From east to west.

There was actually a final little leg in my tour around Japan during the week of holidays I took before coming home. I had a lovely bike ride around a very cool temple town called Kamakura, and saw the final of the three great sitting Buddha statues (大仏). I'll put up some nice pictures in this post so you can have a look. It was a great end to the trip, I saw some sights in Kamakura that I'd been meaning to see for a while and also hooked up with some other old friends who'd moved out to Kanto, I was so grateful to see them one last time.

What I really want to write here is that, well I'm home. I got back about two months ago and well, yeah that is about it. Nothing really earth shattering has happened and all the stuff people told me about coming back has pretty much turned out to be true.

It's been good to meet up with my old mates of course, but I really am missing all the good friends I made back in Japan. I think I left the country in part to get away from the Identity that I had built up around me in the UK. This is going to sound weird, but I didn't feel like me for about 1 or 2 years before leaving. Well I think I found myself, or someone, and I definitely feel richer for it.

Being in Japan taught me a lot of things I didn't know about myself, science, and the world in general. So if you don't mind I'll indulge myself and list them:

1. I love being around people but my god it drains me. I think I've always been more introverted than I let on. My close friends in the UK are quite intense and present, and I love them for it. Sadly thought sometimes in social situations I had just had to shout louder or not be heard. Being stuck up a mountain gave me a lot of time to chill by myself and I found in doing that I could enjoy my time with people even more.

2. I really can achieve stuff if i dedicate myself to it. During my time I picked up, amongst other things: another language, programming, accelerator physics and basic optics, SAXS, snowboarding, some electronics, basic graphic design. My skill sets have increased quite a bit and I'm infinitely grateful for it. I do need to apply myself more still, but I have more confident that I can achieve.

3. Hard work does pay off, even if it really takes a lot of time. Something I learnt from my boss "If you want something hard enough you can make it happen, but it will take a lot of effort".

4. I'm a lot smarter than I think, but not smart enough, but noone really is so it's best to keep learning.

5. Knowing when to take a step back. I have a tendency to do too much, I really do enjoy being active. Sadly my body doesn't always agree but I'm coming to terms with it and just making the time to chill.

6. Food just isn't that scary. Allergies make food pesky, but I make it an issue, sometimes I just need to consider other people and let things go.

7. I really hate disappointing people, it is my biggest fear. I think I run away from a lot of social situations and responsibility because of it. I'm 25 now, I think I'm old enough to get over myself and just accept that sometimes people get hurt or put out because of my actions, regardless of intention. So long as I'm sincerely sorry for that it should be fine, and if not they probably aren't the kind of person worth worrying about.

I could go on I'm sure, but I won't. I've been asked a lot if I miss it out there. I could easily answer yes, though honestly I miss the people more than the country. There is a lot right about Japan but there is also a lot wrong too. I think I got sucked a bit too into the negative and I should try and be more positive when people ask about it. I didn't have the best experience, I wasn't in a sugar coated bubble, but I think it was fuller for that reason. I'm happy I left when I did as some things were starting to make me bitter, something I would have hated to become.

Ultimately I was out there to study. I'd like to think that I did enough work to get my PhD and I should really start writing up soon. I'm still throwing myself at work though and trying to squeeze out some more results. I guess you can take the the man out of Japan but not the Japan out of the man. That or I'm just trying to escape the feelings of loss and reverse culture shock, probably the latter. Either way the whole experience did disillusion me with the scientific process. I'm going to need think long and hard about my next move.

I guess this was a long winded way to say that I am going to retire from this blog. It has served its purpose, fulfilled its mission statement if you will. I've enjoyed writing and growing and I'm glad some of you came along for the ride. I'm going to keep it back just so I can look back on the memories and the great times I had.

This is of course not the end though. I'm sure I'll be writing something again soon, I need an outlet for my musings. However, for the time being the monkey is hanging up his travelling cloak and putting his walking staff to one side. It was a phenomenal 2 and a half years. Truly life changing. I'm grateful for the places I've been, the things I've done, the sounds I've heard, but most importantly the people I met. You are now a little part of me, maybe more than a little actually, so don't forget about me ね。

Well I guess this is it, Sayonara Japan, I'm sure we'll see each other again.

