Change of plan

We thought about it, and thought about it, and looked at websites, checked the prices. Shirakawa is just going to be too expensive to do in December, so we`re going to focus on doing some local travel. Grab a seishun-juu-hachi kippu and do the local sights. Only 6 months of having a job left before we come back, so we`re focusing on getting as much stuff and cash home as is humanly possible for now.

This doesn`t mean we won`t have any marvellous adventures to share, or pictures to post. It just means they won`t be from Shirakawa-go.

In other news, we`re going to go to the Kobe Biennale with Rob and Jo tomorrow. Sister Ray has a FREE gig on the 11th of October at Socio, Amemura. Thrall is playing on the 21st of October, same venue. Taking the day off on the 22nd of November if all goes well, to try and capitalise on a big metal/punk fest.

Looking after myself better now in the light of my recent cold, and have gotten back on the wagon for a while. I don`t mind being sober almost as much as I don`t mind being drunk..!

Alright, signing off. Much love to you all. Don`t be shy about getting in touch, eh?

Chirpy

I love late summer, early autumn. There's a lot of false starts with the Japanese autumn. Is it going to finally be comfortable yet? Cool breeze one day, back to hot annoying bluster the next. One of the signs of late summer is the change in the sounds of the insects. Suzumushi has moved into my drain on my balcony. Who is suzumushi? Well, it's the Japanese Bell Cricket. He makes a beautiful noise in the evening. "Ping, ping" goes his call, "ping, ping." He's really very soothing compared to the racket of cicadas ("semi" in Japanese) from early summer, and he doesn't wake me at dawn, unlike the cicadas! I've named him "Mr Chirpy" and I hope that he'll be calling in my drain for a few more days before the warm weather and his beautiful calls go away.

Zeni Geva! Oh, my goodness, what a gig. They were just outstanding. They played just as well as they did on their recordings. Just an amazing band. I'm hoping that next year I might be able to collaborate with the Brisbane Hotel to get KK Null down to Tassie for a show, as he's already going to be in Melbourne doing the Liquid Architecture festival in June. KK Null was very nice and said hi to Tom and I outside the gig. We told him we had seen his Tassie gigs, and he got rather excited about the proposition that we might be able to get him down for a third visit.

Tom and Rob and I all got to play our first show as Thrall. It was grand, and many people turned out to show their support. Mel, James, Glenn, Jo, Marcus, Leila, Jeremy, Jai, amongst others all came out of the woodwork and came to what was probably the most powerful and exciting show I've played yet. Thrall will be doing a few more gigs before we go now, because this gig went so well. We got offered another gig on the 26th of September and again on the 21st of October because the venue owner really liked us.

Hooray for music!

My mum was here from Monday the 14th to Thursday the 24th of September. It was so lovely to see her. I tried my best to show her around, but she was struck down by a cold half way through her stay, and was forced to spend 3 valuable days in bed. Now, it's my turn. Same cold, got me sitting in bed blogging, rather than out and about, doing my usual mad busy weekend flap.

My mum arrived the day before my birthday, and on the first night I took her and Ross for a quick bite at The Royal Road Izakaya (also known as the ¥290 Bar). Showed them around Minami Osaka a bit. I could see that it was quite exciting for them to see a city of this scale. The next day we went to Hong Kong Chong Long in Namba Parks for a bit of yum-cha lunch, and unfortunately I could not attend the aquarium in the afternoon with them, due to my bike being nabbed for being parked in a no bike zone so I had to go to Bentencho to go and retrieve it (well, it's a fair cop, I did park it in the no bikes zone, but it was bad timing considering it was my birthday!). The next day I went to Kyoto with mum and Ross, we went to Kiyomizu Dera, looked for some bits and bobs in the tourist stores in the surrounding area. Wandering around the cobble-stoned back streets of Higashiyama area was most pleasant. The next day we returned to Kyoto, to Heian Jingu and Nanzen-ji. We ate dinner at Luxious European buffet. I had to work the next couple of days, but then my Mum got sick, and we couldn't really get out of Osaka again during her visit. I had hoped to get them into Nara and over to Himeji, but alas, cruel fate, had other plans. We got to go to Ryokuchi-Koen to see the Osaka Open Air Museum of Traditional Farm Houses, and it was fantastic. We had a couple of nice spicy lunches in Nan-nan town, courtesy of the Vietnamese and Thai restaurants down there, a fantastic dinner on the 36th floor of the swissôtel, and finished it all up with a visit to Torikizoku. A perfect Osakan holiday - involving a lot of eating, and enjoying the crazy metropolis feeling. It was really lovely to see them both, and I think they had a lot of fun.

