Well we're off to Thailand tomorrow with my folks. Need the break sooo bad, been quite a stressful year so far. We're gonna be travelling all over the place for 4 weeks, up, down and sideways. I have a solo voyage over to Tokyo for a week to catch up with Tsudoi and some others like Mas, Joseph, etc. It's only a week, but I'm sure it's going to be a week of bingeing and the usual nihon no chaos I always get into when I'm there. And since I'm flying solo I'll be getting back to the roots and pawty pawty pawty baibay!
So if anyone's gonna be in Tokyo around mid-august then certainly let me know. Otherwise, more from the other side....
Howdy folks, been a long time, so thought I'd pop in and give you a quick update with what's going on. Things are generally going pretty good. Charee started a new job a few months ago at a big corporate insurance place and is already team leader of a small team there. She was also nominated for some initiative award or something -- good job Charee! I'm enjoying working for myself, even with the crap world economy, half my work comes from overseas (US mostly) and the rest is thru local contacts. I've hooked up with a tech group here and managing a small team of developers for them. I've also got my paws in various other things so I'm pretty busy, which is good news. It was touch and go a couple of months ago, but things have picked up again, and it looks like I've got a steady stream of projects which will take me well into the new year.
Poison Neko released a new song a couple of weeks ago ("My Soul Rises Up"), which has gotten very good feedback, so check it out if you haven't already: http://www.myspace.com/poisonneko We're currently working on new material.
I've also teamed up with another mate (you might remember him as Mr Potatohead from the Thailand diaries) under the name Potato Peal, and we're working on our first track. I'll let you know when that is up too.
This week my boss (ie. me) bought me a nice pressie for doing such a good job lately: an MSI Wind U100 ultraportable notebook. It's quite a cute gadget and actually pretty powerful, powerful enough to run most of my dev stuff on (the Intel Atom 1.6ghz chip seems faster than my old P3 1ghz laptop!). It comes with XP Home but I've dual-booted it with Ubuntu 8.04, installed IIS on XP (which was a PIA) and put another gig ram in it today. So it's running pretty nice, and being so small (it's only 1 kg with the battery) I can carry it in my backpack wherever I go, as well as use it as an ebook reader at bedtime. :P So it's proven to be quite useful! (and complimentary to my other 3 laptops :p ).
I'm also involved in 2 (soon to be 3) role-playing groups, which means I am getting out of the house (plus driving to the office, which is local, to mentor my team at this other gig), and I hope to resume badminton every other Sunday also.
After the winter lull in my work-out schedule, in which time I amassed extra winter poundage, I have resumed my gym outings and even acquired a personal trainer (god help me, he almost cripples me each session!).
Lastly, I'd like to send a shout-out to my mate Gaz who recently finished a 20km marathon. Good job man!
So my mate Dave (aka Mr Potatohead) and I went to see Devo at Festival Hall last night, and man it was a great show. These two spuds were a bit shocked at first at how old and pudgy they looked (as can be expected after 25 odd years, which was incidentally the last time they were in Melbourne?). After a slow start (imho), they picked up pace and rocked the house (there was one point in Peek-a-Boo when Mark lost sync with the music). These guys still have what it takes to put on a good show (tho it did seem a bit choreographed at times, the guys aren't as nimble on the stage as they probably once were). They played all our favourite tracks (except Come Back Jonee) and really outdone themselves on the rockin' songs like Secret Agent Man, Uncontrollable Urge, Gates of Steel.
It was funny to see middle-aged folks wearing their red energy domes (aka "flower pots"). Devo themselves came out in their classic plastic yellow jumpsuits and red hats, which they then proceeded to gradually tear off and finally discard to their black t's, shorts and kneepads underneath. Classic.