Sayonara Sojourns Pt. 3 Seeing Sendai

So after a rather epic 7 hours of trains, chatting with old geezers, helping a young lady break open a hard boiled egg to discover she spoke almost perfect english, and generally just lolling my way up the country, I finally arrived in Sendai. My initial impression? I was really taken aback by just how lively the place is. I guess it had been over two years since the earthquake and tsunami at that point, and the city is a good distance from the coast, so maybe I should have been less surprised.

The liveliness of course totally worked against my favour this time. I, fool that I am, had completely forgotten to book somewhere to stay for this leg of the journey and so laden with baggage I began a frantic search for somewhere to rest my head. Alas nearly every place I tried turned me away and at one point I thought I may have to rough it in a love hotel. 

These places, funnily enough originally established in Osaka in the 1960's, are pretty damn seedy. They were originally built to allow couples, young and old, a place of privacy away from the cramped confines of modern Japanese living. These days however, they are more likely to be patronised by Japanese Salarymen trying to escaped the cramped confines of married life. Oh and prostitutes, definitely can't forget the prostitutes.

Suffice to say I just couldn't bring myself to stay at one of these places, I'm sure they are physically very clean but I can't quite say the same for the atmosphere inside. Instead I opted for somewhere that was a little bit outside of my usual price range. I figured what the hell, the likelihood of me travelling around Japan by myself is slim for a while and also after all the money I saved with my crazy travelling I could treat myself a bit. My friend was sadly busy that evening so I just settled into my room, watched a bit of walking dead and chomped on some zunda dango. Zunda is a kind of sweet paste made from edamame that is a local speciality and is absolutely delicious. Kind of like sweet mushy peas but way tastier than that sounds.

After a well deserved nights sleep it was off to see what sights Sendai had to offer. My friend had not been in town long and was also eager to have a look about. This friend is that same one I met out in Yokohama who works in the circus. As such she is always moving about the country and, as well as just being generally great company, has lots of great stories of her travels and life in the circus.

With not much lay of the land we copped out and jumped on board Sendai's local tourism bus, the loople. It was pretty cheap for the day pass and since it stops at all of the major sights it seemed like the logical way to go. It also meant we could spend less time thinking about where and how to go to places and more time just idly chatting, which was fine by me as the main reason I'd come out this far was to make the most of the little time I had left to just hang out.

Our first touristy spot was the Zuihoden Mausoleum, the tomb of Date Masamune who was one of the most powerful feudal lords of the Edo period,so powerful in fact he earned the nickname of "The one eyed dragon (独眼竜)", pretty nails right. The most striking thing about the Mauseleum itself is the colour palette. Many vibrant reds, greens, blues and yellows adorn the intricate and it looks as though it would be more at home in a modern chinatown than an ancient Japanese tomb. The surrounding area is also very beautiful with many massive cedar trees, symbolic apparently of the Date clan's long history. Besides the tomb is a nice little museum with exhibits regarding the excavation of the site. My friend was very taken with some of the patterned ornaments and sculptures. I myself was more fascinated with some of the ancient tools, it always amazes me how little things like glasses and scissors have changed over the years.

Next we moved on to Sendai castle, or rather what was left of Sendai castle. Sadly much of it was destroyed by the Meji restoration, a large fire in the late 1800s and bombings during world war II respectively. Whilst there is not much castle action the grounds themselves are pretty impressive. Sendai castle was a Yamajiro (山城) or mountaintop castle, one of the original styles of Japanese castle. As you can imagine from the name it is built on top of a mountain, Mt. Aoba to be precise, and with that comes fantastic sweeping views over the city below. I was happy to trade a view of an ancient Japanese castle for the great views out into Sendai.

With the weather cooling down a bit, it is much milder oop north, we opted out of a bus ride back into town and instead wandered back into town in search of adventure (read lunch). I think it was in the main shopping street that I really started to see the impact of 2011. We managed to find ourself a trendy little cafe with seats next to huge windows that overlook the high street. People watching is a mutual hobby of ours and you would think that the city centre would be ideal, but the streets were barren. 

Around 16,000 people lost there lives in March 2011 and several thousand are still missing. Add to that the numbers who are missing or have been evacuated and you can see it has put a real dent into the local population. The gravitas of the situation didn't really hit me however until I saw it first hand in those empty streets however. My friend showed me some pictures taken from the town nearby where she is staying that is quite literally not there anymore. The pictures were, well I'll let you imagine their emotional impact on me. I really wish I'd got my act together and done some volunteering out there.

