I had a slip of paper shoved in my mail box today. It read something along the lines of: We regret to inform you that a mail delivery has been missed. Exact time 12.03 pm. I looked at my watch. 12.06... Damn it!
I knew what it was. My internet papers that I had been waiting for all week. I had missed it by three bloody minutes. I knew when I sat in that sauna filled with rubbery, naked old people that nothing good would come out of being in there!
So it said I could pick the delievery up at the main post office after the postman had finished his rounds. I had no idea what time that was. But then I heard it. The lawnmower sound of a Japanese Postman coming up the street. I was tempted to jump in front of him and pry that letter out of his cold clammy Postman hands, but I thought better of it. I smelt, I was sweaty and I needed shower.
So after a 30 second shower, and having run out the door with a Vegemite sandwich in my hand I jumped on top of Sasha and we were off. Down the street, around the corner, over the train line.... Shit! I dropped my sandwich. No time for regrets!
As fast as I could I rode to that post office. I was going to have my internet today. I jumped off Sasha and hit the ground running, nearly falling arse over in front of a convention of Japanese business men exiting the hotel across the road.
In too the post office, I pulled out my notification, showed it too the old post master who growled and wondered over to the other side of his dungeon like some kind of gollumn. "Hurry up," I thought, thinking he had probably sustained that limp in some kind of war, "I want my internet!"
He hobbled back over to me and I took from him that sacred letter. Like the wind I flew back to my apartment on my valiant steed Sasha. Up the stairs Through the door. To the computer. I open the letter, and there it is. My internet information. My name is spelt wrong in at least three different places, but who cares!
Finally, the internet is mine!
Thursday 26 June 2008
Tuesday 24 June 2008
Still waiting...
In traditional fashion I have had trouble getting my internet. I really should have expected because none of my plans seem to work out as well as they had in my head.
I was meant to get the internet on Sunday. The NTT guy turned up, checked my line and installed the modem. No problems there. I blundered my way through enough Japanese to ask him what time the line would open and when my internet would work. 5pm was the time that I understood. So I waited, went about my day doing my various tasks and when 5pm came around I tried to connect to my internet for the first time... But it didn`t work.
Needless to say: I was pissed off.
I tried to get it working all night, changing settings and trying to work out exactly what was wrong, thinking I probably had a dodgy modem or connection.
On Monday I rang the Telephone company and asked them why my internet wasn`t working. Turns out that while I had purchased a modem and was now paying for line rental... I had not purchased any Internet Service. I rang an English speaking company and bought my internet service, but I`am now waiting for the `package` to arrive.
Here I am now, with a modem plugged into my wall, paying $35 a month for line rental... And I`m still stealing from the guy next door.
I was meant to get the internet on Sunday. The NTT guy turned up, checked my line and installed the modem. No problems there. I blundered my way through enough Japanese to ask him what time the line would open and when my internet would work. 5pm was the time that I understood. So I waited, went about my day doing my various tasks and when 5pm came around I tried to connect to my internet for the first time... But it didn`t work.
Needless to say: I was pissed off.
I tried to get it working all night, changing settings and trying to work out exactly what was wrong, thinking I probably had a dodgy modem or connection.
On Monday I rang the Telephone company and asked them why my internet wasn`t working. Turns out that while I had purchased a modem and was now paying for line rental... I had not purchased any Internet Service. I rang an English speaking company and bought my internet service, but I`am now waiting for the `package` to arrive.
Here I am now, with a modem plugged into my wall, paying $35 a month for line rental... And I`m still stealing from the guy next door.
Friday 20 June 2008
Internet on Sunday
Oh one more thing. I get the Internet on Sunday. Fiber optic line... that means it's damn fast. I tried uploading my photos just now but this connection is too slow and will take forever. So just wait until Sunday and I will bombard you with photos of the Earthquake and from around Kitakami City.
I feel the Earth move...
