Nonstop to Tokyo [.co.uk]

Hello again! I'm on the internet in a cafe which is currently playing non-stop Carpenters. It's hard not to sing along!

Well, we've moved on from Kobe now. We went to Hiroshima from there, which as you probably all know is where the first atomic bomb was dropped in the second world war. There's lots of stuff about peace in Hiroshima, for some reason .... interestingly, since the end of the Allied Forces occupation in Japan, the Mayor of Hiroshima has written to the appropriate government every time a nuclear test is carried out in the world, with a message of peace and asking for the disarmament of nuclear weapons or whatever. It's a nice thought, but maybe not that realistic. Anyway, we decided to stay for two nights in Hiroshima instead of one, as there's quite a bit to do there.

While there, we went to Miyajima Island, where one of the official '3 best sights' in Japan is located, namely the floating torii (temple gate). Basically there's a temple on the beach, and the the temple gateway (a huge red Japanesey thing) is in the sea (or mud, depending on the tide!), and so it looks like it's floating. It is actually really pretty, and we took loads of photos (surprise!). While we were on the island we also went to the top of the tallest mountain (by cable car most of the way), and then walked back down, which was knackering but worth it. Some good views, but it was quite grey and cloudy so the pictures might all be really boring, which will be a shame.

We're now in Nagaski, having arrived there this morning (it's about 6:30pm here now). Nagasaki, as you again probably know, is where the second (and final) atomic bomb was dropped at the end of the second world war. From reading some of the information at the Peace Museum in Hiroshima, it seems that the radiation from the bombs actually dispersed very quickly, so the areas that were bombed could be safely entered (and rebuilt) within days of being bombed. However, the after-effects of the radiation on the people who were exposed during the blast are still being discovered, and the effects are still not fully understood (research conducted by the American Army and the British occupying force in Japan after the war has apparently never been released to the public). Sobering stuff indeed.

On a more positive note, there are literally millons of different regional Hello Kitty's available everywhere we go!!! So many it's unbelieveable. And who knew that she was such a huge supporter of Baseball?! (Baseball is massive over here by the way, sports TV consists pretty much exclusively of Baseball and Sumo). Speaking of Japanese TV, it's crap! Really, truely, lowest-common denominator rubbish. How they manage to produce such good films and animation programmes I really don't know.

We're staying in a traditional-ish minshuku (family-run B&B type guesthouse) at the moment, run by a scary woman who pretends not to understand any of our English or Japanese, but it's obvious she's just being difficult for the sake of it. Still, it's quite cheap, and we get our own little living room and free green tea (blurgh, tastes like dirt!).

By the way, I saw the Matrix Reloaded in the cinema on Saturday night in Kobe. It was in English with Japanese subtitles, which was a bizarre experience, as I'm used to seeing Japanese films with English subtitles. I really enjoyed it, and I'm hoping it will still be on at the UGC in Southampton so that I can see it again for free with my cinema pass. It costs about 1800 yen to go to the cinema here, which is about 10 quid. Ouch! Generally things are quite expensive out here, but not much more than England really, and if you hunt around and go to the right places etc it can actually be quite cheap.

OK, that's enough for one post I think. Well, take care everyone, bye for now, Tim.

PS: it seems that Blogger are doing something to templates at the moment, so if this page is viewing funny (or is actually quite old!) then apologies, but I haven't got time to do anything about it at the moment.

Hello from Kobe! It's now 9pm here. We arrived here this morning, and it seems like a very nice place. Arrived feeling slightly worse for wear, as we went out with Duncan last night in Osaka (we did karaoke, so I had to get very drunk in order to sing - that's my excuse!). Freakily, they had Pixies on the jukebox, so I did a truely awful rendition of 'There Goes Your Man', and when I say awful I really do mean it. It's cool to see Duncan again, as I haven't seen him since he came to England last May-ish. It's also interesting getting his 'insiders' viewpoint on Japan. It really is a strange and complex society.

Have walked loads more since my last email - I swear I'm going to have the biggest legs ever by the time I get back! It's all good though, and strolling around is definitely the best way to get a feel for a place. I can't believe I've been gone for 10 days now or whatever it is, it still seems like we've only arrived (possibly because we have only just arrived in Kobe .... hmmm).