Ok onto happier things now. After finishing lunch and ogling a shrine that appeared as though it had had the shopping arcade built around it, we went…fabric shopping! I know nice and exciting right? Well actually I enjoyed it a whole lot more than I was expecting. My friend is very into fabric, textiles and craft working and when you are around someone that enthusiastic it is impossible to not be drawn in yourself.

Sadly following this we had to part ways as my friend was a little knackered due to her intense work schedule. It's tough being a clown. I didn't mind too much, it would of been nice to spend a bit more time together but I can totally understand just wanting time for yourself so you can just relax. I figured I could use my remaining time to head out and see the new Gibli film I'd wanted to catch before I left Japan. Sadly the nearby cinema was only showing Hollywood fare and the other cinema was too far out of town. Instead I spent the final few hours in a Starbucks catching up on emails and chatting on Facebook, almost as good right? Right?

Well that ends my Tohoku travels. I took a night bus out at around midnight. It wasn't as hellish as the usual journeys but sadly all the seats were furbished with a built in sega mega drive simulator. I quickly located Sonic and Knuckles and, as I'm sure you could guess, didn't sleep very much that night either.

Ja mata neee.

Tokyo Day 1

Well Spring is well and truly in full swing. The cold is behind me, the Sakura has already bloomed and fallen and the new financial year is well under away. So what better way to welcome in the new season than…a holiday. Last year I missed almost all of spring thanks to a large amount of beamtime, the only spring I saw was of the 8 variety. This year with my group’s size shrinking, and the fact we have plenty of data to work with, we’ve applied for much less beamtime.

April is about the best month to be in Japan in terms of the weather. It’s not too hot, the rainy season hasn’t set in it is definitely the third bowl of porridge of seasons in Japan. With that in mind when my parents mentioned they wanted to visit I told them that April was the best month. So without further ado here is a little travel log of the week we spent in Tokyo.

As with nearly all of my trips to the capital that aren’t for work my journey started the night before boarding the night bus from Osaka. I’ve experienced these beasts quite a few times and it’s always a bit different, a topic for another post perhaps, either way they are by far the cheapest way to get to and from Tokyo for me and I’m now a gold member due to my frequent use.

One long and uncomfortable bus journey later and I was standing in front of Tokyo station, and it was finished. To backtrack it has been under renovation since I arrived but now it is all done. I must admit it does look magnificent a real blast from the late 19^th century. After basking for a while I descended into the maze therein to make my way to Ueno park.

I’ve heard many great things about this place, it’s the home to many national museums, plenty of sights of historic importance and also a zoo, admittedly I had no intention of visiting that though. Suffice to say I was very excited to finally get there. Ueno station on the Yamanote line is right outside so I had no excuses not to haul my bum over there, sleep deprived or not.

First impressions? It’s E.N.O.R.M.O.U.S. I think I don’t have too much experience of huge public parks to draw on, or I’ve been in Japan too long where large green spaces are few and far between, but either way I was really staggered by just how much open space there was. The park was established way back in the meji period as a drive for more public places of exceptional beauty, an idea borrowed from European countries at the time. Well good work Meji people you really nailed it.

Asides from monolithic Tokyo National Museum, Tokyo Metrapolitan Art Museum and National Museum of Western Art, amongst a few others, the park is home to a wide variety of flora and fauna. Over 9,000 trees call it their home and as such it has become a particularly famous place to visit for 花見 (flower viewing) in early april. Most of the blossoms had already fallen to the ground thanks to a heavy storm a few days previously but there were still many out braving the early morning to lay down their tarps for festivities in the evening. Amongst them is an incredibly old Cherry blossom tree that is incredibly designated as a world heritage site.

After necking a coffee I wandered about the place in a bit of a daze. As you can imagine, this being Japan after all, there were plenty of shrines knocking about the place. The shrine to Benzaiten (A goddess of luck), which sits out in the middle of a lake definitely caught my attention. I wandered over one of the many bridges out to the shrine taking in the skyscraper dominated skyline that, for me, always epitomises Tokyo. The shrine is not so special but I guess it gets a lot of visitors as there were many people setting up Yatais (portable food stalls). I got talking to the lady who owned on such that was selling dried fruits and nuts. She was fairly impressed with the fact A) I spoke passable Japanese and B) I’d come all the way from Hyogo by Night bus and gave me a nice handful of dried fruit for breakfast. Language skill level up.