They left on the Thursday that Discharge, GBH and The Exploited played at King Cobra. Great gig, great fun. Only two members of the original line up of each band remained, but you could tell which ones were the ring ins and which ones have been at it since the early 1980's. Great powerful music. There's something quite community building about screaming your lungs out and getting sweaty all over with a bunch of other punk rockers. There's always a couple of boofy agro boys who bounce off everyone and try to beat people up, but mostly it's just a great surge of energy, toward the stage, in a musically inspired show of mutual passion. The nature of music and community building has been on my mind a fair bit recently, as most of the Japanese friends we have made over here have been music fans. We've been invited into the inner sanctum of the Osakan extreme-metal/d-beat scene, and made to feel very at home, despite our limited Japanese language ability. It's quite humbling, and I feel lucky that I have the ability to share in this amazing little microcosm.

So, we played our second Thrall gig on Saturday the 26th. I started to feel a bit off colour during the day, and by the time that we played, I was feeling downright sick. But we played well enough, and I got home promptly afterwards. I made it through a rocky shift on Sunday, but couldn't go on Monday. Just too sick. Hoping it lifts from the chest pretty quickly by itself without anti-biotics. I'm guessing I'll be OK for work on Thursday. I'm about to book our end of year travel in Shirakawa, based on the beautiful Gassho house at the Osaka Open Air Museum of Traditional Farmhouses.

I'm ready for the next part of our Japan adventure, the end of our Japan adventure, to begin. Here we go!

Suzumushi is chiming for me... chime me in, little friend.

Excited

My Mum's coming to visit. Ten more sleeps! I'm so thrilled. I might not have always seen eye to eye with my Mum (but then again, are there any mothers and daughters who do?), but I definitely love the heck out of her. She did an incredible job as a single parent for a few years there before finding her current (and lovely) husband, gave me a good education, straight teeth, a lot of support in my debating, basketball and athletics activities... really, looking back (in light of considering starting a family of my own at some point), I boggle at how awesome a job she did. She's about to come over and visit me as her first overseas vacation, and I'm just tickled pink.

I've been trying to come up with some excellent Mum friendly activities (no trips to Bar Konton, methinks), but I just have to remind myself that the competent, well-organised bones in my body are most likely inherited from my Mum, I can probably rest assured that she could look after herself pretty damn well if it comes to it.

Tom got tonsillitis not but last week, which was accompanied with a roaring fever that I though might have been H1N1. Went to the hospital, was masked, isolated, tested, and negative. Tonsils were the size of golfballs, mind you. However, he's shrugged it off pretty well this time and is back at work, and singing with his dulcet tones. It's had him pretty down, the continuous sickness, and I feel like I've run out of ideas as to what to do. My bedside manner has pretty much been reduced to an incredulous "again?" Which is just terrible. Anyway, we've resolved to shove vitamins down his neck each morning, keep away from mad partying, rest, eat well, exercise, that kind of malarky... if that doesn't help, I don't know what will.

Also in the next couple of weeks I have a date with destiny: Zeni Geva are playing in Kyoto and I have reserved tickets. Very pumped!

Lastly but not leastly, our gig is on the 13th of September (the day before my Mum arrives) so we're training like mad up to our deadline... which brings me to what I'm gonna do now: drum practice waits for no woman! And double kicks require daily maintenance or they slip away.

Love to you all, thank you to Colin for the comment about the TB. I had heard similar stuff from my students about the Shin-Sekai area. I don't know exactly what kind of proximity to homeless dudes is required to be put at risk, but there's no denying there's a few of them about. About those emails, cards, postcards and letters that you all haven't sent - the phone calls you haven't made: we'd love to hear from you. No really.

