Hilly's Pets

Hi Everybody! And now for a silly post...

I'd like to introduce you all to my pets.

Firstly is my pet clown fish. They require absolutely no maintenance, they move when I need them to and will never ever die. Well, actually the fish are battery powered and have some sort of magnet that moves them around the "tank". So long and thanks for the fish Kate.

My second pet(s) is my Bilby. Courtesy of the Save the Bilby Fund, and my mum, I now have a pet bilby hanging off my fridge.

Move along please, nothing to see here...

Well the last 2 months have been filled with many days of unexciting hours of fun-filled work. Last weekend I had an eyeball replacement as they literally fell out from staring at computer screens for too long.

But seriously, I managed to land a contract in Australia's capital city - Sydney... woops, I meant Canberra. The work has actually been pretty good as I'm working normal 9-5 working hours, with an additional few hours of contract work to look forward to when I get home.

AND, every weekend I've had the pleasure of travelling back so Sydney, visiting my lovely apartment and drinking myself silly at bucks parties and weddings. At least it's a nice relief for my brain.

In conclusion (yes, the famous last paragraph of a high school-style essay) there's no photos and nothing really that intellectually, socially or emotionally to report. So pretend to enjoy this lame attempt at posting a blog and go outside and enjoy the world for much better things that it has to offer.

Au revoir mes amis!

Beautiful Sydney

Tonight I got home from university at around 8:30pm and decided to go for a quick run, just to clear my head and get the blood pumping through my body.

I decided to take my usual route to Balls Head Reserve, just a few minutes run down the street from me. As I was running through the Reserve, I noticed how beautiful Sydney looked tonight. I decided to stop and go for a quick walk along a couple of paths - in the dark.

After avoiding a fall to my death by crawling down some dubiously placed rocks, I reached a path with a lookout over the Sydney Harbour. I was met with the most beautiful view of the Harbour Bridge, The Opera House and the whole of Downtown Sydney.

I have come to the conclusion that I really really love my apartment, especially the surrounding areas. And, I've also decided that Sydney really is one of the most beautiful cities in the world. I love the fact that I can just sit down in the bushland, on the edge of the water and watch the magnificant scene unfold in front of me.

Return to Australia and "Reverse Culture Shock"?

The flight back to Australia was fairly standard except the in-flight entertainment had a video-on-demand system. This thing is totally awesome! It allows you to select the movie of your choice, then play, pause, rewind or fast forward it at your leisure. So, if there's an urgent call to "go see a man about a dog", you can pause the movie, do your "number one", return and continue where you left off. As an added bonus, there's no longer any luls whilst you are waiting for all the movie's to rewind and restart. Needless to say, I got absolutely no sleep on the flight.

After landing in Australia, I had the arduous task of getting through customs together with the 15,000 other flights that had just landed, and retrieving my beloved guitar from the oversize baggage area.

My lovely parents came to pick me up and give me a lift home which I am always forever grateful for. There's nothing more satisfying than getting off a plane knowing that your transport is taken care of so THANKS MUM AND DAD!

Wednesday night involved meeting up with Sally and Tanya - the two girls that did the exchange program with me at CSUS in 2004. Another friend, Colin from Canada joined us for dinner. He had just arrived in Sydney, ready to start a career in Melbourne for 6 months.

The night was very enjoyable and contained much reminiscing on old times, however I experienced what I would call "reverse culture shock". After spending the last 4 weeks with Koreans Japaneses, Americans and Canadians I firstly found that I was using American expressions such as "sidewalk" and "downtown". I also had a little chuckle to myself at just how funny the Australian accent is, and just how difficult it must be for others to understand exactly what we are trying to say. I then had a little freak out with the Australian money - I actually thought it was quite funny to see people carrying our money again. Lastly, was the confusion when trying to cross the road. Koreans drive on the right side of the road and Japanese on the left side of the road. After being almost run over a couple of times in the past month, my body decided to have a "brain fart" every time I aproached a road.

I can only put this wierd experience to the fact that I've slept about 10 hours in the past week, and the fact that I have had basically no interaction with any Australians (apart from Ben in the first week) for the past month.

Since then, I have done a little research and have come to found that this is actually documented. It is sometimes known as re-entry shock. Although mine was only an extremely mild case it was still the first time that I have ever experienced it in this manner. I have to say, it was a strange sensation and rather amusing. If anyone wants to read anything on this, try starting with this short article.

Aly comes to Jeju

Friday evening began with a return to the house of Sunny (the host from Wednesday night). This involved a quick swim in the beach with black sand, as well as a quick filling of water bottles with the lovely purifying water from Mt Hallasan. Supposedly, the water has healing properties that makes you live longer or something like that.

The night concluded with picking up Aly from the airport. Luckily she turned up as she could now act as my interpreter. Poor Sunny could understand her American accent much better than my wacky zany Australian accent.