So as I mentioned earlier there are many museums and galleries in Ueno and the thing that impressed me most was the price. None were more than 600yen and some were even free. Having not long been severely ripped off at the Kobe municipal museum I was more than happy to see this.

I had to debate were to go a bit but in the end my inner science nerd won out and I went to the National science museum. What can I say, science isn’t my job it’s my lifestyle choice. That and it had a giant whale model outside so I was intrigued from the beginning.

A quick warning here. Whilst the exhibits are enourmous, informative, and well layed out there is also almost zero English information in the entire building. I was a little shocked by this given it is a national museum, but I have long come to expect this from Japanese institutions. That being said if you can read there is a lot of interesting stuff here, with a heavy emphasis on natural history.

The one weird thing I did get out of the museum though was how amazingly Japanocentric it was. One exhibit that really stuck out was one in which the indigenous vs non-indigenous flora and fauna of Island nations was compared. Specifically Japan, New Zealand and the UK. Now it is true that Japan does have a lot of animals very particular to it’s lands alone but as an outsider the way the display was set up almost made it feel like “Japan rules and these other countries suck.” This was also apparent in a section tracing the anthropology of human existence in Japan. One display said in all but words “The Japanese people are special and unlike every other race on the planet.” Maybe I’m just being cynical but it’s a little unsettling that these kind of messages are being passed down to children.

The next floor down however my dark thoughts were dispelled by a wonderful showroom full off old scientific instruments. If there is one thing I most definitely am it is a massive instrumentation geek. I love this stuff. Looking at old telescopes, seismometers and even a 1933 electron microscope really brightened my mood. A kind old man even stopped to explain a bit about the history of the seismometers and how in ancient times in Japan it was believed a giant catfish demon was the source of earthquakes.

The museum itself is absolutely huge. It is separated into two sections, Japan and global, each of which has three upper floors and two basement floors. Being a natural history museum a large portion of the exhibits were set aside for hulking great skeletons (some amazing dinosaurs in there), taxidermy models and, weirdly enough, a large exhibit displaying the intestinal tract of various animals. I was immediately taken back to my youth spending time wandering the displays of Liverpool museum.

Nostalgia aside this place is an excellent waste of time and money at 600 yen. I easily spent 5 hours wandering it’s corridors and I could happily have spent longer. What I will say is that I’m glad I got into Ueno and the museum early because by the time I was leaving around 3pm the whole area was incredibly crowded.

So there ends day one, didn’t really do much after I met up with the rents. Anyway look forward to day 2 some time soon.

Ja mata ne.

Hokkaido Yuki Matsuri

So after almost 2 years of hard work, stress, sleepless nights and god knows what else I’ve finally managed to get me some data I can work with. This of course means I’m now elbow deep in data analysis. A lot less stressful than experiments for sure but also a lot less fun. It’s repetitive, it’s boring and, thanks to the ambiguity of the technique I’m working with, seemingly never ending. But at least I have something I can work with.

Data analysis does however come with some benefits though. Almost all the analysis is computer based and as such can be done anywhere. This means I can do the unthinkable and…take a holiday mid-week. I know I know it’s very out of character and I’m pretty sure very un Japanese but hey, I’m not Japanese and neither is my boss so I managed to get away with.

So what prompted the desire to take a bit of a break, apart from being fully done in by several months of hard experiments? Well I’ll tell you. With my departure immanent, albeit not as soon as I was thinking it would be, I’ve been taking every opportunity to explore further afield whilst I’m in Japan. With that I decided to head out to the northern most reaches of Japan, Hokkaido.

The northern Island of Japan is famous for several things. Its natural beauty in any season is lorded by many of those on the mainland, its low population means that much of the natural landscape lays undisturbed. The same can also be said of its wildlife. Sadly this is best seen in the summer months and as we are in the middle of winter there wasn’t much chance of that. However winter also boasts some unnatural beauties of it’s own in the form of the Sapporo Yuki Matsuri (札幌雪祭り).

The snow festival is one of Japan’s biggest events seeing more than 2 million people flock to Hokkaido annually to bare witness. It was started by a few High school students building Snow statues in the centrally located Oodori park in the 1950’s and has grown and grown ever since. One of my favourite facts is that the local defence force is required to participate as a training exercise.