Trips

Well, here we are once more, returned from another adventure. We've had two journeys in the last month, and it has left me very, very broke. I have done a lot of things that I thought I would never get the chance to do, and I've had some really good experiences, but at the end of it all, I don't feel like we got to do much resting or relaxing in these holidays, so I'm looking forward to devoting myself to a bit of doing nothing for the next couple of days.

So, when did this flurry of activity start...

Let's see, Monday, 20th of July was Marine Day holiday, which we traded in for some overtime, and then on our usual weekend we went to Koya-san Mountain in Wakayama Prefecture. Koya-san was founded by the monk Kukai, known posthumously as Kobo-Daishi (774-835), who is the founder of the Shingon school of Buddhism. Kukai went to China to study Buddhism, and was the first to import the esoteric or tantric style of Buddhist worship to Japan. Koya-san is not just one mountain, but is actually 8 mountains in a ring, selected to resemble the shape of a lotus, with Koya-san village nestled between these mountains. Kukai intended Koya-san to be like a Japanese equivalent to Mount Wu Dang in China. The town is home to approximately 2000 people, 120 temples, many of which offer temple lodgings. The most impressive of these temples is the Okunoin. It is believed by the Shingon school that Kobo-Daishi is in "eternal meditation" in the Okunoin rather than being dead, and that he will re-awaken on the arrival of "The Future Buddha." Now, I think Kobo-Daishi did a marvelous job of selecting a home for his Buddhist school. The forests are misty, mysterious, evocative, spiritual places, and Tom and I really enjoyed wandering around the enormous cemetery that surrounds the Okunoin, and enjoying the fresh air, and cooler temperatures.

The first day that we were there it was so lovely. We arrived at the shukubo (temple that offers lodgings) and one of the monks gave us simple directions to the Okunoin. It was drizzling, which seemed to add to the magical feeling. At the centre of this enormous grave yard, full of vines, moss, cedars, and sculptures, there was a beautiful temple (the one where Kobo-Daishi is meditating still) and an accompanying lantern hall that was possibly one of the most beautiful sights I have seen yet. We enjoyed beautiful sounds of the forest in the evening, the light of the disappearing sun, the sparkle of stars and the moon, and the wonderful Shojin-ryori (Koya-san's local vegetarian cuisine) prepared by our hosts. The Japanese style garden was full of frogs and dragonflies, and we spent quite a while sitting there listening to it all, watching the light fade. Soon we were tired, so we bedded down. We were awoken bright and early for our Buddhist morning service, where we were shown the "Goma" fire meditation. Upon leaving the sukubo, we began looking around at the town for our second day. The weather was less rainy, but no less grey, and it really didn't seem half as magical... it was funny to think that the rain was what made it all seem so etherial. Either way, we made it around most of the sights, unwound and made it back. I took some nice photos. Tom did too.

Muryokoin

Koya-san Perspectives

Koya-san Close up

After Koya-san, we got to have two more weeks of work, I went off and got my Japanese drivers licence on the weekend in the middle there, followed by the Obon holiday period. Obon is the longest break for us in our line of work, so we used this opportunity to go to the far end of Japan - Hokkaido.

As we flew in, the mountains seemed to melt through the clouds toward us. Navy blues, greys, and whites, separating into green pastures that looked so similar to the descent into Hobart, I kept pinching myself to see if I was dreaming. Nope. Hokkaido looks a lot like Tassie - I mean, sure, it's not exactly the same, but it has a lot in common with Tasmania. It's famous for lavender farms, potatoes, onions, agriculture, mountains, cooler temperatures in Summer, lakes, seafood... does any of this sound familiar?

We had booked the tickets to Hokkaido under the impression that it would be noticeably cooler. After our weekend at Koya-san, I was filled with hope - there are parts of Japan that aren't completely sweltering. Alas, Hokkaido's cities are not one of these non-sweltering parts, and we had inadvertently spent a hell of a lot of money on coming to somewhere that wasn't actually noticeably cooler than Osaka - it was still above 30ºC and 90% humidity! We were, to put it mildly, annoyed.

We flew into Chitose, and took the train straight down to Hakodate (pop. 290,000), the Southern-most city of Hokkaido. Hakodate is a gorgeous little fishing city, famous for it's delicious squid, nighttime views, and a laid back environment. We found it to be rather similar to Hobart. We stayed in a nice hotel, went to the Ainu Museum, ate some delicious Italian food and a lot of squid, and plenty of local brews. We drank a beer at the top of Mount Hakodate, watched the sunset... just beautiful. Had a great day in Hakodate. I don't think you'd need much more time there... it's a pretty sleepy little town.

