I say Toronto, you say T'ronnah

Three things occurred to me as the plane circled Toronto in preparation for landing. The city's extensive highways with neighbouring high-rise apartment blocks reminded me so much of David Cronenberg's Crash, which was filmed in the city. Secondly, the CN Tower stuck out like a shining candle at the edge of Lake Ontario. And thirdly, from the air, everything else looked pretty much like Chicago.

In Canada, customs and immigration is done by the same person. Not sure why. But when I mentioned to the immigration officer that I had brought alcohol as a gift for Ryan and Brendan, she advised me that I should bring it into Canada for myself to share with friends, thereby avoiding the considerable tax that would otherwise be payable... And she then let me pass through without paying a cent. What a contrast to my Chicago experience. And in that little story I think I can sum up the Ontario way. There may be a lot of red-tape and beauraucracy, but the people are lovely and liberal, and lacking the red-state madness that I could find only a few hundred kilometres south.

Let me give some examples of Ontario red-tape. This is a province where clubs stop serving alcohol at 2AM. In fact, I couldn't even get a soft-drink past 2AM... Only bottled water. It's a place where you can legally sunbake nude on designated beaches, but you will be fined for entering the water nude at the very same beach (not that I did any of this, just reporting the facts m'am). It's also a place where one buys beer, and only beer, from "The Beer Store"; wine, and only wine, from "The Wine Rack"; or anything alcoholic from the state-owned bottle shops which are hard to find. And yep, they close early, even in summer.

Brendan kindly met me at the airport. It was so good to find a familiar face in a sea of North American unfamiliarity. Brendan seems to have settled right into Canadian life. His vast knowledge of little historical facts, as well as his own take on Canadian people, places, and life, all from an Australian point-of-view, was invaluable over the next week.

But first we had to navigate our way out of the airport. Some taxi-drivers were picketing at the airport in protest against the airport authority's plan to limit which company's taxi drivers could pick up from the airport. There were only about fifteen protestors, but they had successfully blocked all traffic leading out of the airport, which in turn blocked all traffic leading in. We waited at the front of the taxi queue for 30 minutes. During that time only a handful of cars were let through. The media reported that people were missing flights left, right, and centre because they couldn't even get into the airport. But the curious thing is that there were so many opportunities for the cars to accelerate through gaps in the protest, yet they didn't. Strange. I reflected on how back home the problem would have been solved with everyone being arrested and the highway reopened. But not in bleeding-heart liberal Canadia, as the Americans might say.

On the Monday afternoon that I arrived, and also the following day, Brendan took me on a couple of walking tours around Richmond, the area where he and Ryan live. This is a redeveloped inner-city suburb not far removed from Darlinghurst or Fortitude Valley. The thing that struck me most of all about Toronto is how undistinctive the city looks. After Japan there was plenty more greenery, but still the inner-city was mostly concrete pavement and older brick buildings. I felt I could have been anywhere in North America. It's no wonder that so many American films are now made in Toronto. But if pushed to describe Toronto in terms of another city, I'd say it's very much like Melbourne. Maybe that's because both cities have trams, or street-cars as they are called in Toronto.

One of the things I loved about Toronto, and which was very evident in Richmond, was how young, hip, and sassy all the people are. It's all very Jump Street, albeit fifteen years later. Canada is proud of its tolerant society and has embraced migrants from all over the world. It may be hard to imagine a place more multicultural than Melbourne but this is truly the case. The people are a beautifully diverse mix of races and cultures. Then there is this very distinctive Canadian look, which I can only describe as the melting-pot product of a few generations of inter-breeding with the result being unbelievably stunning. Oh, and Torontonians love a tattoo, a goatee, and a masseur sandle... And quite often all three at once. God help these people if they ever visit Japan.

On Wednesday Brendan and I drove around Lake Ontario in the direction of Niagara Falls. Before visiting the falls, we stopped at a picturesque little town called Niagara-on-the-Lake. Canadians describe it as the most beautiful town in all of Canada, and it's easy to see why. It's like wandering into the North American section of an amusement park like Dreamworld. Picture pretty and spotlessly clean.

We were determined to avoid an American-style family restaurant, but in the end our hunger won out over our principles. I ordered a steak, which came with salad and fries, and could have fed a family of 5, and all it cost me was AUD $13.

After lunch we wandered along the street checking out little stores and boutiques that were usually impeccably decorated. I won't say anything about the daggy 1970s Dawn-of-the-Dead style mannequins in one window - just check out my photo on Flickr. Nothing really took our fancy shopping-wise, but we both agreed that Carmel and Veronica would love Niagara-on-the-Lake. Think Bangalow, but cuter!

The one shop I did visit was a candy store. They made the best-tasting fudge right on the premises. Unfortunately the shop clerk was a little humourless, and so my enquire about low-fat fudge products seemed lost on her. Poor dear. But I was very interested in the maple sugar candy. When I was little, our Canadian family friend Teena used to send me these sweets. Basically, they're just maple sugar compacted into a fancy shape. Their melt-in-the-mouth texture is to-die-for. I did buy a couple of boxes but I'm very unsure how many will find their way back home.

Next stop was Niagara Falls. Now this was pretty cool. Photos and movies just don't do any justice to how magnificient the falls are in real life. I was astounded by the volume of water passing over the falls. Buckets of it. ;-)

We wandered along the Canadian side for quite a distance (passing a spot that is significant if you have seen Superman II), and I took many many photographs along the way. But you know what, after about ten minutes I realised that it's just a big waterfall, and they're wasn't too much more to it than that. It sounds silly, but it's true. I think generations of visitors have felt the same way, explaining the gauche high-rises that have sprung up behind the falls, and which make the Gold Coast look classy in comparison.

We were pressed for time so unfortunately didn't make it on to the Maid of the Mist. I guess it's good to save something for next time! But we did experience one of Niagara's unintended highlights. There was no end to the huge 6-wheel SUVs that are a reminder, if one needed any, of just how close we were to the States. Forget Hummers. Click the photos link to check out the size of these tanks.

On Thursday we decided to take advantage of the car that we still had on hire, and put it to good use by heading out to Best Buy. This is a huge American chain store that guarantees to sell electronics, CDs, and DVDs, at the cheapest price. The prices were definitely cheaper than every other store I visited but there were few real bargains. Canada has a GST, and the provinces also have sales taxes. The annoying thing is that unlike Australia, quoted prices are not tax-inclusive. So once you add the 15% of taxes a good price suddenly seems no better or the same as Australia. For DVDs, I think you can't go past American or Canadian mail-order houses on pricing. Which is a shame because it is much more fun shopping for real!

After our Best Buy experience we went to the CN Tower, which is the world's tallest freestanding structure and has the highest man-made observation deck. The view was pretty impressive, but I prefer the view from elsewhere in Toronto, partly because you can see the tower from there. There is an observation deck or restaurant in the Manulife Centre that we never got to visit. Apparently it's view is a little more human than that from CN Tower because one is so much closer to the ground. Still, the CN Tower is a must-see on any visitor's list, especially to appreciate the size of the structure. I loved the photographs and videos detailing the construction of the tower. They highlighted to me just how much Toronto has changed over the last thirty years.

Friday was our day to visit Toronto Island. Brendan and I rode Ryan's bicycles to the lakefront, and caught a five-minute ferry ride across to the island. The whole island is mostly parkland, but also has beaches, a small village, a children's theme park, and at one end an airport just to complete its list of multi-purpose functions.

From Friday night until pretty much when I left Toronto, most of our time was spent in and adjacent to "the Village". This is Toronto's designated gay area, centering on Church, Yonge, and Welleslley streets. Toronto Pridejust happened to be on the week that I was in town. Isn't it funny how things work out? Actually, truth be told, I had to decide between visiting New York or Toronto for Pride, both festivals being on at the same time, but chose the latter because it would be more fun with friends.

In retrospect I was a little disappointed with Toronto's Pride, but only because I have been spoiled by how Sydney does it. There really isn't a cultural festival, like there is in Sydney, to accompany the endless street parties and dance events. So most of our time was spent in and out of bars etc. Not that that's a problem, but still it's not a patch on Sydney. And the parade was a little embarrassing. Just a bunch of dreadful, sequined poofs and saggy-titted - ed dykes walking down a grimey inner-city street. There is a lot to be said for holding a parade at night-time, least of all being able to set off fireworks!

We started off the Saturday evening by attending a fab little bbq in the smallest town house I have ever visited. Lots of Quebecois (or Quebbies, pronounced Kebbies, as Gavin Green is fond of saying). From there we went to Joy, a party held at Guvernment (a set of purpose-built lake-side warehouses). It reminded me a lot of Sydney's Hordern Pavilion but with much prettier people. The North American career must spend countless hours to look so good. I was reminded of the Franz Ferdinand song "Michael", and specifically the line "beautiful boys on a beautiful dance floor" etc etc. I kept wondering if I'd wandered onto an Abercrombie & Fitch . It was a long, but very fun night.

Understandably, Sunday was a slow day for all concerned. We managed to make it back to the Village for afternoon drinks but felt a little stressed by the crowd numbers, and the knock-ness.

By Sunday night it was just Brendan and I heading out on the town. For a laugh, and because there is nothing like it in Australia, we went to Remington's, which is a gay . As might be expected, it was as tacky as any other and we left after a few drinks. Brendan then bailed, and if I had half a working brain I would have done the same... Instead I headed back to Guvernment for that night's Revival party. The party was pretty good, with some fab shows and a live performance by Suzanne Palmer (she sang that Hide U song a few years back). And what a surprise to receive a phone call from Dad at 5AM. Perhaps he forgot that Toronto is 14 hours behind Australia. Thankfully, I wasn't sleeping. Perhaps I should purchase a clock, set it to North American time, and Fedex it home?

