Tokyo

Blogger wont let me log on! I can't remember if I posted to let you
all know I am in Tokyo!

I am in Tokyo!

I am off to the Sony Building/Musuem in Ginza (like 5th Avenue NYC,
full of really expensive shops) because the weather is rubbish!

See you soon!

This is what you would expect from Japan!

Bikes outside the subway station! Lots of people ride them in Japan.... on the footpath! They ride right at you! The technique is to not look at them otherwise they think you've seen them and will jump out of the way!


Drew went nuts with my camera at these Japanese gardens we went to and took some nice shots.


This bus was used at the Aichi Expo near Drew's house. It doesn't require a driver, it finds it's way from some sort of discs that are placed on the road surface. Because it doesn't have a driver, the expo organisers put the mascots in the seats at the front. It would have looked quite funny in motion with 50 people on board being driven around by two green blobs!


Back to the day we were on tv! This was a group of the mascots.... there were about 3 times as many as you see here!


Poor old spermy was down on his luck!


This guy was cool.... I'm not sure what he's sposed to be... maybe an apple?

HAPPY BIRTHDAY NATHAN!!!

You wench!

Australia Day

Happy Australia Day everyone..... Hope you all have a great day. Me and Drew are going to the Aussie bar in Nagoya 'Red Rock'

Hiroshima and Nagoya

Me and my buddy the Oasis 21 mascot. Me and Drew were on japanese tv!!!! We went into downtown Nagoya to check out the sites and stumbled across a heap of mascots wandering around so we went for a closer look..... Turns out they were being filmed by some tv station and they approached us and started interviewing us in English, but Drew responded cleverly in Japanese. This made the hosts very happy and they exclaimed to the camera that they could speak to us in Japanese and I was like "ummmm no!" So they started having a conversation about the mascots in Japanese while I looked uncomfortable at being on tv...... poor old Drew did a great job under pressure and managed to translate for me so that when they shoved a microphone under my nose after asking a question I had no idea about I was able to answer by pointing at my favourite mascot!
After this they got us to do a mini-spot for one of their ad's or something where we had to say Yurui! as the camera zoomed in on us..... we found out afterwards that Yurui means loose in Japanese!!! lol I don't understand!


Drew was my official cameraperson and took this one of me in front of the Nagoya towers, Nagoya's tallest buildings.


Hiroshima. An amazing place, so so beautiful in spite of the terrible crime commited against them. It was a very emotional day visiting that town. On the right is one of the only buildings that survived the blast. The rest of the town was completely flattened. The Peace Musuem has photos of the day after and peoples wristwatches that are stopped at 8:15am and childrens school uniforms stained with blood. Everyone should come here in their lifetime.

Japan des

Me crawling through Buddha's belly button for happiness!


Japanese god in charge of love and his messenger bunny!!!


Crazy John's Japanese cousin!


Kiyomizudera Temple in Kyoto


Out the front of the Jishu shrine, you have to walk between these two rocks with your eyes closed to bring luck in love. After the second rock there is a flight of stairs! So I chose to walk in the other direction and managed to do it without major injury!


The Golden Pavillion (Kinkakuji Temple). This was an amazing sight!


The largest Buddha around! I would have been maybe as tall as one of his fingers!


The deer ate my map!!!!


Deers go electric sometimes!


The japan post girl!!!! :)


In the Umeda district of Osaka, this is the crazy building.... see the escalators on the outside of the bulding!


Osaka castle! Complete with lift!


Cara and I at the old Roman amphitheatre near the Fouviere in Lyon.


Cara and I at the top of the hill where the Fouviere is.


The Fouviere!

I love Japan!  The people here are great, they are so nice and polite!  I got bowed to the other day when I left an observation deck!! Although I now understand what my sister was talking about with regard to overstaffing!  People have some funny and seemingly unnecessary jobs in this country!  I have been to a few temples in the last few days and at every one there would be about 4 people selling tickets, which is fantastic customer service considering only a handful of people wander through the gate every half hour!  Even better is the guy standing right next to the ticket gate who checks your ticket that you just bought off the girl in the window right next to him!!! hehehehehehehehehe.  Sounds like what Mum and Dad saw in China as well.  They also have people manning the parking lots with like 10 spaces in them!  He must have to direct about 15 people a day into their parking spots!  Surely there is some machine that can do this job.... maybe a boom gate?

