Three down, one to go...

Em does love a good castle.



Inuyama Castle (犬山城 Inuyama-jō)



Himeji Castle (姫路城 Himeji-jō)



Matsumoto Castle (松本城, Matsumoto-jō)


These three castles make up 3/4 of the National Treasure Castles of Japan. Hikone Castle will complete the set...

The Sun Disappears... Light Returns...

Well, in the land of the computerless, I've stopped compulsively checking my email seventy times a day. Probably for the best. I wasn't really achieving much by constantly baying at my own little window to the world, and I was actually making myself more anxious for my effort. I am now acutely aware of just how much I was completely addicted to my computer. Giving up smoking was easier than giving up computing. And as this blog post is testament, I am still not reformed!

I've dropped out of my Japanese class. I'm disappointed in myself for not finishing it, but it was robbing me of 3 hours of being with my Tom, and at least 2 hours of sleep... on top of the train fares to get there and back, it was turning into a burden I couldn't sustain. I've resigned myself to a bit of self-study for now, until I find a better way of learning some Japanese. I don't feel particularly driven to learn lots of Japanese, as I have very little aptitude for languages other than English, and once we've finished our time here, I doubt I'll be using much Nihongo in my day to day life. I'll resign myself to partial comprehension and a bit of conversation. It will just have to do.

As the title of this post suggests, we are beginning to find a little bit of peace here.

With the crash of the Aussie dollar and the downturn of the Australian Economy, we have assessed our situation here far more favourably. With our yen now being worth almost twice what it was worth when we arrived, and a worsening employment situation in Tasmania, we have canned any plans for coming back for at least the next few months, and possibly the next year... though I know not to put too much faith in plans...

Osaka is cheap, and with Tom focusing on amassing a huge amount of musical equipment, and me focusing on getting a new computer, we have come to the conclusion that we are best to just stay put for now, and keep working for ECC Kansai. I have been given my last set day on my schedule (at last!) and with Tom only substitute teaching one day a week, our general discontent levels have dropped quite substantially.

Although we have decided to stay in Osaka, we are looking at moving out of this apartment next year, somewhere closer to the main drag, and hopefully less dusty, cramped and expensive. The real estate market here is daunting, and being a foreigner, it's hard to find a good deal. But time, as they say, is on our side.

I have saved some money for a replacement computer, but then Tom lent the money from me to buy a very rare amp that just happened to be in the local Ishibashi music equipment store. So, that puts us in the poor house with a church mouse for at least the next couple of weeks. The soonest the computer could be acquired is January - that would have been true whether Tom had borrowed the money from me or not... and if we need to move house before then, the computer may be pushed further into the future. I am trying not to get anxious about it... the operative word being trying... I really like having a computer, and I'm finding not having one to be a little upsetting. But if that is the sum of my woes, then really, life isn't that bad. And it feels like things will continue to be on the up.

The cooler weather is far more pleasant than the boiling, steamy summer. We have had some opportunities to get out and about a bit and see some more of the seasons:

Arashiyama and Daikakuji

Ginkakuji

Updated - Kiyomizu Dera

Updated - Urban Osaka

And Japan continues to be crazy:

Sometimes you continue to wonder...

We're off to Nagano for Christmas, and I'm going to have a crack at skiing. Hopefully it will be a good crack at skiing and not cracking bones. I'm also going to see if we can come past Matsumoto Castle on the way home, and maybe drop into Nagoya on the way past... but it will all depend on all of those things that things tend to depend on... ra, ra, ra...

Hoping that December is bringing you Australians some lovely warm weather, and that you all have pleasant Christmases, no matter how you choose to spend them. Until next time...

Foreigner's Koens

1. If a gaijin sits down on a subway, is it any different to anyone else sitting down on a subway?

2. If a gaijin is not present to observe gaijin-ized Japanese behaviour, does anyone behave any differently?

3. Is it me you hate, or the world?

Meditate on that.

Death of an Old Friend

My trusty mac, who has been with me through thick and thin for the last four and a half years has finally gotten too temperamental to be reliably used for any more than 30 minutes. The cooling fan has busted, and she overheats.

Apple, a company of whose products I have been a great fan of for some time now, has now done the BASTARD thing of not including a Firewire port in their latest Macbook models (unless I get the really baseline one, which doesn't have much more grunt than the one it's replacing) and so I am being forced to buy the next model up, which I really can't afford right now.

(Apple have also downgraded the memory size on the largest of their iPods, which is really giving Tom the shits because he wanted to buy a 160G, and now they're not making them that big anymore).

