koko ga hen

Sakura, Sakura

2007-04-10T21:51:00.000+09:00

What a time to be in Japan. These last two weeks have been beautiful. We have had 2 hanami (flower viewing) parties and gone for walks around the lake nearly every day.
I have added my photo collection to my photobucket so go and have a look at what you are missing.

here are a few tasters

coco farm and winery

2007-03-24T10:25:00.000+09:00

the week before i went to kyushu, i took a group of the participants of our world culture seminar on an excursion to Coco Farm and Winery in Tochigi.
Its a winery which is staffed by people with disabilities. The wine and food were amazing.

I bought two bottles and i think i will buy more over the net. It tasted like wine
we would get back home, not japanese wine. most japanese wines i have tried are way too sweet, but this place uses french methods and varieties. the chief wine maker is an american from califorinia.

Photos here

we also went to a place called Ashikaga Gakko, japan's oldest university, on the way back home. Most of the photos are from there. i took a video of the winery instead

kyushu photos

2007-03-24T10:14:00.000+09:00

on friday i took my bike on the plane and headed down to kyushu for a 300km bike ride with JETs from Oita around the Kunisaki Peninsular, afterwards i went to mt aso (an active volcano) and on to fukuoka. click on the names for the photos

here are my favs

mt aso from the distance. i rode to the top!

the crater of mt aso. we could only stay for 5 mins cause of the poisonous gas..

the Oita JETs i rode with around the Kunisaki Peninsular

koko ga hen

2007-03-12T13:16:00.000+09:00

sorry to not have posted in a long time. i have been busy at work and also traveling to hong kong and also back to Australia for my brother's wedding

lots of photos are now available on my photobucket.

hong kong

josh and em's wedding

here are a few of my favs

the kiss

the happy couple

hong kong fish market

hong kong skyline

dinos are not extint after all

2007-01-30T20:53:00.000+09:00

who would have thought they were hiding in a park near mito!

see more here!

more photos from engagement party

2007-01-14T19:28:00.000+09:00

this is one that kate took. its my favourite, all the girls in one!

you can get to more of kate's photos here

photos from engagement party

2007-01-05T11:15:00.000+09:00

i know i have been pretty silent lately, but i have been busy with business trips, holidays in japan and a trip home to melbourne for christmas

here is the first set of photos i have uploaded.
they are from our engagement party at holiava bar in richmond

more photos to come!

photos from recent holidays

2006-11-06T16:41:00.000+09:00

Nov 3rd
Kasama festival - Horseback archery demonstration

Nov 4th - 6th
Fukushima - Onsen holiday, visit to Shimogo, Ouchijuku and Kitakata

hakone

2006-10-30T21:57:00.000+09:00

As i wrote in a post last week, i went to Hakone with Katie last weekend for a girl's onsen holiday.

We met up at odawawara in the morning and then took the train up to hakone.

our first stop on the trip was yumoto-hakone town. we walked around looking at the town, river, food etc and then got on the local railway to go up to the town where our hotel was, ohiradai.

our hotel was not exactly what we were expecting for $100 a night, but it was still ok. and we were to find out later that the food and the onsen made up for the pockey little room.

after that it was lunch and then to the Hakone open air art museum. you will see in my pictures that its really cool. the whole park is the museum and there are so many hands on art works to play with. kids would love it!

then it was back to the hotel and on to the yummy food and great onsen. actually the onsen was not inside the hotel. you got changed in to your yukata and walked outside up a small alley to a different building. the onsen was inside a small garden and youhave it all to yourself.

the next day we took the railway up to gora. we missed the cabel car up the mountain by 1 minute and even though it was still on the platform, the guy at the station wouldnt let us in. so we walked up hill to the next stop to catch it from there.

which was a good idea cause we found a really cute cafe and photography museum beside the next station. we wouldnt have gotten off there if we hadnt missed the train so it was worth it.

then it was up the hill and a transfer onto the cable car. it took us across the valley to a sulfer onsen where they cook hard boiled eggs in teh water cause its so hot.

we ate 3 each because its said that each one will add 7 years on to your life span..

we couldnt get on the next part of rope way because they were doing work on it, so it was onto a crowded bus to catch the pirate ship ferry across the lake. the view was great but the weather was getting bad and it started to rain while we were on the boat.

we ran over quickly to a restaurant for lunch cause we had no umbrellas. by then it was getting late and time to head home. ibaraki is a long way from hakone...

i took a bus back to odawara and katie went the other way back to numazu. the bus company was a bit annoying because the bus i panned to catch didnt stop cause it was too full and the bus katie wanted to catch just drove straight past her..

eventually we both got home and it was a great trip even with the rain and bad transport. we have planned another girl"s onsen trip for dec

here are my photos

Katie's photos and blog

one of the sculptures in the museum.

ahega halloween

2006-10-29T19:21:00.000+09:00

like last year, we all got dressed up to go to ageha (the biggest nightclub in asia) to go to the halloween party.
you cant take a camera inside the club, so i didnt take one at all, but april did and here are her photos

april's photos

we all met up before hand and had dinner (all dressed up) at coco's and then took a train and drove a bit to get there by 11.30pm

the place is huge but its also packed with people. we all tried to stay together but lost everyone at some point.

lots of great costumer. i was an angel, good old 100 yen shop for the wings and a left over halo from last year.

we left at around 4am, and for some reason it took 5 hours to get home when it should have only taken 2.5....

needless to say i was wrecked today and havent done anything useful apart from sleeping, have a nice long bath and watching a dvd..

i will put more photos up when the others who went too put them on line.

mobile phone number portibility

2006-10-24T10:31:00.000+09:00

people often think of japan as the home of technology..
but they have only just introduced the system of being able to move your mobile phone number to a different carrier today!

how long have we been able to do that in australia?
all the phone companies here are now worried about the competition this will create, but really they have had it easy up till now. time to start thinking of the customers .

vodafone (now called softbank) have now announced that they will be putting free calls to other vodafone users into their plans. and that they will be matching any price drop by the other 2 big companies by 200 yen discounts within 24 hours of any announcement.

i will be interested to see how this plays out...
hopefully they will put in price caps like australia..

end of the week!

2006-10-20T17:14:00.000+09:00

its the end of the week and i have 15 mins left till home time. its hard to get motivated to do anything productive when you only have 15 mins left. after i leave the office i will be off on a train to chiba to see tom (that's where his tournament is this week), and then tomorrow morning i am off to hakone (the first time is 7 years) to go onsen-ing with katie

the last time i went to hakone was in high school when josh came over to visit. we took the train, the cable car, the rope way, the pirate ship and then hitched a ride to our hotel from a very full car.

this time round we will use all the kitchy transport options again, but will stay in a slightly nicer place with an onsen and meals (youth hostels are great and all but you know..)

have charged up my camera so i should get some good shots to put up here next week. the weather has been weird here today, kind of misty and dark. i hope the weather is good enough to se fuji. i wonder if any of the leaves have begun to go red and orange.. will find out tomorrow i guess

today my building where i work smelt like op shop. you know that old musty smell of second hand clothes? the reason it smelt funny was the 100 or so old ladies dressed up in their kimono's doing something with green tea in the meeting rooms next door. i am sure they must only get their kimonos out once a year... all those moth balls

the train to the fireworks in tsuchiura smelt the same last week. it has begun to get cold at night and i think everyone got their coats out of storage as the fireworks went late into the cool night.. it was hard to breathe on the train though.

i never realised autumn was so stinky. perhaps in australia it doesnt get cold all at once and there is no mass moth ball-ridden coat usage to create such a stong smell.

only 8 weeks till stinking hot melbourne instead!

long awaited update

2006-10-10T16:12:00.000+09:00

i have finally had a day off when i can do the things i want to. right now i am sitting in the starbucks in mito with my laptop and relaxing. i should be at work, but as i had to work at the un-godly hour of 5.30am on sunday morning, i have decided to take a long awaited day off.

i looked back at this blog and realised the last time i did a real update was august 17th! thats not good at all. since then i have done so much.

- visited sakado (my old town where i was an exchange student) to see their yosakoi festival and introduce tom to the family.
- started going to pilates classes
- picked up more new JETs from tokyo orientation
- been to a PA conference in tokyo
- visited kawaguchiko to see tom and drop Scott off at the base of mt fuji. no way was i going to climb it again..
- been to a few golf tournaments
- had katie over to visit in mito for the weekend
- been to a soccer game
- went to a amazing taiko concert (the finalle was great cause the buff guys were only wearing loin cloths)
- went to the japanese equivilant of a wiggles concert (a friend was performing in it)
- did a few world caravan visits
- judged a mormon speech contest (dont ask)
- helped tom show his mate Ash around Mito and tokyo
- met the emperors son
- made a speech in front of 1000 people, including the prince
- set up a booth at the ibaraki festival at 5.30am on sunday (the weather cancelled the set up day and the first day of the festival)
- survived crazy wind and rain
- visited sakado again to drop tom off there for the week. he will stay with the kitos as the tournment this week is only a 10 min drive from there.

ok, got it all out. will try to post more regularly from now on...

what happened to pluto..

2006-09-05T09:58:00.000+09:00

unusual facts about australia

2006-08-17T17:11:00.000+09:00

i have been looking up info about australia for my "world caravan" primary school visits
here are some of my favourites. they may seem normal to us aussies, but the japanese kids love them!

if you have any more, add them in the comments.