Saturday began with some beach hopping throughout the island of Jeju. This involved an introduction for Aly to the safe and sound driving of Sunny. First was the trick of driving down the wrong side of the road - a road that was still being built mind you. Next up was some VERY close calls further up a real road from some vehicles driving in the opposite direction. It seemed that most of the cars were attracted to Aly and just wanted to get nice and close to her. Lastly, later on in the day we had missed our exit from the highway - so the logical thing to do was stop, turn around and drive back to the exit. Unfortunately, the concrete median strip forced us to once again drive down the wrong side of the highway. In Korea, driving like this is fairly standard. I think the driving test consists of "the more points you lose, the higher the level of licence that you get". Oh well, miraculously, the whole 4 weeks that I spent in Korea I have never witnessed an accident! Anyway, back to Jeju...

So the day consisted of visiting the many beaches that Jeju had to offer. Unfortunately, they were just no comparison to the gorgeous white, sandy, wavy beaches of Australia. BUT, it was great to be spending time in the salt water and practice my sea swimming - all to the amazement of the locals who were shocked to see somebody actually swimming properly. I think Aly and I put some of the lifeguards to shame with our swimming techniques.

Saturday afternoon Aly and I decided to farewell Sunny and Co. and catch a bus to Jungmun beach. This was the beach with the great waves that I had experienced on Thursday. The "Aly and Hilly Jungmun Beach Experience" actually ended up to be quite fun. We arrived around 8pm, just in time to watch the last rays of the sun slipping from view. Luckily, we had some beer and some left over Sake from my Japan trip to keep us entertained.

After a few small sips of beer, we decided that some night swimming (together with the ulterior motive of relieving our bladders) would be a grand idea! Luckily for us "Mother Ocean" had put on her best show and decided that tonight's roll in of the tide would be particularly ferocious. Poor Aly copped the brunt of waves. Being used to lake swimming, she was caught unawares by the force of the waves and received a few free "spin cycles". Needles to say, she went through a few sets of t-shirts to keep herself dry and warm that night.

After some time we decided to bury each other in the sand. This was a very unique experience mostly due to the fact that the sand was very wet and heavy - unlike Sydney sand that tends to be light and powdery. So there we were, each one of us buried in turn with the full weight of the sand on top, staring at the sky in hope of catching sight of a shooting star. I have to say, it was a very relaxing feeling and would love to do it again one day. The only draw back being that you are covered in sand that blatantly refuses to unstick itself from your body for the next few days.

As the night wore on, Aly's body started to become more floppy and her speech became a little slurred. This was obviously due to the constant thrashing around in the ocean. We decided to find somewhere to sleep for the night. The lifeguard tower seemed the most logical option at 2AM. We set up the single sleeping bag (more about that a little later) in the tower and walked up the stairs to the shower to attempt to wash off the sand from our bodies. BTW, I think that somebody in Jeju needs to check the showers, as from 2AM onwards the water seems to come directly from the freezer outlet. Nevertheless, we managed to wash ourselves to the sound of eeks and shrieks which were a natural reaction to the lovely cold water. Aly also reminded me that she couldn't sleep with sand on her body. So, Hilly to the rescue! I had the honour of being the Knight in Shining Armour and giving her a piggy back ride across the sand to our room at Jeju Hotel (the lifeguard tower).

Aly went to sleep fairly promptly. She fit in the tower quite snugly (for those of you that don't know, Aly's a little shorter than me) . I fitted, but only if I carefully placed my body in an exact location. Pretty soon I was wide awake again after attempting to better my position and failing - always a bad move and a confined space. Aly saw this as an opportunity to wrap herself completely in the sleeping bag, whilst wearing my only long sleeved shirt and saying how cold she was (she had absolutely no recollection of this the next day). I just sat there shivering a little, with a grin on my face. I guess chivalry is still hasn't left our modern world yet.


Sunday morning began at 4:45AM for me. I climbed out of our "Hotel Room" and watched the magnificence of the sun rising. This is one of nature's most beautiful moments and should always be cherished.


After being cooked alive on the beach later in the morning, Aly and I decided it would be a great idea to have a Western style breakfast at the Hyatt, which was only a couple of minutes walk up the stairs from where our "Hotel Room" was. The breakfast was a full buffet including fresh fruit, cereal, eggs, bacon, sausages, pastries yoghurt etc etc etc... We took full advantage of the all you can eat buffet for around 1 and 1/2 hours, stuffing ourselves in the most piggly manner possible.

