Kanazawa

Suppose I should write some sort of updatey thingum. I was feeling all inspired a few hours ago, but now... gone; brain off into the ether.
One family member is off in search of snacks, the other busy flinging themselves into my internal organs.
We are in Kanzawa, something-or-other prefecture, central Honshu. It's pretty cool actually, the train station is spectacular. I'm no architecture-nut, but I like a building which looks like it's been made of Giant's Mechano.
Our hotel is called 'Dormy Inn'. I was a bit 'hmmm' about the hourly 'refreshment' room rates, but actually it's fine and no sign of dodgy goings on at all. Also, they have a 'natural hotspring spa' (presumably they pipe the water in from elsewhere, as it's on the 14th floor), which I would like to get up the nerve to go in if I can stop feeling like I look like a hippo compared to Japanese women. You do the spa thing in the nude you see. And, apart from being a normal Western size, I also have quite a tummy (which is fine) and boobs which have taken on a life of their own (which is not fine).
Our room is much nicer than our apartment which is just a little depressing. Still, won't be in it a whole lot over the next 6 weeks as we'll be off travelling for half that time... or at least that's what we'd like to be doing. At this point, we're not entirely sure we can afford it.
Anyway.
We've spent the day wandering Kenroku-En, one of Japan's 'top three' gardens. Actually it was really lovely. I had mentally prepared myself to be disappointed, as the gardens I have seen so far have mostly been a bit 'woteva'. This one was full of trees in full Autumn flight. Lots and lots of running water. A few cute little teahouses, and not so many people that we got annoyed. Not like the other day in Nara when after one too many Little Old Ladies elbowed us out of the way, I deliberately charged into one in return (she deserved it, pushy old bat).
So, that'll do (Pig, that'll do.) for now, going to attempt to hire a car tomorrow and drive about the Noto-Pensinusla and look at fishing villages.
Cheers, Big Ears.

Where are we, again?

Tokushima... I think. I keep wanting to say 'Takamatsu' and I'm not even so sure that is a place.
Shikoku anyway. Arrived yesterday on the bus. It's quite nice here, sort of provincial. Well it seemed small anyway, until we caught the cable car up to the top of the nearby hill and looked out and realized that, no, actually this city is freaking huge. Grey and grey and grey as far as the eye could see, grey sea blending into gray horizon and overlaid with a hazy quilt of more grey. Sounds terrible but it is nice. We've walked around a couple of parks, some castle 'ruins' (would have been better described as a 'site' as no ruins were to be seen but there was a decent view and lots of nice trees, and thousands upon thousands of mosquitos.) Many interesting sculptures about, my favourite was a giant ant stuggling in a pond.
I was going to say more but the enthusiam to write has escaped me.
Tomorrow: whirlpools at Naruto.

Time for an update?

I can hardly believe we are halfway! Where did the time go?

The first 11 weeks are a blur, from not knowing for the first four, to passing the next 7 in an exhausted haze. At the time I was thinking, 'I'm not that sick, I can't complain, I haven't even vomited once' but now that I think back I realise that, actually, I felt like crap Trying to pack to go to Japan was such hard work, I would sit staring into the suitcase with dismay, I could hardly concentrate on anything and just wanted to curl up and sleep. I forgot we even had a packing list. I forgot to take my trackies. I forgot my bathers. I took sheets for our bed, but forgot to take pillowslips. It’s impossible to know if it was just the hormones, or withdrawals from my medication as my GP halved my dose, either way I felt beyond ordinary, like having a 7-week hangover.


When we got to Japan I was just tired, but I didn't expect any less, even short plane trips are draining. Once that initial tiredness had worn off, I felt better immediately. It was like a switched had been flicked, from ‘crap’ to ‘fine’. The switch seems to have one extra setting: ‘great’. I feel so contented right now; it’s really quite a strange feeling for me. It seems those ‘happy hormones’ have cranked up a gear and I am very steady right now. In fact, I’m not anxious at all. I seem to be feeling very blasé about having a baby; I’m just convinced that it will work out fine. I have Dylan, I have my mum and brother, and I have Dylan’s family and my friends (including here on SIC) all as backup. Even my father has come to the party and sent me an email asking how I was, and telling me he was excited to hear that we are pregnant (I wrote him a letter from Japan).