Later on Monday afternoon I ventured out for my second major Torontonian shopping experience taking in the Eaton Centre, Sears, and Hudson's Bay Company. The Eaton Centre is a huge interior shopping mall in the centre of town that reminded me so much of the Myer Centre. I went there to purchase some new luggage. Dad convinced me to purchase some cheap luggage back home. One of the bags didn't even make it out the front door without snapping a handle. By the time I made the Tokyo-Toronto flight I only had one working handle out of four. Fortunately Sears came to the rescue. To me, Sears (which I have nicknamed Sears's), is very much like Myer back home. But Sears is in America, and Canadians are almost always on edge about anything American preferring Canadian stores where possible (which explains the Starbucks clone called Second Cup that is everywhere in Canada). The Canadian competitor to Sears is Hudson's Bay Company. Kind of like the British East India Company,
Hbc is Canada's oldest company which started with a 17th century license to hunt for something or other. I did go to Hbc, and one of their better/bigger stores in fact, but I wasn't impressed. Hbc is reminiscient of a bad McDonnell & East store, or at best the dowdier sections of Brisbane's old David Jones store.

On the Tuesday morning, just before leaving Toronto for Ottawa, Brendan and I went to the Famous Players googolplex to see Batman Begins. The flick played on an IMAX screen, and it may have had a larger format print... But the sound was certainly much better than normal cinemas. Before we watched the movie we got to enjoy a 10-minute laser light show spectacle highlighting the cinema's features. It was very cool, if a little exhausting.

Batman Begins is pretty good. I did feel the story to be a little too familiar. It suffers from the problem that plagues most first comic adaptations in that so much time is spent telling the hero's backstory, and very little on new drama. But the film ends with a set-up for a sequel that will probably be much better than this film. I still think I prefer Tim Burton's vision of Gotham, but almost every other aspect of the film, including Christian Bale as Batman, is second-to-none. And how cool that every lead actor is British, excepting Katie Holmes and Morgan Freeman of course.

So that pretty much wraps up my time in Toronto. It's the only place I have visited so far where I would have liked to stay another week or two. But perhaps I can get back there later this year.

On a personal note, my time in Toronto also came at the time when I started to feel a little home-sick. I found myself texting and calling a few people back home, before realising how I was feeling. But rather than dwell on it, I have realised it's best to take advantage of every experience that travelling can provide, as suggested in the parting advice from Doug and a few other friends back home. It'll only be a matter of days before I am back on top of things.

Two days ago I arrived in Ottawa. Which is like Canberra, but prettier, and with purpose. More soon.

Red-state paranoia

Red-state Paranoia

The flight from Tokyo to Toronto was always going to be a bit of a hike. Air Canada fly direct, but I was scared of a 13 hour flight in a 1980s 747 that lacks personal tvs and all the other conveniences that can now make such a distance on the long-distance flights. So instead I decided to fly UA via Chicago. I was very happy with the in-flight service, and look forward to my next UA flight in a few weeks.

I actually left Tokyo on Monday afternoon, and after a 13 hour flight I arrived in Chicago at 11:30AM on Monday morning (having crossed the date line). As usual I didn't get much sleep on the flight so I was pretty flat by the time I arrived in Chicago.

I lined up at the immigration queue for visitors and duly waited my turn. This part of the Chicago O'Hare terminal was pretty impressive with its size and the volume of passengers being processed at the time I was there. When I was at the front of the line I noticed a little poster that described passengers' rights etc when dealing with immigration officers, and how the Department of Homeland Security sees its immigration officers as the face of of America. Well, if that is true, then the face of America is an gun-toting, tobacco-chewing, SUV-driving, red-state redneck . The interview started with the usual what am I doing in America (transiting), how long do I intend to stay (about 1.5 hours), where have I been (Japan), where am I going (London), what is my job (programmer), do I have a job (no) etc etc, but quickly headed south when he asked to see my ticket for my Chicago-Toronto flight. By this point I was a nervous wreck and had forgotten I already had a boar
ding pass for that flight. So when he misread my ticket as having me staying in Chicago for 8 days (the complete opposite of everything I had just said) he saw red and felt justified and pressed on. For at least fifteen minutes the immigration officer drilled me over every aspect of my trip. He wanted to know how much money I was travelling with, whether there was anyone else travelling with me, how I could be working in London, what other passports I had etc etc etc. I eventually cottoned on to his error, (by which time as had he) but he didn't care to acknowledge the misunderstanding. Sadly my experience isn't unusual, although it probably doesn't help to be an unemployed Australian of Mediterranean descent travelling alone on two passports. Most Canadians I have since encountered tell me that they do everything possible to avoid transiting through America now.

Thankfully every other person I dealt with in Chicago was polite and professional, restoring some sense of balance to my O'Hare experience. The airport looks exactly like it does in Home Alone. The only thing I wasn't prepared for was how the people looked. I saw more extreme cases of obsesity in 1.5 hours at O'Hare, than during my 3 week stay in Japan. And what's with ladies' hair fashions there? I haven't seen so much teasing since the 80s.

Lost in Shinjuku

What a wild four days. Tokyo rocks. On the Thursday afternoon that I arrived, I headed off to checkout Shinjuku as soon as I could. The Akihabara district of Tokyo (also known as Electric Town), is famous for its electronic stores, and I intended to go there, but Tracey Northcott gave me the heads up and suggested that Shinjuku's stores, products, and prices were just as good. And that was handy because when I did visit Akihabara the next day, I was disappointed with the stores, products, and prices.

As well as being a major commercial centre (and home to Skyscraper City - their term, not mine) Shinjuku is one of Tokyo's many retail and entertainment focal points. I likened it to Times Square, but my Tokyo friends tell me that there are a half dozen other places that might easily also claim the title, Shibuya among them. But Shinjuku does have a lot of flashing lights and neon signs, enough to make Jim Soorley have a fit. Coming from Brisbane, it is all terribly exciting. And in retrospect (having visited Shibuya the next day) Shinjuku is my favourite.

Anyhow, on Thursday afternoon I headed to Yodobashi Camera, an electronics chain and easily my favourite store in Japan. The Shinjuku location is their head store, occupying eight floors in a sizable building (even though their "normal" stores are huge by Australian standards). I spent more than hour just gawking at electronics and camera stuff, as every major product allows a hands-on. Overcome with the urge to shop, I ended up buying a few things that I probably didn't need, but seemed essential at the time. Japanese prices vary to Australian prices only according to the product. So some things are cheaper, but a lot is pretty much the same price. Some things are more expensive but they will tend to be stuff we just can't get (or even be able to ship and use) back in Australia like huge NTSC projectors and plasma screens. I picked up a CompactFlash LAN card for my PDA for about AUD $45, and an unbelievably small flash memory dongle (512MB) for an amazing AUD $75. My hotel had free ethernet internet access, so the LAN card was kinda essential... but the dongle is probably just for coolness. And it is cool.

After shopping I headed back to the hotel to change and get ready for dinner. I love being in a new city and staying at a nice hotel. It all seems so glamorous. I met Tracey at 9pm for drinks and dinner, and she offered me a wonderful perspective of the area. We met under the huge Studio Alta television (a local meeting point) and wound our way through the busier avenues and little side streets of Shinjuku. Even at 9pm there were masses of people everywhere. Tracey showed me the little spot, just near some cinemas, where the local drag queens congregate. Really strange. They look like cross-dressing street cleaners performing some street mime, standing in the middle of the street with brooms, almost frozen like a statue. Weird.

We then went to the Golden Gai area which has about 400 bars in the space of around 1 square mile. The area is so small it's grid doesn't even show up on my map. Many of these bars (like many throughout Tokyo) only have a handful of seats, and customers have to be known to the owners in order to enter and be served. The little place we went to was called Krishna, and it was really cool. The food and decor was a fusion between foreign and Japanese sensibilities... a bit like the clientele. We then headed to Shinjuku-2-chome (which I later visited every night while in Tokyo). This is Tokyo's designated gay district, but just like Osaka it's a pretty disappointing setup for such a densely populated metropolis.

Knowing I'd be in town, Paul Jones came down to Tokyo for the weekend. Knowing that our nights would be busy, I planned most of my sightseeing for Friday and Saturday. First thing Friday morning I went to the Tsukiji Fish Markets. As I was hungover I arrived too late to see the tuna being cut up, but it was still pretty cool to wander around the little maze of restaurants which serve the fresh produce.

I then headed to Ginza, which might be world-renowned for high-end shopping but just looked to me like I wandered into Surfer's Paradise. I did visit the Sony Building in Ginza, which has a 5-story of past and present Sony products. Some of the stuff on show was very cool, especially the high-definition video cameras and projectors. One of the cooler displays had an original WalkMan, CD WalkMan, and MP3 player side-by-side. I also got to play with an Aibo robotic dog. They're pretty neat.

Next stop was Tokyo Tower, which shows up in many tourist photos. Even though I'd seen it countless times before I never new until recently that it is a replica of the Eiffel Tower. It's obvious now when I look at it, but I think I was thrown off by the Tokyo Tower being painted red and white. Why these ugly colours? Apparently all transmission towers in Japan must be painted these colours to aid aerial navigation (ie not crash into the towers). Unlike its French sibling there are no grand, wide boulevards leading up to the Tokyo Tower. Instead you catch glimpses of its uppermost tip between the skyscrapers. As you approach it you realise it's actually in the middle of a commercial district, on a hill no less, and completely built-in by the surrounding buildings. There are two observation decks, the highest of which can offer a pretty spectacular view of the city and even allowing glimpses of Mt Fuji on a clear day. But on the day I visited there was a brown haze obscuring even the closest landmarks. The thing I love about observation decks is how they can provide a spatial map to the city. Having already wandered around Shinjuku it was astounding to view it from a distance and see how big just that one district is, and how far it is from all the other centres.

