Hilly Manly to Colourful Currumbin

So science over and done with it was time to delve into one of my other great passions, travelling. My plan was to fly out and meet my cousin early but sadly due to the enormous cost of flights on a Saturday I had to leave it until late evening. That left me with an extra half a day in Sydney that needed to be filled.

After a little bit of research in through the various leaflets lying around in my hotel I very quickly decided to head north to Manly by ferry to escape from the city and have a bit of a bike ride. Manly is about a 30-minute ferry ride out of Sydney’s main transport hub, Circular Quay, which was another 15 minutes from where I was staying. No lie in for me then if I wanted to make the most of the day.

Sadly that night I’d had to change rooms and my new sleeping spot had an open balcony overlooking the main road, with no windows! Needless to say I didn't sleep very much. In desperation I headed to the T.V room to try and chill on the coach. Alas I didn’t have much success but I did manage to watch a lot of classic Looney toons.

 

So with a little less than two hours of sleep under my belt I packed up my stuff, stuffed it in a locker and headed off to the ferry terminal. Alas my fatigued brain was not up to the task of buying ferry tickets and I managed to board the wrong one. I realised just in time but thanks to a rather unfriendly ticket lady I departed for Manly five dollars less rich.

The ferry ride over was very pleasant and reminded me of trips on the Mersey ferry when I was a wee little one, minus the obnoxious music of course. The addition of a spectacular view of the Sydney Opera house and Harbour Bridge were also very welcome.

30 minutes later and I was in Manly. A short stroll from the ferry terminal I found the bike rental place and looking around at all the awards they had won I knew I was in for a treat. The staff were friendly, the selection of bikes was large and all the safety equipment was provided. With my gear locked up and helmet strapped on I was ready for the off.

Getting out of the main town area was a little bit hairy but once you are away the roads clear up beautifully. It seems like the local council have really invested a lot in cycling as there were signed cycle routes everywhere. After a little bit of peddling I soon realised why the area is called Manly. It’s a hilly place and some of them are massive, if you aren’t feeling very manly when you set off you deffo will by the end of the day. A bit of reading has revealed that the reason behind the naming of the place is because of how ‘Manly’ the natives appeared to Capt. Arthur Phillip so there you go. Manland.

Sadly I was a bit short on time but I tried to cram in as much as I possibly could and did a rapid 30km route of the southern coast. First I headed out to Sydney harbour national park for a little bit of (unintentional) off-roading and some amazing coastline and Cliffside views. Having the vast expanse of the southern pacific stretching out before you on a clear day is totally breathtaking. If you get the chance to just take in a view like that sometime definitely go for it.

After a very short tour of the North fort artillery museum I turned back around and headed down towards Manly’s main beach, aptly named Manly beach, for a nice little promenade pedal and a break from all the hills. It being a Saturday the beach was packed and there was a lot of weaving to be done. If I’d had the time it would have been nice to maybe try and surf a bit and chill out but as usual time was short.

 

I finished out by heading west through the main residential area, more monster hills. There seemed to be a lot of construction and real estate auctions going on. I’m not too surprised to be honest as the area is gorgeous and just far enough from Sydney proper to not have the whole busy atmosphere of a big city.

So all pedalled out I bought a whole mango and some other snacks from ALDI, yes and ALDI and the brands were almost the same to, before boarding the ferry back to Sydney. After that it was a short hop by plane to the Gold coast, which in the eyes of local time zones took 0 time, and my cousin’s place in Corrumbin. I have to admit one of my favourite things about the trip, apart from the weather of course, has been the access to fresh fruit, vegetables and bread. That and shelves full of cereal. Ah how I miss the food of home.

Laters.

Sunday is for exploring

I spend far too much time thinking, “Flippin heck I live on a mountain in the middle of nowhere,” and not enough time thinking “Flippin heck, I live on a mountain in the middle of nowhere.” I woke up after midday after an epic night out, I hate waking up late but sacrifices must be made and it was an amazing party, leading to a 5am return.