Then, as you know, Dylan’s grandmother passed away a week ago after a long struggle with motor neurone disease (although it was a stroke that struck the final blow). I think this is a great relief to everyone as this way she, and others, did not have to see her go through the end stages of MND, where she would have been a prisoner in her own body with full cognition of what is happening around her but no way to control anything at all, no control of eating, talking, bowel movements and so on. At least she was spared that final indignity.

Dylan’s dad brought us home for a week and the funeral was yesterday. Ikingut twitched through the entire service, especially at the end when we stood around the coffin. I was surprised at how much I cried, I just kept thinking of how, in some ways, Nanny and I were quite similar. We both had a love of craft, of art and design, and we both have suffered from anxiety and depression. In her case, it was not until her 70’s when she had help from medication with this. I consider myself very fortunate that I was able to start getting better from 22. It’s taken five years but I feel good now, I actually feel good, and normal, and rational. I don’t expect to stay this way forever, there are ups and there are downs to go along with them, but I’m very grateful for this time of level-headedness and clarity.

We had a scan in Japan on Monday and the doctor told us everything was fine, but he mentioned that the placenta might be a little low; he also smirked at the size of my tummy. When we came back to Australia the other day we rushed around and were able to see my GP who said, ‘oh, you’ve put on hardly any weight at all!’ which was very reassuring (22 more weeks is plenty to time to add it ), and we were also able to have a scan in Australia which was much more comprehensive than the Japanese one, this time I was told that the placenta's position is fine, it is low but well out of the way as well. Ikky looks totally normal and I am so relieved. Much as I like having minimal medical intervention when you have a totally normal pregnancy, it was still good to see and hear that the baby looks fine. I was just thinking about how Sally/Gidget had mentioned her friend who’s child had DS and even though that was OK it would have been good to know beforehand so she could prepare. I realised then that forewarned really is forearmed.

I met up with my 37-weeks-pregnant friend and her husband today for coffee, they were quizzing me about nappies and so on, and I realised I have no idea anymore what I want. The irony being that they are going with cloth nappies, and I was the one who convinced them they should look into this in the first place I still think I want to stick to as basic a set-up, and as green a set-up, as possible. Cloth nappies, no pram just a pusher, sixteen different types of slings, Ikky in a cot next to the bed so I don’t have to get out of ours when they wake What I do have is a short-list of names (I keep adding names to it, Dylan keeps taking them off )

When we get home things will be interesting. We have no house. We have no car. We have no jobs. We don’t yet know which hospital we should even (theoretically) be going to. Luckily my GP is a very relaxed sort of person (perfect for me), and just said ‘oh, we’ll just sort that out when you get home’, she’s also planning on sending me off to a psychologist for a proper review before Ikky is born so we can see if I can reduce the medication, or stop it completely for a month or so beforehand so the little-one doesn’t have to withdraw from it.

Now my mind is consumed with ‘what will they look like?’ Will they have Dylan’s blue eyes, my hazel eyes, FIL’s grey-green eyes or MIL’s brown eyes? Will they have blonde curls like my brother, or dark ones like Dylan did? Will their hair be dead straight and white like mine was? Will they have one dimple like my brother, two like Dylan, or none like me? How big are they going to be? Will they be a waif, or a roly-poly? Will they be a sleepy baby, or eternally awake? Is Ikky a boy as I believe, or a girl as everyone else thinks? Are they going to be born in summer, or in autumn? I can hardly wait to find out, I’m so excited even if reality has not entered my brain at all (but then, as my latest book says: “You’re quite sure that reality and fantasy are opposites?”*)

Well, that’s my update. It’s ended up a lot longer than I intended, and much more about me than about the baby (oops) but oh well.

*Brave Story (p 120), Miyuke Miyabe

As things are...

BAH! Had this all written up and can`t copy and paste it down :(
So, moving on and attempting to be less bitter about it...