I caught up with Tracey, Paul, and Nobby on Friday night for drinks, which turned into more drinks, at a place that I can only describe as Tokyo's answer to the Cockatoo Club... just not as fancy. It knocked, but it was the fun group that made the night.

Most of Saturday was a write-off, but Paul and Nobby took the train to Shibuya which is regarded to be the young people's area. Not sure what we were doing there. Scarlett Johansson's character visits Shibuya in Lost in Translation. She's seen watching a dinosaur move across a huge television screen affixed to the side of a building. We didn't spend much time here, and it just seemed like a blur of retail stores to me without anything particularly special that caught my eye. Out of the two, Shinjuku definitely has my heart.

I hunted for a gym on Saturday afternoon, eventually finding myself at the Tipness chain's Shinjuku location. Tipness is the largest fitness chain in Japan, and I'd be surprised if many other locations are larger than Shinjuku. Set over two or three floors, there must have been at least three or four hundred people there at the time. There was an aerobics class in full swing that must have had at least two hundred people, all jumping in unison, like a military parade on speed. If you've been reading the blog you'll know about the crazy Japanese rules about wearing gym shoes to the gym, ie I am supposed to have a pair of shoes that only ever see the inside of a gym. Tipness had this huge board near the entrance listing all of its rules. Near the top was "No tattoos". If you have a tattoo, no matter what it is, you cannot attend the gym. How crazy is that?

Nobby arranged a dinner on Saturday night with friends at a restaurant called Christon Cafe. It's in Shinjuku, in what looks from the outside to be a commercial office building. When the elevator doors open on the 8th floor, it's like stepping into the Bat Cave. Who would have thought there would be a two-storey themed restaurant on the top floor of an office building. Unusually for such a large space in Japan, there are no windows to the outside. Instead all the fittings look like they have been ripped from a cathedral in Europe. Rather than trying to explain this, perhaps it's better if you check out their site.

After dinner we headed to Ageha, Tokyo's superclub. If there is any one thing that I did in Tokyo that gave me a feeling of how big the city is, then it was going to this nightclub. It's on the "outskirts" of town, but still accessible by a 30-minute-plus subway ride from Shinjuku. It seemed to take ages to get there. On this particular night the club hosted a Paradise Ball party. I'd love to say it was uniquely fabulous and unlike nothing I had ever seen before, but I'd been lying. It was fabulous, but EXACTLY the same as gay dance party in Sydney at a place like Home. What people wear, do, dance, drink, smoke etc etc, and how it is all done, is all exactly the same as Australia. The only difference being that all night I had the feeling that I'd wandered into the middle of a gang of Asian youth at Mardi Gras.

Sunday was almost a total write-off. I was very tired from the night before, and thankfully the Shinjuku Washington hotel provided me with a cool, dark space to hibernate in for many hours of catch-up sleep. I did manage to head out into Shinjuku and Shibuya to snap some night-time photos which you'll find on Flickr.

First thing Monday morning I had breakfast with Nobby and Paul at their hotel buffet. I felt really sad saying goodbye to them both as I had spent a lot of time with them over the preceeding weeks. They're so cute together.

I thought of Ben as I navigated through Shinjuku station to find the Narita airport express train. I think Ben once got lost in the station, and it is so easy to see why. It's also the busiest station in the world, with more than 3 million people passing through every day. Do you remember the John Eales Visa card where he is trying to push his way on to a Japanese train. It was shot at Shinjuku station.

I had wanted to visit Japan since studying Japanese at school. Still I think if that Paul Jones wasn't living there I may not have made the trip so soon. And I can't help but think that Lost in Translation was also a motivating factor in reigniting my interest. I expected Japan to be different, but it was still so different to what I expected. In many ways it is a country of contrast and contradiction. 130 million people crammed into an area smaller than New South Wales, and while it's unbelievably busy I rarely felt claustrophobic. Everything runs smoothly and on time, but from a distance it looks like total chaos. It's a place where the drinking age is measured by whether someone is tall enough to pop coins into a vending machine (thank you Tracey for that chestnut), and you can go on a 3-day non-stop karaoke binge, yet gambling is still offically outlawed. Foreign men may be in great demand with Japanese women, yet the Japanese men are scared senseless by foreign women. It's an Asian country that is more Western than many Western countries, idolises Western celebrities who sell Japanese products, yet you can still encounter bars in Tokyo with signs on the door saying "No Foreigners". Where's Quentin Bryce when you need her?

On leaving Japan, the overwhelming feeling of my experience was how much I value diversity, be it in people or places, and how I have always taken this for granted in Australia. Foreigners stick out like sore thumbs in Japan. And while the Japanese people are nothing less than first-class in almost every way, I always felt like a guest in their country, and might never be more than that. Whether in Hiroshima or Tokyo or elsewhere, I often felt the hint of nationalism. Or maybe it's just foreigner culture shock. There is something to be said for how foreigners greet one another as they pass. This didn't always happen mind you, but quite often I would pass another foreigner and we would acknowledge each other with a nod of the head or a friendly hello... even though I had never seen them before, and would never see them again.

The Lost in Translation film is wonderful as entertainment, but it is much more than that. Sofia Coppola really nails the mixed sense of wonderment and isolation that accompanies life for a foreigner in Japan.

From Tokyo With Love

Finding wi-fi internet access in Japan isn't as easy as I thought it might be for a country that is otherwise obsessed with technology. In Kyoto I found free wi-fi at the McDonald's at the station. How unfortunate that I had to purchase a tasty double cheeseburger meal just to sit at McDonald's while accessing the internet... And to do so on more than occasion in a day.

My last post was written while on the train from Nara back to Kyoto, and sent when I stopped by at McDonald's that evening. You might remember I was hiding from Dominick, the crazy German rice queen, who wanted to go sightseeing on Tuesday. I was paranoid I'd run into him, and be busted. And sure enough, as I left McDonald's that evening, I could see him heading towards me. Fortunately, I was heading in a slightly different direction, and managed to avoid being busted. I think.

Yesterday, Wednesday, was the scheduled day to check out some of Kyoto's sights. But after two weeks in Japan, I am out-shrined, out-templed, and just plain over trying to deal with the thousands of schoolchildren that I have to battle in order to visit a tourist attraction. I think I am conservative in my estimate that I have encountered no less than twenty thousand school children in Hiroshima, Miyajima, Osaka, Nara, and Kyoto. In fact, I am beginning to wonder if Japanese kids do ANY schoolwork at all.

So I took my time to get up yesterday, and didn't leave the hotel until 11:30. From a state of relaxation, I was thrust into panic Upon realising I only had about five hours of sightseeing before everything closes. Kerby is so organised when we travel together, and recently I have relied on him to set the schedule. I could have done with Kerby's help yesterday because I got stressed really quickly speed-reading my guide book and shortlisting an intinerary.

Anyhow, I made it to three temples and shrines. The first, whose name forgets me, is located on the edge of the city, perched on a mountainside. Kyoto is essentially located in the basin between a ring of mountain ranges. This shrine had a stunning view of the city.

I then went on the Philosopher's Walk, a designated walking route that follows a canal for quite some distance. I am not sure why it is called the Philosopher's Walk, because while beautiful it isn't stunning, and not even that thought-provoking. Perhaps that quandary is precisely what I am meant to be philosophising about. Not sure. But I discovered a fantastic Italian café, where I had a three-course meal, including coffee, for about AUD $20. Not a chopstick in sight. Across the canal from this location was a little shop/kitchen that made and sold cinammon biscuits. These rock-hard, thin wafers look like they are made entirely of cinammon and look delicious. I bought some to send back to Kerby but I don't think that many make it into the parcel when it is eventually sent.

After lunch I hastily visited the Silver Pavillion and the Gold Pavillion. These gorgeous temples (the latter covered in gold-leaf) are located in stunning gardens. I visited the Gold Pavillion just on sunset, and snapped dozens of photos with the building's gold-leaf illuminated by th setting sun. And no schoolkids that late either. Unfortunately I didn't make it to Ryoanji garden, which is probably Japan's most famous zen garden. But I hope to return to Kyoto one day and see a lot of the other things I missed, like the monkey park and the Toei Movieland (a working film studio where many of Japan's samurai and period dramas are filmed).

This morning I caught the shinkansen from Kyoto to Tokyo. Unfortunately it was an overcast day so I wasn't able to see Mt Fuji. Here's hoping that the weather fines up for when I visit Tokyo Tower tomorrow. Apparently you can just make out the mountain's cone-shape on a clear day.

From Tokyo I took an above-ground train to fashionable Shinjuku. I love the look of Tokyo. So many new buildings, and Shinjuku is like Tokyo's shining jewel in the crown. This is the area that featured in Lost in Translation. I have checked into a Shinjuku hotel for sentimental reasons. I read about this hotel in the Beyond 2000 book about nineteen years ago, and even did a school assignment on it. At the time it was heralded as an example of the future of hotels. It's still pretty impressive, and looks like it has been recently renovated. My room is a decent size, not as small as I expected, but is equipped with a 20" flat-screen LCD television, and an electric massaging chair among other things. It's a little out of the way from Shinjuku-2-chome (Tokyo's gay district, also in Shinjuku) but is very cool nonetheless. That's about it for the moment. I am now heading off to check out the local electronics stores before catching up with Tracey Northcott this evening.