From Hakodate we jumped on the train to Toya-ko (Lake Toya). Toya-ko is surrounded by active volcanoes, which give it a myriad of onsens around the rim of the lake. The only problem is, occasionally the mountain likes to erupt, or just excavate the roads a bit haphazardly, or cause mudslides, so there are eerie segments of the town that are half-buried in mud, and filled with wildflowers and insects that have reclaimed the disused buildings. I really liked Toya-ko Onsen, the major town on the lakeside. Next to the lake there is a wide boulevard, where there is a little public onsen for your feet. Every night in summer they put on a little festival, some old ladies in yukatas come out and do a little dance for about half an hour, and then there's a 20 minute fireworks display that would put Hobart's New Years Eve to shame. The town itself is so sleepy it may well be in a coma, but that said, it's a very pleasant place to spend a few days. We found a really good little cheap place in Toya-ko Onsen called The Green Hotel, and it put on a massive feast for breakfast and dinner of local seafoods and vegetables. I got a bit excited and hired a row boat and rowed to the island in the middle of the lake. It took 45 minutes to get there and about 50 to get back because the wind got up and we were a little tired. It was so wonderful being at the island, we jumped in the water. There were lots of little fish and iridescent shrimp in the water who were not afraid of us at all. They walked all over our feet and legs and tickled like mad! The local tourists don't seem to go in for swimming in the lake, so we were the only bodies in the water. It was wonderful.

We left Toya-ko Onsen for Sapporo, the capital of Hokkaido, via bus. As we went around the hills toward Sapporo we saw many crops, almost every bit of flat land was being farmed quite intensively. We arrived in Sapporo - the town is also the name sake of one of my favourite Japanese beers. I was hoping to get myself a Sapporo Beer poster at the beer museum, so we dumped our bags at the hotel and went to the Sapporo Beer-en (Beer Garden). They specialise in "Jingis Khan" (Mongolian Lamb barbecue) which we indulged in. And boy, we over indulged. It was 100 minutes of all you can eat, all you can drink MADNESS. After that we went back to the hotel. We were really tired, and kinda crabby. I've decided I'm not too keen on being close to cooking lamb. The lamb fat just gets into all your clothes and makes everything smell awful. Yetch! The next day we decided to go to Moerenuma Park. Moerenuma park was designed by Isamu Noguchi as an architectural sculpture. It's massive. It's also two trains and a bus away from where we were staying in Sapporo. It was annoying to get to, but nice once we were there - very inspiring spaces. We then went to Sapporo Art Garden to see their exhibition of paintings and prints from the Wein Museum (including works by Klimt, Scheille, and Kokoshka), which was also really good, but it took the rest of the day for us to get there because it was on the complete opposite end of the city, two train rides and a long bus ride away. Sapporo is a car town. What an annoyance - I could have driven, had we enough money to hire a car, but hire car prices in Hokkaido are almost 50% more expensive than they are in Osaka. Ridiculous. And all the while it was so hot, we were just sweating and sweating, just like we had been in Osaka. We were really hoping to come North and be comfortable for a while, but it just didn't work out. We were a little disappointed with Hokkaido, even though it was lovely. We so wanted it to be colder... oh well, you live and learn. This was a particularly expensive lesson, but I think I've actually figured a few things out about traveling just generally - we got really tired of moving around so much. I think it's better to just find one good place and stay there until you unwind than to try and travel around too much on your holiday.

Finally, I did get to have an excellent scallop ramen from the Sapporo ramen alley on the last night, and I've been fantasising about it ever since it was so good. Hokkaido was really nice, and the food was great!

Hokkaido

We then flew into Tokyo for a bit of madness. We stayed in Shinjuku, went to the Mori Art Muesum in Roppongi, we went to Tokyo Opera Building to see Tomoko Konoike's first solo exhibition, we went to Iron Chef Chen Kenichi's restaurant for lunch, I did a little reckless shopping in Ginza (new shoes, new wallet, new neck scarf), we saw the giant Gandam in Odaiba, we went to meet up with Luke Ray in Shinjuku and had yakitori in the famous "Memory Lane" (but all the locals call it "Piss Alley" - how stylish!) and the heavy metal bar in Kabuki-cho (that I may never find again - it was very well hidden!). At the end of it all, we were quite exhausted from our holiday!