Hey there every one,
Sorry about the delay between posts, earlier this week my computer got a virus of some sort and it royally boned my computer, so much so that I could not load half of my programs. So once again I was forced to format... That makes it about the fifth time since I arrived in Japan I believe.
Anyway, I'm sure most of you have heard about the Earthquake that struck Japan last week. It was on Australian news, as well as American, British, etc. It was a 7.2, which is pretty big and the epicenter just happened to be good old Kitakami City... The city I happen to be living in.
I was on my way to work dreading the six hour day in front of me, a day which would be filled with misbehaved kids who for some reason or another want to punch me in the crotch for their amusement. It was never meant to be, after riding to the end of my street the world began to shake. It was as though the earth had come to life and was either yawning or roaring, because the sound was incredible. It was nothing I had ever heard before.
Nearby the Shinkansen (Bullet Train) Track which exist as an overpass above the road began to shake with such ferocity that bits of debris began to fall off onto cars which had been stopped or abandoned beneath it, the occupants having obviously run for shelter else where. I just sat on my girl, purple bike Sasha watching the scene unfold. After about a minute the shaking subsided and I continued on my merry way, thinking while it was big I had been in small earthquakes before and thought nothing more of it.
That was until I walked into the Kitakami Station, where people were hiding under tables, in door ways and generally anywhere they wouldn't be hit by a falling fluorescent light. I was greeted with "Oh my god! Did you feel that?!" by my neighbor Megan who came running up to me. Turns out she was heading into Morioka and was at the station when the Earthquake happened. All the trains had stopped, including the Shikansen and my classes were cancelled. I headed back home to find my apartment an absolute disaster zone. Things had been thrown across the room, pots and pans had fallen out... And my fridge had taken a dive for the worst and fallen over. Funnily enough... No one else reported any such damage to their belongings.... Grrr. My electricty, gas and water had also been turned off due to emergency procedures automatically put in place when an earthquake of such magnitude occured.
I ended up staying the night on Megan's flaw. I could feel every bump and shake of the after shocks that night, and at least once we both sat up ready to leave the building because of the size of an aftershock. I took some photos of my apartment, and around the generally area of my apartment, but damage was fairly minimal which was good. Other places were hit pretty bad, and there were over one hundred injuries and at least six deaths.
A pretty insane experience I would have to say...
Sorry about the delay between posts, earlier this week my computer got a virus of some sort and it royally boned my computer, so much so that I could not load half of my programs. So once again I was forced to format... That makes it about the fifth time since I arrived in Japan I believe.
Anyway, I'm sure most of you have heard about the Earthquake that struck Japan last week. It was on Australian news, as well as American, British, etc. It was a 7.2, which is pretty big and the epicenter just happened to be good old Kitakami City... The city I happen to be living in.
I was on my way to work dreading the six hour day in front of me, a day which would be filled with misbehaved kids who for some reason or another want to punch me in the crotch for their amusement. It was never meant to be, after riding to the end of my street the world began to shake. It was as though the earth had come to life and was either yawning or roaring, because the sound was incredible. It was nothing I had ever heard before.
Nearby the Shinkansen (Bullet Train) Track which exist as an overpass above the road began to shake with such ferocity that bits of debris began to fall off onto cars which had been stopped or abandoned beneath it, the occupants having obviously run for shelter else where. I just sat on my girl, purple bike Sasha watching the scene unfold. After about a minute the shaking subsided and I continued on my merry way, thinking while it was big I had been in small earthquakes before and thought nothing more of it.
That was until I walked into the Kitakami Station, where people were hiding under tables, in door ways and generally anywhere they wouldn't be hit by a falling fluorescent light. I was greeted with "Oh my god! Did you feel that?!" by my neighbor Megan who came running up to me. Turns out she was heading into Morioka and was at the station when the Earthquake happened. All the trains had stopped, including the Shikansen and my classes were cancelled. I headed back home to find my apartment an absolute disaster zone. Things had been thrown across the room, pots and pans had fallen out... And my fridge had taken a dive for the worst and fallen over. Funnily enough... No one else reported any such damage to their belongings.... Grrr. My electricty, gas and water had also been turned off due to emergency procedures automatically put in place when an earthquake of such magnitude occured.