 I was moping a bit thinking that now it was too late to go exploring, the next bus wouldn’t arrive till 3pm and that would give me 4 scant hours to travel to somewhere. Not enough time. That's a rubbish attitude to have though. Not sure what got me thinking it but think back to being 5. Every time you step out the door it’s an adventure, the smallest trip becomes epic.

I need to get that back to that or I’ll go mad up here. Now the weather is turning nicer I have no real excuses to keep me indoors. To that end I hopped on my bike, zipped up my swanky gortek coat (cheers Dad) and set out on the mountain roads to explore and take some piccies.

When the idea sprung up in my mind I was a little apprehensive at first. I’ve still got a few hang ups and sometimes I second-guess myself when I plan on going cycling, it's ridiculous really. There are a lot of bad memories tied into those 2 wheels that I’d rather put behind me. Recently though I think I’ve just been seeing it as another mode of transport and I’m starting to remember how much I love cycling.

I didn’t realize till I did this how little of my local area I’ve really seen, and surprisingly how much it’s been touched by human hands. There are dams all over the mountain and extensive tunnels piercing the landscape. Looking at some of the bypasses around here I have nothing but great respect for Japanese engineering.

That being said though there is still a lot of exciting natural landscapes, whether artificially arranged or naturally occurring I’m not sure. One thing that is almost ubiquitous around here is the Cedar tree. They were planted in great numbers during the 20’s and have since become a corner stone of the wood industry.

An interesting byproduct is that many, many Japanese are allergic to them. Hay fever, known locally as 花粉症、is a huge problem come the spring with many a Japanese person donning a face mask to fend off the invasive pollen. I’m thankfully completely immune, in fact I’m not bothered by hay fever at all over here which makes a nice change.

Another reason I need to get out and do this more is that it’s great inspiration for my writing.  Some of the stuff I snapped with my phone just screams, to me at least, to be written about. The small brook and rickety wooden house being encroached on by cedar trees in particular spring to mind. Whilst I am a city boy at heart I do love being outdoors. Sitting back and watching a stork fly off into the sunset was another great moment. I actually dove for my note book when I got back to the apartment to scribble down a load of ideas.

There is a whole world out there I never see, as per an earlier post. Taking the time to really experience it was a great thing and got me to thinking what is the real nature of exploration. It’s about the journey right? Not what you find at the end really.

So I think as much as I can I’ll set aside Sundays for exploring. This doesn’t need to necessarily be physically travelling. Sometimes it might be an inward exploration, or maybe going for a new experience. Perhaps the exploration will be of a virtual world of someone else’s creating in a game or a book. I’m not sure of the logistics really but I’ll have a lot of fun trying for sure.

On another note Venus and Jupiter looked incredible on Monday night. Gotta love those clear night sky views up here. Anyway hopefully I’ve inspired you to go and explore your own world just a little. 

Mata neeeee.

Kindness and Cockups. Kobe and candy.

Phew what a week. Shigoto, shigoto, shigoto (work, work, work). Sadly our beam time has not thrown up any concrete information so it seems I spent almost 60 hours awake for nothing. Ah well it was our first time so I wasn’t particularly hopeful. I have to say I’m so glad I was into Lego and Mechano as a child as I seem to have spent a good portion of the last week with an Alan key in hand. As Liam pointed out to me experimental hutches are like giant Mechano sets.

Anyway other than that this week hasn't been massively interesting. Besides work I got my alien residency card, which has opened the door to some cool things, namely I could now get a keitei (mobile phone). I have also got my hand on a nice road bike for…FREE. Unbelievable right.

So that brings me on to the title of the blog. Kindness. The level of generosity and patience I’ve experienced from people here has been unbelievable. After mentioning I needed a bike Ignace, the French guy I mentioned earlier, sent me a template message to send out to inquire about a second hand bike. I got a response nearly straight away, and all though I insisted on paying, the kind person offering the bike to me would have none of it. Sugoi (amazing).