I need the Aussie dollar to bounce, but it doesn't look like it is going to, and so, this month, I will be unable to talk to any of you via the internet aside from the brief moments where Tom is kind enough to let me use his blackMacbook.


Last week, I killed my phone and was forced to fork out ¥42000 for a new handset and whatnot with Softbank/Vodafone. It felt a lot like the Terry Gilliam film Brazil, wherein I had paid out my departure fees with Vodafone when I left last time, telling them "I'm leaving the country." After the date that I had told them I would leave the country (and indeed I had left the country), Vodafone thought it would be a great idea to send me a bill to an address that I had told them that I had left. Then they got all hissy about giving me a new phone this time because I had ¥4400 owing from 2005. To say I was livid would be an understatement. Anyway, I relented, Tom and I are now with the same phone provider on a 'Family' plan, and this will eventually deliver us great savings, or at least, that's what I've been lead to believe. Anyway, I've had a bad month for electrical equipment, and I am making sure that the hairdryer stays well away from the bath, because I'm convinced that technology is out to get me at the moment.

In other news, Osaka in Autumn is pleasant, dry, comfortable and prettier than usual. I've been sick so I've been having to take it easy, but I have been thoroughly impressed with the Kansai Autumn, and I hope we will be doing more than one of them...

Things what I have learned.

1. Never accept a "gift" that you think should be paid for. The giver will probably extract a much heftier payment in flesh than they ever would have accepted in cash.

2. Never expect a new journey to flow from an old journey. Each new beginning is hard.

3. Never think that people will respect or like your ideas. The ones that they like they will steal and pretend were theirs in the first place. The others they weren't even listening to.

4. You can never have enough savings for a rainy day if you live in a country that gets typhoons continuously. My camera broke the other day, so now I am eating beans until pay day so I can replace it.

Just so you know that not everything is shit

Today I drew this poster on a substay. It is the first hand drawn poster I have done in years.



From T7M to ECC. Heh, I had a giggle, I did.

Darker days

Summer is finally over.

Mindless optimism isn't always the best response, but sometimes it's the only one available. I've been playing the mindless optimism card for a while now, but it's getting harder and harder to ignore the fact that things have not necessarily improved for us. Indeed, darker days haven't been seen since we were stranded in Brisbane.

This was supposed to be the big pay off that we were working towards, but it's beginning to look suspiciously like "same shit, different bucket." I'm drinking too often to try and sleep, but I've decided I'm better off being an industrious insomniac than a lazy sleepy drunk. Maybe I should start evolving my own Tyler Durden? Is that really how desperate our situation has become?

I've been besieged by computer disasters. After nearly 5 years of service, my laptop is beginning to falter in her step. I really can't afford another computer right now, so I thought I would try and free up all her memory to help her run more smoothly by moving (not copying, moving) all the photos to an external hard drive. Which then had a fatal error and I am currently in the process of getting it replaced under warranty (which is turning into a nightmare in itself because I need to have an American address before the company will deal with me - luckily Krista is helping me with that one). The photos however, are gone.

I had backed up everything prior to July, but August, when we were traveling around in the Obon holidays, that's all gone, and everything subsequent to that has gone too. I feel empty inside. My photos are a great source of joy to me, when I feel lonely or like I am forgetting the good things in my life, a quick trip down memory lane by opening iPhoto has made me feel better. I also feel a lot like I haven't got very much to share with you all, being so far away, and my words being so empty and hurt at the moment. I can not say it has been anything less than an extremely painful and unhappy time.

Work hasn't improved. We are still subbing two days a week. I find myself resenting the teachers who don't sub. I came here to teach, just like they did... but I am not given the same opportunities they are to do what they do. As I have only one stable shift, I find it impossible to adapt to my circumstances, for my circumstances are constantly changing. I am not enjoying teaching at the Web School two days a week. It gives me a sore neck due to the lack of ergonomically sensible seating arrangements, and I don't get to know the students very well. I only have 3 or so regulars, and the rest are a hodge-podge of first timers. Don't get me wrong... the students, well, they're still lovely, and the staff, well, they're OK - at some schools they are, anyway - but I feel like the company has mislead us about what our duties would be like here. And that feels like a betrayal of trust. We trusted them enough to sell our car and put all our savings on the line for this. We trusted them a lot. That they are now beginning to admit that they deliberately misled us, well, that feels unforgivable. My two year plan in Japan, is looking like it might now be less than one, because the working conditions are not good enough for Tom and me. We had more stability when we were temping back home. Which seems so ironic, when part of the reason for coming back was to have stable jobs.