The afternoon consisted of lazing around the pool, once again courtesy of the Hyatt. We soon became the target of a small family of 6 kids from Miami, Florida. Their father was teaching at a university on Seoul. They were being home taught and didn't appear to have any other real friends in Korea apart from themselves. I thought this to be a little sad and felt sorry for them. But, nonetheless they all seemed to get on very well with each other which I think is quite rare. Anyway, they latched on to Aly and eventually to me. Aly was excited as it's the first time she'd really spoken to Western kids for almost 12 months. She also got to show off some of her very graceful and impressive pool tricks from the days when she was a syncronised diver.

The afternoon concluded with the pool area being completely cleared except for a couple of ladies providing some singing entertainment, an outdoor buffet, a bucket load of chefs and Aly and I sitting around the bar in the pool with a beer in hand.


We eventually returned to our simple life and stayed the night in a sauna. Monday morning once again greeted us with lovely sunny and clear skies. Breakfast consisted of a quarter of a watermelon - which was particularly juicy and appropriate for the day. The only problem was that we didn't have a knife - so good old mouths and brute strength provided the means for cutting it up. Needless to say this was a tad messy.


Around midday was the upsetting task of saying goodbye to Aly and catching the bus back to Jeju airport. She's staying on Jeju Island for another week and then travelling for another few months a little later in August.

Overall, Jeju was a great experience. The weather was great, the people were friendly and once again Aly provided some awesome and entertaining companionship. I just can't wait for our next adventure together!

Jeju Island - the beginning...

On Wed afternoon I took a flight down to Korea's largest and most southern island - Jeju.

The initial blast of hot air and sunshine as I exited the airport indicated that this was going to be a fun few days.

After walking around downtown Jeju I gave in to my urge to finally see and swim in a real Korean beach. However, this urge was only satisified after a 7km hike down to the nearest beach - Samyeong Beach. My only hope was that the hike was worth it.

I arrived around 7pm - much to the delight of the many young and old Korean people whom seemed to find my looks to be very peculiar. I had been warned in my Lonely Planet guide that this beach is made of black sand, which is supposed to be good for your skin, like most unusual things in the world.

The initial assessment was that this could be a great beach. The sun was setting, people were having fun in the ocean and there was a general feeling of happinness in the air. Even the earth grader that was moving mounds of black sand seemed delighted to be there.


I jumped in the water only to find that my manhood had completely dissappeared - due to the rather cold water.

Without hesitation a couple started talking to me. They spoke good English and invited me back to their house for dinner and a place to stay. This was great news as I was originally going to stay on the beach with black sand...

I returned to their house for a meal and a bed on the floor. It turned out that they were hosting a Canadian man who is teaching English in Jeju. My hosts were great tour guides, pointing me in the right direction for the best things to do and see whilst on Jeju Island.


Thursday morning kicked off with an early start - 6AM. Today my mission is to hike up Mount Hallasan. It's an inactive volcanoe that sits 1900 metres (about 6000 feet) above sea level. Luckily the weather was fairly cool and a little rainy - excellent hiking weather. However, I soon learned that the hike itself was 9.6 km each way. That's a total of almost 20km (just over 12 miles) return trip. Wow!

The hike involved traversing up the volcanoe, on a path of volcanoe rocks - nice and comforting for your feet.


After around the 6km mark the gradient increased significantly and the hiking became rather difficult. The peak greeted me with a spectacular view of mist and cloud and fog. Lovely! The temperature had dropped to around 0 Celcius and the wind was enough to blow a house of it's foundations. Neverless, the hike was a good personal achievement. I completed the whole return trip in 4 hours 20 minutes on nothing but an empty stomach containing 1 Snickers bar and 1 bottle of water. Well, we all do silly things...


After the hike, I decided to find a decent beach. Jungmun is the one to go to. I arrived there around 3pm. Sure enough, the sand was whitish, the waves were big and plentifull and there was a good sized crowd to go with it. However, unfortunately the beach is patrolled extremely vigourously by many life guards (whom I suspect can't really swim judging by their swimming skills) with whistles. If you DARE go into water that is deeper than your shoulders you are whistled back into more shallow waters. This was a little frustrating however I did mange to body surf a few waves which was quite fun.

The post beach bliss soon wore off as I did more walking, followed by more walking. I was trying to find a house which was a friend of the people that I stayed with last night. Pretty soon I decided to try a phone call. Unfortunately, the person who answered seemed to know little English so I gave up. However, the person who's phone I used in the shop seemed to be very excited to have me there and gave a free popper of pea juice for his troubles... Did I just say he gave me a free gift for barging in and using his phone?... Yes, that is correct. Once again the Korean people have outdone themselves with generosity!

Thursday night I decided to sit by the sea and write in my journal under the dim aura of a street light and with a few sea bugs crawling nearby as friends. After some time I took a walk along the break water, watching the waves crash in and nearly drench me in the darkness. It was on my return to my sleeping place (Jimjilbang) for the night that I ran into a group of Korean people finishing their dinner festivities. They began to speak to me and one in particular spoke quite good English. We ended up sharing a couple of Soju's together and walking back to the Jimjilbang.


