i’ve been back in Sydney for more than 2 weeks now and am starting to settle in a bit more. having more time than my usual short holidays here means i actually get to spend some quality time hanging out with people which is nice. it’s also given me time to work on organising my photos, tagging them and hopefully at some stage soon getting some of the better ones up online here.
last week i made a spur of the moment decision to visit my grandma down in Melbourne – “grandma, i’m arriving tomorrow night”. my feeling like a tourist in my own country syndrome got even worse as i bumbled my way around what was, even when i did live in Australia, a strange city. not strange as in weird (let’s not even start that whole Sydney/Melbourne rivalry thanks folks!) but just that i had no idea where to go or how to get there and after well signposted Japan it was a real struggle even to buy train tickets! the other week someone stopped me in Sydney’s CBD and asked how to get to a place. i had to apologize and tell them that i had no idea. if they’d asked me in Tokyo i might have been able to help but here in Sydney, where i grew up, i’m hopeless.
on the bus from the airport to Melbourne’s main train station the driver gave us a running commentary about the places we were passing. it was fascinating, not because i found what he was saying overly interesting but for the fact that it gave me a really interesting insight into what he thought people were interested in. As we left the airport he pointed out a range of mountains which had first been surveyed by Matthew Flinders. more important however was the fact that an Australian hit drama had been filmed at the base. “on your left is the Woolworths depot where all supplies for all Victorian stores are delivered from…if you follow that road to the left you get to the track where Holden test their cars”.
once on the train to my grandma’s place i rediscovered that sometimes it’s nice not to be able to understand everything that people say. a group of recently graduated from high school girls derided the shallow and meaningless conversations that high school girls have on public transport and then spent the rest of the train ride discussing eyebrow waxing, that slut Amy, cosmo magazine and other things that i would call shallow and meaningless. i guess people a few years older than mesay the same things about my conversations?
i could say that my stay at the nursing home was fun filled and action packed but that would be a slight mistruth. though i did see the Siemen’s choir, a trio of call centre girls who got time off work to sing to oldies. we also had a very exciting coffee break where i got to see that it’s not just young school girls and their recently graduated alumni who bicker amongst themselves. the single male in the nursing home made a guest appearance, was the centre of attention briefly then zipped away on his walking frame which was emblazoned with “my other car is a mercedes”. what a stud. (i’m not making that up).
and now it’s back in Sydney where i continue to plot and plan our big adventure. the blog posts will become more interesting in a few months :o)
Tags: Australia, family, Melbourne
In spring Japan goes mad for blossoms, in Autumn it’s all about the turning of the leaves. There’s an appreciation for the seasons here that i haven’t really seen anywhere else. There is always seasonal decorations, seasonal food and ever things which can be made all year around (like peach flavoured kit kats or molasses ice-creams) are only available in the “correct” season. I’ll admit it’s a bit annoying when green tea kit kats (which I love) go out of season because it’s no longer winter and i know the only place i can get them until next winter is Kyoto, but on the other hand it’s actually kind of nice to be reminded of the seasons even though i’m living in the midst of the world’s largest metropolis. The greater Tokyo area (which includes Japan’s 2nd largest city – Yokohama) has a population of over 35 million people. That’s close to twice that of Australia!
One of the places close to Tokyo which is well known for the changing of the leaves is Nikko so a few weekends ago we headed up there to do a short walk in the mountains. Traffic was horrific and we nearly missed the last train but it was beautiful up there. Which, of course, was why there were so many people. Here are some photos of the delicate maple leaves changing colour.
Tags: autumn, Japan, nature, Travel
Another entry from my life in Tokyo before i leave on my mad adventure. The other week i headed down to Tsukiji fish market on one of the first trains (4:30am wakeup i believe it was) to experience the hectic market for what may be the last time. I never did get around to buying the leopard print gumboots I planned on buying when i moved here and knew that visiting the fish market would be a semi regular occurrence. Another thing I never did was buy a fresh wasabi root and grate my own wasabi to eat with sushi. Strange thing when you’ve lived in a place so long but not done the things you wanted to do in the first week there.
Fish wait for a buyer at the Tsukiji fish market in Tokyo. The largest fish market in the world by a ridiculously wide margin, Tsukiji sells around 450 different types of seafood at any one time, with about 2,200 different types being sold over the course of a year. Approximately 4,000 tonnes of seafood gets sold every day and around 12 million people will eat something sold at Tsukiji every day. They’re mind boggling numbers.
These fish are at one of the 1,500 small wholesale stalls which sell to small retailers and restaurant owners. The whole area is a hive of activity in the early morning, when the people who will eat for lunch the fish sold here are still fast asleep.
Tags: fish, fish market, Japan, Tokyo, Travel, Tsukiji
Hello world!
So, my first blog entry. This is where I introduce how amazingly interesting and fantabulously adventurous I am I guess… Well actually at the moment I’m feeling neither of the above and rather sheepish about my “grand” travel plans. Mainly after reading about the journeys taken by people like Alistair Humphreys who spent 4 years cycling around the world or his mate Ben Saunders who is the youngest person to ski solo to the North Pole. So yes, just in case there is any doubt I am in no way as adventurous as these two young men. On the other hand, I have a little more planned than the man who “sold his life” on ebay who said, “Once it’s finished and confirmed, I’d like to do some travelling. I’d like to go to the top of the Eiffel Tower, it’s one of a huge list of things I want to achieve”.
My adventure is kind of between those two extremes. The loose plan at the moment is an overland journey from Japan which will start in late March 2009. It seems weird to start my blog this far in advance but I’m slowly working on getting myself ready. In 3 weeks I’m quitting my job in Tokyo and then heading back to Sydney to spend some time at “home” before I leave for at least 2-3 years. I’ve been living overseas since early 2004, about 2.5 years each in China and Japan, with a good dose of round the world trips and random travel in the holidays over the low season from being a small group tour leader. I usually got 3-4 months off over winter and made full use of that time to see as much of the world as I could “before I settle down”. Turns out that’s not going to happen just yet! The travel bug I thought I’d get rid of has only got worse and if this overland odyssey doesn’t fix it I may just resign myself to my nomadic fate.
The plan is to fly back to Japan from Australia then not take another flight for as long as possible. I will go by boat to Korea then China. The plan is to skip most of China (having spent 1.5 years there as a tour leader travelling with groups) but spend time in the western areas (Xinjiang and Tibet), both of which I love and want to spend more time exploring. From there it’s through the ‘stans of Central Asia, down to Iran, across to Europe, into the Middle East and by boat to New York. Some route or other across North America then back to Japan by boat to complete the circuit.
For a travelling companion I have my fiancé/by then husband, Brett, whose feet are possibly even more itchy than mine and who already has many miles under his tevas. He will be continuing to work as we travel but has a great 6 weeks on, 6 weeks off schedule. What this means is that our travel will be a little stop/start as I hang out in Kashgar, Almaty, Baku and other random places while he goes off and earns some casheesh.
So there you have it. The true adventure doesn’t start for another 5 months or so but there’ll be some interesting stuff in the lead up – packing up my life here (ok, so that’s not overly interesting), heading home, a few weeks in the Pacific and all those fun “I want to take everything but fit it all in this small backpack” dilemmas you have just before a long trip.
That’s all for now :o)
Tags: adventures, introduction, planning, Travel