This also brings me back onto my first cock-up, so it turns out that mailing list I used to send out the message shouldn’t be used in this way. I got a short sharp telling off. Still we don’t learn unless we make mistakes and I always resolve to only make them once.

So the next kindness, you can see a theme emerging here ey. The money I had brought with me finally ran out on Tuesday and due to an error processing my bank account I had no bankcard with which to process my wages. Bit of an issue since I’d hoped to go away on Friday with the free day holiday. Fortunately for me the secretarial staff where amazing and managed to get me my flight reimbursement money in cash. I do believe I owe them some cake.

Speaking of cake I thought I’d take a brief moment to talk about sweets. Someone the other day asked me what the sweets were like in Japan and I sadly couldn’t tell them. As I may have mentioned before I’m a bit funny with food and I have a horrible feeling I’ve lost some weight since I’ve been here. So I decided to investigate Japanese sweets further. Traditional Japanese sweets are called Wagashi and here are a few I’ve come across so far.

Mochi: Essentially a ball of glutinous rice flour covered in sugar and usually stuffed with something sweet. Most of the time this is Anko, or sweet red bean paste. Whilst not overly sweet these things have an amazing gooey texture and I can’t get enough of em.

Dango: Similar to mochi but stickier and on, well, a stick. Kind of like a sweet kebab.

Yokan: These are blocks of agar mixed with Anko and sugar. It’s similar to jelly but not quite so rubbery. Very tasty.

Taiyaki: This is again filled with anko. It’s essentially fried pancake like batter pressed around anko in the shape of a fish. I think they do other filling as well. You seem to be able to get them in many street markets.

There are also many cookies, including these nice black sesame seed ones I picked up yesterday. Fruit jellies and hard sweets to, I’m a big fan of the raw cane sugar things. And of course many odd flavors of chupa chup, including matcha (green tea) flavor.

Ok so yesterday. Now this was a fun day. I’d been emailing back and forth with a member of Osaka’s Frisbee team called Yuko for a while and had found out she was also into climbing. Yuko is a lot of fun. She’s very lively, I think that may be down to her job as a personal trainer, and is also very curious about England. She had told me she new of a nice place to climb in Kobe so we agreed to meet up on Friday as it was a national holiday.




On my way to the bus stop I noticed there was a festival going on just own the road from my flat. Had to go have a look around really. I’m not sure exactly what the occasion was, possibly just because it was Showa day, but it was pretty fun. There were loads of food stores, people selling locally grown goods and also some displays from the local school kids. The music and dancing was a lot of fun to watch.

I stayed for a bit but I was getting on for time and didn’t want to keep Yuko waiting. I set off on the now familiar trip to the station and took the train to Kobe. Unlike Osaka, Kobe station was a lot smaller and I easily found Yuko. We wandered for about ten minutes to the rock gym, introducing ourselves a bit more along the way.

The gym, called Kobe rock garden, was pretty small but lots of fun. It was all bouldering but that's not a problem, it was a god way to get back into climbing. I was a little confused at first. The grading system and how the routes were planned where very different to hat I’m used to. Also the starting footholds weren’t so great, but I eventually got the hang of the place (no pun intended).

Ah it was fun to be climbing again and it was nice to do it with many other enthusiasts. Although they didn’t speak much English the staff were very helpful and I think explaining climbing moves transcends language. Yuko got chatting to a couple there that were about our level and we all tried problems together. It was fun and there was much cheering whenever one of us reached the top hold.