Tokyo

Iron Chef Chen Kenichi's Restaurant, Shisen Hanten

Either way, now we're back in Osaka, and we've been trying to make reparations for the over-indulging and over-exertion holiday we just survived. I'll be tight with the cash again this month (what's new?) but I really do feel like this time I got to have a bit more of my fill of Tokyo. I think this will change our next move as to what we will do when we finish up here in Japan.

Either way, my lovelies, this was a very long post, and now I'm very tired, so I'm going to watch some Iron Chef and then go to sleep. Hope you're all keeping well.

The problem with blogging

The problem with blogging - the problem with all these little updates on the internet - it's like an autobiography. But unlike a good autobiography, there's no flow to the story. It's all just little atoms in the void - people making little noises, wondering if anyone hears them. Like a mad bugger talking to themselves. Little fragments of the story. No quality control. Many people have told me that my blog reads like too much of a big whinge - but that's partly due to the fact that when I'm busy and happy, I have no time to blog. It's only when I've had life kick me in the teeth and I'm having a little rest in bed that the urge to update the blog falls upon me. So rest assured, for every monthly update that reads like I'm having a bad time, there's 4 unwritten ones that would have told you about me having a good time.

That's the problem with blogging.

I find facebook status updates to be a lot more cheerful. I enjoy reading well thought-out little quips, or wildly enthusiastic updates with too many exclamation points. I particularly find the "I'm angry with a specific person, so I'll make some kind of interior monologue I'm composing to them my status update" approach pretty funny. It comes across as seriously sad, mad... and bad. Blogging isn't as bad as facebook. The status update approach lends itself to the off-the-cuff, one liner, Groucho Marx approach to personal cowardice. Facebook is totally trite.

Facebook may well be the devil, but I think Twitter sounds even worse. I am still refusing to get a Twitter account. Anything that has Twit in the title is already consigning itself to the land of the foolish. It sounds like nothing but status updates on Facebook. Vacuous to the max.

I've been watching the commentary surrounding the "white flight" from myspace to facebook - a cyberspace mirror image of the move of whitey to suburbia, leaving people of ethnic origin in the inner city. The internet, the web that was supposed to bring us all together has now been divided into similar real estate divisions as we have created in the real world. How true it is that our exterior and our interior landscapes reflect each other.

That's part of the, dare I say it, fun of being in the current generation - watching as all of these information technology developments are played out. From our little Atari playing fingers in our youths, to our Palm Pilots, iPhones, Blackberries, Nintendo DS, PSPs. I don't know many people who don't have a laptop computer, or some kind of computing installation in their home. Paul Virillio talked about the information age being all about speed. It's about being first, being new, being in the right place at the right time - myspace is dead - everyone go to facebook! Why? If you ask why then you're not 'getting it.' When all information is power, we begin to lose quality control. We start to have tweets in the void, mad fragments of interior monologues. Virillio observed that we begin to be unable to cope with the sheer volume of information. Information becomes white noise, static, and we start to have trouble picking out voices in the roar of the crowd. Everything is reduced to one virtue. Everything is traveling somewhere, regardless of direction. Everything is speed.

Is blogging like just being a voice in the crowd? Or is it like having an extended conversation with yourself? I think I tend to veer toward the latter, and end up composing these extremely introspective little pieces. Quite strange, really. Sometimes I wonder why I do this. I wonder who reads it, who enjoys it, who dis's it. I wonder if it's really worth the time.