The walk back included a group of young giggly Koreans who were having a street party in a random car park. They were very excited to see a foreigner and decided to offer me some of each drink and type of food that they had.


However, it was my new Korean friend (Woo Seok) that offered to be my tour guide for Friday. He promised to pick me up from the Jimjilbang at 10AM. The agreement was that I teach him to speak propper English and he takes me for a tour of the island. Sounded good to me!

Sure enough, Friday morning at 10AM he picked me up for a local's tour of Jeju island. This included a look at the cinema museum, a quick hang out with some local fisherman, a tour of the traditional folk village and a trip to the lava caves. The caves were particularly spectacular, purely because they were formed from lava escaping from the island and eventually settling to form a lava cave. What made the cave even more interesting was a young Korean kid who spoke very good English and decided to latch himself on to me and practice his English.

Busan and a fun filled weekend with Aly

On Wednesday I returned from Japan to Busan. I had the added adventure of finding my second couchsurfing person - Mayo. Mayo had hosted Aly in the past however had neglected to send me the directions to his house. It looked like I could be spending another night in a sauna.

Whilst waiting for my email with the directions, I decided to give myself a quick tour of Busan.

My initial impression was that this is a true tourist town. I've seen more foreigners here than in Seoul! Busan has a famous beach named Haeundae which seems to be the only beach in Korea that has sand on it. It's the spot that I stayed at. The only problem being that the water was pretty cold and it was raining.


Anyhow, my self led tour led to a mermaid statue and a lighthouse along a little rocky trail. It seems that everyone is out for their healthy walks.


The Busan stay included a couple of nights meeting Mayo's friends, a pool tournament in which I miraculously made it to the third round and a game of Monopoly which became a little too competitive for my comfort level. But none the less - the experience was fun.

Friday involved a frantic cab ride to Busan train station to catch the fast train (KTX) to Seoul. In the end I had 8 minutes to spare - plenty of time!

Friday night I met up with Aly. Weekends are always fun with Aly as you never know what is going to happen and it's always a guaranteed good time. This weekend was no exception.

We begun by taking the KTX down to Mokpo (a short distance from my original starting point in Busan...) with the usual picnic of food and beer. The train arrived in Mokpo around 10:30PM. Our first mission was to eat supper, consisting of tomato, cheese and bread. We did have a problem though - the tomato needed to be cut and we had no knife. You wouldn't believe how hard it is to find a plastic throw away knife in Korea. But, we eventually found a street store vendor to cut it up for us - with a bit of a cranky face mind you.

We sat down on the steps of a random bank and ate our supper - like a couple of reasonably well dressed vagrants. Whilst doing so we observed the "Mokpo Strangler". He was a guy who'd been hanging around our vicinity for a while. In his hands he was wielding a headscarf - tensed up for the quick kill. We watched him cautiously until he dissappeared up the street to get his first vicitims. They walked back to a car with him . Whilst the driver went to open the vehicle the strangler lifted the headscarf to his neck and...

...let him open the vehicle and continued to talk and joke with his friends. I guess our sense of adventure had just got the better of our imaginations. Woops!

After our nervous supper Aly and I spent a night in a Korean sauna. Luckily for us the sleeping area was also a sauna that turned into a refrigerator later on in the night. It also provided free mosquitos and the soothing sounds of dogs barking throughout the night.

Saturday morning we kicked off to an early start. I looked outside the window and to my surprise the barking dogs had been guarding a yard packed with trash. It was obviuosly pretty important trash to somebody...

Anyhows, we ran into a Korean guy who'd spent time in Columbia and started to speak to us in Spanish. Luckily Aly's Spanish is much much better than mine so I let her do the talking.

We eventually caught a cab to a ferry terminal. Our aim was to go to Hong Do (Island) for the weekend. Unfortunately, we had missed the ferry by 10 minutes and the next one was not until 1:50PM. D'oh! We decided we would go to Heuksan Do instead and then catch a ferry to Hong Do.

We arrived at Heuksan Do about 11:30 and had a craving for swimming. We had a map of the island and had a sort of rough idea of how to get to a beach. We decided it would be better to get directions of a local, so we asked a fisherman the beach was close by. He said something about jump on my boat and I can take you to a swimming spot. Pretty soon a couple of blocks of frozen fish got thrown on the boat together with a small group of people. Luckily for us, most of the group was around our age, with a couple of them speaking fairly good English.

We set off on the boat and ended up on a floating dock-come-fish/oyster farm. Aly and I were pretty excited as the water was extremely clearand looked swimmable. However, to our horror - the water was teaming with jelly fish. I guess swimming is out of the question. The group took us for a quick tour of the fish farm and started fishing themselves. It looked like we were having fish for lunch I guess.