The festival runs for one week and whilst you can visit the sculptures anytime I definitely recommend heading down after dark. Sure it’s freaking cold (about -10­⁰C)

And yes the streets are crowded but the lighting is absolutely fabulous and really accentuates just how amazing these things are. Pictures do not do these things justice. The scale is just something else with entire buildings being reconstructed purely out of snow. I was pretty much in awe of everything I walked past, some of these sculptures were easily over 10 metres.

A little bit down the way is Sapporo’s central entertainment district, Susukino, where the streets are lined with spectacular ice sculptures. Again these really need to be seen at night as the pure ice glistens with the surrounding lighting. Once more I really can’t do these justice with pictures but I gave it a go anyway. If you go for the start of the festival you can also be treated to watching some of the sculptors hard at work with their chainsaws putting together some of the statues.

Of course no festival in Japan would be complete without Yatai’s, small portable food stores, and these were a bit of a treat. The other thing Hokkaido is famous for, besides nature and being mega cold, is food. It is one of Japan’s central agricultural hubs, being home to about a quarter of Japan’s arable land. Add to this the cold northern seas and that gives you great fish and veggies to boot.

Being that it is very cold Hokkaido food tends to be on the heartier side but when you are out in sub-zero temperatures that is pretty welcome. The miso ramen was amazing, a really nice blend of aka and shiro miso, and the curry soup is possibly the tastiest thing I’ve eaten in Japan. Sadly as it was only a 2 day stay I missed out on all the good seafood but as it was crab season I think I would have missed out anyway.

Due to the short nature of the trip there really wasn’t much chance for side trips unfortunately but I did manage one. Just a short journey from the centre, maybe 30 minutes by train and bus, is a small peak called Moiwa san. It’s not particularly but it does offer some amazing views out over Sapporo, as well as having a rather unique cable car journey to the summit. Sapporo doesn’t have many tall buildings so you can really see pretty far out across the area.

To be honest that is pretty much it. I probably spent as much time travelling out there as I actually did in Hokkaido but I’m really glad I went. My favourite moment? Well that is a bit private but one thing I found highly amusing was Panasonics stage at the Snow festival. They had cornered off an area to advertise their new range of air-conditioners, complete with Hawaiian scenery and a fake beach. Was it successful? I’ll let the thermometer do the talking.

Mata ne.

僕の町で迷っている- Getting lost in my town.

Once again it’s been a long time between blog posts sorry. I think as I get more and more used to things here the trivial differences have become, well, just that. It also has a fair amount to do with me being knee deep in data analysis and after having your eyes glued to a computer screen all day the desire to write is somewhat diminished.

I had originally planned a post about Christmas in Japan, how and why it sucked, the soul sucking commercialism of the whole event and blah blah blah. Looking back it wasn’t so awful. I mean it was rubbish but the New Year made up for it. That sums it up better than any ranty tirade I can think of.

Instead I am going to take you on a journey. A journey through time and sp… sorry bit of a Boosh moment there. Anyway I regularly listen to1 a podcast called “The Forum” from the BBC world service. It has many interesting discussions, check it out, but one interesting segment is “60 second ideas to change the world.”. On one such show one of the panellist recommended spending a day getting lost in your local area. I hadn’t intended on it but that’s just what I did, and I came across quite a few cool things.

My goal for the day was to buy a new tin opener, my old one broke, and a new laptop cover, my old one broke. I think you can see a pattern here. I’m really bad at keeping things nice, always have been. With that in mind I left my mountain home and set out to my local City, Himeji (姫路) incidentally It means “Princess street”.

Now I don’t want to sell it short, historically Himeji is very interesting. It has the largest Castle complex that  maintains much of it’s original construction, it is the most visited castle in Japan. This would be wonderful but sadly it’s in a box at the moment. Nearby is Mt. Shosha and the Engyoji temple complex, a very ancient Buddhist site as well as the setting for some scenes in “The last Samurai”. It is the second largest city in Hyogo and I’m sure there are many other things it’s famous for.

Here is the thing though Historical also means old. The price you pay for keeping such things well preserved is that you can’t do much renovation and renewal. There isn’t much of a night (or for that matter day) life in Himeji. For a city there isn’t a whole lot going on and with Osaka and Kobe so close I guess there is no real reason to bother.