After a good two and a half ours of bouldering I was getting pretty hungry. We got changed and Yuko led me down to the main shopping area of Kobe on the port. It seems really nice don there, much less busy than Osaka and actually reminded me of home a bit. I think I’ll have to look around Kobe again when I’m not so rushed, there seems to be quite a bit to do.
So onto the food. Yuko picked out a hamburger restaurant with a great view of the river. Hamburgers aren’t normally my thing, I’m not so good with beef, but it seemed impolite to disagree with my host so I just went with it. Now in Japan hamburgers are done a bit differently. As you can see from the picture they’re generally served like a stew with a thick onion gravy. It was good but a bit heavy and I think it sat on my stomach a little ☹.

Right so well fed we had a good chat about loads of things, mainly travelling and Frisbee though. Lots of talk about Frisbee in fact. Yuko told me all about a tournament coming up in July which should be cool. Apparently in Japan, and contrary to what I’d been told, things are the same as Britain. There is a real struggle to get women playing the sport. Yuko it seems really wants to expand the team in Osaka so they can enter more tournaments around Japan. I’ll have to help with that I think .

We left the restaurant and had a quick wander around the nearby shopping mall. I had asked her earlier about getting hold of a phone and noticed some signs up in one of the shops we passed. In we went and after a few initial exchanges we realized the salesperson spoke perfect English. I managed to get myself a good deal on a 2-year contract, half price with the 2-year contract, so I’m sorted phone-wise. Or rather I would be but my train was actually due to leave before the phone would be registered eep.

I had planned o meet up with Yuko again on Sunday anyway so she offered to pick up my phone whilst I legged it to the train station. Now I realize that this was a bit of a silly thing to do given I’d only met this person once, but my experiences so far have only been positive, plus as I’ve sad before Frisbee players are generally all right. So off I dashed.

Alas it was for nothing I missed the last bus home and had to get a taxi, which was outrageously expensive. Cock-up. It probably would have just been cheaper to stay in Kobe. Ah well never mind. Anyway I’ll finish there. Currently there is an open day going on at work but that's for another post. I’ll leave you all with a few pictures of my home cooking, including something I have dubbed okonomibreakfast, okonomiyaki batter mixed with fruit.

Dewa matta mina-san.

Tabemono, Nomimono and a weekend of adventure

So once again sleep evaded me, thank-you jet lag. I’m sure it’ll sort itself out soon. It was Saturday and I was up at 6 in the morning what was that all about. Though I’d not slept much through the night either. Still it did mean I could get my first skype call to the rents, was great to finally chat with them . I decided to do a bit of yoga to chill out and set me up for the day, and then proceeded to watch some anime live, something I’d been trying to do since I got here. It was rubbish but novel.

So after that it was on to the cafeteria for breakfast with the usual “Kore wa nan desu ka? Sumimasen kairoi to nyusein areguri desu, kore wa daijobu desu?” I eventually managed o sort myself with something to eat, miso, rice, salmon and some veg.

After a bit of discussion over some green tea, myself Cheung and Liam decided it would be a cool idea to rent some bikes and go for an adventure around the site and into Harima. We went to the front desks and picked up the keys to our trusty steeds. They were free to rent which was awesome.  We had a few initial hiccups getting the tires pumped up but after that we were good to go. We started off with a quick peddle round the synchrotron itself. It’s a really impressive structure in itself although as the beam is down right now for maintenance. We also had a better look at the XFEL. This thing is massive, there is a really slender pipeline that runs the length of it which is the 1km long beamline, involved in a lot of testing of optical sensors.

So with the facility satisfactorily traversed we continued on into Harima Garden city. It was all down hill on the way so we whizzed into town quickly. The place is admittedly a little bare. There are a couple of science facilities, 2 schools (a high school and an elementary school) and part of Hyogo University. There was also a little shopping precinct called Hyogo plaza. There were a few things there like a bank, supermarket, post-office and a restaurant with loads of plastic food outside. I’d heard about this but it really is a site to see in reality, apparently making plastic food for menus is big business in Japan.