- some gum trees can grow over 10 meters in one year
- koalas sleep 21 hours a day
- dingos cant bark
- kangaroos are related to wombats
- there are more than twice as many kangas than people in australia
- emus and kangas cant walk backwards
- emu eggs are green
- wombats have back to front pouches
- there are 9 sheep for every person
- baby kangas are only 2cm at birth
- there are 1500 species of spider
- kanagroo means "i dont understand you" in one aboriginal dialect
- koalas are not related to bears
- australia is the biggest island in the world
- uluru is the biggest rock in the world
- the hottest ever recorded temperature in oz was 53 degrees celcius
- chirstmas is in summer
- average of only 2 people per square km
- australia is the flattest country in the world
- australia is the driest country in the world
- australia s the largest island in the world
- longest straightest road in the world in is nullabor - 148km
- there are no trees in the nullabor

my life recently

2006-08-17T12:53:00.000+09:00

so the mito komon festival went down well. we danced from 4pm to 9pm up and down the street until we could dance no more.

there were two songs to learn - the same ones as last year, one of them reminded me of "thriller" and strangely enough one of the dance moves in the song was like a "zombie"...

it was fun (kind of), the regural beer breaks were helpful, but in was good to meet up with some of the new jets in a social atmosphere. they all seem really nice

the second group of them arrived last week and i went into tokyo to pick them up and bring them back to mito. now there are 32 newbies. another 2 will come next week and i will pick them up too (with my boss who will just stand there looking useless)

i finally caught up with tanmi, a friend from high school. we just havnt been able to meet up in the last year that i have been here. it was great to catch up, she has been living in hawaii for the past year since i saw her last.

i moved offices to the international association on friday. the new CIR is taking over my job and i am taking over the job of the guy who was here for 5 years. not bad here, but a bit quiet. no aureleian to talk to now..

on the weekend i made a spare of the moment decision to drive with tom to shizuoka to meet up with katie. i had been talking to her on msn on friday arvo and when i got home from work i thought "got nothing to do and it would be cool to see her"...

not a great idea to drive during the obon holiday season in japan. a 4 hour journey turned into 7....
we got there at 2am on saturday morning. but then stayed up talking till 5am

after getting up at around midday, we met up with a friend of katie's and went for a drive to see a waterfall and some tea fields in the mountains. later we went out to dinner with a few more of her mates. lots of fun

we left her town around midday to try and beat the traffic home... but got sidtracked at gotema outlet mall. i bought a few tops, a pair of pants, a yoga mat. tom bought some shoes.

if we had kept going we may have missed the accident wheich held up traffic for hours. it took just as long to get home as it did to get there. 7 hours...
we got home at 9pm...

but it was worth it to see katie and go shopping :)

this week so far we have had "Ibaraki Orientation" for the newbies. i have been spending the last few weeks preparing presentations and handouts for this day. it went well but way overtime.. people turned up late cause of train delays and also we had too much to talk about.

this weekend tom and i will go up to saitama to catch up with the kitohs and megu's family. more driving... hope the traffic will be better this time

Bali photos, as promised

2006-08-03T16:33:00.000+09:00

I finally got some time today. It took so long cause i have nearly 400 photos to chose from. I ended up only putting up around 60. Enjoy!

Bali Photos

update

2006-08-03T08:57:00.000+09:00

yeah yeah, i know.. i havent updated for ages. i still havent got my bali photos up yet either. its almost as bad as tom's updating...

been away from my office heaps over the last few weeks and that is normally where i do the updates cause i keep my photos on the work computer.

so as soon as we got back from the relaxing bali trip it was head first into the busiest few weeks i have ever had.

- visited a primary school
- had lots of meetings about orientation of new jets which i am coordinating
- had a few good bye parties for people leaving japan soon
- taugh aussie culture to high school kids at 2 schools
- climbed mt tsukuba
- run the childrens art show at NHK for a week
- taught english on NHK for 2x15 min shows
- got my drivers licence
- cleaned up and packed up the art show
- went to tokyo to welcome new jets
- now back in mito getting ready for second wave of new jets next week

this weekend is the Mito Festival, so it will be firworks on friday night and dancing all day in the parade on saturday. i did it last year too and it was crazy. will try and get some photos.

anyways, time to get to work....

guess who went away to bali and came back engaged!

2006-07-19T17:28:00.000+09:00

and tom even asked my parents first if it was ok!

he was apparently going to wait until we got to ubud, but after being in bali for only about 3 hours and during a stroll on the beach at kuta, he got down on one knee and popped the question. he couldnt keep it in for another 3 days!

we went shopping for a ring once we got back to japan as he wanted to make sure i was happy with it. we looked in bali too but there were no good ones. but this one is gorgeous!

There are so many people to tell and i havent had a chance to tell hardley anyone yet! But kate has written about it in her blog before i even did!

we waited till we got back to japan to tell mum and dad, even though they knew already. they had apparently been waiting by the phone on thursday, the day tom was going to do it, so they were getting jittery that we hadnt called.

actually we met up with jill, ron and ann in bali too but we couldnt tell them until i had called mum and dad... i bet they are annoyed cause both of them kept joking about how funny it would be for us to come back engaged :)

at the moment we are thinking that we wont get married until after we come back to melbourne for good, so that could be over a year away. but nothing is definate yet, just the fact that we are really happy.

it was pretty unexpected that he would propose in bali, but i have always known that i would be with tom for the rest of my life :)

so much to tell, but i promise i will write more soon. sorry if you find out about this via blogger, i want to talk to everyone indiidually but its hard from japan! hope to see you all soon.

bali here we come

2006-07-06T11:11:00.000+09:00

only 2 more days until we will be relaxing on the beach in bali. only 1 more day of work.... will i make it through?

its probably not the best time to be heading off on holidays, got so much work to do for the orientation of the new JETs when they come in early august, but i will find a way to get it done.

so i will be offline until the 17th july. see you all when i get back! i promise to put heaps of great pictures up!

car car car

2006-06-23T09:35:00.000+09:00

its confirmed, we will get our car on tuesday next week!! yey!!!!

japan shattered, australia still alive

2006-06-23T09:34:00.000+09:00

well i must admit, i didnt stay up till 4 am to watch the soccer this time, but after a quick check of the score this morning on the internet, i am pretty happy.

though i could have waited till 8am to watch the tv cause that is all they talk about on the morning shows here...

japan lost again, australia made it through!

i never used to like soccer cause i thought it was a low scoring slow game, but its getting more and more interesting. i might even go and see a game in kashima next month to barrack for the ibaraki team "the antlers".

lots of photos

2006-06-21T11:55:00.000+09:00

staying at windsor park golf course

big buddhas and wineries in ushiku

recontractors conference in tokyo

brooke's visit to mito

update

2006-06-21T11:49:00.000+09:00

has it been that long since i have had a chance to post? i have been soo bust recently.

since my last real post (there have been some silly ones in there i confess) i have:

- been to tokyo for the recontractos conference, caught up with megu, mai and katie.

- had a movie night at my apartment and confussed all the americans and canadians with "the castle"

- helped out at a kids golf tournament (13 hours i might add) up at windsor park

- been to the 1st winery in japan and the tallest bronze buddha in the world (180 meters). both are about 1 hours drive from mito in a town called Ushiku.

- rode in an ambulance

- judged a speech competition

- made lots of food for a goodbye party in the park

- went onsening in Ajigaura (about 20kms from mito)

- taught a class at university

- bought a car with Tom (11 y.o. Toyota RAV4) but we dont get to drive it for another 2 weeks or so.. so much red tape in japan...

soo much stuff. no wonder i am so stuffed. but i cant wait to get the car. it will make getting around soo much easier...

names of fruit and vegetables in japan

2006-06-09T14:38:00.000+09:00

I was making this list for work, but i thought it would be good online. seeing i couldnt find a similar list when i started to make it, you never know if someone else has been looking for it too.

Fruit and vegetables in Japan
English - Japanese - Japanese pronunciation
Apple りんご Ringo
Apricot アップリコット Appurikotto
Artichoke アーティチョーク Atichoku
Asparagus アスパラ Asupara
Avocado アヴォカド Awokado
Banana バナナ Banana
Beans インゲン Ingen
Bitter melon 苦瓜 nigauri
Blue berry ブルーベリー Buruberi
Bok choy チンゲン菜 Chingensai
Broad bean 空豆 Soramame
Broccoli ブロッコリー Burokkori
Cabbage キャベツ Kyabetu
Cantaloupe カンタロープ・メロン Kantaropu-melon
Capsicum ピーマン Piman
Carrot 人参 Ninjin
Cauliflower カリフラワー Karifurawa
Celery セラリー Serari
Cherry さくらんぼ Sakuranbo
Chestnut 栗 kuri
Chili 唐辛子 Togarashi
Chinese cabbage 白菜 Hakusai
Chinese chives にら Nira
Coconut ココナツ Kokonatsu
Corn とうもろこし Tomorokoshi
Cucumber きゅうり Kyuri
Durian ドリアン dorian
Edible burdock ごぼう Gobo
Eggplant 茄子 Nasu
Fig イチジク Ichijiku
Garland chrysanthemum しゅんぎく Shungiku
Garlic にんにく ninniku
Ginger しょうが Shoga
Grape 巨峰 Budo
Grapefruit グレープフルーツ Gurepufurutsu
Green horseradish わさび Wasabi
Green pea グリーンピース Gurinpisu
Guava グアヴァ Guawa
Honeydew melon ハネデューメロン Hanedyu-meron
Japanese hornwort みつば Mitsuba
Japaniese butterbur ふき Fuki
Kaki かき Kaki
Kiwi fruit キウイ Kiui
Komatsuna 小松菜 Komatsuna
Leek ニラネギ Niranegi
Lemon レモン Remon
Lettuce ラタス Retasu
Lime ライム Raimu
Lotus root レンコン Renkon
Lychee ライチ Raichi
Mandarin みかん Mikan
Mango マンゴー Mango
Melon メロン Meron
Mountain vegetables 山菜 Sansai
Mushrooms きのこ Konoko
Nashi pear 梨 Nashi
Nectarine ネクタリン Nekutarin
Okra オクラ Okura
Olive オリーブ Oribu
Onion 玉ねぎ Tamanegi
Orange オレンジ Orenji
Papaya パパイヤ Papaiya
Passionfruit パッション Passhon
Peach 桃 Momo
Peanut ラッカセイ Rakkasei
Pear 西洋ナシ Seiyonashi
Pineaple パイナップル Painappuru
Plum 梅 Ume
Potato ジャガイモ Jagaimo
Pumpkin かぼちゃ Kabocha
Raddish 大根 Daikon
Raisin レーズン Reson
Rapes 菜の花 Nanohana
Raspberry ラズベリー Rasuberi
Red pepper パプリカ Papurika
Rhubarb ルーバーブ Rubabu
Salt-wort おかひじき Okahijiki
Snow pea さやえんどう Sayaendo
Soy bean 枝豆 edamame
Spinach ほうれん草 Horenso
Strawberry いちご Ichigo
Sweet potato サツマイモ Satumaimo
Taro サトイモ Satoimo
Tomato トマト tomato
Turnip かぶ Kabu
Water melon スイカ suika
Welsh onion ねぎ Negi
Yam ヤマノイモ Yamanoimo
Yuzu lime ゆず Yuzu
Zucchini ズッキーニ Zukkini

where the bloody hell are you?