Back to Sunday. Now I like most people am a creature of habit. My first thoughts for my shopping trip where to head to Miyukidori, the main high street of sorts. However for some reason when I left the station my body was telling me to go left not right. Sometimes it’s best not to argue so left I went.

Now one thing I really love about Japan is that it is really strong on boutique culture. The big name brands are of course about but they have no where near the presence you would see in high streets back home. For somewhere as homogeneous as Japan it is really amazing that so many niche and quirky stores can make a living. But they do just that. The fashion tribes rule the youth subcultures and it’s a consumer jungle out there so it lends itself well to these odd little stores.

First random encounter of the day was a café that specialised in all things soy. It was a tiny little thing with a Tudor style interior, very old school looking and quite incongruous in the surrounding concrete jungle. The place catered to all things bean, with fresh dried beans, home made soymilk, soy lattes on the menu ad even soy ice cream. I was more than a little happy. I bought some of said soymilk, made about 5 minutes from the till and I have to say it was worlds apart from the stuff you get at the supermarket, delish. The lovely old lady that owned the place assured me that their lunch menu was tasty also so I guess I’ll have to go back.

Returning to my pavement pounding with no real goal other than to find an electronics store I pressed further west. As I approached a bypass the roads started to widen and I was soon surrounded by nothing but car outlets and family restaurants.  It is of course at times like these that Japan likes to throw a quick spanner in the works.

As I crossed the next traffic signal I spotted a mini cooper. It took a second to sink in. A min cooper. In Japan! It’s been almost two years and I hadn’t seen a single one up until this point. Not only that but it was a classic none of this new fangled little big mini cooper nonsense. After the shock subsided I noticed another, and another, and in fact I was outside a mini cooper speciality garage. They even had a mini cooper pick up truck, not entirely sure when it would be useful but cool nonetheless.

 

After a few photos and nearly getting run over in the process I stumbled upon my next surprise. Out in what I can only really consider the middle (ish) of nowhere was an art museum.

Called the Enzan memorial museum of art it is a privately run establishment that specialises in showcasing traditional arts and crafts, including various methods for looming Obi (Japanese sashes) and bamboo weaving. The two curators looked a little nervous when I walked through the door but as soon as they realised I could speak a bit of Japanese they visibly relaxed and kindly demoed some of the techniques for me. It still amazes me a little just how timid Japanese people are about their English ability. 9 times out of 10 they know much more than they think they do and can communicate at least.

The second floor of the museum was a gallery with some wonderful displays of paper craft and intricate Noh masks. At times like this more than others I lament my inability to read Japanese. I really would have liked to know a little more about what was on display but alas I was lost in a sea of unknown symbols. This also meant my trip round the museum was considerably shorter since I wasn’t stopping to take notice of the signs. I did take a few moments to take in the wonderful garden at the entrance way though. The simple aesthetics of Japanese gardens are definitely a sight worth seeing.

And there ends my little detour. It was a nice reminder that life can still surprise even when partaking in the seemingly mundane. I encourage anyone feeling a bit humdrum to go and get lost in their local environs, just see what you can find. As for my shopping, well I at least found the tin opener. That's something.

Mata ne.

Into the Bush, Byron and a bit of surfing

Reunions are usually fun and seeing my cousin for the first time in a fair few years was no exception. Whilst we hadn’t really spent huge amounts of time together in the past, the age gap seemed much bigger when we were younger, I’ve always thought (and been told) we were pretty similar. At any rate he and his girlfriend made me feel so welcome at their home and I had a really chill couple of days.

Before I continue though, what a home! If my memory serves me my cousin was always a bit of a hippy and that whole idea of being in tune with your environment is something reflected by his current abode. It’s right in the middle of the Currumbin Valley and is pretty much surrounded by the forest on all sides. All the house water comes from rainwater and I’m pretty sure he said that the electricity and heating were solar powered. The toilets are even eco friendly, rather than flush they just go straight to compost.

My favourite thing though? If any of my rubbish was biodegradable I could just sling it over the side of the balcony into the forest for the local beasties to munch on. It was far more fun than it should have been.

So speaking of beasties there was an abundance of them around. Aside from my cousins dog there were also possums, bush turkeys and kangaroos weaving their way through the bush, though in the case of the former I only heard a pair scrapping in the wee hours of the morning. This being Australia there was also all manner of creepy crawly things flitting about. I’ve never been overly squeamish anyway but Japan has certainly hardened me to bugs.