We were told in a Personnel Workshop a few weeks back that we would have stable shifts by the end of October. This remains to be seen, and with the track record of bending the truth or just flat out lying that the company has, I must admit to being slightly skeptical.

I went to Tokyo for my birthday with Tom. We had a lovely time, spent far too much money, galavanted about and got a feel for the city. It reminded me that I had asked to be stationed in Tokyo, to which the company representative said that "we don't have couples in Tokyo." I asked why, and he said that they didn't "...have couples accommodation options available", to which I said, "I can arrange my own accommodation" to which he said "no - you are forbidden to find your own accommodation." We were told Osaka or no Japan, and at the time, I was so desperate to get back over here, that I compromised and came to a city I never wanted to be in.

Have I learned nothing from the Brisbane experience? If there is only one place you want to go, then don't go elsewhere... go there!

Anyway, we went to Tokyo, I took a stack of photos, of which these few remain. Thank goodness for the facebook or I would have nothing to show you at all.

Hiroyuki Sakai's restaurant in Shibuya

Tsukiji Fish Market

I have started looking at job websites in Tokyo, with an eye to move there at the end of this contract. If I do not manage to secure a job there, then I will quit the company, and go stay there in a gaijin house for a month or so. It may actually be a more rewarding experience to do it that way, anyway.

I feel gutted. Last time I was here, Japan was such a great experience, and now that we're back it's being a terrible experience. These dark days, were not what I was hoping to be sharing with my love. Now that the equinox has passed, we head inexorably toward winter, and who knows what lies there.

Broad brush strokes... the last two months.

I don’t want to bore you with details (to be perfectly honest, I don't want to bore myself with writing details either), so I’ll just give you a bit of a broad overview of how our lives have been travelling along for the last two months since arriving in Japan.

I’ll also admit that I can’t be bothered uploading photos to the blog, simply because it takes too much effort to resize them, so I’m just going to put in some links to my facebook albums.

A brief timeline of our lives since arriving…

5 June – touchdown! Got on the first plane of the morning in Hobart at 6am. Got off the plane from Sydney to Osaka at 8pm, local time. Met up with a charming chap called Simon on the plane whom we’ve quickly be-friended. After an hour or so of immigration and customs and whatnot, we arrived at our house near midnight, to find that it didn’t match the pictures we had been shown. Tired, and feeling like we had no alternative, we signed the lease and went to sleep.


5 June – 10 June: Before training.

We did a lot of cleaning the house and trying to find out about our local area. It took us days to find a ¥100 store – which turned out to be on Abeno Suji, embarrassingly close to our house.


6 June, we were at the Sumiyoshi Ward office registering ourselves. We saw a bike store around the corner. I bought a phone from Docomo (which turned out to be a mistake because everyone else has Softbank phones except me). We cleaned the house a lot because it was full of dust and mould. Not nice.


7 June, we went back to the bike store around the corner and bought ourselves some bikes. Tom got a nice blood red bike, I got a midnight blue one. To practice our riding skills we rode in a straight line toward the bay and got terribly lost and confronted by the industrial estate just two kilometres down the road from our sweet little house.


8 June, we rode to Tennoji on our new bikes and got on the Osaka loop line and went to Osaka Castle. It was refreshingly green, but a bit confronting in it’s tourist oriented bustle.

Osaka Castle photos.

We then rode past a little store selling tomato plants on the way home, and Tom has since had a little garden on our balcony with beautiful herbs and as yet not very productive but huge tomato plants.



11 June – 27 June: Core Training.

Two weeks devoted to perfecting your art as a teacher… or a whole bunch of theoretical skills that don’t get to see the light of day until you’re totally petrified in a class full of people expecting a lesson and you’ve have forgotten what you were told about what to do in this situation when you were learning about these skills a week ago.

This is the time where you make a lot of the friends that stay close to you for the rest of your stay in Japan. To give you a quick run down of who was there - Simon, from the Gold Coast, a high school science teacher and our cute and enthusiastic friend from the plane; Joe, an Arizona native who had been working in IT, who has an adventurous palate and a huge thirst for partying; Krista, a talented hobby photographer who is not party averse either, who’d been living in Chicago and working in publishing; Andy, from Carlisle in England, who had been working for a global pharmaceuticals company, and a very enthusiastic participant in the drinking game; Peter, a Melbournian and recent percussion graduate from the VCA who steers clear of beer; Susan, a Hungarian born, Sydney-sider and tea-totaller; and Brendan… well, Brendan was just a bit odd.

