The Friday Five (on Saturday)

This week's Friday Five Questions:

You have just won one million dollars:

1. Who do you call first?
Matt (aka. "The Mister")

2. What is the first thing you buy for yourself?
Moet and Chandon and get really really pissed.

3. What is the first thing you buy for someone else?
A Single Malt Whiskey for the Mister, so he can get really really pissed.

4. Do you give any away? If yes, to whom?
To our parents and to charities.

5. Do you invest any? If so, how?
Property, darling, property.

Bureaucracy

Let me diverge from Japan for but a moment, and have a right hearty bitch about my antipodean friends, the NSW State Government.

Matt and I have to get birth certificates to apply for a marriage license (which we have to organise from Japan) and its ridiculous how anal the NSW Government is.

I understand that to get a birth certificate, the government has to be pretty certain that you are who you say you are, but Matt had the good fortune to be born in South Australia, where all you need is a copy of your passport, the most sacred of documents.

In NSW, you have to supply 3 forms of ID - Passport (List 1) , Medicare Card/Credit Card etc. (List 2) and ID from List 3 - a document with your current residential address on it, either gas/electricity account or bank statement. Herein lies the rub.

My Japanese bank doesn't issue statements (I mean, its not like the Japanese banking system is in the 21st century or anything) and the gas and electricity accounts are in Matt's name, Matt being in a superior linguistic position to decipher the bureaucratic mayhem that is, well, any Japanese utility.

"OK", says the NSW government (who, to their credit have been very prompt with answering my questions), "howsabout a tax statement or official company document with your address on it?" "Eureka!" cries I, "they send me enough of those buggers! The address is in kanji, though, is this OK?"

"Well, no, actually, if the address is in Japanese, you need a certified translation of it." Huh? You don't got no Japanese readers in the NSW Government to translate a measly address? Shit, even I can read it!

Do you realise how difficult it is in Japan, to get a document with an address in English on it, it being Japan and all, where they speak, um, Japanese??? Does the NSW government have any idea how goddamn difficult this is?

I could bite the bullet and put my parents address as my residential address which would begin the painstaking middle-man process, but I really would like to get my birth certificate this year. Sometime.

Damn. Adelaide is beginning to look pretty good after all.

Janome

No. Not the sewing machine. The japanese parasol...

Day before Australia Day

If you'd have told me two years ago that I'd be inviting strangers into my home, whose websites I saw on the 'net, I'd have sent out for the strappy white coats and made you a cup of tea while you were waiting.

Not sure what's changed, but having Martine, Darin and the ever bashful (?) Kat over for "Day before Australia Day" drinks, seemed totally natural. They didn't even seem like strangers when they showed up on the doorstep. In fact, saying "Nice to meet you" felt a little fruity.

"Nooooo! My face is all blotchy!"

The fact that they'd brought VB, XXXX (granted, the most heathen of brews), TimTams, Tiny Teddies, and Aussie wine, didn't hurt their acceptance into the household. XXXX might be crap, but there's something oddly nostalgic about that red and gold tinnie (must have been that memory of the U of Qld Toga Party circa 1993 when... oh never mind).

And what do 4 Aussies (and one honorary Aussie from America's "pan handle") do in Tokyo on Australia Day? Have a BBQ and watch the cricket, always within arms-length of a six pack? HELL NO! They go to karaoke of course. Always within arms-length of a nama-biru and a microphone.

It's a shame we met Kat and Darin now we're looking down the barrel of our departure. I really miss good sarcastic banter with fellow Aussies from time to time. Actually, I don't even realise I'm missing it until I have it again.

So somewhere along the line, my attitude toward meeting new people has flipped a switch. In Australia, I was paranoid about having strangers come to my home, arguing "What if they bring numchuckers and trash the place?" My mother's words will forever echo in my head - "You can never be too careful".

I guess we figured that if Kat and Darin were thieves and stole all our stuff, they would be doing us a favour, seeing as we have to get rid of it all anyway. They aren't thieves of course, but guys, next time you come round, could you, you know... take something???

Kat's pics of F.U.N
Frangipani's Happy Snaps

It's not that I hate NHK...

Any network with enough insight to give us Katori Shingo in a samurai toupee every Saturday night, has to be commended.

But we pay 3,000 yen every quarter for what is basically a crap service.

We rarely watch NHK, save for the bilingual NHK news, the Sumo (in season) and the aforementioned Katori Shingo perve-fest (OK, I may be the only one in the house who watches this).

And at 5 p.m every evening (during the critical moments of the sumo) the network gets an attack of reception tourettes and starts flickering between an average picture and a bright blue blank screen every few seconds.

But the "NHK Man" religiously rings our doorbell every 3 months insisting we pay the NHK fee, simply because we own a TV. In the early days, we pretended we didn't have a TV, but those little ferrets are on the case and sniff out your antenna, so that ploy swiftly died in the arse.

Payment of the fee is supposedly a law, albeit a non-enforced one. No-one's going to come and confiscate your TV, but the locals pay with little complaint, so anything other than total compliance is no doubt an affront to the fee collectors. Some months they knock on our door every night for days, at the ungodly hour of 10pm to retrieve the cash.