2006-06-08T21:03:00.000+09:00

I finally saw the ad on TV in Japan today. they have the voice over saying "where the bloody hell are you" but the japanese says "でなんでオーストラリアへ来ないの？"

its a bit if a different feeling, but i guess thats the best you can do when the word just doesnt ehttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifxists in the language...

i would translate the japanese back into english as "so why havent you come to australia?"

australia has a fancy new site in japanese now to go along with the new ad campain. i might "borrow" some of their maps and pictures to use in my school visits.

video of the art show

2006-06-08T17:19:00.000+09:00

try this!

art show at the kencho

2006-06-08T17:11:00.000+09:00

Here are some photos i took today of the art show so far. I have been away all week, but apparently lots of people have been to see it so far. While i was down there today a few of the kids who actually drew the pictures came to look with their parents and grandparents. very cute

thorpedo water?

2006-06-03T18:31:00.000+09:00

i always knew that ian thorpe or "so-pu" was big in japan, but i never expected this.

now you can buy "thorpedo bottled water"
the ad on tv shows the so-pu swiming around and saying
"you cant change others but you can change yourself"

apparently the water is low GI

i did a bit of a web search and came up with this website thorpedo foods

is this already on sale in australia?

Australia-Japan Children's Art Exhibition 　日本・オーストラリア小学生絵画展

2006-06-02T15:41:00.000+09:00

The Australia-Japan Children's Art Exhibition 　日本・オーストラリア小学生絵画展 website is up on the E-ibaraki report

I will be putting images of the actual art up as soon as the 1st exhibition is over. dont want to spoil it by showing the art early :)

The show starts on monday at the 11F Atrium of the Kencho.
We are just waiting for the people who are using it this week to clean up so then we can start hanging the works this arvo.

wacko jacko in japan

2006-05-29T11:52:00.000+09:00

According to the Age, Michael Jackson is in Japan and visited an orphanage in Tokyo...

is he just trying to make his image about his relationship with children even weirder?

australia, japan and the soccer

2006-05-26T10:18:00.000+09:00

japan is making a huge deal about the soccer. especially about how they will play australia and apparently kick our arses.

this morning on the tv they were disecting the game played the other day between greece and australia in melbourne.

they had sent hordes of journalists the cover it. apparently channel 7 back in australia refered to them as "japanese spies" because there was so many of them.

they were even interviewing aussies in the streets and asking them about our chances. i was hoping to see someone i knew cause it would have been funny on japanese TV, but no it was only a group of purple clad boys from wesley and a few daggy people.

i am not much into soccer, but i hope that australia can beat japan. but then again, i dont know what kind of reaction would be waiting for me then the next day at work after that match on june 12 ....

tower or beast?

2006-05-25T14:57:00.000+09:00

from google maps, t looks like tokyo tower has had enough and is on the move.

kasumigaura photos

2006-05-25T11:37:00.000+09:00

you can see i havent got much to do today.
trying to catch up on all my posts and photos.

here are the photos from the Kasumigaura Cycle and Cruise day that Tom and I took part in on the 14th May.

HMB Website

From this photo below, you can see how wet it was out there. 110 kms in the rain isnt always the most fun thing to do, but we were glad to have finished it

actually the weather got a lot better in the arvo as you can see below, but the ride got slower. the kids who rode with us had actually taken a boat in the morning across the lake and we met up with them halfway. the last 50kms was so slow. we stopped every 5km so it was really quite painful.

my saturady in photos

2006-05-25T11:32:00.000+09:00

some more photos on photo bucket now

on saturady i was all over the place. in the morning i had to do a smeinar on the environemnt for the "world culture seminar" that we run here in mito.

then it was off to moriya to play futsal in a tournament organized by other CIR, but i was too late to play. lucky cause i suck at it. but we played a friendly against the asahi brewery team and won.

then to the brewery to taste some beer.

after that it was dinner at a friends house and then a party at teh drunken duck to celebrate another friend's birthday

i finally rode my mama-chari bike home at 2am to crawl into my futon.

here are some photos of the day

Moriya Futsal Tournament
Tamae's birthday at the "Duck"

photos from biwa-ko

2006-05-19T16:36:00.000+09:00

I havent got all the photos because we took a lot with Tom's camera. i wil get them off him when he comes back to mito on sunday.

But in the mean time, here are a few http://s45.photobucket.com/albums/f57/carlybode1/biwako/

this is one of my favs. its is a 3 storey pagoda in the temple which was on chikibu island, the island we stopped of at on our boat trip across the centre of the lake.

this is another good one. we worked hard enough riding to deserve a beer at lunch

cycling holidays and the after effects

2006-05-19T16:07:00.000+09:00

so much has happened since i got back from my cycling trip to Lake Biwa that i havent had a chance to write about it.

almost everyday i have been out of the office, and when i am in there is too mcuh to do!

so i will go back to the start and go through the last few weeks systematically now i have a few minute sto spare.

on thursday night (27th april) i bundled up all all our bikes and shoved them in the back of my friends car. he wanted them a day early just to make sure it all fit.

on friday (28th april) at around 6pm they came to pick me up from my apartment and we were off on our long car journey through tokyo to nagoya. i was designated navigator, which was good because i got the front seat and more room. the boys in the back seat were a bit squished in with all of our luggage. most mine seeing i had too bikes taking up a lot of the boot. luckily we were in a statin wagon.

we stopped at the driver's girlfriends house in tokyo to drop off mant bottles of tequila for a mexican party she was having later in the week (alcohol is cheap at the yamaya near my house so people always stock up when they come to visit me) and then after another brief stop at adrive in startbucks, we were on the freeway and away.

nagoya is a long way from tokyo. it was also golden week so the traffic was not at its best behaviour. but guido, my friend who was driving was a wannabe ferrari racing team member and got us to nagoya by 1am. people said it couldnt be done, but he proved them all wrong. i was thinking twice about being in the front seat at some times worrying about how fast we were going, but he had it under control

we finally found tom's hotel at around 1.30am and i was in bed by 2am. tom was not so happy to see me at that hour as you could understand. we all had to be up at 6am to get to the golf in time for him to start work the next morning.

on saturady and sunday (29th, 30th april) guido, lee and matt, the guys who i drove down with came to watch the golf. i actually didnt go on sunday because i wanted to look around nagoya. i got there just as they were getting to the 17th hole. bit of a waste going all the way out there but i got a nice lunch in the club house :)

nagoya is a great town. all layed out in a grid like melbourne. very easy to get around and the area of town we were staying in was full of great shops and bars and resturaunts.

on sunday arvo after the golf we jumped on a shinkansen, with all our luggage and bikes, to start our holiday in kyoto.

finidng the hotel in kyoto was a bit of a other. actually getting the bikes back in to once piece at kyoto station was more trouble. you have to pack your bikes into a special bag when you go on the train. sometimes they make you pay extra, but we had managed to sneak onto the shinkansen without anyone noticing. lucky.

found the hotel and after a nice long onsen, it was time for bed.

monday morning (1st may) we were ready to start our holiday properly. we used our bikes to ride all over the city. probably about 50 kms in all. saw lots of temples, shrines, and even made it out to the "samurai movie world" on the outskirts of town. it was suitible daggy, but kind of funny.

tuesday (2nd may) we spent the morning at a history museum and then we rode up over the mountain to get our first view of the biggest lake in japan, lake biwa. that night we back tracked a bit to a town called kusatsu to visit a golfing friend of tom's and his family and had a great meal at a small family run bar/resturant. ask tom about how he came to be called "tommy gorilla"

wednesday (3rd may) we rode over 70km up the west side of the lake to a town called imazu. it was a very warm day and the weather was perfect. the day before had been a bit rainy.

on the way we met a number of interesting characters and one scary one. we had stopped by a shrine to check out the festivities (being golden week there are many festivals) and the guys there setting up the fetsival shared some icecreams and sake with us. on the way out, another even drunker person yelled out at us but we ignored him as we wanted to get on our way. about 10kms down the road, the drunk guy drove by us! swerving all over the road. he was yelling something out at us and trying to hand us something. finally we managed to loose him but we were worried for the next 30 mins if he might come back again.

in imazu we checked into a cute little inn right on the banks of the lake. it was a sleepy littel town but had a real old japan feel. not much to do at night but we found a place to eat luckily.

on thursday (may 4th) tom had hurt his knee somehow and we decided to take a boat across the centre of the lake to get around some steep hills in the north. after a lot of negotiating with the boat captain, we got the bikes on the boat for only 700 yen extra. the boat stopped at a small island which had an amazing temple on it and the boat company looked after our bike while we did some sightseeing.

the boat finally dropped us off at a town called nagahama. i have never seen so many people in one place at a time! it was crazy. i guess being golden week could explain it a bit, but it was still crazy. we were lucky to find a place to stay in teh end. i called almost 20 placed until i found one that was available. another nice little japanese style inn.

this town was even cuter than the last one. very traditional and lots of interesting covered arcades and laneways. we wandered around all day just taking in the sights.

on friday (5th may) we had planned to go to a town called hikone. but after we started to ride, it turned out that hikone was only 15 kms away! we got there very early in the day and there wasnt really enough to fill in the day and make it worth staying there. they had a great castle and a nice little town, but not much else.

so we decided after lunch to keep on riding. we had booked accom in ogaki for saturday night so we decided to see how far we got on our way there. in the end we got the whole way! the so called mountain between hikone and ogaki was not so moutainous after all.

this worked out well because it was set to rain on sunday when we had booked a game of golf with the ueda's. so we played golf with them on saturday instead. i had sent our golf bags down by courier the day before i left for nagoya. after golf we ate yakinuku and were very full and content.

sunday was the last day and it rained and rained. we packed up the bikes to send home and had lunch with the ueda's again. they took us to this strange mountain bbq place. you hire out little huts to cook your bbq in.

i finally got home to mito at around 10pm after having to stand up on the shinkansen the whole way home. golden week strikes again. i should have booked but i wouldnt have known what time to. ueda-san is very unpredicible and even though i said i wanted to be on teh 3.30 train, it wasnt until 5,30 that i got anywhere near a train station.

it was a great trip, not as much riding as i would have planned. we didnt get to ride all the way round the lake, but i think we did about 3/4 of it (230km all up over 5 days). a good excuse to go back again.

cycling biwako trip!