Susan and Brendan haven’t been seen by the training group socially since they finished training, but the rest of us have stayed actively in touch, and done a lot of gadding about and a bit of sightseeing and whatnot. All in all, we’re a good bunch, and I wouldn’t have had a different training group for quids.

It wasn’t easy. In fact, a lot of it was downright stressful, what with having to demonstrate your teaching chops (when you clearly haven’t got an idea in your head about what you’re doing) and try and remember all of this stuff that you’re not getting to put into practice until quite some time after being instructed.


21 June – In the middle of all of the training madness, Simon, Krista, Joe, Tom and I all went to Nara to see the Daibutsu (Big Buddha).

Todai Ji photos.


26 June – Joe and I went about a kilometre down the road from my house to the Sumiyoshi Shrine rice blessing ceremony.

Sumiyoshi Taisha photos.


27 June, we finished training, and began teaching on 29 June.


29 June – 6 August: Teaching.

For me, the old NOVA instincts were still in there, and I felt fairly relaxed about teaching the “Free-Time Lessons” within days of being let lose. ECC also have a fantastic array of “Group” classes – 80 minute long adult classes with real textbooks where you actually get to do a bit of real teaching. I have absolutely LOVED teaching group classes. I wish I had one on my set schedule. However, our schedules are not set, and nor will they be in the foreseeable future. We were hired in June – the contracts for the year are set in April. This means that ECC hired us at a time in the year where they would have usually already sorted out all of their staffing needs for the year. But this year ECC has been hiring more teachers than they have set schedule slots open for. Those of us unwittingly hired when there is no set shifts for us to inhabit once our training is completed have been stuck in a haze of substitution shifts – waking up each morning not knowing where we are going to be working, or who we are going to be working with, but most importantly, who we are going to be teaching.

I used to be a Kids Program Co-Ordinator at Tajimi NOVA, and I am fine with teaching kids if I am given the opportunity to know what is going on. If I get to do it often enough to know the course even slightly, I am a fantastic Kids teacher. I like kids and kids like me. But the way that ECC have been giving me kids lessons has been that they seem to crop up in my schedule so intermittently - bordering on never - when I do teach the little blighters I have don’t know what is meant to be going on, where they are up to in the course, what they know, what they don’t know, what the games are, where the lesson materials are or how they work. ECC have a lot more Kids levels than NOVA did, and there is no way that someone like myself – who has three set shifts of absolutely zero kids teaching – can possibly keep up with what the Kids lessons are. The upshot of this is that my lessons are awful, the kids hate me, and I hate the kids.

Even with the adults, it’s hard to build any rapport or target your lesson planning to specific student needs if you never know if you’re ever going to teach at that school again. Sub teaching is difficult, and I’m not enjoying it very much.

I understand that there’s nothing that can be done until some teachers who have permanent shifts decide to leave or a new contract year comes around. ECC has also been continuing to train a lot of new teachers – six batches of new recruits this summer alone, at a time when they usually do not recruit at all – from what I’ve been told. With so many people hungry for set shifts, for a bit of stability in their lives, it is difficult to see how everyone will get all the work that they want. Other teachers who have been here for a long time who don’t do any substitution shifts seem blissfully unaware of just how unpleasant it is, subbing all the time with no end in sight. At least if I knew “it’s just until November” then I might be able to coax myself through this unstable part of the year a little more successfully. At the moment it feels like we will be stuck substitute teaching until April next year – which may leave me burnt out and bitter before I even get my first set contact. We weren’t told before we came that we would be substitute teaching for an indefinite period of time. We were given the impression that what we were signing up for was a stable job, where we taught at a variety of set locations. Not that we were signing up for an unstable job, where we teach at a variety of unset locations – sometimes we are shipped from one location to another in the middle of a shift to cover for someone. It makes you feel pretty lonely because you don't know any of the people who you work with, and I don’t know who to ask for help.

Staffing practices aside, on a more positive note, the course materials at ECC are very good, I love teaching at the Web School (even thought it does feel a bit like working in a call centre), and I have met a lot of really fantastic teachers and students. It is very different to the ol’ Pink Satan, NOVA-bot jazz in many regards, and I am quite prepared to stay with the company. I think I would be very happy if it were not for the blasted subbing. The last few years have taught me that I can adapt to anything, given enough practice. I am just finding uncertainty a little more difficult to adapt to.