We are living in Matsuyamachi, which is 10 minutes walk from Shinsaibashi and like another world in comparison. Unlike Shinsaibashi, which is neon lit and very busy well into the night, all the shops and restaurants in our area seem to have closed by about 8pm, except for the ever present Lawson`s Convenience store (there are 2, about 150m apart, and very convenient they are indeed). Even the homeless men have gone to their cardboard beds in the doorways by about 9pm.

Our apartment in on the 6th floor and overlooks the main road which is crammed with shops selling the most unbelievebly cheap and nasty plastic toys - bottom of a crappy showbag things - and fireworks. Don`t worry about the fireworks, they`re quite safe; every shop has two small buckets of water out the front in case of an incident. Fortunately, our building is over a takeaway shop and a pharmacy so no undermining the foundations with exploding stores for us!

We`ve started working,　it`s OK. It`s work, and the bank account is dwindling alarmingly fast. Good thing we paid our rent for several months at once! Everyone at work is friendly, but our schools are a really long, and more importantly, really expensive distance away. If we go out to work for just one lesson, the transport cost takes almost all the money we make. So, looking to make ourselves very popular with the `clients` quickly! (all the corporate-speak in our company makes me want to roll my eyes、but I don`t, that would be unprofessional and we can`t have that...)

Our apartment is good apart from the strange smell from the new tatami. It`s like straw, which is fine, and like fish, which is not fine. It`s killed my romantic notions about tatami. Everyone says, `oh! new tatami! Isn`t is a lovely smell?` Um,no, sorry, not at all. We have the windows open as much as we can trying to air it out. Probably some El Cheapo B-Grade tatami or something....

Anyway, that`s all for now.　My original was much longer so I expect you`re all glad I had to rewrite it!

Photos on Facebook :)

Katie
xx

Firing up the old travel blog again.

Hello Everyone!

Thought it was about time I sent a proper email update (or blog update, if you are reading from there), rather than just tidbits via facebook.

So, most of you know we went off again, and to anyone out of the loop: D and I have moved to Osaka for a little while. Just until just before Christmas, and then we'll be home, back to normal life until we get sick of it again and repeat.

The story so far:
In around about April or May, when I was supposed to be concentrating on my thesis, we applied for jobs with an English Instructing company here in Japan just to test the waters... and each landed a job first go! Slight hitch... we're 'employed' (actually, apparently contracted as independant instructors) in different cities, I'm supposed to go to Kobe, Dylan to Kyoto. The upside? There's another humungous city right in the middle of them and given the fabulous transport system here (Transadelaide, take note) they're only about half an hour, give or take, from Osaka to the CBDs of the other cities. Slightly bizarre to have three cities that close together when you come from Adelaide where the next sizable city is an 8 hour drive east.

Anyway, before we'd even organised the jobs, we'd booked flights to Tokyo (yes, we know we could have gone straight to Osaka, yes, we know that would have been a whole lot easier, but we weren't sure at the time where we were going to end up). So, to Tokyo we came about a week ago.
We spent a grand total of one day in the neon lights, wandered around the oldest temple in the city which was nice, worked out where to catch the Shinkansen (bullet train) from, ate Indian curry for lunch (when in Rome...), got lost trying to find the station home, and found out what the 'semi-double' bed we'd booked really was (a very small double bed, wouldn't recommend it for the taller or bigger of us).

Next day... off to Osaka, new home city! We caught the Shinkansen, which was surprisingly boring and uneventful. Biggest drama was trying to figure out which carriage we were supposed to be in and hoping like hell it was a non-smoking one (it was). We found our way to the hotel... well, actually, a gentleman on a bicycle spotted us looking bemusedly at the map and led us the way there, and then peddled away without a backward glance.

Day after (saturday by now) we met with a real estate agent called Madoka, who had impeccable UK-learnt english, who drove us around the city and we looked at a number of apartments and chose one on the spot. It was a bit of a blur, all I can remember is that it had a tatami room with a head-height ceiling lamp, another room, and a bathroom and midget kitchen (ie a single burner and a bar fridge). I know this new place is in the Namba area, and if I look at the map I can work out which stations are nearby but one of our jobs in the next few days is to see if we can find it ourselves because neither of us have a clue where it really is. It was all far too easy really, we gave Madoka a full quarter of our holiday savings, she gave us a reciept, and that was it! We can't move in until late next week however because it's getting new wallpaper and the tatami is being repaired... personally I could have coped with the couple of holes in the paper but it's nice to have it done even if it means sharehousing until then.