2006-04-28T10:51:00.000+09:00

Below is a map of our trip we are going to take next week. I am heading off to Nagoya tonight by car with a few friends, and meeting up with Tom there.

After nagoya we will go by train to kytoto, spend two days there and then start riding towards the lake. we are in no rush (gotta love the 9 day holiday of golden week) so we havent made too many plans about where and when we will be at any particular time. the only plan is that we need to be in Gifu on Saturday night. At that rate we shouldnt need to ride more than 50 kms a day so lots of time for sightseeing.

I will probably be offline for all of those days so talk to you all again when i get back to Mito on the 7th May!

a very hot appointment

2006-04-28T10:29:00.000+09:00

on thursday i was asked to help do some more interpreting for a Rotary GSE team from Turkey who was visiting Ibaraki. I had been with one of them to the Hitachinaka Port last week and this week it was off to the steel works of Sumitomo Metal Industries in Kashima, about a 1.5 hour drive from Mito.

I dont know if i was much help in the interpreting because there were too many technical words and numbers (i hate numbers in japanese) but i dont think the GSE people knew much about it anyway so i was able to bluff my way through it a bit.

However, the tour we were taken on was pretty cool. i have never been anywhere like that before. We were not allowed to take photos, but i found a similar shot on their website. Isnt it cool? or should i say hot? I think the temperature is about 1200 degrees celcius. You could feel the heat from about 30 metres away, where we were standing.

first a vase, and now a glass!

2006-04-28T10:19:00.000+09:00

i must be in an arty mood or something. first i get my vase back from its trip to sydeny, and now i have a new glass that i made myself at a glass blowing studio in Northern Ibaraki.

We headed up there early on sunday morning last week (on the 7.30am train!) and got to work straight away. actually it only took about 20 mins to make the glass but there were a lot of us and we wanted to be finished in time for lunch so that we could go hiking in the arvo.

i decided to make a "baileys" glass and i am prety happy with how it worked out. but i wish i could have done more than just that. yeah we got to do the blowing of the glass and shaping of it, but under heavy instruction. i would love to be able to go back and learn a lot more about why we had to do certain things and how to do them myself. yeah i did make a glass, but its not really all mine. the person who was directing us did most of it... however, it will be very nice to drink baileys out of when i get it back on May 10th. You have to leave it for a few days to dry at a certain temperature, otehrwise it will crack. we have a big ALT meeting on May 10th so we will all get them back in one go to save on postage. hopefully this one wont end up in sydney again...

after the glass blowing, we headed up the mountain a bit for a hike to the summit of hanazono. cool views and great waterfalls to look at.

check out the rest of my photos on photobucket.

my vase!

2006-04-20T16:31:00.000+09:00

it has only taken 6 months, but i finally got my vase that i made at Kasama back! and its really cool!

Normally it takes 3 months to dry, fire and glase the pottery, but mine accidently went on a bit of a holiday to sydney before making it back to mito, only 20kms away from its starting place.

here is the finished product. its a lot smaller than i imagined it would be. i should have taken that into consideration when i was making it i guess. i can probably only fit about one flowere in it at a time...

new baby "Suri"for tomkat

2006-04-20T09:58:00.000+09:00

According to the Age today, Tom cruise and katie holmes named their baby "Suri" which has its origins in Hebrew, meaning "princess", or Persian, meaning "red rose".

I wonder if they thought about what this name could mean in other languages...

In Japanese, "suri" means "pickpocket".
maybe they have her career planned out already...

cycling at last! and some golf news

2006-04-17T09:48:00.000+09:00

i finally got out on a real bike ride this weekend. out of the blue i got an email from someone i met a few months ago at a bike shop in mito. i was looking for a cycling group and they recognized me from the radio interview i had done fo IBS when i handed over my business card with my email address on it.

the group is run out of a bike shop called "Nemoto" and is pretty serious. but like most groups, no women and mainly middle aged men. but they were all nice people and they didnt leave me behind on the hills. in fact i was keeping up even though i havent ridden seriously for many many months.

we rode up some country road out the back of mito and up towards where all the golf courses are. we actually rode very close to the course that tom and i play at!

in the end it was around 70km and i was home by 2pm. the weather was really bad, but the rain didnt pour down so it was bearable. it was just really really cold. i heard on the news that there was snow in some areas of japan overnight it was so cold.

i better get some more practice in before Tom and i go to lake biwa in a few weeks. he is worried now that i am going to leave him behind cause he has no chance to practice while he is off on the golf tour.

btw, brendan jones, the guy he caddies for, came 2nd is yesterday's final in gifu so we are all pretty happy. lets hope he can go one better this week in hyogo!

it was funny, when i turned on the tv on saturday arvo to watch some of the coverage of the tournament, the first thing i saw was tom's face filling the screen! but on sunday they hardley showed his group at all, even though he came second. apparently it could have been because of the big scene brendan cause on the 17th hole on saturady by throwing his clubs around in the mud...

useful information for cycling in japan

2006-04-14T11:42:00.000+09:00

if you need to ever send your bicycle somewhere in the mail (japanese train companies are not so happy about people taking their bike with them when they travel), takyubin or "door to door deliver serice" is the answer.

Although there are many takyubin companies in japan, but only one deals with bicycles to give them a special price. i was quoted over $100 from one company and thought they must be joking.

the company to go with is "Kuro-neko Yamato". but before you can use their bike service you must apply for a special tag to hang on the bag you pack it in.
You can do this from the Japan Cycling Association.

Just send 1000 yen in a special cash envelope (you get it from the post office for 20 yen) to:
Cycling Tag Application
Japan Cycling Association
Japan Bicycle Building No3
1-9-3 Akasaka, Minato-ku, Tokyo
107-0052

〒107-0052
東京都港区赤坂1-9-3
日本自転車会館３号館
(財)日本サイクリング協会
「サイクリングタッグ申込係」

When you get the tag, pack your bike up in a "Rinko bag" and hang the tag on it. You can not use this service with a bike box. it must be in a bag.

You might want to print out the following page so that the Takyubin people know what you want. Most drivers have never delt with this service before so you may need to remind them
http://www.j-cycling.org/yamatobin/index.html

I am going to try it out this golden week. so i will report back if it is successful or not.

It shouldnt cost more than 2000 yen to send when you do it this way, a saving of nearly $80!

the famous building i work in

2006-04-14T11:31:00.000+09:00

last night i watched the TV drama that is being shot in my building. it was really strange to watch the characters walk down the same corridors that i do, look out the same windows i do.

its also funny to see that all the signs that said "ibaraki prefectural office" now say "university hospital" when you see it on TV.

i think i figured out which scene they were filming when we were standing in the foyer waiting to be able to start our movie seminar the other week. they shot it like 20 times and it was a short 5 second shot in the finished product. would have been cool to be able to see us standing on the side, but alas, they didnt put us in.....

the show is called "Iryu" or in english, "team medical dragon" and is on every thursday night at 9pm on channel 8. it is apparently based on a comic book, like most japanese TV shows

and like all japanese dramas, it is completely overacted and unrealistic. but thats why we love them :)

photos and recent update

2006-04-10T14:45:00.000+09:00

New Photos of things i have been up to recently. most of them involve cherry blossoms as it is that time of the year.

- Birthday bbq in the park
- cherry blossom viewing party
- town festival
- cherry blossoms at my work

This is Domo-kun, my favourite japanese TV character. I got a photo with him at the festival. he is suppose to look like a TV...

. . . jerrold in toronto: Strange Katakana

2006-04-10T11:47:00.000+09:00

While looking for some cool trivia questions about japan, i found this list of strange katakana-english words on an ex-iabaraki jet' blog.

Enjoy the confusion!

Sometimes Katakana English doesn't quite jive with English. Sometimes it corresponds in interesting ways. Here are some examples of such Japanese words taken from English:

torampu = playing cards (from “trump”)
wan wan = bow wow (a dog’s bark)
shaapen = mechanical pencil (from “sharp pencil”?)
coora = air conditioner (from “cooler”)
forubaru = a walk in baseball (from “four balls”)
herusumeeta = a bathroom scale (from “health meter”)
gasustando = gas station (from “gas stand”)
noto = notebook (from “note”)
manshyan = small apartment (from “mansion”)
dedobaru = a beanball in baseball (from “dead ball”)
furontogurasu = a car windshield (from “front glass”)
jipan = jeans (from “jean pants”)
handoru = a car steering wheel (from “handle”)
patocaa = police car (from “patrol car”)
hochikisu = a stapler (from “Hotchkiss” the inventor)
opincaa = convertible (from “open car”)
sumaato = slender person (from “smart”)

I woke up today and was shocked by what my health meter read. I'm not looking so smart these days. I then left my mansion in my open car. I passed a patrol car on my way to a gas stand where I refueled. The attendant was wearing jean pants and cleaned my front glass. While I waited, I used my sharp pencil to jot some notes in my note. I needed to remind myself to replace my broken Hotchkiss and buy a new deck of trump for my upcoming poker game.

new panier bags

2006-03-31T09:46:00.000+09:00

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

2006-03-28T10:44:00.000+09:00

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

2006-03-28T10:24:00.000+09:00

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

australian food and movies

2006-03-27T13:55:00.000+09:00

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

2006-03-24T16:06:00.000+09:00

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

2006-03-24T11:06:00.000+09:00

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

happy birthday to me from tom's mum

2006-03-24T09:50:00.000+09:00

i wonder who got to eat the cake?

big holiday weekend

2006-03-23T17:16:00.000+09:00

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!

2006-03-14T22:01:00.000+09:00

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"

2006-03-14T11:13:00.000+09:00

more Photobucket updates

2006-03-14T10:11:00.000+09:00

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

2006-03-13T10:30:00.000+09:00

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

2006-03-13T10:19:00.000+09:00

I have put some new photos up on photobucket.

discrimination update

2006-03-10T14:46:00.000+09:00

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

2006-03-10T13:25:00.000+09:00

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

2006-03-10T09:54:00.000+09:00

"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

2006-03-09T09:50:00.000+09:00

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

2006-03-03T16:27:00.000+09:00

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......