Goodbye Osaka, Farewell Nara

I went out again on Sunday night to Doyamo-cho (the gay "district") for a drink, and to meet up with a couple of people I'd met the night before. One is a bar-owner called Hideki, who coincidentally knows Paul Jones' friends in Tokyo. It's a small (gay) world after all. The other guy is Dominick, a German rice queen who now lives in Singapore. His English is quite good, having studied in Florida. Unfortunately, he is a little self-absorbed. But I am so desperate for contact with westerners right now, that it was fine at the time. He asked me how old I thought he was (can you get more self-absorbed than that), and when I said 31-32 (which frankly as a conservative guess) he seemed shocked. He asked me if I thought he was that old because he's a writer/producer for a Singaporean television network. I said "yes", but thought to myself "whatever". Turns out he's 25. Whoops. Anyhow, Dominick seemed intent to rain on my parade by crashing my sightseeing progam. At fir
st the suggestion seemed a good idea, and I said yes. But I didn't realise how much I am enjoying travelling by myself until we tied to put this into practice. All of a sudden I was at the mercy of his schedule, which would be fine if he didn't turn up an hour late to things (three times running). Also, he's a penny-pincher, which I can't abide when on holidays. He didn't want to go to the Kyoto Tower observatino deck because it was ¥700, but he was more than happy to spend ¥1200 on dinner at Subway. Oh yeah, that was where he suggested having dinner. So I ditched Domninick and went to Nara by myself today.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Yesterday was my last day in Osaka. I checked out of my business hotel and after putting my bag in a locker at the shinkansen station, I headed to Osaka Castle. While not quiite as big as Himeji, Osaka Castle was still pretty impressive. Like Okayama, and Hiroshima, Osaka Castle was destroyed in WW2, and rebuilt in the 50s or 60s. And like Okayama, the restoration guys had the good sense to install an elevator and airconditiong. So considerate for hot Osaka days (where the humidiity feels like 95% all day and night).

I made my way back to the shikansen station, feeling a lot more confident about Osaka's train network. But that has more to do with experience than usability. I still think Osaka Station (as well as Osaka for that matter) is a mess. From Shin-Osaka I took a 15 minute shinkansen ride to Kyoto. It would have been about 35-40 minutes by normal train.

The little I have seen of Kyoto suggests to me that it is a beautiful city. The population is around 1.5 million. One of Kyoto's focal points (like every other Japanese city) is the area around the train station. This is where the Kyoto Tower is located. At only 100 metres above ground level, and with an observation deck about 20 metres wide, it wasn't exactly the most thrilling experience. But still I love observation decks to get my bearings on a new town.

Unlike the other cities I have visited, Kyoto has a brand-new station that is unlike any other I have seen. The twelve-storey complex combines a hotel and commercial and retail space with the city's shinkansen and local train lines. The Isetan department store spans at least 10 of those floors, with each floor staggered horizontally, thereby creating two diagonal atriums through the building. As impressive as the building may be, it courted huge controversy when it was opened in 1997 as it blocks the view across the Kyoto skyline.

I am actually staying right near Kyoto Station in the New Miyako Hotel. This is a beautiful, large, Western-styled hotel with around 700 rooms. My room is actually nearly normal size. In Japan, the business hotels are notoriously small. And at the New Miyako I almost have a normal bathroom. The hotel room bathrooms are like a self-contained unit in their own right, that have somehow been inserted into the room by crane. The place where I stayed in Osaka (Shin-Osaka Station Hotel) took this even one step further. Not only was it ridiculously small, the whole bathroom (sink, bath, walls, ceiling, floor) was a fibreglass shell, consisting of just two separate pieces. The join was about three feet above ground and extended right around the room. It was cool in a futuristic kind of way, but the bathroom was so small that I had to go outside to the bedroom to dry off. Also, if I sat on the toilet my knees were three inches from the door, and only two inches from the wall
by my side.

Before Tokyo was the capital, that honour belonged to Kyoto. Which is why Kyoto is home to many important cultural and religious sites. Furthermore, Kyoto was spared by the Americans during WW2 carpet-bombing campaigns (because of its cultural treasures) and so these sites are still accessible today. Kyoto is reputed to have more than 1000 shrines (or is that temples), and no less than 17 UNESCO World Heritage sites. I will be sightseeing in Kyoto tomorrow.

Today I visited Nara, which was Japan's first capital (for only about 70 years), and right before the capital was moved to Kyoto. Nara is a beautiful, rustic town that prides itself on the Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines that make up Nara Park. My favourite spot was the Buddhist Todaiji Temple. This is the world's largest wooden building. In photos it looks pretty impressive, as I had observed from my pre-trip planning. But still my jaw dropped when I saw it in person. It is huge. There have been two other temples on the same site, both destroyed in war, and one of them was even larger than the temple that presently stands. Inside was a huge golden Buddha, along with four other suitably-impressive statues. Todaiji is also a UNESCO World Heritage site, along with several other sites in Nara. I think I have visited almost ten World Heritage sites in my two weeks in Japan, and almost all were registered in te late 1990s. It's like Japan went World Heritage crazy.

Anyhow, enough for now. As interesting as Kyoto will be, I am actually looking forward to getting to Tokyo where my time will be spent doing stuff other than just sightseeing. I am actually sick of looking at things and taking photos. And my feet hurt from walking a hundred kilometres every day. But on the upside I have lost a little weight from my gut, so I can’t complain. :-)

Miyajima Island, Okayama, Himeji, Osaka

The last three days have been really busy, with me visiting no less than 5 different cities and towns. When planning my trip I estimated the time cost of travelling based on how long it takes in Australia to travel distances. This is what I planned:
- 2 full days in Hiroshima
- 1 day to travel from Hiroshima to Osaka
- 1 full day in Osaka
- 1 day to travel from Osaka to Kyoto
- 2 full days in Kyoto

But once I started travelling, I realised how in appropriate it is to base travel in Japan on how one might travel in Australia. For example, Osaka is a city of 3 million people while Kyoto has a population of 1.5 million. It only takes 30 minutes to travel from one to the other on the local train... and only 15 minutes on the shinkansen. So with the benefit of hindsight, I could have quite easily based myself in Osaka and travelled to and from Kyoto, Himeji, Okayama, Akashi etc just for the day or half-day. Anyhow, with this in mind, I altered my schedule about three days ago so I could visit a couple of other places. The Japanese love lists of top threes, eg the top three views, the top three castles, the top three gardens etc etc. By modifying my schedule I could take into account some more of the best of these top three.

On Friday 10th I visited World Heritage listed Miyajima Island (something I intended in my pre-trip planning), which is about a half-hour local train ride south-west of Hiroshima. The island is only a 10 minute ferry from the coast, but has a very rugged geography and is quite beautiful in a rural way. The whole island is a deer sanctuary, and you even find deer wandering through the main town. Miyajima is famous for its torii (a Shinto Red Gate) that floats in the water just off the island. If you have seen a tourist photo of a red gate in Japan, this will be the one you have seen. Even from the ferry it was an impressive sight. The view of this torii is considered one of the top three views in all of Japan.

Miyajima is also home to a Buddhist temple, which is at the top of its highest peak. I walked about 1 kilometre uphill to get to the first cable car station, wondering why they couldn't extend the cable car to the bottom of the mountain. The first cable car was very steep, and fairly long, to cover most of the mountain's height. The second cable car was a horizontal transport from one peak to the next. This second cable car station has a beautiful view overlooking the Sea of Japan, although it was fairly hazy on this particular day. This peak is also home to dozens of monkeys. Lockers were provided in the station for us to secure our belongings (as the monkeys have a bad habit of stealing stuff). Unfortunately for me, on the day I visited, the only monkey up there was me.

Frankly, I think they should have built a third cable car to get to the very top of the mountain, because it would be a very hard climb even without the represesive heat that I endured. The temple was beautiful and boggled my mind how they carted the building tools and materials up such a high distance. From the temple it was about another 10 minutes of very steep climb to the very top of the mountain. I was sweating up a storm by the time I got there, but collapsed in laughter when I got to the top, because there (in true Japanese tourist style) was a 3 story contemporary-styled pagoda where I could purchase soft drinks, or the obligatory alcohol and cigarettes. I have absolutely no idea how the ancient woman tending this store manages the climb every day to get to work because I was buggered after doing it just once.

I returned to the bottom of the mountain and my way to the sea shore to photograph the torii gate, only to discover the tide was out. There was the beautiful torii gate standing in the middle of a field of mud. At the time I was disappointed, but still took lots of photographs. As the tide was out, tourists are able to walk to the gate, and truly appreciate its magnificient size. A torii, in one form or another, has stood on this site for about a thousand years. This particular torii dates from the late 19th century. Even that is an impressive achievement considering it is an entirely wood structure. The main supports alone are as wide as a family car. For good luck, people push coins into these wooden supports, looking like a ring of metal barnacles.

The day after Miyajima I headed to two different towns before arriving at Osaka. The first stop was Okayama (which I had not considered visiting until the night before). I visited the Okayama Castle, which is styled like almost every other Japanese castle (and almost identical to the Hiroshima castle I visited a few days earlier). But Okayama's castle is unique within Japan for being black in colour, lending itself the nickname of the Black Crow. It's a pretty impressive sight, rising just like a black crow from the surrounding greenery of forests and gardens. Okayama Castle (like that in Hiroshima) was completely destroyed in World War II. When it was rebuilt in the 50s or 60s, the reconstruction team had the foresight to include an elevator.

