new panier bags

with my birthday money from mum, dad and grandma, i bought these panier bags for my trip to kyoto in may. they arrived in the mail last night. i had been worried they might not get here in time cause the shop i ordered them from had emailed me to say that they were out of stock.. but they got here in less than a week! i love shopping online in japan. its so easy.

are they cool or what!?

What the bloody hell does it mean? Slogan baffles Japan

From The AGE, March 28, 2006

Maybe Tourism Australia should have done a bit more research before it decided to use the "So, where the bloody hell are you? line in their international ads.

Its seems to have caused a few problems around the world, with it being banned in the UK and Canada.

Now Japan has a different problem. How to trabslate the work "bloody"....


TEACHING Japan to swear is too bloody hard. The catchiest punchline in years has proved impossible to translate into Japanese, leaving Tourism Australia to ask: "So, why don't you come?"

Print advertisements with the English-language scrawl "So, where the bloody hell are you?" have had the new line added for Japan. It will also be used in TV and radio broadcasts.

The change has been made so that the valuable Japanese market does not miss the message. Swearwords are virtually unheard of in Japan, so there is no equivalent to "bloody".

About the worst insult that anyone would hurl is "idiot". "Where the hell are you?" would be said in anger, never for fun.

Tourism Australia's general manager in Japan, Kazunori Hori, yesterday spent several minutes during the launch of the $21 million campaign in Tokyo carefully explaining in Japanese the idea of mateship to an audience of travel industry representatives.

He tied it all together with an anecdote about barbecues and guests who were running late.

"The meat and vegetables are sizzling but your friends have not arrived yet," said Mr Hori. "In such a case an Australian makes a call on the mobile saying 'Where the bloody hell are you?' It means, where are you?" he said.

The stereotypes about the extreme politeness of the Japanese are true. Supermarket cashiers bow to customers and airport baggage handlers assemble to bow to arriving planes.

Into this, wearing Blundstones, has walked Australia. Mr Hori said the vexed problem of how to translate "Where the bloody hell are you?" had been thrashed out in focus group meetings between November and January.

Tourism Australia's managing director, Scott Morrison, said his favourite line from those groups was from a Japanese man who said: "Bloody hell, the more I hear it the more I like it."

But it's no small matter. Last year 685,000 leisure visitors from Japan spent $1.7 billion in Australia, making it our second most valuable market. But the numbers are declining. In 1997, 813,000 Japanese tourists holidayed in Australia.

Mr Morrison said 10 other countries were now specifically targeting rich Japanese tourists, with Thailand and Hawaii each attracting about double the Australian number.

Hawaii has contracted its entire tourism promotion effort to Japan's Dentsu, the world's biggest advertising agency. The "100% pure New Zealand" campaign, now in full swing in Tokyo, has boosted tourism and investment interest there.

Koh Kato, a travel agent, said he liked Australia's new campaign and thought it would attract attention but that the original slogan did not translate. Did he think that Japanese should learn to swear? "That's a bloody good idea," he said.

movie seminar photos

http://photobucket.com/albums/f57/carlybode1/movie%20seminar/

australian food and movies

babe might be an australia movie, but its hard to tell by watching it. i kind of feel like it would have been better to choose a different movie for the last session of the "australian movie seminar", but what other movie would get 50 people to turn up, more than twice the number that had come to the previos 3 sessions.

it was a pretty good day all in all. the only hiccups were that we had to deal with our prefectural office being turned into a hospital for the day as a TV drama was being filmed in the lobby, and that it is not agood idea to cook kangaroo on a bbq underneath a smoke alarm.

we prepared most of the food the day before, lamingtons, scones, hot cross buns, spinach dip, zuccinni slice, anzac biscuits, pavlova, vegemite sandwiches, etc

everything worked well except for the lamingtons, which turned out as flat as a biscuit instead of a nice fluffy sponge cake.. dont leave 2 men to make such a tricky cake ever again, but tom had anotehr go at them once we got home and they turned out a lot better as you will be able to see in the pictures.

on the day we had nearly 50 people turn up. i was really happy cause it would have been a waste of a lot of good food if less than that came.

we had to wait around for a 30 mins in teh morning until the filming in the lobby got out of the way. but luckily cause we had booked in the theatre first we got priority over most things. they had to be out of our way by no later than 10.30.