Being the big nature geek that I am it is no real surprise that I was excited to experience some of Australia’s weird and wonderful wildlife. To that end my cousin kindly organised a trip to a nearby wildlife sanctuary for myself and some friends he had staying over.

Currumbin wildlife sanctuary is run by the national trust of Queensland and is one of the oldest of its kind on the gold coast, originally founded way back in 1947 by a beekeeper. Now it is of course a much grander affair and it even has a wildlife hospital attached. As a general rule I’ve avoided things like this whilst in Japan, the Japanese animal welfare policies are pretty abysmal making most zoos very depressing. The sanctuary was a breath of a fresh air however and made me reminisce of times long gone spent playing in Chester zoo. The enclosures were nice and spacious with plenty of nooks and crannies for the critters to tuck themselves away from prying eyes should the mood take them.

Aside from the usual animals; koalas, kangaroos, dingoes e.t.c, I managed to get through most of my checklist of weird Aussie wildlife, including echidnas and Cassowary; the worlds most dangerous bird. Sadly not platypuses (platypi?) at this sanctuary, they are apparently unbelievably rare. The wombats and Tasmanian devils were sadly a no show but that is just incentive for a second visit.

To round the trip off we watched a bird show sponsored by Air Asia. It’s a bit weird really to think such a massive global company would be sponsoring such a trivial thing but I guess all publicity is good publicity. I suppose it would be nice to think they are just trying to give something back, that’s what the less cynical part of me keeps saying at any-rate.

In fact this enviro-centric notion seems to permeate throughout Australia, from water saving toilets, through the large amount of recycling points all the way up to issuing massive fines for interfering with native wildlife. It’s clear to see that there is a big push to fight the wrongs of the past here. This reverence of the natural world is, I believe, very admirable and I hope it’s a growing trend.

There are similar ideals requiring this respect of the natural world in Japan, however it’s always seemed a bit shallow to me. Preservation does occur but, in general, only reserved for things of beauty or areas that can be considered aesthetically pleasing. Some of the older generation of Japanese people seem to be very proud of this but to me it just seems, like a lot of things in Japan, more about outward appearance than anything else.

Once we were all Koala’d out it was back to my cousins jungle retreat to chill for a bit. I really do mean just for a bit as well. With everyone having early starts the next day, my cousin is usually up at 5am to go surfing and his girlfriend has an almost 2 hour commute to work, bedtime was about 9am. In fact since the sun rises at about 4am and it’s too hot to do anything by midday, daily life there is shifted forward a couple of hours. Everything is really laidback as well, a nice change from the 24hr craziness that can be Japanese big cities or life in a synchrotron.

The following day I was up and ready to go by 7am. Today we were travelling through time, well time zones at any-rate, to Byron bay. A lot of people recommended this place to me and, given that I’m a big fan of mister mad, bad and dangerous to be with himself, I should at least have a gander at the town which takes it’s name from his grandfather. It’s nice though, super trendy, in fact maybe a little too trendy for me. It seems like a major way point for rich young backpackers on tours around Aus and the towns infrastructure has built up to reflect this. A bit more wandering would have been nice but I think it would of burnt a hole in my already over light wallet.

My cousin took me a bit further along to cape Byron, the eastern most point of mainland Australia. From here we had a nice wander along the costal cliffs and up to the lighthouse. This was apparently my Grandma’s favourite place in Australia on the occasions she visited. Looking out at the wonderful coastline views, the rolling waves and the impressive skyline of Gold Coast itself I could confirm something I have always known, she has great taste. On top of the views it is also a great spot for a bit of whale and dolphin watching, didn't manage to spot any of the former though sadly.

I finished the day up hanging out in Coolangatta, the Australian equivalent of Liscard. Well that sells it a little short, Liscard does not after all have gorgeous stretches of beach and I’m also told it’s a popular surf point. The high street isn’t much to look at though, but it did have somewhere I could buy new shoes. No surfing for me this day sadly as the wind was all wrong. I did have a good dip in the ocean though. Living up a mountain all the time makes me forget how much I miss the sea.

This trip definitely wet my appetite for a deeper exploration of the vast and quirky land that is Australia. I’m fortunate to have made a fair few Australian friends during my stay in Japan do they should expect a visit from me in the near future.

Yoroshiku ne.