Just across the river from Okayama Castle, and within view, is the famous Korakuen Gardens. Filled with fields, gardens, waterways, islands, and ponds, Korakuen was simply stunning. Even the hazy, overcast weather did little to discredit its ranking as one of the top three gardens in all of Japan. I realised that what is most beautiful about Japanese gardens, is their asymmetric layout. Unlike the equally beautiful by symmetric gardens of Europe, the Japanese gardens can offer an entirely different view just by walking 20 paces away.

From Okayama, I took a 20 minute shinkansen ride to Himeji. Like Okayama, most people visit Himeji for a half-day just to visit it's world-famous and World Heritage listed castle. This castle has featured in many movies. You'll see it in the Japanese Bond flick, You Only Live Twice, as the ninja training camp (run by Tiger Tanaka) that James Bond visits in order to be reborn as a Japanese man. (Personally, I think my hairline is somewhere round You Only Live Twice. God help me if it proceeds to Diamonds Are Forever!). Himeji also turns up in two Akira Kurosawa films, most notably in Ran (inspired by Shakespeare's King Lear).

Even without its popular culture links, Himeji Castle is an amazing sight. It is huge, and by that I mean unbelievably massive for a wooden structure. It sits on a hilltop commanding an amazing 360 degree view of the area. Around the keep (which must be no less than 3 times bigger than Okayama and Hiroshima castles combined), there are many fortified walls, with secret entrances and dead ends designed to trap attackers unfamiliar with the castle's layout. Himeji was never breached. In fact it was never attacked. But that probably has a lot to do with how imposing it would look to any attacking army.

From Himeji I jumped on the shinkansen to arrive in Osaka. As I write this I am just about to leave, and it couldn't come sooner. If Canberra could be described as a SimCity game honed to perfection (with the sterile feel that comes with overplanning), then Osaka is the SimCity game that has been built without any planning and left to deteriorate for a thousand game years. It is a big, dirty, ugly, soulles city, that sprawls from no apparent centre into the far distance. Take for instance the train stations. The combined shinkansen/local-line station has 20-odd platforms just for local trains. But this isn't the main station. That would be Umeda/Osaka, which has more platforms than I can remember, connected by dozens and dozens of confusing, twisted passageways that run under, over and between platforms and buildings, and with two-dozen exits from the station. Umeda is an interchange for the subway, which is a further complicated mess, added in more recently than the above-ground lines. I had no idea where I was going while traversing this underground city. If Osaka ever fears an attack from a foreign city or power, the populace should hide in the subway. It was more confusing than Himeji Castle.

I visited the gay district on Saturday night, which for a city of 3 million people was a joke. Two or three bars with collectively about 50 people inside. I think this has a lot to do with how homosexuality is regarded in Japan. There are no laws prohibiting homosexuality or homosexual acts. In the past, it has been governed by social mores that reign in Japan. In many ways, Japan is a Victorian-era country. The younger generations are cool with it, but very scared of the societal impact on their family by coming out. Often it is treated as a "phase", beyond which they marry, have kids, treat their wife like a slave, then continue to do what they want on the side.

I had a hangover yesterday, which wasn't helped by the dreary overcast weather. I visited the Sky Umeda building, which looks similar to Paris' La Defense, and was built to revitalise the down-beat Umeda district with a signature building. Basically it is two forty-storey towers, joined at the top by a platform linking the two. On this platform is a garden and an outdoor rooftop observation deck. To get up there I had to take a glass elevator, and a suspended glass-enclosed escalator from the 35th to 39th floors (yep, nothing underneath the escalator except 35 floors of nothing). The view was pretty impressive once I got to the top, although it was just a lot more of grey ( grey buildings, grey sky, grey ground). Still, the building is pretty cool.

Shinkansen

A Shinkansen photographed at Hiroshima Station.

The Tokaido Shinkansen that I travelled on, reflected in the window of a building opposite the station.

Hiroshima

The hotel that I am staying in provides a western-style buffet
breakfast. I cannot convey how exciting this is to me. And it's only
AUD $16. I have liked most Japanese food I have tried so far, however,
there are real problems with their breakfast foods. A Japanese
breakfast might consist of fish and rice, which is fine, but might
also consist of other things like nutto (which is derived from soya
something-or-other). I had the opportunity to try it it in Niigata.
It has a gooey, grainey texture, and tastes like sweaty socks. Really
foul. While the foreigners generally hate it, the Japanese love it.
Paul likens this to our love for Vegemite.

As my first day in Hiroshima today, I had a little trouble navigating
the public tram system, but after a couple of trips I am a pro. My
guidebook tells me that trams are a rare sight in contemporary Japan,
with most cities removing their systems during post-WW2
reconstruction. Hiroshima took delivery of the tram carriages that
were no longer needed in other cities, and did so knowing full well
that the tram design differed from city to city. Thus Hiroshima's
system today has a rather unique look, where one carriage will differ
from the next, as if it is all run by Steptoe and Son.

After a brief side-trip to the city's observation deck on an
inner-city hill, I ventured into the city bound for the Peace Museum.
For obvious reasons, Hiroshima looks new and quite different from
other parts of Japan that I have seen so far. There are wide
tree-lined boulevards, with a Western-style street grid. I often
commented to Paul in Niigata that the city needed a good town planner.
Like Europe, I guess, the location of Japanese city streets might not
have changed in hundreds of years.

But here in Hiroshima you could easily be mistaken for thinking you
are in Melbourne or central Singapore. That's where the differences
end though. The city is still subject to the pollution that I've seen
throughout Japan. Not just the smog (they still burn garbage here),
but also visual and noise pollution. There are signs everywhere. And
I mean EVERYWHERE. And usually in flashing neon, screaming
insistently, in case you blink for three minutes and miss it. Then
there is the noise. A constant barrage of sounds that do my head in
at times. Not just shop touters, but annoying nauseating musical
jingles to signify every possible event. (Think of Japan's obsession
with Hello Kitty, extrapolate to cover music and sound effects, and
you've got it). The audible street crossing alerts have a bird-like
chirping sound which is annoying at 3PM. And will continue all night
- even when the street is empty. Rubbish trucks play a jingle,
LOUDLY, whenever they stop. It's not exactly Greensleeves, but it
does sound like an ice cream truck. I'm not even safe on the
Shinkansen. That huge ballistic steroid-bound hunk of metal is
emasculated by a cutesy alert as it arrives in a station.

I have one more whine to get out of the way, and admittedly it is
something I have mentioned before. I can buy alcohol from vending
machines on the street. I could even buy cigarettes in a hospital
vending machine. (And there is nothing stopping kids from doing the
same). But do you think I can find one fucking protein bar in all of
Japan? I have been to about a hundred convenience stores in
Hiroshima, and they all sell the same stuff, which is touted as
healthy but is really just chocolate with another name. Thank God I
have worked out how to find a gym that allows single-visits here.
(Basically, there is one public city-owned gym in every city that
allows that - all the others require me to join... presumably
forever).

Anyhow, today was a very touristy day, with a visit to the Peace
Museum, the Cenotaph (marking ground-zero where the atomic bomb was
dropped, and the A-Bomb Dome, which was one of the few structures to
survive the bomb (and barely stands). The Museum was very moving. My
guidebook suggested, quite wrongly, that the Museum minimizes
Hiroshima's involvement in the Japanese war effort. I didn't find
that. The exhibits made clear Hiroshima's military importance for
more than 400 years to the time of the bombing. However, the
guidebook was correct in saying that there is no mention whatsoever of
Japanese war atrocities to provide some context to the horror of
Hiroshima, but I'm not sure if it is really relevant anyway. There
were lots of exhibits, and in fact too many to study fully. I
particularly liked the little things like the watch stopped at 8:15,
the shadow caused by the bomb's flash, and seemingly-perfect replicas
of important documents (like Einstein's letter to Roosevelt). There
was one particularly strange dioarama that looked like it had been
borrowed from Madame Tussaud's dungeon, with dripping flesh etc, but
the museum is otherwise tasteful and as I've sad already, quite
moving.

I also found out that I was mislead by my friends in Niigata that that
city was the preferred primary target. Apparently, Niigata was in the
original shortlist, and remained there for two months, but was removed
well before the bombing. Hiroshima almost always seemed to be the
preferred primary target.

I had to escape the Museum actually because there were about 3000
schoolkids running around the complex, and inside the building it was
impossible to think (let alone hearing the cool electronic guide I
purchased). But outside, it was cool to see the literally hundreds
and hundreds of schoolkids running amok (although in a very ordered
Japanese fashion). I was even asked by a group of kids to fill out a
survey for their school project. It was in English, and roto-stated
(remember that) to buggery, looking like something that many
foreigners have completed over the years.

The A-Bomb dome was a bit of a disappointment. You can't go inside,
and so I must have taken a hundred photographs of the outside before
realising I was bored of the idea. The other site I visited was Osaka
Castle. This is a concrete reconstruction of a 16th century fortress.
Central Hiroshima is a group of islands, bulit on swamp land. Osaka
Castle sat in the middle of these canals, and was built in such a way
that the land around the castle could be flooded if it were attacked.
Very clever. The castle looked fantastic outside (and yes another
hundred photos or so), but was a disappointment inside. There was
some cool armour and swords, but I wasn't allowed to take any photos,
not even without the flash. Speaking of swords, one trivial thing
I've learned is that all swords were confiscated and banned during the
American Occupation. Must have been something to do with restricting
access to weapons.