after the movie we moved to the cafeteria where the japanese ladys from my office and tom had set up all the food. we had two bands playing, one played some aussie music for us too. bit of waltzing matilda and botany bay type folk songs in a dixiland jazz style...

it all finished up around 3pm when all the food was gone. i still have too many eggs left over so i will try and make another pavlova for the office tonight. on friday about 6 people will be moviing to otehr offices and we will be getting new people so i thought it might be nice to do as a going away thing. i have to move desks too so i am not happy about that. i just got this one all nice and organized...

anyways, back to work...
now its time to think of how to make my next australian event work. the next one will be a childrens art exhibition showing creations from australia and japan.

my new photos

Is Matty a plane captain or does he works behind the ticket counter... gotta love the uniform

Here are some of my photos of the last week.
Saitama - Sakado and Kawagoe
Niigata - To snowboard with Matty
Aboriginal Art Exhibition in Koga

Photos of trip to Saitama and Niigata with katie

They are all on Katie's website, Kt in Japan

happy birthday to me from tom's mum

i wonder who got to eat the cake?

big holiday weekend

i have just had a great 5 days off work. got to love public holidays and a few days of time in lieu..

sadly the weather was not as great as it could have been. the wind has been so strong in the kanto area that many of the train have had to stop. seriously, melbourne's ever changing weather is not that bad after all.

on friday i was supposed to go play golf with tom and some friends, but that got cancelled due to the wind and rain. then later that day the weather was a perfect blue sky! how does that work? so we spent the day wandering around mito checking out some new shops and found a bike shop to buy part of my birthday pressie from grandma, a small bag that sits on top of the handlebars to keep lollies in.

saturady tom left early for golf and i took a bus into tokyo to meet up with ben-chan and katie. traffic was hell so i was 40 mins late to meet up with ben, but then we finally foudn each other and went shopping in okachimachi and akihabara.

met up with katie at around 3pm and then headed to ikebukuro for coffee and then out to sakado in saitama to meet up with old host family for some yaki-niku goodness. its become a tradition, everytime i go to sakado we have yakiniku (korean bbq)

the weather was still windy on sunday when katie and i headed out to kawagoe for sightseeing at "koedo" or "little edo", a place that has been restored to its glory of 400 years ago. very cute town. we even too one of those jinricsha rides around the town. i felt like such a tourist but it was fun.

after more delayed trains, we headed off to niigata to meet up with matt. got there about 9pm and met up with him and warrick for dinner.

the next day we were off to the slopes, but the wind was soo strong that the place were matty works, gala, was closed cause its gondala couldnt run. so we went up there to get our ski hire and tickets for cheap/free and then took them all to a different mountain called Joetsu Kokusai.

This place was pretty good too, but not too many beginer runs for katie sadly. they were all a bit narrow and steep to really get any practice in. still we all had fun. katie decided she liked looking at snow more than actually sliding on it and spent the arvo wandering around taking lots of photos.

that night we got dinner up at gala and then met up with matt and warrick again to head to onsen. we went to a hotel called "sporia" cause it had its bath on the 13th floor roof. it was a bit dark so you coulnt see heaps of the mountains but it was still cool. in their foyer they were having a comedy show too and there were people dressed up as pumpkins, tea pots and blow flies for some reason.

the last day, tuesday, was a bit all over the place. cause katie didnt want to snow board, we went in search of "snow tubing". up near gala there was a moutain that has the world record for the longest snow tubing run so we decided that we had to go there. but once we got there we discovered that it only ran between 1-3pm and we had to leave by 12pm to get back to tokyo in time...

so back on the bus to the station and off to anotehr place that had tubing. not world record sizes though.. this place, nakazato, was a lot smaller and designed for kids, but we still had fun. i bought a half day lift pass and snowboarded for a bit and katie had fun on the tubing and the other snowboard-less activities.

finally it was time to head home. 6 hours on the train back to mito... its a long way, but it cost us only $25 so it was worth it. i got in enough snowboarding to make the trip worthwhile and i am happy i went then cause if i left it any later there will be no snow left at all. all the snow that fell on the day we arrived had melted by the day we left and all that was left was hard and sloshy snow that had been there for months.

Ebay this!

Does anyone want to buy an egg incubator? my dad has one for sale on Ebay in Australia.