So, to actually blog a bit rather than just muse, things in Camp Osaka have been difficult, but I think we're starting to get through the worst of it, so to speak. The hottest time of the year is upon us, our air conditioner is failing to cool our room effectively, and Tom's been sick. It's like he never got better from a chest infection we had in October last year. I shook mine off and have been pretty well ever since (food poisoning aside), but Tom's unwellness has developed into a persistent cough, with accompanying catarrh of varying shades. The cough flares up when he gets a cold (which seems to be that he gets every little bug that comes past - in our line of work, you are exposed to germs on a daily basis), and it also flares up whenever he exerts himself, which has meant that he has been unable to exercise or sing. As we have now got a date for our first gig, this has brought the coughing crisis come to a head, and we are now seeing a doctor to try and get his lungs sorted out. The doctor gave him a chest x-ray - looking for tuberculosis, it seemed. Ridiculous doctors! Would they have suspected tuberculosis if he were Japanese, I don't know. It's that constant irony of never knowing if you're being singled out for being a foreigner or not. Tom was quite upset by his first visit to the ward office/doctor, because the doctor gave him a really hard time about his health insurance card not being updated with his new address, and then the ward office seemed totally unable to explain anything to him about his health insurance in English or even simple Japanese, so he was left feeling that he had no insurance, and no way of getting medical treatment. We finally managed to find someone (still with no English) but competant enough to help us at the ward office, and so now we are both sorted out. So, on our second visit the doctor seems to have given up on the tuberculosis angle and now thinks it's allergies (which I think is highly unlikely, considering that I have so many allergies I am a bit of an expert in the field - allergies give you runny clear snot out the nose, not technicolor snot off the lungs). The doctor has given Tom some anti-histamines, anti-biotics, and some kind of anti-sputum drug. If this doesn't work, then we're going to take him to another doctor. One of our students is a doctor - he's a high level English speaker and an expert in internal medicine. We'll see if we can't track him down at his workplace. I mean, I'm not a doctor, but I'm an experienced patient, and I'm pretty sure he's got bronchitis. If only we can get a doctor to treat him for bronchitis, maybe we can get on with having a good time rather than feeling like Tom's firing on 3 cylinders all the time.

Either way, last couple of weeks, with Tom being ill and since I decided to have a rest from all the drinking (my bottom is on the improve - thank you for your enquiries of bottom related health), I've been occupying myself quite well with some other pursuits. My new camera has been having a bit of a work out, trying to get the hang of the new compact format. It's so tiny I find that I don't hold it entirely upright, resulting in slightly off-kilter photos. I was used to the heft of the old camera, the new one seems so light as to be a bit plasticy. But it's got lots more pixels and more zoom - generally it's a more modern camera - and it cost half as much as the old one! Oh, modern life, you move so fast.

So, yesterday I went for a good old trudge around Kyoto by myself. It got me thinking about the strange role that religion plays in Japanese society. Most of my students go to their hometown to clean their family grave in Obon, or go to the shrine or temple for New Years Eve, but are generally unfussed by religious fervor. Buddhism and Shintoism co-exist, but it hasn't always been a peaceful co-existence. In my experience, Shintoism is a strange, animist, and somewhat mercantilist religion. Buddhism seems like quite a relaxed religion (at least in it's Japanese interpretation). Buddhist priests are often rather cheeky, good-humoured. Shinto priests tend to be pushed into their line of work by their family, and tend to be a bit more pained in their profession. The style of the architecture also seems to be quite divergent, with the Buddhist buildings often focusing on dark wooden forms, and the Shinto shrines having lots of red and white, with colourful eves. I sometimes toy with the idea of becoming a Buddhist. My major problem seems to be desire - desiring more, desiring otherness - if I could start to let go of my worldly desire, perhaps I would be a more contented person...?

But it would probably make for less interesting blog entries.

Here is a photo album from Chion In, from my trudge around Kyoto:

Chion-in

I've also been taking myself off to the local ridiculous spa - about 5 minutes walk from door to door. It's quite fun.

Spaworld

It's all been good, clean fun. A little anti-social, I know, but I'm happy enough with the state of affairs as they are. In other news, my Mum's made some murmurings about visiting in September, and I will be catching up with Aunt Mary rather soon too. More news when there is some.

Ain't no cure for the summertime blues...

Coming from Tasmania, summer is my favourite time of year. The days are long, dry and sunny, the nights are short and cool, but not cold. The ever present Tasmanian rain lets up for a moment, and you can bandy about with your friends outside having barbecues and whatnot. The usually chilly beaches are actually able to be swam at, you can open the windows and have a nice breeze through the house in the afternoon, it's a good time for frisbee, a good time for salads and fresh ingredients, a good time all round. I ♥ Tasmanian summer.