I threw myself round a gym this evening, and am now heading to bed,
after a fantastic miso ramen dinner. I'm so exhausted I can barely focus. More soon. Night!

Hiroshima - first glance

I arrived in Hiroshima last night after a long day of travelling. I hailed a cab. The driver helped me with my heavy bag, and drove me 200 metres to my hotel. He didn't seem to mind though. My hotel is beautiful, with a foyer that looks like it was ripped from a country house in France.

I headed out for a bite to eat, and ended up in the nightlife district. We would call this the red-light district anywhere else. Hiroshima is out of control. There were dozens and dozens of strip clubs, bars etc, with women standing outside trying to draw in the crowds. The narrow lanes are filled bumper to bumper with taxis. It was 11pm on a Wednesday night, and still crazier than what you'd find Friday midnight in Sydney's Kings Cross. At one point, a lady grabbed me by the arm and tried to pull me into what looked like a mobile phone shop. I put up a protest, but she kept pulling me towards the door, eventually leaning in close to whisper in my ear, "sekusu kurubbu". Then another girl arrived. I ran away, a little scared. :-)

Off to tour the city now. More later.

Japan

In so many ways, Japan is a very different country to Australia, but there are moments when I feel that I could be at home. Like for example on Sunday when we drove an hour through the countryside to attend a baseball game organised by Paul"s friends. While not quite like Field of Dreams, we were surrounded by rural Japanese-style houses, and not far from rice paddies. Like karaoke, baseball is a national obsession in Japan. I'm not sure exactly when it was adopted, but it may have something to do with the American Occupation. Anyhow, they love it. When I went to the Sofmap electronics store the other day, it was American baseball that was playing on the televisions, in the same way that we'd see football or cricket back home.

But the obsession with the west extends beyond baseball. It is very cool here to use English words in advertising or place names, even when it doesn't make sense or might be grammatically incorrect. And English spelling isn't a high priority. Paul tells me that English is widely spoken in Tokyo, but as we are in the country, almost no-one speaks it here in Niigata. Still, English pops up everywhere. I went to the Joy Fit gym the other day. The stadium in Niigata is nicknamed the Big Swan. And there is a Gatorade-style drink called Pocari Sweat. Mmmm, I know that when I'm hot and dehydrated after exercise, I want to reach for a cool, refreshing drink called Sweat.

But back to the American thing, I can't help but think about World War II while I am here. I may be sensitive to this because I'm presently on my way to Hiroshima, or it might be because with so much English and American-culture I'm reminded of how Japan was America's first foray into the nation-building that is still going on today. Anyway, when I think about the war atrocities, I can't make a connect between what happened then, and the Japanese people I meet today. It almost seems like something is missing. The Japanese people I have met are statistically hardly representative of the nation, but they seem like such placid and polite people. I guess it's one of history's little ironies that things worked out how they did. And perhaps it has more to do with mass manipulation, as was the case in Germany. Actually, I learned something interesting the other day about WW2. Apparently, Niigata was the Allies' preferred primary target for the first atomic bomb. But it was overcast
in Niigata, so the Allies chose Hiroshima instead. Paul's friends tell me that it is often overcast in Niigata. The day I landed I was reminded of landing in Melbourne only a few days before. Meaning, it was beautiful, sunny and warm... until the plane descended below the cloud-line.

We only caught the tail end of Sunday's baseball game because we got lost along the way. In Japan, almost every street is unnamed. Only the main roads have names, in the Western sense. As you can imagine, this makes it impossible to find an address. In fact, if one Japanese person invites another to their house, they must first meet at a recognisable landmark, so the host can show his guest how to get there. You might be wondering how the postal system works? Well, Japanese cities are divided into districts (like what we would call a suburb), then within those districts are numbered subdivisions. Within the subdivision are numbered street blocks. Each building on that block is also numbered, but according to the order that the buildings were constructed on that block. So within the block, it is almost always the case that building numbers aren't sequential. All those numbers are combined into a location code, which is different to the postcode. So it's easier for mail to find
its destination than a human. The exception to all this is named apartment buildings, like where Paul lives. In his case his buiilding is well-known as the city's first high-rise apartment building.

After the baseball match everyone had lunch by in a park by the river. The wide, green, open space reminded me very much of home. There must have been 40 people at the lunch, most of whom are known to Paul and his friends, and some of whom I'd met the night before when we went clubbing. All the gaijin (foreigners) at the lunch are English teachers in Niigata, just like Paul. It seems to me that the local gaijin community is fairly tight-knit, with all the benefits and problems that come with spending so much time with a small group of people. Extending out from this are the Japanese people who make up partners and close friends. Most are fluent in English, and English is the language of communication. It makes for an interesting bunch to hang out with, made all the more interesting by observing how people outside this group react to so many gaijin together.

Late in the day, we played some frisbee for a while before someone suggested a soccer match. Gaijin vs Japanese. I have photos for those who don't believe I could/would participate. In fact, if it counts, I used to play soccer in grade two, 24 years ago. Us gaijin beat the Japanese team 2-1 in the first half, which was intended be the only match. But we all had such a good time it wasn't long before we continued the game. The Japanese team were as determined to win, as we intended to hold on to our lead. I giggled when one of the Japanese players opened the second half with a cry of Tora Tora Tora. It's all in good fun. We lost though. In fact we were trounced by a two point lead. It was a great afternoon.

With only two more days in Niigata, I spent all of Monday riding Paul's bike around town to see what else I had missed. I later worked out that I rode the bike in excess of 25 kilometres, from Paul's place to the beach, in-land to the Big Swan (which incidentally hosted some 2002 World Cup soccer finals), and finally back home again. After gym on Saturday, soccer on Sunday, and bike-riding all Monday, I was exhausted by the time I got home. I should mention one place I visited. It is called Nihonkai (Sea of Japan) Tower. I've come to learn that Japan is home to the "world's best standard" crap amusements (explaining to me once and for all why Japanese tourists go to the tackiest amusement places in Australia). Nihonkai Tower proudly proclaimed that it was the only observation deck built on a water reservoir, in all of Japan. Wow. The view was crap. But the best thing was that it is a revolving observation deck... with an area marked "smoking corner".

We finally got to have yakiniku on Monday night, which is a Korean barbeque-style dinner appropriated by the Japanese. We sat on tatami mats, at a table with a built-in barbeque. The staff brought trays of meat and vegetables which we cooked ourselves. Delicious. The yakiniku restaurant we attended is todihorai, meaning it's all-you-can-eat. It can also be had with an all-you-can-drink nomihorai deal. This cost us ¥2800. I can't think of anywhere in Australia that will give you that sort of a deal, reinforcing my belief that Japan simply isn't as expensive (anymore) as suggested by guidebooks and tourists from the 80s and early 90s. Of course, I might think otherwise once I get to Tokyo.

Yesterday, I visited Sadogashima (Sado Island). This is Japan's second largest non-main island, and is easily the highlight of my trip so far. I learned about this remote part of Japan from my pre-trip planning. Located off the coast from Niigata, this is the island that the world-famous kodo drummers hail from. The island's isolation from the mainland is fundamental to its history. Sado is kind of like Japan's Tasmania. At one time, it was used as a prison, with the prisoners working as slaves in the island's gold mine. A deposed emperor was even exiled here.
And Michael Palin visited on one of his treks, so I figured that was as good a recommendation as any.

I caught a 6am jeto-foiru (hydrofoil) from Niigata to Ryotsu, which is a port in the centre of the island. I had read that Sado was remote and lacked amenities for tourists, so I was expecting to see dirt roads leading from the jetty. You can imagine my disappointment when we landed and saw that Ryotsu was built-up, grey, and ugly, like so much of the rest of Japan. I hired a car, and headed north. Once out of the town of Ryotsu I found myself travelling along a stunning coastal road. Sado reminds me very much of Tasmania. Both islands share a harshness to their scenery, with narrow roads winding around sheer cliffs. On one side is the brilliant green of pine forests (with the occasional outbreak of bamboo), while on the other side is the sea, as blue as can be. This is the Japan that I have come to see. The speed limit was a ridiculously low 40, but thankfully most drivers almost double that. It was only about 35 kilometres to Futatsu-Game, the one place that I had to see, a
nd the car rental guy said that would take an hour. Despite my speeding it still took an hour because I had to stop every kilometre or two to take a photo. It was that beautiful. I also stopped at a post-office to buy some postcards. The clerk rummaged around in several draw before coming up with two plain-white cards with conveniently marked sections on one side indicating where to put the address. The reverse side was blank. No photo. Nothing!

Futatsu-Game is Japanese for two turtles. And that's the best way to describe the two huge shell-shaped rocks that rise out of the sea only 100 metres from the shore. They're connected to the mainland by a little isthmus but the sheerness of their slopes made the turtles very much off-limits. Just past Futatsu-Game was another place that was even more beautiful. I've forgotten its name, so will post it later. But here there was one "rock", rising out of the ocean at least 200 metres high. There was a walking track all the way to the top. The torii gate at the start of the track leads me to think there might be a Shinto shrine at the very top. The lower slopes were covered in fields of bright yellow daffodils. Check out my photos to see how spectacular this looked.

My journey continued down the western side of the island. With the exception of some quaint little towns and some spectacular tunnels, nothing was quite as spectacular as what I'd already seen. Regarding those tunnels, Japan spends 10% of its GDP on infrastructure works. A lot of that money is spent on projects that won't recoup their cost, like tunnels in remote country islands, and the Akashi Kaikyo Bridge (the world's longest suspension bridge) linking an island the size of Singapore with the main island of Honshu. I'd love to visit Akashi Kaikyo, but it's kinda out of the way so will have to give it a miss.