I ended up staying the night on Megan's flaw. I could feel every bump and shake of the after shocks that night, and at least once we both sat up ready to leave the building because of the size of an aftershock. I took some photos of my apartment, and around the generally area of my apartment, but damage was fairly minimal which was good. Other places were hit pretty bad, and there were over one hundred injuries and at least six deaths.
A pretty insane experience I would have to say...
Thursday 12 June 2008
Pumping Iron.... Grrr
I joined the Kitakami Sport and Activity center yesterday. It’s pretty much a fancy name for a gym. It’s on the 7th and 8th floors of the big shopping center we have in the city called ‘Sakurano.’ The actual gym itself has windows looking over the city and you can see the snow capped mountains from the treadmills. It looks really cool, but I thought it was funny that people would rather walk in one spot and look at a mountain then actually go walking there.
The language barrier while becoming less and less ever so slowly still caused what should have been a 20 minute application to last over an hour. At parts the girl who was signing me up and I were in hysterics trying to work out what the other was saying. With both of us flailing our arms about it was kind of like playing charades… You know one of those rounds where nobody has the slightest clue what the other is doing and nobody wins. In the end it all worked out though, however when she read the rules I just agreed to everything. Probably the reason why I wasn’t allowed to enter with only one pair of shoes.
That’s right; I rode to the gym and was sent back for not having an ‘outside’ pair of shoes and an ‘inside’ pair of shoes. Talk about strict. Damn culture. So I rode back home, wore my ex-school shoes with my jeans like a dick and was allowed to enter… Only to take the bloody things off and put on my runners almost immediately after.
Ah well. Anyway it’s funny to watch the old guys look at you when your doing weights. They all kind of whisper to each other and you hear them exclaim “Amazing!” in Japanese. Makes me feel better because after having not been to a gym for just on two months I was starting to feel like an absolute show bag full of shit.
Oh yeah… Another great thing about having started at the gym is the machines room where the weights are looks directly into the ‘dance studio’ where all the girls are working out. So if it comes to watching mountains on the treadmills or working out in the weights room you can guess where I’ll be spending most of my time.
The language barrier while becoming less and less ever so slowly still caused what should have been a 20 minute application to last over an hour. At parts the girl who was signing me up and I were in hysterics trying to work out what the other was saying. With both of us flailing our arms about it was kind of like playing charades… You know one of those rounds where nobody has the slightest clue what the other is doing and nobody wins. In the end it all worked out though, however when she read the rules I just agreed to everything. Probably the reason why I wasn’t allowed to enter with only one pair of shoes.
That’s right; I rode to the gym and was sent back for not having an ‘outside’ pair of shoes and an ‘inside’ pair of shoes. Talk about strict. Damn culture. So I rode back home, wore my ex-school shoes with my jeans like a dick and was allowed to enter… Only to take the bloody things off and put on my runners almost immediately after.
Ah well. Anyway it’s funny to watch the old guys look at you when your doing weights. They all kind of whisper to each other and you hear them exclaim “Amazing!” in Japanese. Makes me feel better because after having not been to a gym for just on two months I was starting to feel like an absolute show bag full of shit.
Oh yeah… Another great thing about having started at the gym is the machines room where the weights are looks directly into the ‘dance studio’ where all the girls are working out. So if it comes to watching mountains on the treadmills or working out in the weights room you can guess where I’ll be spending most of my time.
Tuesday 10 June 2008
All my photos...
I posted up some of the photos I took on the weekend. I know that they are low quality and are very few but that's because I am stealing the internet from the guy next door... And he doesn't know about it. 