So far today we've been to the Chinatown area in Kobe, and had sone food there which was very nice. (I'm OK with chopsticks btw, I certainly won't starve, but my technique definitely needs a lot of refining.) We then walked round the harbour area, which was very nice.?@Everything in Kobe is really new, because of the earthquake in 1995. It's very nice, but I think in some ways it's a bit TOO nice ..... it doesn't really look lived in, if that makes sense.

Not yet sure what the plan is for the next couple of days here, we may have a day trip to see a proper old castle (a lot of the stuff we've seen so far has had to be rebuilt over the years, especially after the heavy bombing of the second world war), which will be cool.

Well, that will do me now I think. Hope everything's OK back home in Blighty (or wherever else you may be!). Apologies for the length of the last post by the way.

OK, so I`m in Osaka and actually having quite a restful time, which is surprising given the whole `bright lights big city thing`, I suppose it`s because we aren`t having to walk as much now (hooray for subways!). So far we`ve seen the Aquarium (very nice, although I think I prefered the Sydney Oceanarium!), been to an IMAX film (Space Station 3D or something, about the?@International Space Station, which was cool), been on the biggest ferris wheel in the world (it was tall, oddly), and generally wandered round seeing the sights. Oh, and we ate the biggest ice-cream sundaes in the history of sundaes. Which reminds me, they put cornflakes in their sundaes here; we`ve had a few so far, and they`ve all had cornflakes in towards the bottom of the glass. It`s actually quite nice, and the one I had yesterday even had milk at the bottom to eat them with! Strange but true.

Speaking of food, we`ve both fallen in love with Japanese convenience stores. They serve the nicest bread and pastry products ever! For 100yen (about 50p) you can get a savoury bread product (which comes with fillings like ham and cheese cooked inside it or something), and they have a sweet glaze to them, which was odd at first but now I can`t get enough! And the donuts ..... mmmmm!! Very tasty indeed! We have easten real Japanese food as well though, although saying that because we`re doing things slightly on the cheap we haven`t gone the whole hog and had a full traditional meal with a billion dishes and stuff. Yet.

So, a little summary of what we`ve done so far is in order I think. Kyoto: was a great experience, and a pretty good place to start in Japan as it`s a good mix of ancient and modern, and the place we stayed in was great. Seeing Geishas doing their thing was fantastic as well, we were so fortunate.

Nara was a pleasant surprise to both of us, we didn`t know a huge amount about it but it`s a really nice town, full of history and with a great park with loads of deer running all over the place. Deer are pretty much the emblem of Nara, and every tourist shop is full of Deer-related merchandise. Speaking of which, Hello Kitty is everywhere! There`s just tonnes of regional Hello Kitty merchandise, and every city and a lot of the major attractions we`ve been to have had their own range of Kitty goods! As you can imagine, Nara`s involved Kitty-chan getting dressed up as a little deer, and invariably being cute with it.

Osaka has also been a pleasant surprise in a way, because although it`s pretty much all concrete and neon it`s actually not that bad a place, and they`ve made a lot of effort in the last few years to make it less ugly, which is always good. There`s loads to do as well. Because Osaka is a port city (like Southampton only bigger? Hmm, maybe not....) there`s a lot of sea-food specialists around, so we had some fried octopus dumpling ball things from a street vendor last night, which were quite tasty although the batter or mix or whatever it was really gooey which was a bit off-putting (I don`t like slimey food!), but I managed OK, and they were quite tasty. I got a sucker stuck in my teeth, which was nice.

Not speaking Japanese hasn`t really been a problem so far, as most people here speak at least some English, and the universal language of gestures works wonders sometimes (hold up two fingers and say "two beers please" and you really can`t go far wrong .....). The Japanese people we`ve met have all been really helpful as well, and the service ... nothing like back home. We were even bowed at in MacDonalds, of all places!

We haven`t much shopping as yet, mostly just browsing, as we don`t want to carry loads of stuff round with us for the next two weeks. Once we get to Tokyo we may start to make some purchases though ..... the main problem we`ve had so far is that, of course, everything here is in Kanji rather than English, so finding is stuff is quite difficult. I`m sure we`ll manage to overcome that though.

Well, that will do for now I think. This evening we are potentially going out with Duncan and a friend of his in Osaka, if we can get hold of him that is, and then tomorrow we leave Osaka for Kobe to stay with him for a few nights.