2006-03-02T11:42:00.000+09:00

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.

speechless

2006-02-27T16:18:00.000+09:00

i have lost my voice

it could be from a combination of many things. mainly the ones that are not giving me any free time at all to rest.

last week i had helped interview 11 people in english, had two school visits, went to tokyo for a golf fair and then ran the first day of my movie seminar.

on the way to the first one school visit i didnt have a great time, i really wish i had caught one train earlier than i did. i was supposed to go to a station called ishioka, about 30 mins from mito, but i only made it as far as hattori, one station shy of ishioka, when the train stopped and sat at the platform for way too long.

finally when i realised we were not moving again, i took out my headphones (currently listening to many different australian podcasts, triple j ones are great, especially hack), and listened to the announcements coming over the train's PA system

"There has been an accident at Ishioka, the police have been called and the ambulances are on their way..."

Great. Another one of these. I pulled out my phone to call my office to get the number of the person who was supposed to be picking me up at Ishioka, (i had left it on the desk at home) and at that point my phone runs out of battery.

Luckily we were stopped at the station and not somewhere in the middle of the tracks. I got out and found a pay phone. Funny, cause i was just listening to how telstra will be getting rid of 5000 pay phones in australia over the next year or so..

I had to call my office 4 times till they got the right number and redirected my lift to hattori station. In the mean time i met a danish person who works for the same english company as Tom and a japanese guy who had just got back from NZ and was now running late for a job interview.

The school visit went fine in the end, but i missed out on teaching one class cause i was so late. sorry grade 5! They still gave me a big box of cakes to take home though.

It would have been faster to ride my bike there in the end. I have been really close to that school before cause it is almost next door to the golf course in Ishioka where tom caddied for last year.

my second school visit, the day after, was also in the same area, but this time we got there with no problems. i went along with Tod, the other CIR in Mito, and his tuba.

I am getting good at these school visits now, dont have to prepare anything cause i have a whole kit made up with photos, maps, games etc that i just take with me to all schools and choose the best bits for each one.

The golf fair in tokyo was something that tom wanted to see and i went along for the ride. it was very... golfy...
way too many golf clubs for my liking. its bad enough letting him loose in a golf store!

Sunday was the movie festival/seminar part 1. We showed "The Dish" and i think it went down well. Had about 20 people turn up and after a few minor hitches (the power not working until 10am on the dot) we got it started. Next week is "strictly ballroom" so if anyone has any ideas for the seminar part, yell out in the comments.

Today, Aurelien (french CIR) and i went to a Natto museum and factory to write about it for the E-Ibaraki Report. Veyr stinky but luckily we didnt have to eat any of it. They gave us some natto furikake as a present. i think we will give them away to people who like it rather than try it ourselves. Natto has to be the worst food in the world. But i did find out in the museum that there is anotehr 6 or so countries that have dishes similar. one even in africa! Aurelien describes it as "food from hell"

anyways, now i have written all this down i wont have to say it and use my voice. i sound very husky at the moment, but its hard to avoid talking. it better get back to normal by thursday as i have a radio interview to do! they want to ask me about australian stuff cause japan will be playing australia in the soccer world cup. the interview will be broadcast in 10 min slabs every day next week, so listen out if you are in ibaraki at lunch time anytime next week.

be prepared

2006-02-19T19:34:00.000+09:00

when i bought my bike in late 2004 i bought some spare tire tubes just to be safe. up till now i havent had to use them. never had a puncture.

today i decided that after a year of riding, and thousands of kilometres, it was probably time to put the spares to use.

i took off the front tire and spend about 30 mins stuggling to get the tube out. i am not very good at replacing tires.

then i pulled out the spares and discovered that my preparation was not as good as i had hoped.

the spares i have been carrying around for the last 18 months, relying on in the case i might get a flat out on the road, the ones i got from the bike shop along with my bike the day i bought it.

they are the wrong size!!!

after all that stuggling with the tubes, i just had to put the same one back in

not happy jan. dont rely on the bike shop to sell you the correct tubes. when flat they might look the same size, but when pupmped up, a few milimetres make a big difference.

grrr.

another one-giri

2006-02-17T14:41:00.000+09:00

this time from "011-738-8281"
i looked it up on the net and its in the "worst one-giri ranking".

where did these people get my number from? or is it just a cooincidence....

One-giri

2006-02-17T10:39:00.000+09:00

Does this happen anywhre but Japan?

I know that prank calls are common in many countries, heck, look at bart's escapades in the simpsons when he calls moes tavern over and over.

in japan its different. all they do is call and then hang up before it actually rings. its called a "One-giri" or "One ring" in english.

When i woke up this morning i had a missed called at around abouts 1am from a number i didnt know. My old mobile would tell me how long it had rung for so it was easy to tell if it was a One-giri or not, but this phone doenst have that function.

So i looked up the number of the net, 048-631-2730, just in case it was the hospital calling to say matt had injured himself snowboarding again or something. I knew the number wasnt from Ibaraki but it could have been from Saitama or that region.

ANyways, i didnt find out who it was, but i did find out that this number is known to be a nuisance number. Many people have written on a forum that they have recieved prank calls from this person. always one-giri's.

why would someone want to do that. what kind of thrill do they get out of calling someone in the middle of the night?

I am happy that my phone was on silent last night or i would have been pretty pissed off to hear it ring at 1am.

"Lets go to the Flicks" Australian Movie Seminar

2006-02-16T16:25:00.000+09:00

"Flicks” is Australian for “Movies”. It probably comes from the sound a film projector makes…

This year is the “Australia Japan Year of Exchange” and we have decided in Ibaraki to help to deepen friendship, cooperation and understanding between Japan and Australia through holding an Australian movie seminar.

As part of the Ibaraki International Association's World Culture Seminar and the International Affairs Division, every week we will show a famous movie from Australia that is not well known in Japan. Before each movie will be a short introduction to Australian culture by our Australian Coordinator of International Relations in Japanese, and afterwards there will be a chance to ask questions.

Dates and times of sessions

* Sunday February 26th 2006 (10：00～13:30)
Movie: THE DISH
* Sunday March 5th 2006 (10：00～13:30)
Movie: STRICTLY BALLROOM
* Sunday March 12th 2006　(10：00～13:30)
Movie: RABBIT PROOF FENCE
* Sunday March 26th 2006　(10：00～15:45)
Movie: BABE
A party with Australian music and food will be put on for the participants following the movie on March 26th

Place:
Prefectural Theatre, Level 2, Prefectural Office, 978-6 Kasahara-cho, Mito
Click here for a map

Cost:
Free！

How to take part:
Please send a postcard or an email with:
your name, address, phone number, days attending and number of people taking part with you, to the following address

Address:
978-6 Kasahara-cho, Mito 〒310-8555　
International Affairs Division, Australia Japan YOE Movie Seminar
Email　：　ausflicks@gmail.com

Deadline:
No later than 3 days before each session.　The first deadline is on Friday February 24th 2005. There is a limit of 50 people per session. First in best dressed!

For more information:
Contact the International Affairs Division on TEL 029-301-2857 or email Carly Bode, ausflicks@gmail.com

do you want to pay for NHK?

2006-02-15T16:08:00.000+09:00

The other night a man come around to my door to ask me to pay for viewing NHK.

I have heard of this happening before, and in fact they came to our house in Ebisu once too, so i played dumb and pretended that i didnt speak japanese. Why should i pay nearly $20 a month for a channel that i dont even watch.

I looked it up on the net to see what it is really all about and found this site, RECEIVING FEE SYSTEM

Apparently, Article 32 of the Broadcast Law tells me that
Any person who has installed receiving equipment capable of receiving the broadcasting provided by NHK shall conclude a contract with NHK with regard to the reception of its broadcasting. However, this shall not apply to those who have installed receiving equipment not intended for the reception of broadcasting, or receiving equipment solely for the reception of radio broadcasting or multiplex broadcasting (broadcasting of voice and other sound transmissions not coming under television broadcasting and multiplex broadcasting classifications).

So does that mean that just having a TV means i have to pay? or does the line "this shall not apply to those who have installed receiving equipment not intended for the reception of broadcasting" mean that if i dont watch NHK and only use my TV for watching movies from my computer, that i dont need to pay...

I dont know if we can play dumb again if they come around again. I might just stop answering the door in the evening.

Luckily i have found another artilce from the Japan Times that tells me "there is no punishment for nonpayment" and because a large number of people are not paying, NHK is having huge trouble with its budget.

I think that if a fee like this was introduced in Australia, noone would pay it. But i did read that in the UK, BBC has a similar system and it has a penalty of 1000 pounds if it is not paid.

Well i think i can continue to avoid it, but i also heard that they always send around people who are good at getting your sympathy...

E-Ibaraki Report

2006-02-13T16:23:00.000+09:00

The January Edition of E-Ibaraki Report is finally up. Check it out.

busy busy bee

2006-02-13T16:22:00.000+09:00

i dont know the last time i actually wrote about what i have been up to recently. its all been about the freezing cold weather. its starting to get warm again here and any moment now the ume (plum) blossoms will be blooming. when i walked though the kairakuen park on saturday they were preparing for the thousands of people that will come through to see them over the next month.

this month has been extreemly busy. i think it was a ploy to get me to recontract here at the kencho cause one of my qualms was that i didnt have enought challenging work to do.

over the last few weeks i have run a workshop day for the other JETs in Ibaraki, been to a PA training seminar in Tokyo, gone to a sake brewery to write about it, MC'd a speech contest for foreiners (i wish i could have taken part, they won some groovy prizes like bikes, money, suitcases, microwaves etc), translated the entire audio system of the Ibaraki Nature Museum (check it out as of April 1st if you want to hear my work), translated heaps of tourist brochures and letters for the governor, visited a number of primary schools to teach about Australia, and setting up a movie festival to start on the 26th February showing Australian Films such as "the dish" and "babe"

Now thats only what i have been doing at work. I went skiing the other week, taugh tom a lot of japanese, golf lessons at the driving range, english teaching at the local international centre, taiko drum concert in Ibaraki-machi etc.

Still this month i have another 3 school visits, a trip to the tatami and natto museums for the E-Ibaraki website, learning how to do indigo dyeing in Yuuki, helping out at english interviews in Tsukuba, talking at MESA, and the movie seminar from feb 26th.

if i am lucky i will go skiing in Fukushima on the 25th for only 500yen, but i might be too tired to move by then.
we have a JET bowling day on march 3rd too...

no wonder i have been tired recently.