The audience was very interesting, a wide range of people, ranging in age from people in their 60s down to teenagers, with mostly middle-aged types in between. Old-school Devo fans, no doubt. It was a good crowd tho, very appreciative of the lads back after so long, and playing all their hits (one good thing about reunion tours), and singing along and dancing with great gusto (and not that screechy whiny singing/shouting of the teenyboppers at Green Day!). The vibe was quite similar to the livehouses in Japan, excited reservedness. More my scene than raging moshpits, screaming, shouting and drunken disorderliness (cf Ramones, Festival Hall, 1990).
The opening acts were supposed to be Regurgitator and Eddy Current Suppression Ring (ECSR). I'm not sure what happened to Regurgitator (did we miss them?) but it seemed they'd been replaced by another band. ECSR was already playing when we arrived. They were all huddled on one side of the stage which was a bit odd (except for the lead vocals dude, who was vibrating all over the place). The other band (Regurgitator's replacements?) put on a much more energetic show imho, even tho I had no idea who they were (the bass player looked like Kenny Everett, according to Mr Potatohead).
Devo didn't play any of their later stuff (from Smooth Noodle Maps or later) nor from Shout. But it was a good mix of their early and mid-career stuff, spanning about 90 mins all up (not including the 5 min retrospective intro movie projected on the back screen). Anyway here's Devo's play list:
That's Good Going Under Peek-a-Boo! Girl U Want Whip It! Secret Agent Man Satisfaction Uncontrollable Urge Mongaloid Blockhead Jocko Homo Smart Patrol / Mr DNA Gates of Steel
Encore: Freedom of Choice Gut Feeling / Slap Your Mammy Beautiful World (by "special guest" Booji Boy)
Mmm not so sure about Booji Boy (even tho he's the integral "fifth member") singing Beautiful World, I would have preferred to have heard Gerald singing it. There's just something about Booji's squeaky voice that's a bit off-putting.
Damn good show tho, very impressive. Are we not men? We are Devo!!
We took the train to Harajuku, Charee wanted to do some shopping on Takeshita Street. Today was our last day anyway, and shopping was planned. I couldn't stomach girl shopping, so headed back to Shibuya for my own shopping (Tower Records = 4 jp cd's!). After that we went to Akihabara, famous for denki denki (electronics) shops. I was sure that Mrs M said that that was the place to get yukata and kokeshi dolls. However after walking around a bit we realised that that was not the case; having asked directions to the kokeshi dolls, it was actually Asakusa we needed to be at! So we headed over there, back to Senso-ji, where there are alot of tourist shops. We got the yukata, kokeshi dolls etc, plus a new bag (for Y1050!) to carry all the new omiyage (gifts). That took most of the day. We had to meet Tsudoi after work, around 9pm, so we headed back to Ikebukuro and hung around there until he finished. Then we all went to a small smoky izakaya in Ikebukuro. Charee got a bit sick from too much ika (squid) -- I knew that stuff was bad!
Saturday, March 29:
We got up to have our last breakfast with Tsudoi before he left for work. Then we had a couple of hours to pack up everything and clear off to the airport. I thought our flight was at 6pm but it turned out to be 8:20pm (!!). We didn"t have anything to do (with all our luggage), so we decided to go to the airport early (about 4 hrs early!). We took the Narita Express, using our JR Passes for the last time (sob sob). I was taking the Star Wars travel guitar Tsudoi had gotten me, so it was a bit much lugging all our bags. However, the guitar was a magic gift, as when we were waiting to board the plane, we got VIP entry into the plane before everyone else as we had to talk to the crew about where to stow the guitar (apparently there was some contention as whether to put it in the overhead locker or special cupboard onboard). Turned out the overhead locker was fine. It was a bit odd sitting in there with no-one else onboard, with the rest of the crew scurring around making final preparations before the other passengers boarded! Anyhoo, we finally got underway, and the flight was uneventful besides a bit bumpy. We arrived about 20mins early on Sunday morning, but had to sit on the runway waiting for another plane to leave our dock, our 20mins lead time was gone. To make matters worse, Channel 7 was filming "Border Security" (tv show) in Customs, which caused huge delays there. It took us about 90mins to get through (and finally meet my waiting parents who were wondering where the heck we were!).