Oh, my knee is a lot better now by the way. I bought a support thing for it the day after it ceased up, which helped I think. It did get worse for a while, but that`s because we didn`t let up on the walking. In Osaka it seems to be sttling down nicely, which is good.

OK, bye for now, hope everyone`s well, will try and post again soon.

Well, it's our last day in Kyoto today. Yesterday was spent seeing a range of zen temples and various quieter leafy parts of Kyoto .... very nice, with all the traditional wooden buildings and stuff. Oh, and did I mention that we saw some real life Geishas? About a million of them. Well, nearly.

We went to see a Geisha classical dance performance at a small theatre in Pontocho, an area of Kyoto where Geishas still hang out and do their thing. It was really cool actually, the first part was a small play, a classic tale of love, loss, death, and Dallas-style 'it was all a dream' endings, and then there were some song and dance performances. Lots of pictures were taken which I may bore you all with when I return of they come out (and I can be bothered to scan them!).

Then in the evening we were walking along in Gion, another famous Geisha area, and we practically bumped into one walking down the street! Impressed by our Geisha-spotting success we went for a walk down a street which is renowned for Geisha-spotting, and lo and behold we saw 5 more!!! We even stalked one down the road for a bit. Again there's pictures if they come out. It's just so wierd to see them walking down the ultra-modern neon-lit streets, with drunken salarymen (Japanese businessmen) all around.

By the way, in addtion to my bruised bum and ankle, I also did my knee in while walking up the same damn flight of steps that I slipped on, so I've been hobbling quite a bit for the last couple of days, which is fun. In a painful kind of way.

Anyway, we have to check out soon and catch a train to Nara, so I'll be off now. Will regale you with more fantastic stories of my travels later!

Finally, we've actually done some things that are newsorthy! We've spent the last two days pretty much just walking around Kyoto. There's loads to see, lots of temples and shrines and castles and stuff. We went to the main castle in the centre of Kyoto, Nijo-jo, which is huge and has a pretty good novelty value - the shogun that built it was so paranoid about getting assassinated that it was built with 'nightgale' floors - basically they squeak when there's any kind of movement on them, but the way they're made it sounds like a bird singing, and when you've got a whole horde of tourists walking over them it's a really bizarre sound.

Speaking of bizarre, it's currently day-trip season for Japanese school-kids, and so far we've been approached by 5 sets of school-children with "Hello, may I speak with you in English please?" They then ask you a few basic questions to practice their Engligh pronunciation and listening skills, ask you write a message in their book, and then take a picture with you. It's quite sweet really, and the last group gave us a piece of origami each that they'd made with their school address on asking us to write to them!! If we don't lose them then maybe we will when we get back .....

We went out last night and ended up in Kyoto train station, which may sound a bit odd, but in Japan the train stations are like mini-cities, and in Kyoto the station is a bit of a landmark and is so tall it has one of the best views of the city. It's partly outdoors, and unfortunately it's been raining here quite a bit, and so I had a little accident involving a wet flight of steps and my bum .... I've got a cool graze on my shin to show for it though, and we've taken a picture so don't worry you can all see it when I get home if it comes out OK!! You lucky things.

Yesterday we also met 3 Americans, one in each different place we went to. All were very nice, and 2 were gay, somewhat bizzarely (what are the chances?). In order, they were Charlie from Minnesota, Jeremy from Boston, and Chris from San Franciso. (Hi guys!) In Australia I came across what my housemate calls the 'Travelling C*nt' (TC)phenomenon, basically somebody who goes travelling and acts like they alone have discovered the places that they've been to, even though half the other people in the hostel have just done exactly the same stuff. In my experience most have been Americans, but I'm glad to say that the 3 we met yesterday weren't anything like that.

Well, I think we're off in a minute for a stroll/drink/snack food event, so I'd better dash now. Take care.

PS: The snack food - how nice is it?!! And so cheap too!

After what seemed like an eternity, we've finally made it to Japan! It's now about 9pm, and I've lost track of how many hours its been since we've been up. The flights and everything were fine, no major delays, and the planes were all ok, although no individual screens, which sucked. Lots of legroom and very nice food though - Austrian Airlines scores very highly on that!!

Japan has been very cool so far - we haven't had to say much Japanese though, which is lucky as I don't really know very much, apart from some basic hellos and thank yous and excuse mes. It's very tempting to buy loads of stuff already - we've been to a supermarket and the packaging is all just so fantastic!