I returned from Sado around 5:30, eager to attend to a problem that had been brewing for a few days. This is my first post in several days, and the longest to date, and that's because Paul's computer has been out of action. It all started when I tried to procure some software from a less-than-reputable web site, not realising that Paul's computer is open to the internet. No firewall. No anti-viral software. It was about a half hour later that we started to notice strange messages. I'm actually travelling with my bag of disc-tricks so ordinarily it would be easy to remove. But the problem was made a whole lot worse by Paul having a Japanese version of Windows XP, meaning that every on-screen message (including Start) appears in Japanese in Kanji, Hiragana, or Katakana script. And it's a particularly nasty bug that the PC got, hijacking the browser to redirect every web request to a particular page, and blocking access to any site that provides tools or guides to assi
st with removing viruses and spyware. I spent two nights working on it before deciding the problem was bigger than I could handle. Anti-viral software eventually removed the viral components, but no other tool, or any amount of fiddling was able to fix the browser hijack. My last resort suggestion to Paul was for him to take it to a PC shop and have them rebuild the C: drive using the Japanese Windows XP, with me picking up the tab. I didn't sleep well last night, probably because I was thinking about the problem overnight, and I hate to be beaten by a machine. It turns out it is something I have seen before, and was fairly easy to remove once I remembered how. Phew!! I was able to leave Niigata with a working computer for Paul, and a clear conscience for me!

I'm writing the tail end of this post from the shinkansen (bullet train). When planning my trip, the shinkasen was one of the things I was most excited about as I have always wanted to travel on a very fast train. The French TGV was clocked at more than 500km/hr, but the shinkansen remains the world's fastest scheduled train service. I purchased a Japan Rail Pass from Australia which gives me 14 days unlimited travel on the shinkansen throughout Japan, and also many local trains. It cost me ¥45,100, which is a massive cost saving to individual trips. Just one return journey between Niigata and Tokyo alone would cost AUD $250. I have already travelled three times that same distance, and I haven't even gotten to my destination yet!

My journey started on the Joetsu Shinkasen, travelling form Niigata to Tokyo. Niigata is the end of the line, so it was easy to get a window seat, and some of the journey was through a beautiful mountainous region. Part of the reason why the shinkansen is so expensive is that purpose-built rail lines had to be constructed throughout Japan, most of which is above-ground. There are also many, many tunnels to mitigate the need to change grade or reduce speed. I certainly haven't felt I'm travelling at a 270km/hr. (It takes 5 kilometres for the train to stop from maximum speed). The ride is incredibly smooth and gentle, making QR's local trains all the worse!

Arriving in Tokyo was fantastic. It is such a huge metropolis that the view looked "big city built-up" almost an hour before we got to Tokyo Station. And what a station. It doesn't look spectacular, but it was busier than any I have ever seen before. I actually took a moment to stand by a wall and watch.

At Tokyo I boarded the Tokkaido Shinkansen, which is the original shinkansen line, opening around 1964. It took me a while to find the right carriage because there are first-class and second-class reserved seating carriages interspersed with the non-reserved carriages. I finally found a non-reserved carriage, and a spare seat, and settled in before realising it was a smoking carriage. At first I thought it would be okay, but after a few minutes I couldn't breathe. I eventually found a non-smoking, non-reserved carriage, which unfortunately also seemed to be non-air-conditioned. It's not so bad now, as the carriage has almost emptied, but the first few hours were suffocating. Otherwise the shinkansen has been very comfortable. All seat are reclinable with a tray table on the sat in front There is no restaurant car, but a trolley dolly appears frequently, pushing her food and drink cart.

We have passed through Nagoya, Osaka, Kyoto, and Kobe, but I will stay with the train until it reaches the end of the line at Okayama. There I will change trains and catch a third shinkansen to Hiroshima. I left Niigata at 2pm, and will arrive around 9:30pm. The train system runs like clockwork here, with JR's motto something to the effect of set your watch by their schedule. And the connections are flawless. In 7.5 hours of travel, only 30 minutes will be lost to waiting for connections. If I happened to miss any of these trains there would be another in 30 or 60 minutes, right across Japan. It makes me wonder how many trains are in operation. And mind you, these aren't small trains. Each carriage is about 30+ metres long, and there are at least 16 carriages. Even at around the half-kilometre mark in length, when one passes you at a station, it does so in about three seconds. If you are looking the wrong way you won't see it, but you'll certainly feel the air pres
sure change, even from within another shinkansen! Everything about the shinkansen is simply amazing.

Izakaya, Karaoke, and Mt Yahiko

On Thursday night, Paul too me to an izakaya, which is like a Japanese pub (but nothing like a pub back home). Food is often ordered here and shared and eaten like tapas. But the great thing about this night was that we ordered really healthy food, and it tasted great. Lots of raw tuna and salmon, which was delicous, and only the occasional fried dish. I saw a path out of the fat-laden quagmire that I thought might overwhelming represent my time in Japan.

After dinner, we caught up with Jolene, an English teacher friend of Paul's. Jolene hails from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. And yes, she loves the West Edmonton Mall. We went to a karaoke bar, which is nothing like I've ever seen before. Karaoke is a national obsession in Japan. The venue we attended, Shidax, is a purpose-built eight-story building (quite new in fact), each floor with 20+ karaoke booths that comfortably hold at least six or seven people. Apparently the place is full on a Friday or Saturday night, and it is near impossible to get a room. Have a look at my karaoke photos.

We could have payed for only two hours, but Paul and I knew that we wouldn't be able to stop once we started singing. So we went for the all-night/flat-rate/nomihodai deal. Nomihodai is Japanse for all-you-can-drink. Many restaurants and bars offer a nomihodai deal because:
(i) alcohol is ridiculously cheap when purchased from a supermarket (AUD $13 for a bottle of Johnny Walker Red Label), and
(ii) one doesn't need a license to sell alcohol, so a shop or bar owner can purchase alcohol from a supermarket and sell it to with no problem.
Alcohol consumption seems prevalent throughout Japanese culture. There are drink vending machines everywhere, and many sell alcohol. Just this morning I asked Nobby (Paul's boyfriend) about the incidence of liver cancer. Apparently, like lung cancer, there is a very high incidence of these diseases in Japan. You can drink anywhere, and smoke anywhere, except on planes. So when I see someone smoking on a train, taxi, or while working in a restaurant kitchen, it's understandably surprising coming from Australia where smokers are treated like lepers.

Anyway, back to karaoke. We had an absolute ball. Although I think we all thought we were much better than we actually were. I took some videos on my digital still camera, and they just prove this point. But karaoke is very addictive, and it's very easy to fight over the microphones or song choices once you get hooked. We left Shidax around 5:30AM, making our time there an eight-hour marathon.

We had planned a big day, which was understandably reorganised because of the big night before. Paul wanted to take me to Mt Yahiko, where there is a Shinto Shrine (although Paul insisted at the time that it was a Buddhist temple - whoops about that). Yahiko is around 40 minutes drive south west of Niigata. At one point, the road is built on a narrow edge between the mountains and the ocean. It is very reminiscient of the drive between Cairns and Port Douglas. Check out the photos here.

We drove up the coast side of Mt Yahiko, to a dodgy themed attraction at the top with a "ride" which is just an observation tower like the one in Niigata (for more photos of that ride, check out my ever-expanding Niigata photo-set). From the mountain top, we took a cable car down the other side to the Mt Yahiko shrine. It's a good thing I didn't go there with my Paul (hello Kerby), because it is a well-known local superstition that if you go to Mt Yahiko with your partner, you will anger the local demi-god and you will split up not long after leaving. Yahiko was stunning, with a quaint town just nearby.

Gotta run. We're going to a baseball match. Will write more soon.

Dried Fruit

And this is the dried fruit that I purchased from Isetan. A strawberry and mango. It was delicious.

Isetan

This photo was taken in the Isetan food hall. The stall at the right edge of the photo is where I purchased the dried fruit.

Obsessed with food

Yesterday Paul had a full day of work, so I was left to my own devices in the city. After spending 2 hours geting my blog in order, I headed out for lunch to Isetan. This is a department store perhaps a notch above David Jones. There are small boutiques for Chanel, Cartier, Hermes etc etc within the store, but frankly a lot of the products didn't impress me. The food court was a floor of about fifteen restaurants. I went to one place and ordered a neapoli pasta (tamago nashi desu - meaning without the raw egg that it would normally come with - mmmm). I then went to a sushi deli next door and ordered a tray of seafood sushi that looked fantastic in the window. It was actually pretty good, although the prawns throw me because they look delicious and cooked and are in fact raw. I had other sushi with a slice of raw tuna, or salmon, or squid, and all were delicious. Then I headed down to the food hall which is very much like that in David Jones or Harrods. The food is of very high quality. I ordered a potato bake, which I see everywhere in Japan. The lady explained to me that it had poteto and cheezu and poteto and cheezu, indicating layers. It looked so greasy and western that I was instantly sold. But the highlight of my food obsession yesterday lunch was discovering the food hall kiosk which sells every possible fruit in dried form. They had blackberries, blueberries, cranberries, strawberries, mangos, mandarins etc etc. I picked up 50g each of the mangos and strawberries which were delicious. But not cheap at ¥714 per 100 grams.

I have heaps more to tell about yesterday, including a visit to an izakaya (where I had my first full-till-I'm-stuffed meal in Japan) and an 8-hour karaoke marathon last night/this morning with all-you-can-drink nomihoudai (which we are still recovering from). Paul thinks he is Diana Ross, and in a way he is right. After all she is an alcoholic. But he is pressuring me to get ready so we can go to a temple in the "countryside". More later.