It's slow and incredibly irritating so bare with the photos I have up at the moment as soon as I get my own internet in a few weeks I will post alot of high resolution photos up on flickr.
Kuga was always up to something different so it was a lot of fun watching him... Particularly when he would start squirting me in the back of the head with his water pistol. I forgot I took this photo but it's my favorite one of the day. I will muck around with it later and show you what I come up with.
I also have some photos that I took while I have been riding about Kitakami on my bike. I will be sure to get those up soon as well. When you go looking for something to do in Kitakami you can find some pretty interesting things. Anyway thats enough from me for the moment. I plan on making Mondays and Thursdays my permanent update days so check back then for a new post.
It's slow and incredibly irritating so bare with the photos I have up at the moment as soon as I get my own internet in a few weeks I will post alot of high resolution photos up on flickr.Kuga was always up to something different so it was a lot of fun watching him... Particularly when he would start squirting me in the back of the head with his water pistol. I forgot I took this photo but it's my favorite one of the day. I will muck around with it later and show you what I come up with.
I also have some photos that I took while I have been riding about Kitakami on my bike. I will be sure to get those up soon as well. When you go looking for something to do in Kitakami you can find some pretty interesting things. Anyway thats enough from me for the moment. I plan on making Mondays and Thursdays my permanent update days so check back then for a new post.
Megan's 23rd Birthday
Well the rain here in Kitakami finally gave up its relentless downpour and the break allowed us to celebrate my next door neighbor Megan’s 23rd birthday in the sunshine along the banks of a river that runs alongside Iwate Park. A Japanese teacher named Yuki and I decided to travel into Morioka by train with her five year old son Kuga. The usually boring fifty minute train ride seemed a lot more enjoyable with him sitting beside me trying to poke me in the ear with one of his little action figures and the two of us fogging up the windows with our breath, much to the disgust of the other passengers on board at the time.
Along with the other teachers from my school that lived in the area I had the chance to meet a lot of new people who worked in other schools in the Morioka area. I was also able to finally put some faces to the names of people I had heard so much about but had not yet met. We spent the whole day sitting by the river as Bryan took charge of the small charcoal barbeque that Tom had brought along and cooked for us all. The amount of meat that we cooked I think was equal to that of a small farm yard of animals, but we somehow managed to finish it all off before we left.
As night began to fall and the city darkened around the mosquitoes turned their undivided attention towards us. We packed up our rubbish and everything else we had brought and decided to head out to Karaoke and sing our little hearts out while drinking as much as we could for two hours. The greatest thing about karaoke is no one gives a damn what you sound like as long as you sing as hard as you can. If you ever do Karaoke in Japan a good song to sing is ‘I don’t want to miss a thing – Aerosmith.’ It really seems to go off and is a favorite among the Japanese and foreigners alike. It is always brilliant fun, but I really enjoy listening to the Japanese girls sing, they put so much effort into the songs and I can appreciate anyone who can sing in Japanese… Considering I’m yet to work out how to say ‘Australian’ in Japanese correctly.
It was only early when we finished karaoke… Well for a night on the town anyway, so while most people headed back to their apartments for a good night’s rest about six of us continued onto the next bar where we stayed until it was light outside and then headed back home. My favorite part of the walk home was buying some freshly made Melon Bread. It was so damn good.
I stayed at Bryans for the night and when we woke up it was like we had been sleeping in sauna for six hours. It was insanely humid so we got out of there as quick as we could and with his girlfriend headed down into the city to get some ramen for lunch. We parted ways afterwards and I caught the train back to Kitakami on a train packed with school kids. On a humid day where you haven’t had a shower, you stink and all you want to do is get home as soon as you can there is nothing better than a Japanese train in peak hour to push you closer and closer to the edge of reason.
So it was back to quiet little Kitakami, slightly more sun burnt then I was when I left the previous day, and I couldn’t help but look forward to that night’s sleep and think “I’m glad that I live in a place where nothing every happens.”