Everything is entertaining for me here!  The billboards mean nothing to me but I love their use of roman characters like exclamation marks which conveys excitement about a word I have no idea about!  The models they use here are absolutely amazing!  I am in love with the Japan Post girl!

The train system is fantastic! even better possibly than New York! I have had no problems at all figuring out how to get to places even involving 1 or 2 transfers!  Japan uses quite a lot of romanised names so a bunch of Kanji characters I don't understand becomes something I can understand like Shin-Imimiya or Kyoto station..... This means the language isn't really a barrier to travelling here.  Also there language is so cool that however it is written is how it is pronounced.... Rachel would be able to tell you more, but they break up the words into syllables which are said the same way regardless of context! This basically means that there are no tricks with pronunciation like there are with English (silent letters etc...)

I have seen the Golden Pavillion here in Kyoto, and the temple of Koyizudera which were both amazing, the golden pavillion was breathtaking.  Koyizudera had the love shrine and two rocks which if you could go between with your eyes closed promised luck in love.  I managed to do it without falling down the stairs convieniently placed right behind the second rock!  So if you miss the rock you not only have bad luck in love but you go to hospital as well!

Today I went to Nara, the first capital of Japan way back in like the 700's.  I went to the biggest statue of Buddha in Japan (also in world?) which was great.  I got to crawl through Buddha's belly button which promised to deliver eternal happiness...

Also I saw the deer which frolic around in Nara Park.  They are everywhere! In the markets and temples chasing locals and tourists alike for food.  I went to pat one but didn't have any food... so he ate my map!!! prick!  Lucky I knew where I was going and also in true Japanese fashion, the landmarks were very well signposted.  Although the first 600m of the track took about 10seconds and the second 600m took about 5mins! hmmmm

Osaka!

Greetings from the East! I am safe and sound in a cute hostel in Osaka!! I am very impressed and am loving Japan so far! There isn`t a huge amount of English but a lot of the Japanese things are Romanised so it isn`t any harder than navigating around on French trains or whatever.....

I have been up for a couple of days pretty much except for a bit of napping on the plane flights so I`m a bit tired.... particularly because I didn`t go to bed when I arrived today cos I was too excited! I went straight out when I got here and went to Osaka castle which was beautiful! Photo`s soon!! It was traditional Japanese architecture but quite modern by Japanese standards - 1600s..... it had 2 moats with only one way of getting across to stop invaders.... unfortunately for them it didn`t work and they got overthrown!

Then we went to the Umada district and saw one of the whackiest buildings ever.... It looked like something that a child would make out of lego!! It had 2 towers connected at THE top by a couple of floors that bridged THE 2 buildings. In these 2 floors they have cut a THE 2 buildings. In these 2 floors they have cut a circular hole out which serves no real useful purpose that I could determine but it looked cool!! and then in order to get to these floors they have escalators which operate in THE empty space between THE buildings! get what I mean?? neither do I. I will post photos soon!

Tomorrow Nara or Hiroshima before crashing in Kyoto for the next 2 nights then going to see Drew!!!!!!!!! yay!!!!

Happy Birthday Nathan!! Sorry it`s a bit late :)

Drew! I`m coming to see you on THE 22nd? Let me know if thats ok dude!

Crazy Japanese computer keeps capitalising my `the`s and cutting and pasting my sentances all over the place!!

Harigato!

Je suis en France

I'm so confused.... what side of the road are we driving on here?? where am I? what country am I in??

I have been in 3 countries in about a week and I'm about to go to Japan! (and Fiji where there's supposed to be a coup???) better talk to the embassy about that one....

France is beautiful, well Lyon is beautiful, can't vouch for the rest of it. There is a Manhatten-ish landmass with three sections seperated by rivers. All the buildings are old and very French and even though there is graffiti down by the river, it is in French so it is strangely charming.