In the first few months of being here, our finances are being stretched to the limit. Monthly pay in arrears is great when you leave, but it’s difficult when you arrive, waiting for the tide to change and money to start coming back in. Luckily for us the tax man gave us some money back this year (unlike last year where he took all our money away), so we were able to make it through the dry times without having to resort to eating our shoes.

When Tom's tax came in, he bought himself the computer that he has been wanting for the last 4 years - a fantastic windfall for him. It also means that we are no longer competing for the usage of my computer - which seems old and decrepit next to the shiny snazzy new black Macbook.

We spent a fair bit of time putting away some beers with Joe and Simon, and having the occasional games, karaoke or noodle party with the nice neighbours, Tom and Alexis from Canada, Mark and Lindsey from Michigan, and Angela and Richard from Melbourne who live up the road. Good people and good times.

Here are some of our photos taken from around that time:

Urban Osaka photos.
Strange details from Osaka photos.



7 August – 19 August: Obon Holidays.

Paid holidays. What a total and utter novelty for two people like Tom and I! I take back everything I said above. I love you, ECC.

We received our first full sized pay packet on 12 August, and so we were very, very broke at the start of the holidays. It is unfortunate, because we were unable to book any accommodation or tickets because we had no money, so we sort of got stranded at home, hiding inside under the air conditioner trying to hide from the brutal imposing Osaka summer heat. It doesn’t even get cold at night here in July – August, and the choking humidity is very difficult for our Tasmanian constitution to adapt to.

9 August – we travelled to Kyoto to meet up with my old student and now friend, Takako, from Tajimi NOVA. We then went to the Yodogawa Hanabi (fireworks display) – the show was almost stolen by an enormous lightning storm that ended up soaking all of the people gathered on the riverside to watch the fireworks.

Yodogawa Hanabi photos.


12 August – we jumped on the JR line to Himeji and went and saw the enormous, beautiful original castle there.

Himeji Jo photos.


18 August – we rode our bikes to Osaka Port and went and saw the beautiful sea creatures at Osaka Aquarium.

Osaka Aquarium photos.


22 August – we went to Akame Shiju Hattaki in Mie Prefecture to see the amphibian centre, and the 48 waterfalls on the 8km nature walk (of which we did 4km and turned around and came back).

Akame Shiju Hattaki photos.



So… now we’re back at work, starting to hatch some plans for a get away around my birthday. I’m probably just feeling that 3 month hump at the moment. It is only natural, as I have mentioned before in this log, that humans resist change. Change on this scale is bound to upset our sensibilities after a while. A new country, a new company, a new language, new friends, new opportunities, new difficulties… and this is just a broad brush stroke over what has been only the beginning of our time in a country that we plan to be in for about 20 months… we know all too well that plans sometimes don’t run smoothly, and I’m hoping that life remains interesting but allows us a little time to enjoy our pieces of stability. We do have a stable income. We do have a stable house. I’m about to take up learning Japanese at the local YMCA. Routines slowly emerge. I’m finding a lot more peace here than I had even hoped for. The quiet mind in the din. I love Osaka, I’ve decided… it’s a great place – the good things about it are really good. I look forward to having more to report in the next few months…

Finally made it.

Osaka: City of love

So, we made it. Got off the plane at 9:30, fingerprinted and photographed, and thrown out on to the Nankai line. We arrived at our house by midnight. It didn't match the photos, but by this point we were so tired we just wanted somewhere, nay, anywhere, to put our heads down to rest.

We registered our details as aliens at the local Sumiyoshi Ward Office on the first morning. We bought some bikes on the second morning. We had a phone by the third morning. We managed to get our internet on in under a month. Things are traveling along - not without their frustrations - but they are traveling along.

It is hot. We are in the middle of the longest hot spell that Osaka has experienced in years. It gets close to 40ºc during the day, and doesn't cool down much at night. The humidity hits you in the face like a warm putrid slap every time you leave the house. I'm looking forward to Autumn with ever increasing enthusiasm.

We have done some sightseeing, and I will go into that in more detail later, but for now, let it be known that we are in Osaka, and that we still love each other, and maybe we'll grow to love Osaka... but that will probably happen when it cools down a bit.

A Nice Little House

To quote the great Steve Miller, time keeps on ticking, ticking, ticking, into the future. We have a lot of stuff to sort out in the next few weeks, and not much time to devote to anything except working. We are both a little nervous that we won't get everything sorted out sufficiently well before we need to leave. I've not been sleeping so well. It's pretty normal, considering that we're about to embark on a pretty big adventure.