Pretty soon we ate our lunch - raw fish that had JUST been gutted in front of us - with rice and all sorts of side dishes. Actually, lunch was pretty good and filling.

We quickly became friends with our new hosts and they invited us to stay with them for the night at their house on the island. We accepted and decided we would go to our original destination - Hong Do - on the Sunday.


The evening progressed with dinner followed by a small party upstairs as it was one of the group's birthday.

The following morning we awoke to breakfast and headed off to Hong Do by ferry.

Hong Do is a relatively small island that is best seen from the ferry tour. Whilst waiting for the tour we went for a walk. We ended up talking to a young girl. Her parents then forced her to "go away give the strangers a tour of the village". The young girl talk us on a couple of scenic walks and then a quick tour of the village - even pointing out the place where the local ferral cat hangs out. We paid her with and ice-cream and sent her on her way.

The ferry around the island was interesting. It was very picturesque however involved many long stops where the Koreans could take many many photographs of the same thing. The photographs usually involved multiple angles and multiple permutations of people. One of the most amazing sights, was "The Man Who Fishes In The Middle Of Nowhere". Basically he was fishing from a rock sticking out of the ocean - with no means of transport nearby. The 9th Wonder of the World - just did he get out there?


The ferry back to Mokpo involved us and many other people being yelled at for being on the outside decking - which was only to be used for boarding and exiting during emergencies.

We ended the weekend with a return trip to Seoul on the KTX and the return journey to Beomgye on one of the last subway trains for the night. Another successful weekend thanks to the kind Korean folk and the adventurous Aly!

The return to Hakata and my last night in Japan

Monday afternoon concluded with a trip to Shin Osaka station and the Shinkansen (bullet train) back to Hakata - my final destination in Japan.

Monday night was spent in a Japanese Sauna, with the usual snorting and farting from old Japanese men. At least it was a relatively cheap night.

Tuesday started off pretty slow until I made my way to Canal City - a shopping mall based on the theme of a man made canal.


The magical thing about Canal City was that it contained a map in English of the Hakata region. It would have been extremely if they had one of these at the tourist information centre. Now that I had a map, I could start exploring this city properly.

The majority of the city contained shrines and temples.


Eventually I stumbled across a guitar shop. This contained a crazy old Japanese man who seemed to be a guitar teacher. He becconed me into his shop and spoke to his students. Pretty soon he was pulling out some fast, noisy riffs - impressive for an old person!


The shop owner directed me to a bar by the name of House of Guitar which I had read about earlier in the day on the internet. This bar apparently is full of guitars, has guitars as tables, has a fret board as a bar top. Basically it's a bar for guitar heads - just my cup of tea.


The bar opened at 8pm - so I went back to my cumfy capsule hotel and prepared for a big last night in Japan.

I arrived at the bar pretty much right on 8pm. Unfortunately for the bar tender, I was the only person there. He could speak English but had a fairly limited vocabulary. Pretty soon we both sat down and jammed - ah music, the international language! After some time some people joined us who could speak English and eventually the owner arrived - a bit of a maistro on the the guitar. I loooked forward to this!

The owner jammed on stage with a couple of the customers, who themselves were fairly tallented. At the completion of their songs I was invited on stage to play guitar. Woohoo! I've never really played in a bar before. Could this be the moment I've been waiting for my whole life - a kickstart to my musical career? I jumped on stage and played a few blues riffs, together with a song and an intro to Metallica's Nothing Else Matters. Well, I got an applause and a pat on the back from a few of the customers so I was happy with that.


The night continued with a few free beers and scotches as well as making friends with many a Japanese group who made their way through the bar at various times.

Eventually around 2:30AM I decided to call it quits. Personally, I think there could be no better way to say farewell to a country.

The next morning I walked to the International Shipping Terminal in the teaming rain, ready to board my ferry back to Korea.



In conclusion, Japan was a nice place. The people were very very courtious, the food was good and the scenery was quite beautiful. Overall I would describe what I saw as a regimented version of a Western City with people speaking Japanese.

I would like to return some day to explore the rural areas to get a different overview of the country. But for now "Sayonarah" Japan.

Osaka

The trip to Osaka began on the Shinkansen or Bullet Train. The bullet train made the trip from Hiroshima to Osaka in record time. The trains are quite confortable and seem to make the supersonic journey with little effort or worry to the passengers it carries.

The modern Bullet Train (Shinkansen)


Shinkansen seating

I arrived in Osaka late in the afternoon. My first task was to sort out my return journey to Hakata. This proved to be quite diificult to achieve as nobody in Osaka station seemed to want to take responsibility for the open ticket that I was carrying. Eventually, after visiting many tourist bureaus and bullet train representatives I was able to lock in my ticket.