So that ends our trip to Japan. Overall, not a bad little adventure, we did a diverse range of things and were content to come home and see our kitties (tho changed our minds now, we want to go back!!). It was good to see my bro Tsudoi and a few other old faces while we were there (tho there were some other faces I would have liked to see). Nowe we have to wade through the 700+ pics we took! I'll let you know when they're available for viewing...
A few travel tips for the future:
bring a small towel - we only had to use our own towels once, most of the places we stayed provided them, and a big towel takes up alot of space in ye olde backepacke
less shirts, more socks in cold climate
bring small shower gel/shampoo - most places provide, so can refill when they become available
double-bag all bathroom liquids
don't bring umbrellas - we bought cheap ($10) umbrellas in Aus, only to find they were being sold for Y150-Y500, about half the price in Japan (Charee came home with 3!)
good comfy walking shoes are imperative - give yourself time to break them in before leaving!
We left early to leave Beppu for Mt Koya, which I figured would take about 6 hrs to get to. Boy, was I wrong! We had to take 2 shinkansen (Beppu to Kokura, Kokura to Shin-Osaka), then an express train to Wakayama. We then had to take a small 2-car local country train from Wakayama to Hashimoto, then a very local train from Hashimoto up Mt Koya and finally a cable car the rest of the way (which was very steep). Arriving at the top, we had to take a bus to our ryokan, Sekishoin. We arrived around 7:30pm, having caught our first train at 9:44am! It was pitch dark when we arrived, and very cold (Mt Koya town is 1000m above sea-level apparently). The town consists mainly of Buddhist temples, and our ryokan was actually part of a temple itself. Our room was very nice tho, large, with a private bathroom and view onto a japanese garden (which we couldn't see when we arrived). We were checked in by a resident monk, but we had missed dinner, and everything was closed already. We were starving upon arrival (having eaten mostly snackfood on the long journey). We told the monk we had missed dinner and he then proceeded to find a place in town still open for us to eat at! Buddhist monks are very nice. He found us a place and he drove us, and another couple from London who were also hungry, to the restaurant. He even went so far as to order us a set meal, consisting of vegetarian food (vegetable and tofu dishes). After dinner we had to walk in the dark and freezing cold back to the ryokan. We went via the cemetary, which was a bit creepy. Since we had to get up at the crack of dawn the next day for monk prayers (7:00am) and breakfast (7:30am), we called it a night.
Wednesday, March 26:
We woke up at 6:30am to prepare for the monk chanting. Around 7am we, the guests, amassed in the temple where the head monk began the "service", which consisted mainly of chanting and prayers with sound effects (bells and cymbals). It was pretty interesting. Afterwards he explained the various parts of the temple, with the help of a bilingual guest. There were only about a dozen of us; if we'd come a couple of days earlier there would have been about a hundred people, mostly japanese, come to pray for their ancestors (as the time was the equinox - the Buddhists believe this is the time that the living world is closest to the dead world). We then all went to another hall for a monk breakfast. I was a bit disappointed that no other monks were eating with us tho. Apparently the temple only had 5 resident monks anyway. After breakfast we had to check out but we dropped our bags at the office and headed out into the near-freezing weather to have a look around. As I said, the town consisted mainly of temples, shrines and a huge cemetary, but had hundreds of years of history. We walked through the cemetary which wound slowly up the mountain to a big temple in honour of Kukai (as I recall), who was the founder of the Buddhist sect resident on Mt Koya (as far as I remember). We spent most of the day until about 2pm looking at temples etc, before leaving Koya-san. I'd been searching for a copy of "The Teaching of Buddha", a book in our room, but had had no luck finding an english version of it. When we collected our bags, I asked a monk at our ryokan about it and he gave me a copy of it from one of the rooms (I had started reading it the night before, quite interesting). At first we were going to go to Nara to stay next, but we decided instead to head back to Tokyo, where we could do a day trip up to Nikko. The trip to Tokyo was also very long, taking about 8 hrs, and various trains as before. We arrived back in Saitama about 10:45pm. We met a funny drunk nihonjin salaryman on the train in Tokyo, who accompanied us all the way to Saitama (he lived one stop from Tsudoi's). We met Tsudoi at the supermarket then headed back to his house for a very late dinner, chuu-hi and some much-needed (and deserved!) rest.