However, we have had a lovely development regarding our housing arrangements.

Today, I got an email from our housing agent, offering us a lovely house in Osaka in a suburb called Tezukayama. It's in Sumiyoshi ward which is part of the southern part of Osaka. Look at how lovely and clean the apartment is:





It just looks so lovely, doesn't it? It is on the fourth floor of a four storey apartment block, so that also bodes well. I like being the stomper upstairs, not the stompee downstairs. Of course, it's Japanese sized, so I don't think we'll be swinging more than one cat at a time, but I've seen smaller, and the price was the same as the house we used to rent in Napoleon Street. Ridiculous, isn't it? That a house in Hobart now costs the same amount as a house in Japan.

Let's just hope that Godzilla doesn't visit Osaka and smash everything up before we get there.

Some of Australia

What happened between then and now...

We drove. Or more specifically, the person with a licence drove. We left Brisbane on a Wednesday and drove down the Pacific Highway. We drove to Surfers and jumped in the water to say goodbye to Queensland. We went past Byron Bay and stopped at Coffs Harbour for the night - which was sadly over developed and full of fast food outlets. On Thursday I drove until I collapsed in a heap in Newcastle, which was about as pretty as Coffs Harbour but far less disappointing. On Friday morning we made good time to Sydney (aside from a panic attack on the Sydney Harbour Bridge after which I needed to pull over and have a deep breath - Sydney-siders would do well to learn some patience and etiquette from Queensland, I must say), where we met up with Jonathan and his good lady wife Denise. We saw Stuart briefly, Matt Wlazlo came out of the wood work, and Angus was there too. Friday was a blur. Saturday we went and saw Immortal, and there we saw Trent, Alex, Luke, Anthony, and a whole bunch of other people we knew. Sunday, we drove to Dapto and saw my Aunt Mary, who was so very kind to us, and we then stayed the Monday in Canberra. I went to the National Gallery and experienced the kind of disappointment that I have only ever experienced before in Tokyo when I found the fabled 'Godzilla statue' and it was only 40cm high. Just pitiful really, considering that we went several hundred kilometres out of our way to find this moderately sized collection that lacked any real balls. We jumped in the car on Tuesday and drove again, this time to Jindabyne, where we had a pleasant evening in a youth hostel with a bottle of wine and a pizza. We drove on to Thredbo, where we took a brief diversion up Mount Kosciusko and took in some air from the highest point in Australia. We then drove through the hair-raising hair-pin bended road from Thredbo to Khankoban, on to Woodonga. At Woodonga I checked my pulse, bought a big bottle of regular cola, and floored it all the way down the Hume highway. We hit Melbourne on Wednesday evening, just before I was getting to the crazy-crashing-the-car-lady tiredness threshold. We spent four nights in Melbourne (including one in a lovely hotel with a beautiful sparkling city view), and we caught up with Monika, Ben Butcher, Liz Clark, Laurel, Gianni Abbate, Sam and his lovely lady friend, Lach, Lou, Timmy T and a few others before jumping on a day sailing to Devonport on the Spirit of Tasmania. A word from the wise: DON'T TAKE THE BOAT unless you can not possibly avoid it. It is full of really horrible obnoxious bogans of all sorts of descriptions, and it just doesn't warrant thinking about. We were put up by Al Sainsbury for the night in Promised Land that evening. The next day we gunned it to Hobart. And here we are. In Hobart. AGAIN.

And if it seems like a lot of words to put in one paragraph, I did so because it was a lot of kilometres to do in that space of time, and I realise now that most people these days will never drive as far as I just drove in a manual car with no cruise control. It's hard work, and I would have liked to have a rest after all of that. But that never seemed to happen. From the moment I got back here, there was something doing every moment of every day. Right now I am sitting at work, which is the closest I have gotten to having a rest, in a sunny corner in my office at the Department of Justice in Rosny, waiting for my supervisor to give me some more work. So, well may you ask: "how does this relate to the ongoing mission to get to Japan?" - and the answer is: without the Department of Justice, I would never go anywhere.