Suffice to say, it's a little different in Osaka.

It's humid. Steamy. Like you'd expect in Singapore on a really steamy day. There's only the slightest breeze (if you're fortunate enough to be in it's path - which luckily with the new house, we are - the old house was in an area of totally stagnant air) and if you open the window, all you manage to do is let in more steam. The food turns rancid in two seconds, the garbage stinks even if you put it out twice a week. You end up hiding in your air conditioned room and going slightly stir crazy...

... similar to Tasmanian winter ...

...or you can go out and watch movies in air conditioned cinemas, or window shop in air conditioned department stores, or go to the air conditioned museum/aquarium/gallery - but you're seeing the pattern here. For a Tasmanian to feel comfortable, it is imperative to be under the influence of some air conditioning. No air con = hot crabby Tasmanian.

Our power bill doubled last month.

Now, what most ex-pats seem to do during summer is drink their way through it. In the cooler months, I am barely interested in drinking, but as the temperature climbs, so too does my will to drink. However, my judgement has never been very good when figuring out when to stop drinking, so a few hangovers have ensued, and last week I fell down when I was drunk, broke my camera, broke my arse, and landed on Tom's laptop - which appears to have come out unscathed - unlike my camera and my arse. I fell on my tailbone. There's no bruise but it's not stopped hurting since. I've decided that it's time for me to stop drinking again, at least until such time as my bum stops hurting.

I tried to keep on doing cultural things on the weekends in June, but the hangovers were definitely interfering. However, we still made it to Heian Jingu last month:

Heian Jingu

I regret to report that I probably won't be getting out and about much until July 20th long weekend. We've booked a night at a Ryokan in Koyasan, and we've got 7 days in Hokkaido coming up in Obon, followed by a few days in Tokyo, and a day in Iga Ueno with our mate Glenn, so it looks like we'll be posting more photos soon.

And, bless my lovely husband, Tom helped me pay for a new camera, so I'll still be snapping happy for you all over the coming months. I would like to get a D-SLR camera... but I doubt I'll be able to put aside enough cash at this rate.

In other news, my first gig with Sister Ray is fast approaching on Thursday, 30th July - and Thrall has just had the first gig confirmed at Socio on Sunday the 13th of September - so soon we'll be firing on all cylinders with the bands. Probably a good time to be sobering up for a while, considering the amount of stuff I have to do!

Oh well, love to you all, I wish we could get some of your cool weather up here, and we could send some of our hot weather to you, and then we'd all have comfortable, warm weather...

Japaniversary

5 June 2008 - touchdown!

5 June 2009 - Japaniversary.

As you get older, birthdays become less of an egotistical festival of "give me things!" and become more of strange nostalgic time. The ever increasing blur of years freezes for a second, and you look around in the life that you have made for yourself.

You may say to yourself: "How did I get here?"
You may say to yourself: "How do I work this?"
You may say to yourself: "My God! What have I done?"

All of the above sometimes...

Tom and I are currently working on some plans for some fire fly viewing. I am also booking some lodgings for a stay at Koya-san in July. I can't believe we lived on the train line to Koya-san for almost 6 months and never made it up the mountain! Well, time to make amends. We are also looking at Hokkaido and Fuji-san in Obon - I had been looking at Western Japan for opportunities in Obon to do some traveling, but Tom has said that he would like to go North to escape from the heat. I am happy to do that, as I would love to go to Hokkaido. I want to do as many things as I can while I'm here. For winter, I'm hoping to go into Gifu and spend some time in some of the traditional alpine villages up there. No stupid skiing this year. Just enjoying the snow for what it is: snow. Throw a hot spring or two into the mix there, and you have something totally magical. The last thing I want to do is leave Japan with a sense of regret - or as Tom often quips - it is better to regret doing something than to regret not doing something.

In other news, we have had some startling news from Tom's mother - Tom's cousin Kimbra passed away very unexpectedly a few weeks ago. She was only 36 years old. Also, there have been murmurings of some serious health problems for someone from my side of the family, but I haven't heard anything official. Either way, it has not all been smooth sailing, and unsettling news from home makes me thankful for all the times that there is nothing to report.

Happy Japaniversary everyone. Don't be shy about getting in contact. We love hearing from you all!