All Posts from the Misc Category
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Holiday snaps
Hi all. I realised that my last few posts, apart from sounding rather bitter and twisted, didn’t feature any pictures at all, which is a shame. So here are a few photos from a couple of weeks back when my mother and sisters were visiting (which already feels like months ago…).
One of the first things I did was to take them to Cafe Hoxton about 15 mins down the road for a coffee. This place is a jazz-inspired and they have little sculptures out on the terrace, like this one:
Isn’t that just the coolest thing?
Then we proceeded onto Takehara, another 10 mins down the road. In this excellent photo of the streetscape taken by Sister Rose (none of mine worked out), it looks like a Ye Olde Worlde exhibit at a fun park, but it’s actually a living breathing town with real life animatronic people in it. Hard to believe we only stumbled on Takehara by accident a few months ago. Which just goes to show the value of the occasional aimless Sunday drive when you’re in a different country.
Another day I took Sister Liz and my mother up to the Buttsuji temple complex, one of my favourite spots in these parts, where I discovered an audience of stone Buddhas that I hadn’t noticed the first time. (Amazing what you see when you haven’t got the kids in tow.)
Click here for more Buttsuji photos.
Rose the Cruise Director took the family on a trip to Matsue to see some museum in Matsue on the other side of the country. It only took three hours, since Japan is quite skinny down our end. The museum has a stunning garden attached. Here is the evidence:
Another day she took Sister Liz off to Kyoto where they saw this garden:
Boy did they get good value out of their Japan Rail Passess. Tragically the Sushi on a Stick household isn’t allowed to buy them as we don’t have tourist visas, otherwise I would have been to all these exotic places too… But at least we got some photos, if indirectly, and I thought I should put them in this post, even though it’s technically immoral since I wasn’t actually there.
Meanwhile, Grandma was keen to see her grandkids in action at a Real Japanese School. Unfortunately we couldn’t get a suitable time to see Felix’s class, but I was able to sneak her in to brass band practice one day, where we discovered Ruby has managed to master the trumpet pretty well:
This next one is after the family had gone home but I’m going to chuck it in here anyway. Last Sunday Ruby had a match up at Fuchu in the mountains, and I embarrassed her severely by insisting on a team photo, though as you can see nobody seemed to mind too much. See if you can spot the one girl NOT doing a peace sign. What a rebel!
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Tokyo trip
Last week I went on a whirlwind trip to Tokyo. Just like a real businessman!
Our little city of Mihara, despite being in the sticks, has its very own stop on the Shinkansen line, so it’s only four hours to the centre of Tokyo. The idea was to spend a couple of days up there and then catch a leisurely Shinkansen back down on Wednesday or Thursday. That was until I found out that Ruby’s graduation ceremony was on the Wednesday at 10 am. Not even the bullet train could get me back in time so I ended up catching the first plane back on Wednesday morning.
And what was I doing in Tokyo, you may ask. As far as the honourable tax man is concerned, I was in Tokyo to visit clients. And this I duly did, cramming in no less than four clients on Tuesday. But the real reason was to watch the mighty (actually not so mighty in recent times) Melbourne Victory play an away match against Kawasaki Frontale on the Tuesday night. Although I had to get up at 5:oo in the morning after the euphoria of the night before in order to make my flight, it was worth it.
It was funny to experience Tokyo as both a foreigner and a small-town resident. Because although I’ve seen a fair bit of Japan, I’ve never actually lived anywhere else except Tokyo, so I’ve always pretty much equated Tokyo with Japan. And on previous visits from Australia my mindset has been “isn’t Japan exciting and different compared to home” whereas this time was more like “isn’t Tokyo full-on compared to Mihara”. I noticed it especially on the Monday afternoon whilst doing the rounds of the computer and electrical shops in Shinjuku, jostling against wave upon wave of keen shoppers and harried shop staff amidst the unending din of the spruikers, witnessing the unfettered frenzy of consumption, Tokyo style.
And then I came across these melons for sale in one of the swanky department stores. See the price tag? At the current exchange rate that’s about $350. For a pair of melons! I think that just illustrates the different value systems up there in the capital.
To finish with, I should like to provide a visual representation of a key difference between Tokyo and our new home. One of the photos below is the view from my hotel in Tokyo; the other is the view from my office window at home. Can you guess which is which?
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Accidental firebug
On Friday I nearly set fire to the house.
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It all started when I moved the breadmaker instruction booklet from its normal spot next to the breadmaker over to the side of the stove. Next thing I know there’s an interesting burning smell in the air and the instructions are on fire. So I apologise to Eleni, open the doors and windows, blow out the flame and chuck the smouldering instructions outside on the concrete.
Ten minutes later I’m sitting upstairs working when I hear hysterical screaming from downstairs. I fly down to find Eleni trying to douse a grass fire in our back yard. Luckily we still had the bathwater from the previous night so we could just fill up some buckets and put it out, but there’s a nice little patch next to the kitchen wall that’s all black now.
It seems that the smouldering breadmaker instructions, far from dying out quietly as they were supposed to do, just kept on a-smouldering and eventually set fire to the plastic outdoor slippers nearby (which you wouldn’t have thought were burnable, but given that they’re now twisted lumps of charred plastic, I think we can assume that they are). The slippers must have been so hot that the grass next door then decided to burst into flame. And this is where the fun (and the screaming) began, because the grass was burning really, frightening, quickly. Had Eleni not been sitting at the kitchen table, I suspect the whole back yard would have been on fire in minutes, not to mention the side of the house.
In Japan, summer is humid and winter is dry, so it’s winter when you need to watch out for fire, rather than summer as in Australia. In particular, we’ve had a cold snap over the past few days which has made the air even drier (as our cracked hands and feet will attest).
So all in all, a rather lucky escape for Sushi on a Stick.
After all, not only would it have been highly embarrassing in the local community and down at the school (because everyone would have heard within minutes; Felix would have found it highly amusing but Ruby would have been mortified), but it all happened on Friday, just days before I was due to get my official visa. And as we all know, Immigration Authorities love nothing more than an excuse to refuse you a visa. Any excuse will do, but I imagine arson would go down particularly well at the Bureau.
This blog is about the adventures of a family of Australian barbarians spending two years in the islands of southern Japan. Stay tuned for regular updates on the food, the culture, the earthquakes, the wacky festivals, the school system and more. 
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