Ah, yes, sharehousing. We did have the option of living in a sharehouse the whole time but quite frankly, the couple of days here have made me glad we opted for the extra expense and chose to go to our own place. We're not in our own room for a start... and D and I have a bunkbed to sleep in. We're both sleeping on the bottom level, we'd rather still share the bed, but even if we had chosen to go one above and one below we couldn't have done so as there is only one mattress. The other 'person' in the room is a Japanese girl whom I am just going to assume is very shy, as she hasn't said a word to us at all and I don't even know her name (she does smile at us now, however). I say 'person' as there is actually 2 other people in here, the girl, and her boyfriend whose name nobody knows as he just seems to be bunking here and isn't supposed to be around, apparently. Oh well. They have their stuff scattered over 3/4 of the room and like to burn incense. So our room smells of bad Indian incense, as does the entire house as multiple people seem to burn it. Tonight I detected through the window an undertone of 'other' smoke, don't know why you'd bother with that really, I'm told it's ridiculously expensive and hard to get (for example, I'd have to work about 30 hours here or at home [same same] to cover the cost of a baggie, should I want to), but whatever floats your boat. More expensive than cocaine apparently.

Anyway, everyone is very nice and friendly so no issues there at all, just that the actual house is dark and dusty, and there is one toilet and one bathroom for 9 people, so will be glad to move into our own, brightly lit, place in the not too distant future.

Won't bore you with details of getting phones, bank accounts, and alien registration slips. All I will say is that if you are ever here and need to do any of these things firstly, take along a Japanese speaking friend to help you fill out the forms otherwise you will have to do it at least 3 times over before you get the details in the right spot, and secondly, give yourself lots and lots of time, plus extra. Even with the phone salesman being American so we had a clue what was happening, getting a pair of phones took almost 2 hours of sitting and waiting for things to be scanned and so on.

So, now D and I have four whole days off in which there are no appointments, and no official visits to anywhere to be made! And we can sleep in without fear of missing the bank being open, or being too late to do anything. We thought we might go to Kyoto, and Kobe, maybe Nara. Or maybe we'll just catch the free shuttle bus to Ikea out in the port :P

Before I go, some things I like:
Giant cicadas, which look painted with blacks, whites, and greys, in all the trees shrilling all the time.
That there are more trees than I expected.
The public transport system... great connections, have not yet waited more than about 5 minutes for a train.
Girls' glittery nail polish, and the way showing your bra is in vogue, and hair bleached out the other side of blonde and teased up so high it looks like a wig.
Babies in slings, lots of them, and babies in teeny weeny prams, they make Aussie ones look like trucks!
Prayer slips of paper tied on trees.
Giant naan breads, udon noodles in curry sauce, free glasses of water in every restaurant, the huge variety of creme caramels available.
Little temples squeezed in between house or highrises.
Incredibly patient people.
The toilets (can't help it, fascinated by the buttons, although I'm not into the heated seats in 30c+ degree heat)
The car 'lifts', and the way that if there is a space for 2 cars someone will call it a car park and charge people to park in it.
That everyone rides bicycles everywhere with their children on the front or back in a basket, did not expect that at all, especially such old-school bikes!
The rain.

Not so keen on:
Curry flavoured gravy on rice, mashed daikon, or Lipton Yellow Label tea (I brought my own tea bags because I am a tea-snob - or nerd - and know how much I hate LYLT and refuse to subject myself to 5 months of it).
Almost fainting in the subway, complete with close up examination of the ugly brown tiles and rolling nausea. Not embarassing. Not at all.
The tamarins for sale in the petshop :( Totally unaffordable, I hope, for most people at 3 million yen (each or a pair? not sure?), but totally inappropriate pet in my opinion.
Not yet knowing how to say 'no plastic bag/disposable spoon thanks'.