We arrived early in the morning and got a shinkansen (bullet train) from Tokyo to Kyoto, it didn't go that fast though which was a shame. Very smooth ride though, and loads of space to stretch out in. So far all we've done really is nap a lot and wander round the centre of Kyoto, which is pretty cool. Tomorrow we'll begin our exploring properly though, probably some temples and various historic stuff, and maybe a bit og Geisha spotting in the evening if we're lucky!

Bye for now, will post again when I actually have something to write about!

My last day before we fly off into the great unknown (well, OK, so technically we know exactly where we're going, but still ...) Everything is prepared, and I'm in an eerie state of calm. I don't like it. We're leaving the house at about 4am tomorrow (ouch!), so it'll be an early night for me tonight. I'm hoping that I'll be able to update this blog a fair amount while I'm away in the Land of the Rising Sun; when I went to Oz I was on the internet practically every other day, so hopefully there will be frequent updates from me this time as well. I may have a go with Blogger's email-to-blog feature, although if I have time I'll post the old-fashioned way to guarantee that the posts actually do turn up.

Well, that's about it from me in this country I think; everyone take care of themselves over the next month, and be sure to check back here regularly for updates of my international exploits!

Sayonara!

Only one more day at work! Whoo-hoo! Hmm, the flip side is that I've got SO much work to do tomorrow before I can leave ..... bugger.

I'm going to see Mel C in concert tonight. In my defence, I'm not paying anything, and I'm only going because this is the only night I can see my friend Howard before I go to Japan, but even so, I'm just so ashamed! Hence my publishing it here for all the world to see ..... hmm.

Update: OK, so it wasn't awaful, and I secretly enjoyed a couple of the more rocky tracks, as well as Never Be the Same Again, and I Turn To You, which was the closer and a rather good trance-rock effort actually. However, Mel C doesn't have the greatest voice, and some of the songs were either boring or quite pedestrian. There was a (gay) guy sat in front of us who was really into it, and kept on doing the 'rawk' \m/ gesture. I just wanted to grab him and say "look, if you want some fucking rock music this ain't it". Oh, and maybe slap him too. Just to emphasise my point, y'know.

An updated playlist is now up for this week. last week's was: Nada Surf - Hi-Speed Soul, Beachbuggy - Kickin' Back, All ABout Eve - Flowers in Our Hair, Mice - Tiny Window, The Hidden Cameras - Boys of Melody.

No joke of a lie. I've just watched Buffy S7 eps 13 - 16 and Angel S4 eps 12 - 15, and they are seriously amazing. I've never been so edge-of-my-seat excited about any TV show, ever. Of course, I was particularly excited about the very Andrew-centric episode Storyteller, and it didn't fail to deliver. I'm just gutted that I'm going to miss the rest of the shows until I get back from Japan .... at least the whole Japan trip will be some small consolation, I suppose ;-) .

PS: Saw X2 this evening. It rocks, although it's a bit on the long side.

PPS: I had a curry this evening, and now my stomach is all over the place. I'm at a day-long software presentation/demonstration event thing tomorrow (I'm even wearing suit! Cripes), so I really hope it settles down overnight, otherwise I'm going to be very embarrassed come tomorrow (and potentially very smelly too).

Can somebody please explain to me what the hell the new Cheeky Girls song is all about? What significance does taking your shoes off have? And what's all this about 'teenage freedom'? To quote the pop parrots: "'Come on everybody/come and take you shoes off/feel the teenage freedom/feel it all around you." You'd never guess it was written by their fucking mother, would you? Now, Touch My Bum, on the other hand ..... now there's a song we can all relate to I'm sure. "Come and smile, don't be shy/Touch my bum, this is life." So true. Hmm, all this pop malarky reminds me, I was watching CD:UK this morning, and I heard the new Girls Aloud single, 'No Good Advice'. I'm sorry to say that I actually really like it. Please don't hate me!

On a completely unrelated subject, I noticed that voluntary migration to the new Blogger system, Dano, is now available. I tried to sign up for it, only to be told 'you have no blogs that require migration,' and then it won't let me any further. But I do have one, damnit!! Has anyone managed to do this yet? If so, am I being really stupid and missing something blindingly obvious about the process (which wouldn't suprise me one bit).

Pinch, punch, first of the month :-)