Last time i looked it was up to $130! Isnt it just what you always wanted? it could make a good "white day" present!

happy "white day"

more Photobucket updates

There are another 3 albums in my Photobucket website now.

Especially have a look at the new natto photos. we visited a "Speed Natto Easting Compettion" two weeks ago and it was really really gross. Here's an example

my new golf clubs

i am finally going to play golf at somewhere other than the driving range on friday this week. going to a course near mito called sunny fields with tom and some of his japanese golfing buddies. i have worked enough weekends lately to deserve a friday off i decided.

so i also decided that it was time to actually get some golf clubs that are long enough for me. the ones that ueda-san gave me back in october are really designed for some japanese lady about half my hieght.

call it a birthday present to myself. i couldnt justify paying for new clubs but i got some good second hand ones. its unbelievable how cheap they are in japan.

cant wait to try them out on tuesday at the range.

photo update

I have put some new photos up on photobucket.

discrimination update

i have told me office here in Ibaraki and they are suprisingly supportive of my views.

in fact they are going to call the Tourism Association in Hyogo to tell them that some of their members are not acting within the law.

well they say they are, if they actually do it is another questions, but at least they know now. they assure me that this would never happen in Ibaraki though... i am going to look into it and see what safe guards are actually in place here to not let that happen.

By the way, here are the addresses of the ryokan that turned me down. Not likely you will ever need to stay in this region, but just in case...
川西市　宿一覧　

just for good measure

seeing i am in rant mode, i will directly you all to the following site to see more about racial discrimintaion in japan.



Debito: information about places which refuse non-Japanese in Japan

and people thought australia was racist

"i'm sorry, we dont let foreigners stay at this hotel"

i dont know who they thought i was though. and that even if it was me who i was trying to make the bookings for that i wouldnt be offended either. i know my japanese isnt good enough over the phone for them to be thinking that i was japanese myself..

after hearing 3 hotel refuse to let 2 foreigner stay in their establishments, i dont know if my job as a "Coordinator of international relations" is actually doing anything.

okay, i will go back to the start.

a while back tom and i sat down to try and book all of his accomodation for work on the golf tour to no avail. the golf courses are in the boonies and its really hard to find info on the internet about accomodation in the country.

so yesterday, when i decided i was bored at work and i would try again, i was extreemly happy when i found the phone numbers for 3 places within a reasonable distance from a particularly troublesome course (last time tom stayed there he had to take a 1 hour taxi ride each way from his hotel so i was determined to do better than that)

i took the numbers home and got myself settled in with a gin and tonic to make the calls.

all was going fine until i told the lady the name of who i was booking for. maybe i should make up a japanese name for tom. maybe something like "tomu watanabe" could work. most of the letters are the same...

"i dont know if we can take gaijin, they wont know how to use the bath"

"they might offend other guests"

"we cant speak english"

"blah blah blah... gaijin are scary and all criminals"

okay maybe they didnt say the last one. but that was the feeling i was getting.

no matter how hard i explained that tom and his otehr caddy friend stay in these kinds of hotels every week. and that they can speak enough japanese. and that they know about japanese baths. and that they can eat food with chopsticks...

i got exactly the same response from 2 other places. but i knew at least the first place had rooms so i called back again.

"oh, we just had someone from the golf call up and book out all of our rooms. sorry we have none left now. "

sure sure. what a strange cooincidence. i was considering getting a japanese friend to call up and book for them. but then i reaslised why would you want to stay in a place with people like that anyway. even if it was a last resort.

i felt like saying to them, "how would you feel if you went on a holiday to australia and you had to sleep on the street cause all the hotels had a policy of NO JAPANESE because they dont know how to speak english."

Its exactly the same thing. but i bit my tounge cause i knew it wouldnt get me anywhere. these people are far too gone for that.

the thing i couldnt believe is that she was willing to say these things directly to me, knowing that i too was a gaijin. would she have let me stay there if i wanted to? was the language the main problem? i dont think so. i think if i turned up there with my blonde hair she would have had a heart attack or something.

but what can you do. being a CIR only gets you so far. changing the attitidues of people who dont want to change is not an easy task. but it has given me a new idea for what i can do for work to make the lives of gaijin in Ibaraki better.

finally after pleading with the xenophpbic lady for 10 mins, she gave me the phone number (grudgingly) of a place nearby that might be ok.

i call this place, and they dont even flinch. gaijin, no problem. and in the end ot is closer to the course and cheaper!

so if you ever need to stay in Hyogo near the Yamanohara Golf Club, stay at a hotel called "Iwayakan" and not Ichinisan Ryokan or Futaba Ryokan.

maybe there are some good japanese out there afterall. just not in a town called Kawanishi.