My next task was to catch the subway to my residence for the next two days. The place that I was staying was found through a concept named Couch Surfing. It basically involves a network of thousands of people throughout the world who are kind enough to offer their spare beds/couches/floor space to travellers whom for whatever reason do not want to stay at a hotel or hostel. If you wish to contribute to the network, check out the Couchsurfing Web Site.

The person that I stayed with, John, is a New Zealand born English teacher who has been living in Japan for 8 years. He was also hosting a couple from Texas at the same time.

After finally working out how to purchase a ticket, with a little help from an American girl, I made my way to the subway station. The train arrived and to my amazement, the carriage that I was about to enter was reserved for Ladies Only. I can only attribute this to the many stories that I have about women being accosted by the wandering hands of Japanese men (and possibly curious Japanese women) in the packed subway trains.

The "Ladies Only" Carriage

I eventually made it to John's house and had a chat with his well travelled hosts. John was kind enough to offer us his skills as a tour guide for the night.

First stop was dinner, a place named Potato Circus. The menu consisted of many small dishes, each costing around $3.50, including the always rewarding glasses of beer.

Our next stop was a quick tour through the heart of Osaka. Our first impression was that it totally outshone (literally) Picadilly Circus in terms of a visual sensory overload. These people really love their flourscent lights - more than the Koreans it would seem.

The lovely lights of Osaka

John then took us to an area where young Japanese dancers can practice their stuff. According to John, the dancers were allowed to occupy the area between the hours of 8 and 11pm, as long as they cleaned up after themselves. The irony of the area was that the majority of the teenagers were breakdancing. This is a dancing culture that traditionally attempts to rebel against the rules of society. However, they are rebelling within the confines of what is deemed to be acceptable behaviour in Japanese culture. Additionally, after each short session of break dancing, the teenagers would sit down with their traditional Japanese fans to cool themselves off, whilst completing their dinner of rice eaten with chopsticks. I doubt you would ever see that picture in the Bronx.

[insert picture here] [insert video link here]

Sunday began with a journey to Japanese Buddhist Temple. This was a relaxing and enjoyable experience. The Buddha statue is apparently one of the largest in Japan. The Temple also offered a small garden to the side of the cemetary and the main temple. The garden had an immediate calming affect on me. Although it was simple in design, it offered relaxing waterfalls, ponds with lillpads and goldfish and small trails. I spent a lot of time here, taking photos and enjoying the serenity of it all.


My next stop was the Osaka Aquarium. They advertised that they held a whale shark in captivity. This I had to see. I have seen many television shows that depict the beauty and tranquility of the plankton-eating shark. Sure enough, after beating the crowds of people, and viewing an assortment of otters, king penguins, sloths, dolphins and countless fish, I made it to the tank containing the whale shark. The shark itself was relatively small, 5 metres (about 15 feet) but nonetheless was a graceful and peaceful creature. I would love to dive with one in real life.


After the visit to the aquarium I decided to eat lunch. Upon parusing through the many assorted seafood restaurants, I came across an Australian restaurant. They advertised Australian beef meals for around $9. This would have been great if they weren't serving minature pieces of minute steak. Oh well, I guess the Japanese are fascinated with Australia so at least they can pretend to get a taste of our culture. I would imagine (and have witnessed) that they would be fairly put off by some of our pretend Japanese restaurants.


My last major attraction for the day was the Osaka viewing platform. This was a unique building which had a viewing platform high in the air, suspended between two buildings. The lovely part about this is that the lift to the top is on the outside of the building, and see through, so you get to watch the ground disappear as you ascent around 70 floors up. To add to the feeling of "gee, I'm really high up!" is the see through esculator that raises you the last couple of floors to the viewing platforms. However, the view from the platform was quite spectacular, especially as the sun was setting. It brought out the true beauty of Osaka.


Monday involved a visit to Osaka Castle. Unfortunately, the rain had set in, taking away the opportunity to a lovely sun soaked day in the grounds of the castle. Nevertheless, I enjoyed reading about some Japanese history and viewing some of the artifacts on display at the castle.


The highlight of the visit would have been the random snake that I came across whilst trying to get a decent photo of the castle. I had ventured to the rear of the castle, passed through come grassy areas submerged by water and found higher ground. The poor snake had decided that it wanted the same view of the castle as me. Unfortunately, it seemed to be afraid of my size and decided to slither away.


Another interesting aspect of the castle, is that it is surrounded by a large area of parkland. The eye catching feature about the park was that it appeared to accommodate a number of homeless people, who each seemed to have their own personal blue tarpaulin to live in. I decided to do a little research on what these tarpaulins are all about and came across an article which gives a little insight in to the lives of Japan's homeless.

Hiroshima

The journey to Hiroshima was long but visually appealing. I had opted to travel by coach, due to the wallet-emptying cost of the bullet train.