Anyway, that's it for now, thanks for making it to the end, maybe the next installment will be shorter?

Katie
xx

Secret squirrels go to Singapore

Yup sure did. Wasn't in the original plan but we had to decide if we should extend our Philippino visa the required 4 extra days (and pay for a whole month) or just change the flights. To be honest, we were totally over Filipino food and decided to go back to KL 4 days early and then we buggered off to Singapore for 2 days and got back to KL this morning :) I've been wanting to go to the S'pore botanic gardens since I whipped past it on a tourist bus when I was 17 and it was well worth the wait :) I won't bore you all with botanical details, let's just say I took over 90 photos and leave it there. Ahem. Oh and I got bitten by ants again but I guess that comes with the trade...
So since we came back to Malaysia (and Singapore) a week ago, we've played super-tourists and visited museums, zoos, night safaris, gardens, markets, temples... Heck, we even bought tourist bus passes in both KL and Singapore!
It's good to be back here, after I last wrote Dylan ate most of a Dodgy Chicken Sandwich (DCS) and I had a bite too and let's just say that the next day was thouraghly...unpleasant. I got off lightly, Dylan did not and I'm sure the day spent on a variety of buses and jeepneys making it back to Angeles in time for our flight will stay in his memory for a long time (a story to rival yours, Sam!). So anyway, after the DCS episode, the food in the Philippines went from memorably bad to downright poisonous. Being able to sit down in any cafe here and eat a dirt cheap, fabulous and trustworthy meal is bliss! I've said it before and I'll say it again, we get seriously ripped off with curries in Australia, they ain't got nothing on anything you can eat on any street corner here. Our favourite place to eat is called something like Zakir and Hameed's Gigantic Halal Eating Emporium...or something like that. If you are ever here in KL, it's the big tiled 24 hour place near Pasar Seni station, right by the central market. We are fascinated by the staff, they seem to come in only a couple of varieties. There are the tall, dodgy ones who float around a lot trying to look busy but never actually do anything, and then there are the little ones who run around like chickens with their heads cut off doing everything. One guy in particular is the splitting image of Snoop Dogg. Truely. Except he's about 5 foot tall.
It's coming up to Chinese New year and so the city is positively abuzz with energy, flowers, lights and lanterns, I'm sorry that we'll miss the real thing in a week, Adelaide's just not quite the same.
Anyway, speaking of curries I'm off for a naan and something delicious, then we'll go rescue our bags from the guesthouse (we just took one pack down to Singapore, a little nerve wracking to know that half of what you own right now is in another country and you don't live in that one either), have a shower and then head out to the airport to begin yet another long journey. There have been a lot of them this trip, not much time to rest but it's been good all the same. Might write a highlights/reflection thing for you all soon that I'll put a little more thought into.
Anyway, see some of you soon, some of you later, keep well and Happy New Year :)
Katie

The long way around.

Helllooo everyone!

Super-tired today, can't remember half of what I was going to write so will just wing it a little.
Where did we leave you last? Catching the plane to Cebu? Remember how I said the Sinulog festival was on and we may or may not stay for it? Well we didn't! Couldn't find a cheap enough room anywhere (in fact even all the expensive ones were taken) so we moved on a day later to Bohol Island with the express idea of gawking at Tarsiers. We stayed in a nice-ish guesthouse with an enormous terrace, good thing it was OK too because I managed to eat something which didn't agree with me; long story short I just hung around the guesthouse for a couple of days, pretty much, making daily trips to the shopping mall over the road to attempt to eat without throwing up (never did, just close), watching movies at the cinema (I am Legend, much better than I expected but very depressing) and watching the Local Karaoke Championship held in the centre of the mall. I am ashamed to admit it, but we ate at Pizza Hut 3 nights in a row [bows head] but honestly, food so far has been far from enticing and PIzza Hut was the best there was (nice garlic bread though, I'll give them that!).