Famous Tom

2006-02-13T11:37:00.000+09:00

Tom and i have been getting special treatment down at the driving range ever since this article was in a Golf magazine called "Alba" in January.

Basically it is about how he was caddying for Tajima last year and how he is good at imitating other peoples golf swings. In the picture he is taking off Tajima's swing.

my new camera

2006-02-06T09:47:00.000+09:00

I finally bought my Panasonic Lumix FZ5 at Yamada Denki near my house yesterday.

It was 4000 yen more expensive than in Tokyo, but i got 4000 yen worth of free points which i used to buy a iron that i was going to buy anyway. So it ended up being the same price really.

I still need to get a case for it so it doesnt get scratched, but it works really well. But by the time the batteries charged, it was already darl outside so i didnt get a chance to take it out for a test drive.

Shame, cause even thought it was soo cold outside, it was a beautiful day. Not a cloud in sight. I guess that is why it was so cold...

new level of cold.

2006-02-06T09:43:00.000+09:00

this is getting ridiculous. when we woke up yesterday, our pipes were frozen.

when we woke up today, they were frozen again!

at least now we know that the hot water trick works, but its no fun going outside in that cold to do it.

lucky for me, tom had to leave 1 hour earlier than me to get to work so i got to stay in my warm futon and by the time i got up the pipes were running fine :)

soo cold

2006-02-05T15:49:00.000+09:00

it was so cold this morning that the pipes froze. we couldnt get them working again till way after lunch when we decided to try pouring hot water over them cause we couldnt wait any longer.

in other news, i bought a new digital camera today (and an iron). new photos will be up soon. and finally i will have neat clothes to wear to work.

snow fun

2006-01-30T18:36:00.000+09:00

we have had some fun with the snow in japan over the last week.

after going up to the frozen waterfall in daigo last weekend on the first day of snow in mito, this weekend we went to niigata to visit matt at gala and also do a bit of skiing and snowboarding ourselves.

we got to yuzawa at 8pm by bus. the bus just stopped at the side of the freeway and we had no idea where to go next. matt had said do we want a taxi, but i had looked at the bus stop on a map and it had looked close. but when there is over 4 metres of snow all around you, it is not that easy.

after a crazy cab ride, i am sure the driver thought he was a rally car champion, we got to the hotel and matt arrived to see us.

we met up with another friend from ibaraki and then had dinner. the next day was to be a big one so it was an early night.

tom had tried snowboarding last time at buller with no luck, so this time we went for skiing. i put the skis back on my feet after a rest of 6 years. it was a funny feeling. i had forgoten most of it but it came back fast enough.

the snow was amazing. as i said, 4 metres all around. it was snowing pretty hard all day on the saturday and it was powder heaven.

it was so soft that at one point i had to rescue tom from the side of a run. i got myself caught too, up to my waist and when he got out he had to pull me out too.

my friend aurelien decided it would be a good idea to go dressed to the snow as a cow. literally a cow. he had a cow costume on which had a tail and even ears. he had quiet a few funny looks and a few people pulling his tail.

that night we went to dinner at an izakaya and then drinks at an aussie bar

the next day, the weather was amazing. blue skies and warm. the snow was still soft and there were less people on the mountain. japanese people like to ski on saturadys. 6000 of them. only 4000 on sundays.

i snowboarded on saturday and left tom on the beginer run to go out and try a few tricks with matty. i have now learnt the 360. but at one point i ended up on my butt and matt ran straight into me. i think that hurt more than the original fall.

we left the mountain after lunch for a quick japanese bath and then a long train ride back to mito. our train was cancelled due to the snow, but lucky for us we were able to get on the shinkansen for the price of a local train. we saved over 1 hour doing this and got home in only 4 hours.

today i am pretty stuffed. got a few bruises and sore muscles, but i think we will go back again in march cause you get a free lift ticket on your birthday. matty and warick might also come down to mito to visit some day soon.

i am an alien in japan

2006-01-24T16:09:00.000+09:00

photos

2006-01-21T20:24:00.000+09:00

photos from vietnam! sorry it took so long

let it snow

2006-01-21T20:02:00.000+09:00

its snowing here

a little bit of australia in ibaraki

2006-01-17T10:04:00.000+09:00

i think i have managed to convince my office to let me run my australian movie seminar/festival in march.

we have gotten past the problems with the copyrights and they actually seem to like the idea. i bet its the fact that it will only cost them about $70 to run the event for 4 weeks that sealed the deal.

i am planning to show
- the dish
- strictly ballroom
- rabbit proof fence
- babe

they all have funny titles in japanese though. here are the direct translations
- the sheep of the moon
- dancing hero
- 1500 miles barefoot
- babe (the only normal one)

if you are in ibaraki in march, keep your sunday mornings free for a day at the flicks.

good morning vietnam

2006-01-13T16:25:00.000+09:00

well in fact it was afternoon by the time i got there on the 5th, but it felt like the morning rush hour. but then again, i think it is rush hour 24 hours a day in Ho chi minh city (HCMC).

its amazing that my taxi to pham ngu lao, the back packers district, didnt crash into anything. in fact i only saw one accident the whole time i was there. the traffic is like organised chaos. people and ducking and swerving all over the place, they toot their horn, not to tell people to move, but more to say i am here!

just crossing the road is a trial. but i figured out the best way to do it is just step out and hope for the best. they bikes go around you, its only the busses you need to worry about. there are not that many cars at all.

i checked into my hotel. only $12 a night! with breakfast! and set off to explore the town by night. the area i was staying in was full to the brim of foriengers. i think half of australia was in HCMC that week too.

some things i noticed:

you can carry the following things on a motorbike
- 4 people
- 5 slabs of beer
- 6 mattresses
- a pot plant
- soup
- two computers

you can buy the following things from people in the street who come up to you while you are sitting at a resturant
- gum
- books
- tiger balm
- hammocks
- sunglasses

there is no such thing as refrigeration at a market. meat just sits out on the table

it is legitimate to have your 2 y.o. son out at 11pm if it helps you sell on of the above items

the vietnamese food in australia is better than the vietnamese food in vietnam

people try to steal your bags when they ride past you on a bike

the drive on the other side of the road (most of the time)

there are no road rules

beer is extremely cheap here

the list could go on..

on my first full day i spent the day exploring HCMC. I went to the market, the war museum, the reunification palace, the notre dam cathederal, the post office etc. all the big sights in HCMC. by the end of the day my feet were falling off.

in the evening i went to a bar to try and make friends. it is actually pretty hard to do this i found. most people on holdiay were either their with their partners or close friends. its hard to be on the outside of a group. i finally found another 2 women from australia who were travelling by themselves and we partied the night away

on the next day i set off for a 3 day trip of the mekong delta. the prices here for tours are uneblievable. $26 USD for 3 days, all busses, boats and accom. all we had to pay for was food.

i dont know if i can remember all the places we visited along the way, but we spent a lot of time on boats cruising along the mekong river and its canals.

the river is huge. i think he said 3km at its widest point. but i found it more interesting along the narrower cannals where we could see the banks and the lives of the people along the way.

the tour showed us lots of the industry along the canals. mainly rice related, but some fruit and construction. we say how to make rice paper, coconut candy, vermicilli noodles, bricks, fish farming, insence, weaving, bonsai trees, floating markets, boat builing etc

it was really interesting and we also got a lot of time to wander through the villages and interact with the people there. its amazing how poor they are, yet how happy they are. it really brings you back to earth and shows you that you dont need all the things that we think we do. ipods, computers, fancy cars etc. they live with so little, their houses are so small and unstable, but they have the biggest smiles i have ever seen.

the tour brought us back to HCMC in the evening of the 9th and i was able to catch up with some of the JETs from Ibaraki who were also travelling in Vietnam at the same time.

My last day i visited the Cu Chi Tunnels on a tour which cost all of $4. It is another amazing place. we were able to crawl through the real tunnels to see what it was like for the people who built them during the war. I only went through 30 metres of it but i could have gone for 90 metres. The tunnels are only 1.2m high and 70 cm wide. it is very very tight in there and i didnt have a torch. after 30 metres i knew what it felt like and decided it wasnt worth doing another 60...

Our tour guide was a veteran from the South Vietnamese side and had lots of stories to tell. It is a must see for anyone visiting HCMC.

There was a very sad thing that we found out on the tour however. 5 days earlier a korean man had commited suicide at the shooting range next to the tunnels. normally on this tour you get to go to the range to shoot real machine guns and he turned one on himself. so naturally the raneg was closed until investigations could be completed. i didnt want to go there anyway, but it is very sad that this kind of thing could happen.

at the end of my last day i went back to the market to ofload all the vietnamese dong and USD i had left in my wallet. i am not a very good bargainer so i went through it pretty quickly. but i am happy with my purchases. i always feel too sorry for the people trying to sell me things and i dont push them to lower their prices. but what i bought i would have bought in japan anyway and it was still cheaper.

i came out with some winter coats, some beads, new sunnies, some t-shirts for tom, some vietnamese coffee, some pants for me and a t-shirt for me. i am pretty happy with them all.

i got back to japan at 7am on wednesday and i was stuffed. my flight hadnt left HCMC till midnight so i had to kill a lot of hours between going to the market and the airport. i spent it at the pub reading a book and till a found some people to talk to. my taxi driver to the airport was hilarious. he loved karaoke and he even had a list of the songs he wanted to sing with him to share. i sang a few to fill in the 30 min drive with him.

now i am back at work and have lots to do to get my australian movie seminar off the ground. i have spent the day trawling through copyright laws to find out if i can even show these movies. i think i can get away with it under the heading of education. anyways i am going to try.

i will put up some photos of the vietnam trip in the next few days so keep you eyes peeled.

part 2 of the chirstmas holdiays

2006-01-13T15:49:00.000+09:00

i spent christmas eve at tom's mums place. then christmas lunch was at my aunty's house and dinner was at mum and dads. I stopped by to visit tom's dad's family for a little while during the day and then he came to our dinner.

boxing day was of course a trip to the sales. i now had too many clothes to fit back into the 2 small bags i had brought back from japan with me.