Luckily the majority of the traveling took us through rural Japan, so I got to see, from a distance, just how the other half of Japan really lived. I have to say, Japan is a really beautiful country.


Luckily also, the coach drivers seem to drive the buses like normal vehicles. This is the complete opposite to Korean coach drivers who leave a bus stop, put the accelerator flat to the floor, and leave it there until they reach the next bus stop. Usually, a trip in a Korean coach is like Moses parting the red sea - most vehicles in front just seem to sense there is a coach coming and get out of the way.

I arrived at the Hiroshima bus terminal late in the morning. Unfortunately, downtown Hiroshima was around 2 hours walk from the bus terminal. I asked a few locals how to get to downtown but this just added confusion to the matter - every solution they offered seemed to not be in my favour.

I eventually reached downtown Hiroshima via taxi. A word of warning though - the 15 minute taxi ride cost almost as much as the 4 hour coach ride. Yes, taxis in Japan are VERY expensive.

My first impression of Hiroshima is that it is very very very hot and very very very humid. I think I lost around 14 litres of fluid whilst standing in the shade for 5 minutes. Oh well, at least it keeps you relatively healthy. Maybe I could start a business here... "100 YEN sauna. Line up! Line up! Just step outside!"

As usual, my first task was to walk around downtown, to familiarise myself with the area and to get my bearings. Whilst doing this, I came across some homeless people living under a bridge - a little like trolls but definitely not as mean. To my surprise, the homeless people appeared to all have blue tarpaulin tents to live in. (More on this in my Osaka posting).

The afternoon involved a very sombre visit to Peace Park. In my opinion, this is the heart of Hiroshima. It contains remnants of a building that survived the A Bomb blast as well as many monuments and a large and extensive museum.




Whilst I was here I stumbled across a Japanese Buddhist ceremony. It involved the lighting of candles from an eternal flame followed by a formal ceremony. I have absolutely no idea of the significance of the ceremony as it was around 2 weeks before the anniversary of the dropping of the bomb, and around 1 week after the anniversary of the death of Sadako Sasaki - the girl who made the paper cranes famous. There's a fairly good summary of the park on Wikipedia.


The visit to Peace Memorial Park was a very moving and eery experience for me. Many people tend to forget the thousands of innocent victims who died painful torturous deaths or had many years of suffering through cancer or other radiation-related illnesses. The Park serves as a constant reminder of the horror of nuclear weapons and the wastefullness of war.

Later in the night, I stumbled (yes, I'm not joking) across the Hiroshima Red Light District. I had written down directions to a Capsule Hotel via a posting on an internet site. The directions led me straight into the heart of a rather seedy area (well, seedy by Japanese standards) which seemed to contain a large number of women in very short skirts (which was nice to observe!), a lot of massage parlours and a lot of pubs and clubs with the word "Sexy" in their name. Luckily, a random Japanese guy led me on his bike to a capsule a couple of blocks away.

My second day in Hiroshima was twice as hot as the first day. I think the river was starting to bubble whilst roads slithered away from their original resting place...

Today my goal was to visit Hiroshima Castle. This was a moderately interesting castle which gave a brief insight into the history of Hiroshima. For those of you that aren't aware (as I wasn't) Hiroshima used to be a collection of many small islands. Some king dude had the insight to make it a shipping port. As the same time, the silt from the mining up the river was washed downstream and gradually built the area into a single land mass. Pretty cool I think!


The other fun thing about Hiroshima is that the city is run by trams. The tram system is nowhere near as extensive as Melbourne, however it's still fun.

North Korea

The journey to North Korea started off a little rushed. Aly and I had originally deemed that 30 minutes was enough to reach the buses from our current location. Unfortunately, a few cab drivers decided taht they either didn't know what we were talking about when we got in the cab, or blatently refused to take us there. Eventually we found a cab that would take us - but the traffic was so slow that it would have been quicker to crawl, backwards, whilst blindfolded.

We finally arrived at the bus stop where the trip began, with just enough time to purchase a couple of LARGE beers for the all night trip to North Korea.

The company that took us was Adventure Korea. Aly knew a few other people on the buses from previous trips, so eventually I got to talk to them as well. Everyone seemed pretty friendly and excited to be there. I thrive on this type of atmosphere.

Aly had taken the advice of a couple of her friends and taken three travel sickness pills, purely to help her to fall asleep. Unfortunately, she fell straight into a really really deep sleep. Funnily, we had stopped at a road house during the night and Aly met another person from Kansas. Aly, in her sleepy haze did not have the energy or brain functionality to hold a conversation and drifted off. I'd love to hear what the other Kansas girl thought of this.