Thursday, March 27:
Our plans to go to Nikko were changed the night before, we really couldn't face any more long train trips! It would take about 3 hrs to get to Nikko from Saitama. Tsudoi had offered to take us to Kawagoe, about 5 stops from his house, to see the sakura (cherry blossoms) which had started blooming. We left late morning and Tsudoi gave us a tour of the area of Kawagoe. We bought some food along the way and went to the kouen (park) and drank some traditional Kawagoe beer made from sweet potato. The cherry blossoms, while not in full bloom, were still very nice to see. We were glad to be able to see them before leaving Japan, it would have been a shame to have missed them! We then did a spot of shopping, where Charee managed to lose herself, but I managed to find her after awhile, luckily. There were many people there! Late in the afternoon we went back to Saitama and had yaki niku for dinner, then headed back home to relax.
[I'm writing this on a slow computer with js turned off, must remember to update later]
Well, after that last entry, I had to run quick-smart to make the shinkansen. My knees almost gave way as I sprinted to the station, up two flights of escalators and finally made it into the train (with Charee already waiting inside), a couple ofseconds before the train whistle and the train pulled out of the station! Five seconds later and I would have missed it for sure! Poor Charee was almost having a nervous breakdown, as she was already on the train and I was the one with the details about the inn we were staying at in Beppu. We had to take a Hikari superexpress to Kokura then change to Sonic express to Beppu. All up the trip was only 2 hours (an hour each train). We found our minshuku easily, only a couple of minutes from Beppu JR station. Admittedly, we were quite nervous about staying at another minshuku after the last one, but discovered that this one was very nice indeed. Beppu is quite famous for its onsen (hot springs), and the minshuku had their own inside, and free! The name of it is Minshuku Kokage. Beppu is quite a nice town though, right near the coast. It has a nice feel to it. We arrived around midday and our room wasn't ready, plus it was raining, so we dropped our bags at the inn, got something to eat, then went to the tourist info desk at the station to see what to do. Charee wanted to go to the animal safari, but it was quite far away, and the few buses weren't running in a timely fashion for us to make it, so we decided on the 8 Hells of Beppu instead. These are 8 hot springs for viewing only, such as piping hot water (100C+), bubbling mud baths, geyser etc. It was a bit painful in the rain, and we had to catch local buses, but we managed it. It wasn't too bad tho (Y2000 for all 8, or Y400 each). There was a cute kitty at the bus shelter (that I thought was a bit sickly) which took a liking to me and curled up on my lap while we waited for the bus. It liked my stale beef jerky too. We returned around 5pm, checked in (very nice room with private bath/toilet, TV, couch, fridge for Y7650/night) then went for a bath in the inn's onsen. It was pretty hot (53C apparently)! Afterwards we went and had dinner at a local korean bbq (yakiniku) then retired (watching an Arnie Schwartzenegger movie in japanese). After we went to bed the TV mysteriously turned itself on by itself (giving us flashbacks of the previous minshuku), but I think it was because I was messing around with the remote and accidentally set the timer (that's what I tell myself anyway!). We decided to unplug it just in case, but if it went on again we were going to check out immediately! :o
Monday, March 24:
We decided to go to Usuki, a small neighbouring town, to see the Stone Buddhas (Y550). The weather was fine which was good. We took a local train to Usuki town and had a look around there, seeing castle ruins and a few other things, such as old samurai residence (which we couldn't find definitively). We then had to take a local bus to the Stone Buddhas (bear in mind that the local bus drivers don't speak or understand any english). We weren't sure if it was the right bus so we asked an old japanese dude also waiting at the bus stop, apparently he was also going there. We made it there okay and had a look around. The Stone Buddhas are pretty cool, carved out of rock, there are 4 clusters of them. We got a little lost on the trails (go figure) and at one point we came across a big something carved out of rock when suddenly a huge spider came literally bouncing out of the jungle and tried to go up Charee's leg. I shouted (she thought it ws a snake, there were lots of warning signs about snakes!) and jumped up and down in a frightened manner (which I found quite amusing) and the spider ran away. Boy, it was a big baster tho! And the way it came jumping along the ground was quite unusual! Afterwards, we were going to go see some limestone caves but found out they were quite far away (about an hour) and with the last bus back to Usuki at 5:30 meant that we'd only be able to get there to turn around and come back again. We also discovered that the next bus back to Usuki was also that last bus at 5:30 which meant a 3-hour wait!! We saw the old japanese dude talking to a taxi driver so went and talked to him about all this (Charee does the talking generally, her nihongo is better than mine). He was a nice old dude and he offered us to share his taxi back to Usuki (at his expense) so we agreed and went back to Usuki with him. The taxi dropped us at a pagoda there, and we all went to take a look. The old dude knew quite alot about it (he'd obviously done his reading) and while we were pondering some mysterious-looking swirly kanji (chinese characters) on the temple at the pagoda, another old japanese couple came in. Now this old guy started telling our old guy about these kanji, and of course me being a gaijin tending to attract attention, the new old people asked our old guy about us and before you know it we were all having a big conversation. We found out that our old guy was from Hiroshima an his name was Nii-san, and the other old couple was Mr and Mrs Mashino, from neighbouring town Kitsuki. Now, we all joined up and went sightseeing in Usuki together! This was a very unexpected turn of events, as we were going to go from Usuki to a hot spring in Beppu. After we'd all visited a couple of places together, Nii-san took his leave and Mr and Mrs Mashino offered to drive us back to Beppu, as Kitsuki where they lived was on the other side of Beppu from Usuki. Of course we accepted, however in further conversation somehow we got invited to their house in Kitsuki! So off we went in their car. It was quite a long way to Kitsuki tho, and we made a stop at a local mountain water spring where they filled large water containers from their car. The water was very fresh and tasted very nice. Apparently there are several of these "water outlets", where the water is continuously running and anyone can get it (if we had one of these in Aus we'd be rich!). Mr and Mrs Mashino told us alot about themselves, that Mr M worked for Mobil but had retired 10 years prior (at age 57) and got a big payout from the company upon retirement (which is the japanese way), that they met at Mobil, that Mrs M stopped working at age 26 to become a housewife, that they owned 2 houses (one in Kitsuki, the other in Chiba) and that they had 2 daughters (who live in Chiba) and 2 grandkids. Mrs M had remarkably good english, so communication was quite easy. We soon found out they were also quite fit (they both play tennis multiple times a week) when we arrived at Kitsuki and they showed us an old part of town where samurai used to live (lots of hills). Here, another coincidence happened, as we were walking along Mrs M saw someone sh knew who happened to be the caretaker of the samurai residence, which was now closed. However he let us in and gave us a personal private tour of it, with english commentary (a rare treat!). After that we went to Mr and Mrs M's house, which is very nice. It's a big house on a hill in the country, with views of the sea on one side and mountain vistas on the other. They gave us tea (and Charee a box of green tea to take home) and we talked some more before they drove us back to Kitsuki station so we could catch the train back to Beppu. After arriving back we had dinner (izakaya), then a hot bath and retired. What an extraordinary day it was!
Thursday, July 30, 2009