the original plan was to swap those two small bags for my pack so when i went back through vietnam. life owuld be easier.

however, as all things in life, it didnt go to plan. because i hadnt told anyone i was coming back, i also didnt know that matt had taken my pack with him to japan in decemeber. so i had to buy a new one. this one is better anyway. its red, easy to find on the baggage carousel at the airport and lockable - a very important tool when you are travelling in south east asia these days.

the 27th we headed into the city for a picnic lunch with mum and dad and josh and em at the fitzroy gardens. it was mum and dad's 30th wedding anniversay so they were staying in town. i bought some flowers on the way in and delivered them to their hotel to surprise them.

after lunch it was down to the beach to stay at tom's dad's family's beach house.

the 28th was a great day. after a round of golf in the morning, we headed to the new peninsular hot springs resort for an onsen and massage. This was part of my christmas present from tom. i gave him a coffee maker which he cant get till he comes back to japan. a ploy to make sure he came back :)

i had never had a massage before and this was very very cool at the resort. after you go to the public bath, you get your own private bath for about 30 mins. then into the massage room. they hold 3 scents under your nose so you can pick your massage oil. they dont tell you what the scents are till after and what they do. apparently you body can decide the right one for itself.

tom chose the "relax you have too much on your mind" oil and i chose "detox", appropriate seeing i had not had one day since i arrived in oz on the 22nd without a glass of wine in my hand.

the massage was soo relaxing. i didnt fall asleep but tom did. at the end they told me to keep my fluids up so when we got back to the beach house we cracked out some more wine...

after another day at the beach we headed back to melbourne and i caught up with all the uni girls for dinner. had dinner at a nice little cafe on bridge rd and then off to brooke's for drinks.

next day was a bit of a relaxer. and then the day after, new years eve, we headed back down to the beach. it apparently got to 46 degrees that day in melbourne. i dont think it was that bad down at rye, but it was pretty hot. new years eve for us was pretty quiet but we walked down to the beach in time to watch the illegal fireworks from the pier.

next day was a lot cooler than the 46 degree belter. we rode down to sorrento on what i would call antique road bikes for breaky. then off to the golf course to play with some of toms friends. sadly but the time we got to the 2nd hole, the rain came down. and did it come down. it was so wet we had to abandon the game and head for the pub.

the next day we went up to tom's mums for dinner with my folks too and then the day after was a picnic at badger creek in healsville with the danish exchange student's parents who were over.

that night i had all my friends over for drinks and the n the next day was getting ready for the trip to vietnam. i had soo much trouble fitting everything into my pack. it was never going to fit. i dont know why i brought so much stuff back from japan with me. but i guess with melbourne weather, you never know what it is going to do. the 46 to 17 degree drop in 1 day stands to show that..

on the last night we went to indochine at box hill for a taste of the vietnamese food i had to look forward to. soo yummy.

and then i left at 10am the next day, jan 5th, for HCMC .

the curse of the zipper

2006-01-13T09:34:00.000+09:00

before i continue my story on australia and vietnam, i just have to say that even though i left the country for 3 weeks i did not manage to shed the curse of the zipper

yesterday when i was just about to leave for work, i started to put my boots on.

and the zipper broke!!!

how could this happen again? this is the 4th broken zipper in as many weeks.

something strange is happening in my house.

around the world again

2006-01-12T11:52:00.000+09:00

well i have been gone for a long time.

i left my house in japan at 5.00am on the 21st of decemeber and i finally set foot back in it again at 11am on the 11th of january.

it felt like a whole year had passed since i had been here, i guess that is true cause it is now 2006, but it was a real funny feeling coming back after being in OZ for 2 weeeks and then vietnam for another 1 week

so i will start at the start of my trip, cause that would be logical.

on the 21st i left japan. i hadnt really thought too much about how i was getting back to oz. i booked a flight on vietnam airlines way back a few months before and didnt really pay attention to the schedule. apparently i had a 5 hour stop over in HCMC and i didnt even realise! now thats a long time in any airport, but HCMC is really the pits. one restaurant and about 5 duty free shops to fill in the time. then we found out the plane was delayed another 3 hours! i was travelling with another JET from melbourne and we filled the time making friends with other travellers, a few who decided to make their own fun by turning the airport into their own private disco. the boogied all over the terminal listening to their ipods.

finally i got to melbourne. i was supposed to get in at 9am but it was almost 1pm by the time i left the baggage claim and found tom waiting paitently. i had called his house to say i would be late from HCMC but the message didnt get to him cause his dad forgot to tell him...

my parents didnt know i was coming home. in fact noone apart from tom, and a few people he had accidently told knew. i had set up with mum that tom would come for lunch with her at around midday. but i was late so this threw a spanner in the works. tom handled it by calling and saying he was going to be late cause he was christmas shopping at eastland. he had to say something like that cause the airport noise was very loud in the background and he didnt want her to catch on.

finally we got back to my house. i rang the doorbell and hid behind the door when she looked out the window to see who was there. when she opened the door she almost cried. she had no idea at all i was coming home. she had been complainig that noone was going to be home for christmas only a few days before. i had been worried that she might have caught on cause i had been very vauge about my holiday plans and one of toms friends had let something slip at charlotte's 1st birthday. but she had no idea.

so next to surprise was dad. he was still at work and he was supposed to come home for lunch with tom but cause he was running late he didnt bother. so mum kept calling him all day asking when he was coming back and trying to ocnvince him to leave early cause it was his last day before the holdiays. in the end he didnt get back till 6pm! i shocked him by just walking out into the kitchen after he came in and said "hi dad, how was your day?"

then i got my brother and emily. mum called them to ask them over for dinner for no particular reason, but they were going to em's house so they said they would drop by before hand. that worked out well and they were suitibaly surprised.

the rest of the family i didnt get to shock much because i called grandma to tell her and then she told everyone else before i got a chance. but it was still good.

i will continue the story soon, but for now it is lunch time here in japan. back to the old cafeteria food that i havent had for 3 weeks. well at least i will be eating healthy again. in oz i had all the food that i had been missing over the last 6 months - souvlaki, pizza, fish and chips, pies etc - all soo good for me...

my brother the snowman

2005-12-20T17:02:00.000+09:00

the ease shopping in japan

2005-12-20T11:13:00.000+09:00

internet shopping in japan is so easy. you dont even need a credit card.

all you have to do is
a. chose what you want to buy,
b. choose the day you want it to arrive,
c. print out a special page with a barcode on it,
d. take it to the nearest conbini (there is one every 100 meters over here),
e. pay for it there in cash,
f. wait for the delivery man to arrive,
g. and "hey presto" you have something new

I bought tom's chrissy present this way. so easy, no need to lug stuff home from the store or go out in the cold at all! it got delivered at 9.30pm last night, but he wont get it until the 16th january when he comes back to japan. an incentive to get him to come back again :)

okinawa, beautiful one day...

2005-12-19T15:25:00.000+09:00

a disater the next.

but in the end i had fun. here is how it started thought

thurs night i went to tokyo to stay at suma's so i could sleep in to get to haneda, but he had to fly to franfurt and so i had to leave his house at 6.30am after we had been out at karaoke till all hours

i lost my scarf in the bus

toms bike was stolen from out the front of my apartment

my camera broke.

got airport way early hoping to get on an earlier flight but the bitch behind the counter wouldnt let me, so i waited for 2 hours.

flight was delayed.

finally got to naha, and found the car rental place. it was actually a 20 min train ride from the airport. the travel agents had told me otherwise..

got there and they wouldnt let me have my car cause i had accidently left my international drivers licence at home. not way they were going to budge.

sat around sooking for about 30 mins trying to decided what to do and gte over the fact i couldnt get my 9000 yen back either. then went to a castle.

met up with tom around 5.30 and thing picked up then we i found out they had missed the cut and he was going to be able to spend the whole weekend with me. originally i was going to have to spend it by myself and without a car that would have been hard.

the hotel was not that flash. aparently the place tom had been in all week til friday was much nicer and cheaper

the weather was pretty shit all weekend. cold and windy. the sun came out every so often and it was warmish then, but when it went behind a cloud it was freezing.

we did managed to go and see some old castle ruins and a traditional style okinawan house on saturday by bus. on sunday we hired bikes and rode to the old navy underground tunnels. and then a strange tree house style restaurant for lunch. didnt get anywhere near a beach at all!

did a lot of christmas shopping, but still have nothing for mum and dad...
the shopping here was good, perfume is really cheap for some reason. but as all tourist traps go, too many souviner shops.

the island was ok, but i dont know if i would go back again unless it was summer, or we went even further south to get away from the civilization. there were just too many people and too much concrete.every building is made of concrete!

sounds all a bit depressing, but we actually did have fun. the food we ate was great and once we got into it, the holiday was quite relaxing. spent a lot of time just sitting drinking hot chocolates, eating ice cream, watching the crowds go by.

the wonders never cease

2005-12-15T17:06:00.000+09:00

at 3pm on the dot, the music begins. the voice over is telling me to stand up and stretch my hard worked body, "breath in deeply...., breath out....."

funny, i have heard this music every day since i started working here at the prefectual office, but i have never actually seen anybody doing the 3pm exercices, known in japanese as "rajio taiso" or "radio gymnastics"

english grammar

2005-12-15T15:03:00.000+09:00

i know that my knowledge of english grammar is not what it should be. but i cant even remember the last time i studied it at school. must have been in primary school...

anyways i still find it kind of insulting when a japanese person who i have never actually heard speak a grammatically correct english sentance telling me that what i have written in english in wrong.

Correct me if i am wrong, but
Below the motif are the roof and the compartment for the light.

should not be
Below the motif is the roof and the compartment for the light.