We arrived at South Korea customs around 6AM, after absolutely no sleep. We then mounted some UN buses, proceeded through the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) and reached North Korean customs. It was here that we were warned not to take any photos and generally be aware of our behaviour. Once through customs, we were greeted by some very happy smiling faces and a North Korean Bear, which was also friendly enough to wave to us. Oh what a happy place North Korea is!



After the over abundance of friendliness, we went for a hike in the North Korean forest. I have to admit, my initial impression is that North Korea got a pretty good deal when the countries were split - there is some very beautiful scenery here. It reminded me of Soraskan National Park, except that there is no snow this time. We were given two options for the hike, an easy option to a waterfall, or a hard option which supposedly could be done within two hour return. I reached the waterfall which was clouded in and couldn't help myself. I was drawn in by the challenge of proving to myself that I could beat the two hour estimate.

I have to admit, the hike was not easy by any standards. It mainly consisted of steps, followed by steep parts with steps, followed by steep ladders and a few more steps. After exactly half an hour I reached the top, a little more sweaty than when I had started. However, the view was completely worth it. I was greeted by spectular scenes of fog, cloud and mist.

The beautiful misty view...

After lunch we visited a nearby lake. It was not the most beautiful lake in the world but nevertheless it was quite pretty.

Happy North Korean Bears fishing in the lake

The lake trip was followed by an acrobatic show. Unfortunately, I fell asleep during the rope climbing/dangling off part but the rest was fun. There were a couple of crazy guys throwing things at each other, people climbing each other, people throw things whilst climbing each other and a breath defying trapeze act.


After eating a dinner of fried chicken????? (yes, that's very North Korean!) we retired in our hotel for the night's festivities. I have to say, our hotel was very five star and most impressive.

Our first task was to get a photo with President Kim. A few people started taking photos of the photo of Kim in front of the hotel - to the horror of the North Korean guards and the Concierge. Within seconds the sound of whistles and utter chaos filled the air and lightening filled the skies. Armageddon was upon us! Heaven forbid people had taken photos of President Kim without the approval of the guards. Luckily, the Concierge volunteered to approve our photos as long as he took them.

I have to admit, the Concierge was actually a pretty cool guy and we felt a little sorry for him. We had introduced him to Hacky Sack which he joined in on, he had taken photos of the group with Kim and we had shared a few jokes. I think he deserved a much better life elsewhere.

The majority of the night was spent in the bar areas of the hotel. It was here that everybody got to know each other a little better and experience the opportunity to have a couple of beers in North Korea. We found out the next day that the tour group dried the hotel of all beer and most probably made a few members of the hotel staff a little jealous at how much fun non-communists could have. Fancy that considering that "everyone is so happy in North Korea".

The night finished around 3AM after rescuing Aly and returning her to her room whilst sleep walking down the corridoors of the hotel.

The next day started with a bang. My room mate had decided to go to bed early and get up early. As a result, I woke up to a happy, jolly roomie. I made my way to breakfast which was a rather large buffet containing a mixture of Western and Korean foods.

Sunday provided the bonus of another hiking trip. Once again there was the option of an easy or a hard course and once again I couldn't resist the challenge of the hard one. We set at a relaxing pace with people tiring relatively quickly. However, soon enough I was in the "Crazy Hiking Koreans" pack and ascending at a breathless rate of knotts. I made it to the top with about five other people and as usual, they opened beer and Soju to celebrate - just the thing you need after sweating for the past 2 hours!

The afternoon finished with a trip to the local bay. Whilst there we could hear propaganda being blasted into the ears of the workers. From what I could gather, the man started by telling the workers what a nice day it was to be outside working in the fields, even though it is Sunday. This eventually built up to a crescendo of incesent yelling and screaming. My only guess is that the man was watching a replay of the Socceroos as they were kicked out of the Soccer World Cup by the over-acting of an Italian player. This was soon followed by some North Korean Top 40. I think somebody needed to tell the man that the stylus needs to be replaced and they they possibly should go down the road and renew their record collection.

Overall the North Korea trip was a great experience. There are not many people in the world that can say that they have been there in the past 50 years, especially 5 days after they had tested their nuclear missiles.

It was obvious to us that the areas that we toured were designed as a propaganda stunt to show the Western World just how happy the people were and how willing they were to present their country to us. I think in reality, from the brief glimpse that we caught of the workers and the soldiers that there is a lot the North Korea is hiding from the outside world and that there is still gross repression for the average person.

Nevertheless, the trip was awesome, I got to meet many new and fun people and I had a great time.

Where do I start?

Well, this is my first blog ever.

The purpose of my blog? To share my travelling experiences with my friends and anybody who might happen to stumble across it. I only know one other person in the whole world who maintains a blog - and if I could get this blog up to her level - I'd die a happy man...

Where do I start? Now is the obvious answer to that question - but rest assured - there will be many back-dated posts to come.

So, here it is. Welcome to my blog. Please enjoy.