Photos now on-line!

I have finally got my photos set up on-line on Flickr. Check it out! From time to time I will post photos to this blog, but you'll be able to see the entire archive at flickr. Mind you, these aren't all the photos I've taken, as I'm a little trigger-happy... just the best ones!

Belated blogging

This is only my third post, and I have to concede that I am not a born-blogger. It's been six days since my last post, and so much has happened I barely know where to begin. Other than from the beginning.

I was in Melbourne from Friday to Monday for Nicky's 30th birthday, which was actually on Sunday, but the party was on Saturday night. Kevin and Ben also flew down for the event, and the three of us stayed at a fantastic apartment hotel in South Melbourne, the Quest on Dorcas just of St Kilda Road. Our view looked out towards the Shrine of Remembrance, which we visited on Saturday morning. Check out the photos.

I highly recommend the Quest apartment hotels. I don't have any photos but you can google their site. I think they're franchised hotels, but all look very good. We got a Wotif rate of $186/night which is very cheap for Melbourne, especially if you saw how beautifully decorated our apartment was. The hotel is brand new, and is fully-wired with Ethernet. They even supply wifi modems at no extra charge, on request. I was able to hook up my PDA to the net using my iPass account. Amazing.

While in Melbourne we also caught up with Mandy and Nick. Mandy used to love in Brisbane, before her returning to her home town and marrying the lovely Nick. We had lunch at a little bistro off Greville Street which summed up everything about eating in Melbourne. The food is always good and almost always quite inexpensive. Later we visited their house in South Yarra. It's a cute duplex which they renovated themselves. Nick laid down the wood flooring himself. It looked stunning, and the house brand new.

But the big event was Nicky's party on Saturday night at Alumbra, a cute little bar/club right on the water in the docklands. It was decorated with a Thai/Outback/Post-modern fusion theme thing, with lots of couches and a high wog-quotient. I always forget how woggy Melbourne is, until I go. I find myself blending in to the background. :-)

After the party proper, we partied on into the wee hours with Nicky's friends, who were all lovely and very generous and accomodating. Let me just say it was a huge night, with hours and hours of fun, laughs, and hijinks. I even learned a new dance - which you had to see to understand how funny/cute it was. Thank you Claire! (Mind you, I'm not sure how much of it I still remember). And thank you Adam, Marco, and Lena.

On Monday I had lunch with Nicky at The Stokehouse, which is a restaurant right on the bay at St Kilda (just near the Palais). I love how Melbournians call the bay "the beach". The sand is coarse, there are no waves, the sky is gray, and the wind (let alone the water) is bone-chillingly cold.

Nicky dropped me off at the airport, and it was sad to say goodbye. But it was fun leaving Australia via Tullamarine rather than Brisbane. I had a fantastic flight, with a window seat and an empty seat next to me... all the way to Singapore. The food was really good, and there was plenty of it. I was stuffed after each meal. I've planned all my flights on this trip with airlines and planes that have personal televisions. I'd heard the technology is good, but I was still very impressed. I counted 60 different movies I could watch on-demand. Unfortunately, all are presented in a 4:3 aspect ratio, so I passed on the movies. But there were dozens of tv shows and countless audio albums to choose from. And also video games. I played Super Mario for about two hours until I developed a severe case of Nintendonitis.

We landed at Changi around 9:30pm. My phone switched over to roaming straight away, and I could get free wifi internet in the airport. How did we ever live without the internet?

Fearing the rumours of the cost of meat in Japan, I went to Burger King for my last supper. I also stopped by the pharmacist to pick up some protein bars. It seems that health food hasn't made it to Singapore. The clerk stared at me when I explained what I wanted, before directing me to some high-fat/high-sugar bars that best matched my description. However, on a high note, it seems that drugs are cheap in Singapore. A 24-pack of Panadeine with Sudafed was AUD $3. Go figure.

If my flight to Singapore was perfect, then the yin of that yang was the flight from Singapore to Osaka. I cannot recall what made me think that I should book a 1AM flight, especially knowing this would follow a big weekend, but it was far worse than I could imagine. According to my boarding pass sequence number, I was the 20th passenger. I asked the check-in clerk at Tullamarine for window seats on both flights, but she made a complete mess of the SIN-KIX flight. I was in seat 31A on a 777-200, which is the left-most seat in the very first row of economy class seating. As it's the first row, behind the door bulkhead, there is actually no window and only half the leg room of a normal seat. I felt myself slipping into the depths of claustrophobia. But the plane was completely full. And I mean every seat was occupied, so I couldn't move to another row. The only good thing about this seat was that I was close to the emergency exit if we had to crash.

I stayed awake long enough for the meal, if you can call it that. Aeroflot would have a better in-flight service. I got a ham baguette, which was devoured before the stewardess moved to the next row. I tried to get some sleep but my neighbour had a snoring problem. Early in the flight I would nudge him gently every few minutes and go back to sleep. By the end of flight I was jabbing him in the side and/or pulling his pillow out from under him. I know this sounds extreme, but let me assure you it did NOTHING to wake him up. It just managed to stop him snoring for a minute or two. I had to laugh when the Nazi stewardess insisted he wake up to have his meal. God forbid Singapore Airlines allow you to sleep on a flight. The breakfast meal was the flight's nadir. It was a sweaty, broiled omelette, that leaked water when I cut it, as if it were a sea cucumber. And quite possibly the most revolting in-flight meal I have ever endured. So I arrived in Osaka, tired, hungry, and probably still somewhat hungover.

I had a ten hour stopover in Osaka. This seems long, but the domestic (and old international Itami airport is about 70km from Kansai International where I landed. The government started building Kansai in the 1980s to ease the pressure on Tokyo. A man-made island was built a few kilometres off the coast of Osaka but developed massive cost overruns when the island started sinking faster than expected before construction finished. It ended up costing US$14 billion, by completion in 1995. It is still sinking, at the rate of 1 foot per year, which is six times faster than the estimate. The American Society of Civil Engineers rank it as #2 civil engineering project of the 20th century, right behind the Panama Canal. The main terminal building holds the distinction of being the largest (in terms of area) single-roomed building in the world, and is 1.6km long in one direction. My photos don't really do it justice, but you'll be able to see a little of what I mean when I say it's big. Despite all the problems, the Japanese government is committed to making it work. They're actually doubling the size of the island by 2007. Check out this satellite photo to see how big it looks from space.

At the end of the taxiway, the airport authority built an observation deck. This is actually two 6-story buildings joined by a 5-th level bridge. The observatory is open to the public and has a cafe on the top floor. There must have been 100 people there who looked like they had come on a tour especially to see the airport. Most of these people looked like planespotters. Judging from their equipment there must have been at least a few professional photographers, but I also see many people with less elaborate equipment, and charts where they could mark off what they'd seen. There were even guys with shortwave radio equpment, listening in to the tower. It was almost as interesting to watch the people here, as it was to watch the planes. And post-S11, Kansai must be one of the few places in the world where you can photograph planes so close without being arrested!

I was speaking English for the first few hours that I was in Osaka, but the observatory was the point where I managed to combine my phrase book with high school Japanese, and give it a go, and I was successful. Yay! Up until then I felt incredibly isolated. In fact, from the time I landed in Kansai, until a few moments before boarding my next plane at Itami, I did not see one other non-Japanese person nor heard a single word of English in passing. In the few hours at Kansai, on the bus to Itami, and then at that latter airport, it became quite apparent to me why it is that ex-pats (like my friend Paul) love Japan so much. The people seem obsessed with non-Japanese people. They treat you like a rockstar, and giggle in excitement when you approach them. I felt like Ricky Martin at Itami.

From Itami, I took a flight to Niigata, which is the "country" town where Paul lives. The population of the city is about 600,000 (and maybe a milliion or two in the prefecture, or state), but this is definitely country living despite how it may look in the photos. No-one speaks English, although they are still as warm and accommodating as in Osaka. The Shinano, the longest river in Japan, winds its way through Niigata to the river mouth. One of the many bridges (and the bridge I've mostly photographed so far) is the Bandai Bridge. It was built in 1929, although it looks brand new. The lightposts were removed during WW2 as all scrap metal was appropriated for the war effort. The lightposts were only reinstated last year to restore the bridge to its original glory. Paul tells me that Niigata's primary industry is rice and paper (which of course, can also be made from the rice). Japan is supposed to have some of the best rice in the world, and Niigata makes the best rice in Japan. So I'm looking forward to checking this out. Funnily this is my second day here and I still haven't had anything with rice! Niigata is the capital of the Niigata prefecture, and a port city. I learned yesterday that when America forced Japan to open up after 250 years of self-imposed isolation, Niigata was one of only five designated ports that were allowed to trade with the west.

The night I arrived, Paul and his friends took me out for a special welcome dinner. We had a wonderful meal which can only be described as like a Japanese tapas. Most of the friends within this group are ex-pats, or Japanese people who have lived abroad, but all have interesting stories to tell. I have met Prue and GA before, so it was great to catch up with them again.

Paul lives in Niigata Manshon (as in "mansion"), the first high-rise apartment building in Niigata. I like to think of it as Niigata's Torbreck. It's pretty old now, but has a great view of the city. However, the elevator and passageways scare me as they remind me of the Japanese horror film Dark Water. If you've seen the film you will know what I mean. The movie is being remade this year with Jennifer Connelly. I am trying to get everyone here to see the original before I leave.

That's about it for now. Make sure you check out my photo blog at flickr.