Kindness

Japan can feel like a cold country sometimes, especially for those who don't speak the language. Many expats here will be able to tell you what it feels like to sit on a train/street-car/bus and have people choose to stand for the whole journey rather than sit next to a foreigner. Stories like that are common so I've decided to post a positive little missive to provide contrast.

Less than 3 hours ago I was eating lunch with a friend in one of our regular little haunts, Nakau (click for photos). The food was cheap and tasty as usual although a group of 8 office girls in their early to mid 20's wouldn't stop staring at us and giggling which makes it a tad difficult to eat. We finished up and took off in the afternoon winter sunshine. A few blocks away we heard the sound of hurried footsteps approaching us from behind so we spun around. There in front of us was a very flushed Nakau staff member clutching 580 Yen in her outstretched hand.

"You left some money!" she told my friend in Japanese while politely bowing.

No sooner had my friend accepted the money when the staff bowed again and took off at top speed back towards the restaurant. It definitely gives you a warm feeling to know that people in this country will not only NOT take your money when given the opportunity, but they will run a good 300m or so to return it to you!

On a very related note, this same friend left their ipod in a netcafe connected to a computer. A staff member caught up to them a good 500m away from the netcafe while my friend was waiting to cross a busy street. Out of breath but no less polite, the staff member dutifully returned the ipod to my startled friend. I assume being a 185cm tall white woman certainly helps these staff members in tracking down forgetful foreigners.

Autumn is stunning in Japan

I've uploaded a bunch of photos from my very recent trip to Sandankyo with my girlfriend, Yuki. The colours really were amazing, quite often so bright they seemed artificial. I'm beginning to feel pretty limited with my little Canon IXY70 but it's just so convenient and portable that I couldn't part with it.

Enjoy the red leaves over on my flickr account http://www.flickr.com/photos/sa-e-mo-n/

Let's try something new...

Alright, so through careful consideration of the mountains of feedback I've received from all my dear readers (one skype call from my brother Nick) I have devised a new system here. For want of a better label we could call it "random musings". Yeah, hardly unique on the Internet. I'll still write up lengthy recollections of events and happenings but I shall intersperse this with much shorter musings on a more frequent basis. More accurately perhaps, I'll still intend to write those long posts and invariably fail to deliver. I think the shorter musings will have a much higher success rate. So without further delay here's the first:

Japanese highways.

Expensive.

Magnificent engineering feats.

I can still remember my bus ride out of Tokyo (much cheaper to get home to Hiroshima on the highway bus, 11 hours, than the bullet train, 4.5 hours) which left the very central Tokyo station and, after only a few city blocks, rose up onto a highway/expressway (I never know which is the correct term to use) and proceeded to glide out of Tokyo without having to stop at a single set of lights. Pretty incredible, although understandable considering it is one of the most densely populated cities in the world and there was no shortage of government money when they were trying to pull their economy out of recession.

For those readers of mine who have played any of the Need for Speed games of late (which I suspect is a worryingly high percentage) you can picture the highways of Japan as being very much like in that game. Huge concrete rivers that allow cars to whip around the city uninterrupted. The only downside is the insanely high tolls. Driving between Hiroshima and Kobe (about 450km I think) would cost you over $100 in highway tolls, or so I have been told by friends here.

The thing that really blows me away every time I travel across Japan is the enormous numbers of bridges and tunnels. The country, or at least Hiroshima prefecture, is so mountainous that the highways look like the engineers just said "fuck the mountains, we're going in the most direct route and that's that." They just draw an imaginary line between one city and the next and just dig tunnels or construct bridges to fill that line with highway. On a recent trip to Sandankyo (a small town in the NW of Hiroshima prefecture) we went through so many tunnels I lost count. One of them was at least 3km long according to my rough calculations. It all adds up for a pretty spectacular driving experience although it can feel strangely claustrophobic, especially in areas where the highway is bounded by enormous soundproof walls.

You would think that with all these amazing highways that you could get some nice high speed driving done. Well scratch that thought, the limit on all the highways seems to be 80km/h! It just doesn't make sense, the roads are in such amazingly good condition they could be 200km/h autobahns. Maybe its a conspiracy between the government and the Japan Rail companies that operate the shikansen (bullet train). Faced with the choice of a 11 hour drive to Tokyo that would cost me at least 200AUD in fuel and another 200AUD in tolls or a 4.5 hour train ride in big comfy seats with refreshments that costs about 200AUD I know which I'd choose.

Oh here's some highway vocab for those of you who care. "Intersection" in Japanese is インター which is "intaa" in katakana (the alphabet reserved for foreign words and names). It really is amazing how many English words the Japanese have adopted.

That's about enough for a random musing. Let me know if you liked it and I will keep it up.

Sheepish photo update

Yeah, so really, it's pretty ridiculous the amount of material I've had to write about but just been too distracted/unmotivated/lazy (take ya pick) to do so.

I've really forgotten just how much I've actually written up here, but as far as I can remember, the following has so far passed without record:

- I sprained my ankle badly during a tournament match with my soccer team and hence got to experience the Japanese hospital system first-hand.

- I had a really decent week-long trip to Tokyo with my sister, Eleanor.

- I've managed to hook up with a beautiful Japanese girl who just happens to have impeccable English.

- I visited the 3rd most famous landmark in all of Japan, Itsukushima shrine on the island of Miyajima (where I'll be heading back this coming weekend with any luck, to take in the breath-taking Autumn leaves.)

- I've had some really decent nights out, even got to see Adam F when he came through Hiroshima recently.

- I celebrated my birthday at a fantastic restaurant with a great group of friends and even got some presents to boot!

- I missed out on one of the most famous sake festivals in all of Japan (in Saijo, just east of Hiroshima city) because I was sick that weekend, major bummer :(

I'll get around to writing proper entries eventually. Hahahaha; seriously. In the meantime enjoy the 50 or so new photos over on my Flickr account. (The link is over on the right navigation bar, mum)