We did see several tarsiers though when I felt up to moving about at length, at a local conservation park that although was only 14km out of town, took us a looong time to get there on a couple of jeepneys. For the exorbidant amount of about 50c each, we were taken inside a large fenced forest enclosure where we were shown the Filippino version of the kangaroo (in that everyone who comes here knows what it is, charismatic and cute tourism symbol considered worth conserving etc etc). Our guide clearly knew well in advance the favourite perching spots of the critters, which somewhat bizarrely and surely contrary to survivial instincts is located about 1.5m off the ground in clear view. Furthermore, these big-eyed brown balls of fur with a long tail just sat there and looked at us while we ooohed and aaahed and clicked madly away. No wonder they are endangered. I'll put up a picture later as I can't describe these little primates very well, or at least no better than our LP guide which calls them (paraphrasing) 'the illegitate product of an ill-advised one night stand between a gremlin and ET', will leave that to your imagination before I put up pics in a few weeks.

Um what next? We went back to Cebu for a night, not much to report except that to my view it seemed to be a singularly scummy city. To be fair we saw it the day after the year's biggest party, but it smelt particularly bad and we were reduced to trying out another fast food chain for lunch, Shakey's. And on Shakey food ground it was indeed, the pizza especially was a big disappointment and considering the last pizza we'd had was at Pizza Hut there's little left to be said.

Then comes our marathon journey; we caught the overnight ferry (read: ship) to Manila which turned out to be a very comfortable journey albiet slow (21 hours on the boat, plus 3 hours waiting time beforehand). We paid that little extra to share a cabin with 5 other people and one woman's luggage; 18 bags. Yes, 18. And she wasn't even staying in our cabin and had the nerve to imperiously move MY bag out of the way as if to say 'who's is this crappy old thing contaminating my bags?' Raised eyebrows all round. Beautiful night out on the water, people were entranced by the moon and the clouds, I suppose if they lived in Smog-swamped Manila they'd never have the oppertunity to see a clear moon. Also finally discovered a Filippino thing worth eating: Leche Flan, which is basically an especially rich and delicious creme caramel. It went a long way towards redeming the God-Awful sweet and sour squid I'd had to eat beforehand.

Anyway, we boated for 21 hours, jumped off at Manila at 6am, waited half a hour for a taxi which wasn't going to rip us off, went to the bus station, discovered it was the wrong one, caught another taxi across the city to anotehr bus terminal and was on a bus and away to the north by 8am, traffic jams and all! The bus took us as far as Bagabag (8 hours) then 1.5 hours on a jeepney to Lanawe, then another hour or something like that to Banaue, where I write to you from now.

This is the bit where I get tired, because today we went for a 'walk' with a guide (Elvis). Banaue is home to some of the stepped rice terraces this country is famous for. This is a very vertical country, straight up and straight down and yet people have ingenously managed to build and farm on it. We were taken via tricycle to the main lookout point which is a mere 10 minutes from the centre of town and then we walked back across the terraces. I say walked but the first part was pretty much extremely attractive, lush and green Hell-with-Steps. Lots and lots and lots of steps, down and down and down, then up and up and up and then repeat. There was a nice little waterfall at the bottom of one hill (precipice more like), then we climbed (hands, knees and hands) through the mud before we got to the easier part. Which was lovely, we wandered for ages along the edges of the rice terraces, sometimes on mud, sometimes on concrete a foot wide, quite a lot of it where people had been very economical with the concrete and it wasn't wider than my shoes, with a foot drop off one side into the ancient (2000 year old) irrigation system and about a 15m drop of the other side into a pond/field/mud. It was beautiful though, really was, but very very hard work, my legs hate me, I'm not sure I'll actually be able to walk tomorrow, my legs were shaking so badly and continue to do so if I hold them a certain way. However, I only fell over once and no one saw me so that's ok (oh and Dylan decided to 'help' me down one part and we were a bit uncoordinated and I was dropped into the mud, I got shitty temporarily but all was well a short time later, hard to stay mad in such a stunning setting and anyway I was concentrating too hard on not going arse over into a pond).

So tomorrow we're up early to go south again, we're not entirely sure where to next but will update you all when we get there.

Love to all, happy Australia day for 2 days time.

From Katie and Dylan, who can't be bothered writing his own email.
xxx