Along with the other teachers from my school that lived in the area I had the chance to meet a lot of new people who worked in other schools in the Morioka area. I was also able to finally put some faces to the names of people I had heard so much about but had not yet met. We spent the whole day sitting by the river as Bryan took charge of the small charcoal barbeque that Tom had brought along and cooked for us all. The amount of meat that we cooked I think was equal to that of a small farm yard of animals, but we somehow managed to finish it all off before we left.
As night began to fall and the city darkened around the mosquitoes turned their undivided attention towards us. We packed up our rubbish and everything else we had brought and decided to head out to Karaoke and sing our little hearts out while drinking as much as we could for two hours. The greatest thing about karaoke is no one gives a damn what you sound like as long as you sing as hard as you can. If you ever do Karaoke in Japan a good song to sing is ‘I don’t want to miss a thing – Aerosmith.’ It really seems to go off and is a favorite among the Japanese and foreigners alike. It is always brilliant fun, but I really enjoy listening to the Japanese girls sing, they put so much effort into the songs and I can appreciate anyone who can sing in Japanese… Considering I’m yet to work out how to say ‘Australian’ in Japanese correctly.
It was only early when we finished karaoke… Well for a night on the town anyway, so while most people headed back to their apartments for a good night’s rest about six of us continued onto the next bar where we stayed until it was light outside and then headed back home. My favorite part of the walk home was buying some freshly made Melon Bread. It was so damn good.
I stayed at Bryans for the night and when we woke up it was like we had been sleeping in sauna for six hours. It was insanely humid so we got out of there as quick as we could and with his girlfriend headed down into the city to get some ramen for lunch. We parted ways afterwards and I caught the train back to Kitakami on a train packed with school kids. On a humid day where you haven’t had a shower, you stink and all you want to do is get home as soon as you can there is nothing better than a Japanese train in peak hour to push you closer and closer to the edge of reason.
So it was back to quiet little Kitakami, slightly more sun burnt then I was when I left the previous day, and I couldn’t help but look forward to that night’s sleep and think “I’m glad that I live in a place where nothing every happens.”
Monday 2 June 2008
My Road to Nowhere
Hi there everyone!
As of today it has been exactly two months since I left Australia on my big journey. So far it has been one intense and exciting experience. I have had to learn to not only live away from home for the first time ever, but to also do it in a totally unfamiliar country.
When I arrived I knew barely any of the language, and even less about the people. Sure I had heard people talking about Japan, and telling me what it was like, but until I actually set foot here it was hard to imagine. Two months on, I know a little more of the language then I did when I stepped on that big plane to leave my home for such a long time, and I’ve had no choice but to learn how the culture and the people operate in Japan.
From the moment I stepped onto that plane in Melbourne I had so many different experiences, and met so many different people that I don’t think I could possibly recall every one of them if I chose to try. There have been people that have helped me, have done nothing but the right thing by me and tired to do their best to see that my journey goes as well as it could be. And there are those who didn’t bother to stop when I asked the time.
Although only a short time I have seen amazing and unique things. Even the simple things like looking at the night sky from a part of the world, wondering if maybe, just maybe someone I know is also staring at that same sky makes my time here all that more incredible. The sense of being so far away from home, and knowing that I will not see that place for such a long time frightens me a little, but at the same time excites me so much that I often can’t contain it.
I made this website so I could share with everyone my thoughts and my experiences as I travel. I want people to see where I go, what I do, the people I meet and the share my experiences. The world is a big place. Much bigger than I ever thought before I left my little home of Ferntree Gully. And I want to see it all.
Getting on that plane two months ago I had read all the books. I had done countless hours of research. I thought I was prepared. I thought I knew a lot about the world. About its people. About life. Here is one thing that I learnt since leaving home on this adventure:
As of now, all that means absolutely… Nothing.
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