I am in the very surreal world of McDonald's in Lyon.... while a low proportion of people speak English, the radio is mostly American and English (and Australia) music. (50 Cent is on the radio at the moment)... when we went to a bar the other night they were playing rap videos from Dre and Snoop etc.... heheheh It sounds funny when French people are speaking their beautiful language then suddenly 'Snoop' is thrown in!
This demonstrates my understanding of goings on around here. I only recognise basic words and then Nouns. If i listen to a French conversation I can sort of understand what they are talking about based on words that sound the same in English like Universatie and Snoop etc....
But mostly I have no idea what people are saying and I keep saying English things to people! My brain isn't quick enough to adjust to being in a country where I am entirely surrounded by people who don't speak English... I have been saying thank-you, hello and gday!

London was great, I got to see the palace, big ben, houses of parliament, downing st, tower of london, tower bridge.... but had food poisoning one of the days so spent one day in bed which was annoying! oh well, I'm sure I'll be back in the UK at some stage!! The UK passport was fantastic! Walked straight through customs with all the locals and skipped the foreigners queue! I felt like I was cheating the system. I was no more a local than the guy from Kazakhstan lining up with the foreigners!

Thank you to everyone for your messages!! I really love getting messages on the blog and I read every single one even if I don't get around to writing back! Internet has been harder to come by while away from Miami.

Have to go research hostels in Japan and coups in Fiji!!

See you soon, I might add photos at Heathrow while waiting for my plane if I can find internet!

Love you all and see the Aussies in a few weeks!!

Dave

I'm in London! but yet to find free internet so this will be quick! Staying in Paddington at the Wake-up London hostel.

Seen the palace and big ben and the parliament and stuff! Maybe go to Lords tomorrow and maybe go on the London Eye ferris wheel?? Greenwich and go to a proper english pub!

See everyone as soon as I find more free internet!

Dave

Ye Olde Boston

Fenway Park, home of the famous Boston Red-Sox baseball team..... Don't get caught around here wearing a New York Yankee's cap.... no seriously.


Their subway system is soooo cute!! It's like Melbourne Tram's underground!!! That's a good place for them! maybe we should do that at home!


Boston Common. Nice park in the centre of town. Boston is great because you can walk everywhere if you want to. As you can see from the pictures, it's a very English-style town.


View across the Charles river towards downtown Boston..... At the right of the picture is one of Boston's two 'skyscrapers' Once again very cute after being in New York City. These two cities are worlds apart!


Tower at Massechusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) honouring Newton, Galileo, Kepler and other Engineery/Physicsy sort of people. I took a photo of the Science/Biology one too guys! (Hi Ray and Cara) On this one they honoured Darwin and a whole lot of people I don't know!


Sunset over the Charles. To the right is where the town of Cambridge is, which is where MIT and Harvard are located.

Boston is so nice and small!! I am enjoying it after the busyness of NYC! Tomorrow I fly back to Miami to clear up a couple of things and then it's off to London!!!!

Last few photos from NYC

Ice Hockey - New York Rangers vs Philidelphia Flyers. This was the best experience ever..... Hockey is 10 times better than any other sport in the USA. And you have to see it live... on tv it is too hard to follow the puck but live it's amazing. It wasn't hard to get excited about the game cos the crowd was so loud.


USS Intrepid - This was the first time I'd ever seen an Aircraft Carrier and it was quite fun. The boat was massive and they had a Concorde you could walk through and another Blackbird like the Air and Space Museum in DC.


I loved this sign that a child made for the Firemen and Firedogs who were so brave on 9/11. I love how some children are so thoughtful......


Me and Lady Liberty


Central Park

I'm off to Boston in a couple of days so I will speak to you from there.....

Sorry, running out of battery... only photos today!

UN Security Council Meeting Room


New York Stock Exchange, Wall St. Cold again...


Seinfeld Cafe! 112th and Broadway

NYE in NYC 2006

Secret is to wait until after midnight and then silly glasses go down in value to $1 each!!!!!!


Aussie mate Brett from Queanbeyan..... drinking champagne


omg! That was a great night! What a great place to celebrate new years eve.... everyone was friendly, we got to see the famous ball drop and see confetti flying everywhere....


Fair bit of confetti!