Mito's black hole

my apartment seems to be the place to loose things.

i have lost an uncountable number of socks, we have lost the house keys soo many times, i never know where the aircon remote it, but the worst one so far is that we lost the cover for the "strictly ballroom" video that we hired from the video shop.

i have tried to trace our movements back to the day we borrowed it on thursday last week. we noticed the cover was gone on monday so that narrows it down to thursday evening to sunday evening.

we have turned the house upsidedown, looked in every cupboard, under every cushion, behind the tv and in the fridge. it is nowhere to be found.

i even emailed my friend who stayed over on friday night to see if he had taken it home in his bedding by accident (we are running short on sheets and blankets cause it is so cold, so anyone who come sto stay has to bring their own...)

the only explination could be that it went out in the rubbish on friday, the day after we hired it.

today was the day the movie was due back. i rushed down to the shop on the way to work, hoping to get there in time that i could just put it in the returns shoot and never look back. but i was too late. the store was open and i had to go inside...

i kept my cool, trying to pretend that nothing was wrong. trying to pretend that there never was a cover on it...

and it worked! after all that worrying, the counter guy didnt say a thing and i walked out as quickly as possible, worrying all the way to work that any moment someone was going to chase after me and ask me where the cover was.

i am safe for now. but maybe we will stop borrowing videos from that shop just in case. you never know when these kinds of things will come back to haunt you.

And then it snows

I always thought that Melbourne had unpredictable weather. But i think Mito is right up there to take the cup.

How can it jump from a warm 7 degree day to a snowy 1 degree day in such a short time...

while on the other hand, melbourne is a sunny 32...

"You've been in Japan too long when......

I know Kate posted this ages ago, but i rediscovered it today when looking for material for my radio show this arvo. I think i can use some of them...



...you notice you've forgotten how to tie shoelaces.

...you rush onto an escalator, and just stand there.

...you find yourself bowing while you talk on the phone.

...you think US$17 isn't such a bad price for a new paperback.

...when you are talking on the telephone to your parents and your father says, 'Why are you interrupting my explanation with grunts?.'

...you see a gaijin get on the train and think 'Wow, it's a gaijin!', and then you stare at them without trying to be noticed.

...you have trouble figuring out how many syllables there really are in words like 'building'.

...when you wait for the first day of summer to wear short sleeve dress shirts and shorts.

...when the first 'optional extra' you buy for your car is a TV set.

...you are not worried about speeding in the rain, because you know the cops are only out in good weather.

...you think birds cry.

...you think wet umbrellas need condoms. (plastic covers to those non-japan visitors)

...you have discovered the sexual attraction of high school 'sailor suit' uniforms.

...you are only slightly puzzled by 'Melty Kiss.'

...you ask fellow foreigners the all-important question 'How long have you been here?' in order to be able to properly categorize them.

...when in the middle of nowhere, totally surrounded by rice fields and abundant nature, you aren't surprised to find a drink vending machine with no visible means of a power supply...

...the TV commercials make sense to you.

...when having gaijin around you is a source of stress.

...when your arguing with someone about the color of the traffic light being blue or green...and you think it's blue.

...you can't have your picture taken without your fingers forming the peace sign.

...when you pull out your ruler to underline words.

...you bow to other drivers who give you the right of way.

..."natsukashii" comes out of your mouth instead of "what you're saying makes me so nostalgic that I must look like one of those wide- eyed manga characters with a tear rolling out of my eye."

...you buy a Christmas cake on Christmas eve.

...you run for the Yamanote line pushing people left and right, jump on the train holding the doors open to let your bag follow you on. Because you know there will not be another one for at least a minute.

...you leave your office mid-morning and go to a coffee shop in order to get some work done.

...when you vow to "gambaru" before every little activity you engage in.

...you go to a coffee shop back in your home country and order "American coffee."

...you go back to your home country for a short visit and you patiently wait outside your taxi for its door to spring open for you.