teach an English lesson to three nine-year-old Japanese kids called Arisa, Arisa and Kenji (yes, there were two Arisa's, which made life easy). Apparently they were the cheekiest class that James teaches, but they were okay, except for Kenji, who was pretty naughty so I pulled the nasty school teacher and made an example of him, made him sing alone with me, etc. Heaven help the kids if I ever become a teacher; I lasted about 10 minutes before cracking it. The thing that struck me the most about the lesson was how tired they all were, it was 6.45pm by this stage and Arisa No. 2 and Kenji yawned the whole way through. (I made them cover their mouths, too). But it seems to be the norm for kids to be as busy as the adults are here, which is damn busy. You get on a train any time of day and everyone is asleep and after five days in Tokyo, I realise why.

THEN ... yes, this is still Tuesday... We caught a train back to Ginza and met James, who took us to the club where he plays piano four nights a week (he's filling in for someone), called the Crest Club. It was tres swanky so we dressed up (the boys wore ties and I wore lipstick) and we met all James's colleagues who made a big fuss of us and we used our best Japanese and it was smiles all round. They insisted we drink Australian sparkling wine, which we didn't really want to, but hey, everything else cost a fortune so we caved in to pressure. They bought us out a purple case and asked us to open it, and inside was nine little squares each filled with something delicious but which we couldn't see at first for all the dry ice (gas) coming out of it. It was pretty spectacular.

James is a really good jazz pianist, although he says he doesn't practice much. He was using his iPod for backing tracks, which we loaded up that day with all the songs on NJ's iPod, so every now and again Pete Murray or something would bust through in the middle of a song. James was hilarious as a showman (to us), he was muttering under his breath all the time and making little jokes that only us gaijin (foreigners) would get. His first set finished and he came to sit with us and a waiter came rushing up asking, "Would we like to see a magic show?" Magic? Sure. He booked us in and fifteen minutes later we were sitting in front of the desk of Tagashi Arimoto (sp?), who then gave us... you guessed it, a magic show. We picked up a few mistakes but it was on the whole very entertaining, as far as magic goes (I am not a huge fan). He asked us if there were many magicians in Sydney and I said, "There are not nearly enough magicians in Sydney", which is the truth for fans of magic back home.

James second set was gorgeous, he sung in a bit of a spoken-word, Johnny Cash kinda way, and played 'Here Comes The Sun', followed by one of our requests (we sent him a page via a waiter, which included, 'Hey You, Get Into My Car' and our original composition, 'Supa Wa Doko Des Ka' (Where is the Supermarket). He played 'The Way You Look Tonight' and improvised some lyrics along the lines of, "My beautiful family, I love you, don't even lose your endless charm". Yes, teary. It was a good night.

I still can't believe we are going to Hiroshima. I'm planning on putting up a map of Japan on this blog, so you will be able to track us. We aren't going north to the cherry blossoms till the last week of our trip here now, cause spring is running late up north and the cherry blossoms aren't out yet. Strangely, the wet season, which is normally in June, has come early down south, so it's drizzly... but still warm so we don't mind. Huey loves the rain.

I will post this when we get to the next station if someone gives me the password, but I'll sign off on this now 'cause it's already way way way too long... hope you likey the photos. i think i might miss working a bit. i know...

xE

PHOTIES
1. the barber nazi (a la seinfeld, no disrespect...)
2. james getting his head vacuumed post cut. now that's service...
3. city at night... about a fifth of the view from NJ's apartment
4. designated smoking area, outdoors. although you can smoke on trains, in hotels and restaurants. go figure.
5. shibuya... clothes shopping... grr

electronics, edo & sumo

yep, we've been busy, im really tired and still waking up early. yesterday was akiharbara in toyko for more electronics shopping, where hugh met his new girlfriend and i got me a sugar daddy. we got lost on our bikes on the way back and it took us close to two hours to get back to the oz wiggles thing, which got a bit drizzled out anyway.

today we went to the edo museum ( year 11 modern history came flooding back) in the morning, then to a sumo tournament where hugh and i snuck from the very back row of the nosebleed section to about 10 metres from the front to the box seats and got a little tipsy on sake with some japanese companymen. i think i am may have eaten pork but im trying not to think about it. the sumo was really, really entertaining, somewhat surprisingly... we watched about four hours of it and there was a big upset at the end where the no. 1 dude got thrown out of the ring on his head by some nobody... people went nuts throwing cushions (me included). i got hit in the back of the head by one and was just about to peg one back when i saw it was a lady in a wheelchair and decided against it.

i learned two valuable lessons today. if you want to do something you're not really supposed to here, most of the time you'll get away with it because people can't be bothered to speak to you in english to tell you not to (i swear i will use my power for good, not evil), and two, drunk japanese guys are kinda annoying. but that's a universal thing i guess.