Before departing for Brisbane, I was briefly employed as a receptionist in the Department of Justice for the Resource Management and Planning Appeals Tribunal. Kept me out of poverty and in food well enough to get us on the plane and up to Brisboring, where after five months of misadventures and misplaced hope, we finally found ourselves a job in Japan, teaching English for ECC. Once we had found the job in Japan, we were only too happy to run away from Brisbane. We were under the illusion that we might stay with Tom's mother and save some money once we got back to Hobart, but due to it being a bit far away from everything, we ended up having to move out of Carlton Beach and into South Hobart so that we could work. And boy, did I get a job. Policy Division, Workplace Standards, Department of Justice. Helping write regulations. Big stuff. Bigger than the Office for Women policy work that I had done before in Brisbane, bigger than the Information Science and Technology project I had undertaken at Economic Development... and I thought writing ministerial briefs was big cookies. That's nothing compared to the nightmarish proportions of writing the regulations for the Occupational Licencing Act. Tom has also gotten himself a job at the Department of Justice, at the Magistrates Court in Hobart doing administration stuff. Funnily enough, we have once again gotten the same employer (we both worked for the Australian Passport Information Service, be it at different times, and we both worked for the Department of Child Safety in Brisbane).

Now, to pay for our living expenses whilst we were unemployed for those four weeks there and the tickets to Japan, we went quite a fair bit under zero on the credit card, and now we are scrambling like mad to try and make it back to zero before the interest kicks in. I have never paid any interest on my credit card before, and I don't plan on starting paying credit card companies money any time soon either! I'm a bit nervous about it all, and before Tom found himself a job, I was really nervous, but this week we will both receive our first full sized pay packets from our respective jobs.

I was driving back from a barbecue at Marion Bay the other day when a giant kangaroo leapt out in front of me on the road, and unfortunately, our car was mangled a bit. Now we're in a desperate frenzy to cover the repairs, change the registration, pay for the plane tickets, sell the car and try to catch up with all of the merry people that have come out of the woodwork to see us whilst we are in town briefly, and to be perfectly honest, I don't think I will be able to have a single moment to myself until I'm on the plane to Osaka.

And that plane leaves on 5 June, so the timeline is frighteningly short.

I will try and upload some photos soon, but you know it’s hard when you don’t have any internet access at home.

Cunningham's Pass

On the boat

Peel Island would be a nice place to be a lepper.

Fly and crab

We went to dinner

Shipwreck

There is a shipwreck near Moreton Island.

More animal friends

To those who wait...

We went to our interview with ECC today and got the call back about 30 minutes after we walked out.

We are going to Osaka.

Third time lucky!

We will now depart on a road trip via Sydney and Melbourne, get on the Spirit and stay with our family in Hobart until we go. Let us know if you'd like to catch up with us on the way.

Looks like when we'll be going to Japan a year to the day after we planned on going in the first place. We are so relieved to know what we're going to be doing, as the uncertainty for the last four months has been killing us.

Good things are coming...

The Heart of Dampness

It has been said that it’s not about the destination. It’s about the journey.

The Kurtz, the great white whale, the Gandara of our travels – Japan – remains ever illusive; we are currently trapped in a waiting room called Brisbane, watching the clock...

...tick tick tick...

Questions arise in this kind of spiritual wasteland that don’t beg consideration when life is running according to plan:

What if your journey drives you mad before you reach your goal?
What if you lose everything you wanted to take with you in the getting there?
Is it worth risking everything for your dreams?
When your plans go this far wrong, is it a good idea to keep making more plans, or should you just give up and live in the now?

At least when you’re sailing up the river looking for Kurtz the scenery changes. For the last couple of months we have been trapped in a Groundhog Day of temp jobs. Everything is the same as it was in Hobart, but somehow annoyingly different. The uncle, who had been so "kind" in allowing us to stay in the first place, turned on us for no good reason and kicked us out. Since then we have been staying with Emma and Adrien in Milton. I can not show them enough gratitude for what they have done in letting us crash on an air mattress in the front room. They have shown me the true meaning of kindness.

Each day that we spend in Brisbane is a day spent in a place that we never wanted to be in. We only ever expected to be here for two months. Three months later, we’re over it. It’s beginning to take its toll, the feeling of being stifled in your ambitions so completely. Sometimes it makes us both angry. Other times we get trapped in wells of despair. We take turns in being optimistic and buoying each other’s spirits, whilst the other stares into an existential pit of angst, but it's very hard.

We hate it here.