  We popped into the co-op there to buy exciting things. I go some dango, sweets made from glutinous rice flour and sugar on a stick and the bento I’d been dreaming of, yum yum. Cheung also made us try so red bean paste ice-lollies. Odd but still very tasty. I also grabbed some snacky stuff to bring back, including some cereal if I got fed up of the traditional Japanese brekkie.

So fed and watered we thought it would be a good idea to check out the rest of Harima. Like I said earlier there wasn’t much else to see but we had fun tackling some of the brutal, and I mean it when I say brutal, hills around the area. We finished at Hyogo University science facility. It was very, erm, brown there was a cool rock in the centre that I took a piccie of. We turned back and slogged our way back upto the main gate of Spring8, the worst part of all the down hill on the way here, the up hill on the way back. Back into the guest room. I mooched about on the internet for a bit and fell asleep, and didn’t wake up till eight the next day whoops.

Sunday morning I was a bit groggy probably the result of missing dinner (again). I strolled down to the cafeteria for another unusual breakfast. Irashaimasei, I’m not going to lie here that phrase is starting to great. Literally said every time you enter a shop, restaurant whatever, and means welcome your money.

Everyone was still knackered so we all went back to our rooms. I picked up a can of grape fanta. One of my goals out here has been to drink as many odd drinks as possible. This is for two reasons. One there are just sooo many on offer, including hot beverage vending machines. Two when I was at the height of my disorder I’d always found it terrifying to  drink ‘calories’ for a lot of reasons I won’t go into. Anyway I’m putting up a collection of the ones I’ve had so far. The one with the weird blue thing proclaims itself to be delicious (Oishii) and it didn’t lie. The chocolate soda with Alice in wonderland stuff on was my fave so far though.

After a bit of reading, Internet browsing and cleaning my climbing boots it was time for lunch, a dish called ka-san to kodomo (mother and child), which is chicken and eggs over noodles. I didn’t get a picture sadly forgot my camera it was tasty though.

Cheung was still tried and went back to bed but Liam and me felt like a bt more exploring and so jumped a bus to Aioi the nearest town. It was a 30-minute bus ride and I couldn’t help notice how rural the area was, so many rice paddies. We really are a ways out here. It was cool to see some traditional Japanese housing as well instead of the apartment blocks which are everywhere in the big cities.

We wandered around for quite a while, though there wasn’t much going on really it being a Sunday. There were quite a few people on bikes, or cars with megaphones shouting something about various candidates for a local election I think. That was the impression I got anyway.

Anyway Aioi was pretty cool though rather small. It seemed to be mostly residential. We walked along the ‘river’ which I think may have just been drainage and I noticed some cool slap. I had a quick look to see if it was bouldering suitable, I may have to come back to this later. We continued down the road, passed what looked like a garden centre (I snapped a pick for you dad). We has a pit stop in a 7 eleven where I got some One piece tack (yay) and then down the main high street.

Most places where disappointingly closed but I did get a look into a rather cool looking pottery shop. At the end of the road we came across a massive convenience store. Had to look inside really didn’t we? I’m no good in massive shops I get totally bewildered and it was even worse now everything was in Japanese. I did manage to find some studio gibli inspired dishcloths and a wall of capsule dispensers (little plastic things with collectables inside A.K.A more one piece tack).

Inside was also a rather extensive bookshop. Couldn’t help myself really had to have a look around. So much stuff in there and none of it I could understand. They had a manga section and I was determined to buy something. Unfortunately I didn't know what everything was and as manga can be about anything I didn’t want to risk picking up something dodgy. After a while deliberating I picked something that looked violent and boyish. The guy at the counter asked me if I was an English teacher, Gyako sama eigago sensei desu ka? (I guess they get a lot of em over). Book bought we headed back for dinner and an early night, medical time and a tour of the facility tomorrow I think.

Oh also we found this cool bug next to the vending machines in reception. I think it’s some kind of centipede. The Japanese word for bug is mushi.

Matte ne.