When you have 2 things you have to use "are" i thought.
tell me what you think. i might be way off here...

a zipper moment

2005-12-15T10:13:00.000+09:00

somthing is going on.

i have a pair of pants that the zipper just wont stay up on. i have another pair of pants that the zipper bit just fell off and now i cant wear, and it fell off while i was wearing them. i also have a jacket that wont zip up anymore.

what is the reason for all this zipper tourment? did i wrong the zipper in a past life? i apologise now for any harm i may have caused to zippers.

i had better sort it out soon cause now i am down two pairs of black pants and a rain jacket for cycling.

i wish i had a sewing machine. maybe then i could fix it myself, but i think the only option is to take them all to a alterations shop, or send them back to mum in oz....

anotehr busy week and weekend

2005-12-14T12:00:00.000+09:00

since i wrote last about what i have been up to recently, i have done heaps.

sat 3rd: went to the driving range with Umehara-san, a friend we made at the range who turned out to be my friend's unlce. then took a train for 3 hours to machida on the west side of tokyo to meet up with tom. had a meal with all the caddies at TGI fridays and then beat tom in a game of darts.

sun 4th: went the golf course early and hung out in the club house away from the cold while tom and the korean guy he was caddying for practiced. watched the tournament with what seemd a milllion other people. i couldnt get close enough to even wish them luck. in the end they came 7th, but that was pretty disappointing after coming 1st at one point in the tournament. number 13 was not a lucky number for them, triple bogey i think it was....

mon 5th: tom came back to mito to spend the week, and i went back to work.

tue 6th: as per previous post, was on NHK TV again for a short bit of advertising.

wed 7th: went to help out at a childrens taiko school for a few hours. i think i might have finally remembered the song that i have been learning for the last few months off by heart. the kids were doing the same tune, but a lot slower, so it was easier to get.

fri 9th: anotehr trip to the driving range, followed by a dinner at a restaurant called just "EAT". was recognised by the waiter there cause he delivers lunch boxes to my office every day. i didnt even realise. after dinner it was off to bowling with a few JETs from Mito area. Was completely thumped by Tom (must have ben payback for beating him in darts) but i still played my bets game ever, about 90 i think...

sat 10th: a sleepy morning and then a bit of japanese study for tom. at 4.30pm, tamami, a girl from my office picked us up to go to the JET christmas party in Itako, about a 2 hour drive away. actually it only took us 1.5 hours so we got there way to early. so a brief trip to a japanese pub to kill the time was in order. the party started at 7pm and was lots of fun. we played our family's style of kris kringle that involves a lot of stealing and everyone enjoyed it. i ended up with some chocolates and some "elephant" condoms, and tom got a bottle of whiskey.

sun 11th: we had got home from the party at 1am so that was enought time to sleep until we were getting picked up at 8.30am to go group bike riding in Tsukuba. it was a pretty laid back ride, only 30km over the whole day. we stopped every 5 mins to go to a coffe shop or bakery or cake shop. this was good and all but it was soo cold i wished we could go further between stops. the day finished off with a trip to the top of the tallest building to see the night lights and a walk through the christmas tree display. got home around 8pm and had dinner at groovy, our fav pasta shop near my apartment

mon 12th: tom left for okinawa and i went back to working as normal

tonight we have a birthday party for a mito JET called Mehn, actually it wiill be at groovy pasta again, so twice in one week!

on friday i am off to okinawa too, so i hope the weather gets a bit warmer down there. tom called me yesterday as said it wasnt as warm as expected, but anything is better than the 5 degrees we had here yesterday... i might not go on that scuba dive that i had planned though...

the mystery half solved

2005-12-12T15:45:00.000+09:00

my digital camera has been broken for the last few days. i went to my bag on friday night to look for it to take a photo at the bowling alley when my friends were being silly, but it just didnt turn on. all it said was "lens error"

this was a shock. what was wrong with my lens? i hadnt used my camera for about a week, what had happened to it in those short few days?

today i discovered a clue. half of the screws from the case are missing! i found one in the bottom of my bag, but about 5 are still missing so the case is very loose.

by pressing the sides of the case together you can make the camera turn on again, but this is not a very good way to take a photo.

now i know what is wrong and i can take it to the shop and just ask for new screws and not have to spend hundreds on getting it looked at. i have heard times when it costs more to fix than buy a new one.

but this still doesnt explain why the screws fell out. the mystery continues...

super stars

2005-12-06T17:13:00.000+09:00

tom and i were on tv today. granted it was digital local nhk which noone watches, it was still fun.

i had to go there to promote the asian carton expo that my depeartment is running and decided to invite tom along too. he got to hold a poster and sit in the front row. i had to say a few words, but nothing too strenuous.

not only did i do the promo, but they got me up on stage to help with the cooking segment too. they were making some kind of italian cookies that taste exactly like mum's forcer biscuits. very tasty.

all i need now is snow

2005-12-06T17:11:00.000+09:00

the temperature has dropped. the gloves. beanies and scarves are out. all we need now is snow.

and apparently we might get it tonight.

in other regions of japan such as kyoto and hiroshima they have already unseasonal snow. the kinkakuji temple in kyoto is all white! this rarely happens, and especially at this time of the year.

i am sure matt is feeling it in niigata. its been snowing all day according to the weather report.

tonight i am going to cook soup for the 1st time this winter. a big thick veggie soup i think. and then cuddle up on the couch with tom and maybe watch a dvd or 2. definately not going outside at all

rss feeds - the new way to read

2005-12-05T15:38:00.000+09:00

I dont know much about all this, but i think it is pretty cool.

Today i discovered that you can personalize your google homepage so that it comes up with links to new posts in your favourite blogs

Click on Personalized home on the normal google page and it lets you add whatever content you want

If you creat a section, use the following link to get Kokogahen updates immediately on your google page

http://kokogahen.blogspot.com/atom.xml

I know i dont write that often, so at least you wont have be disappointed when you go to my site anymore cause you will know if there is something new or not beforehand.

Because you wanted it

2005-12-02T10:38:00.000+09:00

I just realised that i hadnt announced Kates new blog to my site. Maybe i did and i forgot i did. I cant even remember what day it is at the moment. Being away from the office for half the week really stuffs with your mind.

Because you wanted it takes of where "Funny Face I love you" left off

recent news

2005-12-02T10:31:00.000+09:00

what have i been up to recently...

after finally getting a few free weekends to relax, it back to being busy busy busy again.

since i last wrote on the 19th, i have been riding a bit. I bought some new brakes for my bike. About time too. I dont know how mant thousands of km i had done since i bought the bike in oct last year. But they were very very worn down and probably dangerous. Now i am all ready to ride some huge ride.

I did ride down to the beach and then to the shopping centre that weekend. And then the weekend after i rode a big 50km circut around mito and the surrounding cities. Riding along the country roads is very relaxing, but the large roads have way too many trucks on them for me. I think next time i will stick to country roads again.

On the 22nd we had a big party at one of the JETs houses which ran into the next day. Luckily it was another one of those great public holidays japan loves. I am sure there is at least 1 or 2 a month. The next day a got a lift home with a friend and we decided to go shopping at the new Jusco shopping centre again for christmas presents. I am having no luck at all this year finding anything. And i will have to soon or they wont arrive in the post in time...

This just passed weekend i went into Tokyo on the sunday to meet up with Tom. He had been in Kochi Prefecture, about a 2 hour flight down south working and was coming back to Tokyo to work there for this week. HE wasnt coming till the evening so i spent the day at Design Festa, a big arty kind of show at Odaiba Big Sight. Two of the JETs in Ibaraki were having stalls there so i checked them out. All i bought was a few post cards though and i am sure i will never get around to sending them..

So sunday night was in Tokyo, then monday was the first day of the CIR conference in Chiba. Spend the morning shopping in Ginza with Tom and then got on the train to Makuhari where the conference was being held. I had spend a lot of time in Makuhari in 2003 cause it was where the Tokyo Motor show was held.

The conference was a bit of a waste of time, 3 days of seminars about pretty obvious things. But i got to meet up with lots of other CIRS and stay in a nice hotel (the Prince Hotel). I even met up with an ex-swinny student who was 3 years above me (any one remember Jason?). And also i met someone who was a Rotary exchange student from Melbourne to Saitama 3 years before me.

Tuesday night and wednesday night i went back into Tokyo to have dinner with Tom. First time in a while i have seen him 3 days in a week. Next week he is coming back to Mito though. But the week after is Okinawa. Luckily i am going to go to Okinawa too, but just for the weekend. My office owes me so many days in lieu for weekend and evening work so i can justify taking the friday off. Maybe i will be able to find those christmas presents i need to buy there. I am planning on spending one of the days learning to scuba dive though.. And i will not spend any of the time watching the golf!

So back at work now. But this weekend i will go back into Tokyo to watch the golf on sunday (i know i said i wouldnt go to watch it again, but they have a good chance of winning this week) and have dinner with one of Toms friends on sunday night in Roppongi. Gosh i do some kms for this boy! Oh well, he did come all the way to japan to be with me so i have a couple of thousand kms to catch up on :)

koko ga hen

Sakura, Sakura

coco farm and winery

kyushu photos

koko ga hen

dinos are not extint after all

more photos from engagement party

photos from engagement party

photos from recent holidays

hakone

ahega halloween

mobile phone number portibility

end of the week!

long awaited update

what happened to pluto..

unusual facts about australia

my life recently

Bali photos, as promised

update

guess who went away to bali and came back engaged!

bali here we come

car car car

japan shattered, australia still alive

lots of photos

update

names of fruit and vegetables in japan

where the bloody hell are you?

video of the art show

art show at the kencho

thorpedo water?

Australia-Japan Children's Art Exhibition 日本・オーストラリア小学生絵画展

wacko jacko in japan

australia, japan and the soccer

tower or beast?

kasumigaura photos

my saturady in photos

photos from biwa-ko

cycling holidays and the after effects

cycling biwako trip!

a very hot appointment

first a vase, and now a glass!

my vase!

new baby "Suri"for tomkat

cycling at last! and some golf news

useful information for cycling in japan

the famous building i work in

photos and recent update

. . . jerrold in toronto: Strange Katakana

new panier bags

What the bloody hell does it mean? Slogan baffles Japan

movie seminar photos

australian food and movies

my new photos

Photos of trip to Saitama and Niigata with katie

happy birthday to me from tom's mum

big holiday weekend

Ebay this!

happy "white day"

more Photobucket updates

my new golf clubs

photo update

discrimination update

just for good measure

and people thought australia was racist

Mito's black hole

And then it snows

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

speechless

be prepared

another one-giri

One-giri

"Lets go to the Flicks" Australian Movie Seminar

do you want to pay for NHK?

E-Ibaraki Report

busy busy bee

Famous Tom

my new camera

new level of cold.

soo cold

snow fun

Australia-Japan Children's Art Exhibition 　日本・オーストラリア小学生絵画展