We are trapped in never ending suburbs, leafy green, “laid back,” and filled with the same stores, over and over again: Coffee Club, Zone Fresh, Baskin and Robbins, Dan Murphy’s, Wagamama’s, Crazy Clark's, Fernwood, Sushi De Lite, Bucking Bulls, McDonalds, Hungry Jacks, KFC – never ending strip-malls in varying states of flourish and decay. The Westfields; The Centros: Chermside, Brookside, Strathpine, Toombool, DFO. A kilometre of mall. Tom plays Ariadne to my Theseus, holding the clew for me as I delve deeper and deeper into the heart of darkness...

People who proudly tell you that this is ‘beautiful weather’ when it is obviously revolting, armpit soaking, humidity and heat. When quizzed, you actually demonstrate to them that they spend no time in the weather - they have an air conditioned house, from which they get into an air conditioned car, to drive to the air conditioned train to go to the air conditioned work. The only time people exercise is when they are in an air conditioned gym because if you move too quickly in the actual climate you'll die of heat exhaustion.

People who get defensive when you tell them that you don't like it here. Parochialism in all of it's ugliness, everywhere.

Suburbs where there are no through roads, just an intricate web of cul-du-sacs.

For a pair of inner-city urbanite ‘artist/musician types’, living in a gated suburb was akin to the seventh level of hell. At least Milton is not so foreign, and affords us the ability to walk to and from the city when the mood strikes.

I mean, it’s nothing personal, Brisbane – but you’re just not my home - and you never will be.

And so we have agreed: if we do not get good news regarding our applications to go to Japan with ECC, then we will go to Melbourne. Regroup. Figure out what comes next.

At least there the restaurants are better. There are galleries and music venues (unless they’ve all been closed down in the last two years – which is quite a strong possibility). And at least there we know people. Brisbane has been terribly isolating. We have made a couple of acquaintances, but on the whole, it has just been the two of us, together alone, intensifying the feeling of being stranded. If it was not for the existence of Emma and Adrien, I think we would have gone mad and ended up homeless and destitute, living under a tarpaulin on the banks of the Brisbane River. But the wide circle of friends that I am used to enjoying is noticeably absent from here, and again, I look for the Rachels and Laurels of my life and find none.

So, on Boxing Day we did something we have been meaning to do since arriving here. We went to a beach and threw ourselves in the water. They sky was grey and it was periodically raining, but the water was warm and the surf was quite gentle. And in moments like that, I can forgive Brisbane for being a shithole – if only for half an hour when I’m splashing about in Moreton Bay.

We went to Stanthorpe over the New Years break (for those of you who don’t know where Stanthrorpe is, neither did I until I happened to drive there – it is about 30km shy of the border with New South Wales, inland in the Darling Downs). It was cool in the evening up in the mountains, and I saw shooting stars throughout the sky. It felt a lot like Cygnet to me - a sensation that sits somewhere between being comforting and crushing. I really did hate growing up in the country. I was actually so knackered from driving 250km there and 250km back (five hours each way) that I was delirious with joy when we got back as far as Ipswich. It might be the only time that I will ever be happy to see Brisboring.

But since the uncle got rid of us, Emma and Adrien have shown us marvelous things. Adrien took us out a couple of times on his boat. One time to Flinders Reef, where we went diving/snorkelling with giant turtles and a miriad of tropical fish in a thousand colours in the water, it was just so magical, so exciting. The other time they took us to Peel Island, which used to be a lepper colony, where we just splashed about a bit, relaxed in the shade on the beach - and in that regard, Brisbane makes sense. Moreton Bay is fantastic. Emma and Adrien's company is fantastic. It's just Brisbane itself that is disappointing.

The words of my Aunt Marion keep ringing in my ears:

”You’ve got to give any new place six months. It takes six months to get over the change.”

And you know it’s true. It is in human nature to despise extreme change. It is difficult and alienating. But then, after the newness has worn off, you get to actually start to be in the place, rather than react to it. Marion said these words to me when I called her from Japan, three months into my first trip there, blubbering, lonely, confused, alien, threatening to come home.

“Snap out of it. If you still hate it when you reach the six month mark, then you should come home.”

When I reached the six month mark, I loved Japan.

But from four months in, I'm pretty certain that when six months of being in Brisbane will have passed, I would still hate this trumped up country town.

The humidity, the humidity, my clean clothes are damp on the coat hangers! Mould grows everywhere! I just hate the humidity, I hate it!


Next week we have our ECC interview, and once we finish that, we will know, once and for all, whether it's Japan: here we come, or Melbourne: here I am. Shall let you know as soon as I do. The drafted date for leaving Brisbane is in the second week of March - and that is pretty much certain. But other than that, where we are going to go is still yet to be written.