Last month, I mistakenly opened the door (duh) and had to pretend I had no idea what the NHK Man wanted (ah, the guilty pleasures of discovering one's inner bimbo). So three nights later, he calls Matt on his mobile phone (so not OK) to ask when he would be home so they could unload from him the fee.

When he came to our door, we told him we wouldn't pay the fee until someone fixed our reception as all the other channels were fine. The NHK Man said, OK, pay the fee, then someone will call you to fix the reception. Like stupid f#$%kers we gave him the money. Guess who hasn't received a call about the reception? It sounds piss-poor, but honestly, its easier to just give them the money. NHK trains its fee collectors in rabid pit-doggery. You have to see it to believe it.

So, firstly NHK is a total rip-off. Then there's the NHK news. A while ago, they had a female "bilingual" voice-over who was apparently speaking English, but we could never understand a word she was saying. They ditched her and now we get female English voice-overs for the male commentary and male voice-overs for the female.

And then there's the sport report. The Japanese love their local boys and girls who have made it big overseas, and power to them. But after the winning hits of Matsui and Ichiro, it would be nice to see the final score of the game, whether their team won etc. The NHK news (sorry, I'm picking on the NHK news cos its bilingual - I'm sure the other networks are just as bad) is violently tunnel-visioned.

It's not that I hate NHK. They're just a bit too much like the government - you pay 'em, but its a mystery as to what they do with your money.

Sick

Ugh. Woke up this morning and found I had over 400 hits overnight. Strange, I thought, so I checked my referrals. At least 100, probably more, hits came from a google image search for "baby porn". The offending picture? My nephew, mucking around on the computer, who we jokingly said at the time was "trawling for porn".

It really rattled me that there were sick muthas out there searching for baby porn and getting an innocent photo of my nephew. Particularly because there were like 100 of these searches within 10 minutes of each other all from different domain names. What's going on here? An automated trawling service?

I took all the photos of him down. He's as cute as a button, but don't even think you're gonna get what you're looking for, you depraved arseholes.

Homeless in Bunkyo

...with plastic bags for socks

Always look on the bright side

Do you know those mornings where every frustration/annoyance/minor injustice that you thought had passed you by, one day inexplicably culminates into one very big ugly emotional pimple just bursting to be squeezed?

I had one of those mornings yesterday morning.

I don't get into bad moods very often. There was no reason why the pimple chose yesterday to rear its infernal head, but as I neared my school in the morning, I felt like I was about to burst into tears. Dicky Knee was hurting like a bitch, and her new best friend, The Pimp (the kilogram heavy plaster splint I've had to wear for the past week) was making me feel like Quasimodo on a very bad day.

I pulled myself together and walked into the school.

At that moment, two of my favourite third graders, two uber-hyper girls who, I suspect, are dangerously close to self-combusting with enthusiasm, burst into the foyer in a tornado of "Kim-sensei!!! KIM-SENSEIIIIIIIII!!!!!!"s.

Seeing the Pimp, they grabbed my bag, put my shoes away and got my slippers out for me, took my bag into the teacher's room and pulled out my chair. They disappeared with each of them shouting over the top of one another - "o-daijini!" (take care of your health!)

Love those girls.

I do have a band of naturally extroverted students who always say hello to me in the corridors, but most of them are interminably shy. I'm only there 2 mornings a week, so it's not like I'm part of their everyday wallpaper.

But today, previously bashful students came out of their shells to say hello! are you ok? and wanted to know what was wrong with my leg.

It seems that if I just look normal (?) they are too shy to come up with something to say, but the vernacular of health is a popular and easy way into a conversation. OK. A bizarre conversation peppered with hybrid English and Japanese, but when your girls try to mime "crutches" and keep saying, "tree! tree!" it sure as hell puts a smile on the dial.

Love that skewl. They cheered me up immeasurably yesterday morning. Seems Dicky Knee has been good for something.

It's about time...

They've finally revised the Japanese Civil Aeronautics Law in an attempt to stop passengers flaunting (fairly serious) flight rules.

For the last 2 years I've been teaching Cabin Attendants, both domestic and international and have heard some extraordinary tales. The most demoralising was the story of one CA who refused to serve a drunk and aggressive male passenger. The passenger lost his temper and forced her to get down on her knees and kowtow to him for making him lose face.

These are highly educated (and in many cases, refreshingly outspoken) women, not doormats, but up to now, they have been legally powerless to punish passengers using cell-phones, smoking in the john and generally not obeying the CA's safety instructions. Although a CA's job is highly prized among the chicky-babes of this fair society, a lot of passengers still see them as waitresses and targets for their derision and harassment.

If a passenger is seriously abusive or drunk, they can strap him/her to the safety chair, but swearing and minor verbal/sexual harassment (pinching of bums, asking repeatedly for dates etc.) is desisted but goes largely unpunished. The company policy is; "Polite and deferential at all times. That is the service passengers are paying for."

A (foreign) colleague once complained that CAs get paid too much for being what they perceived as merely high-class waitresses. This couldn't be further from the truth. These girls are trained in serious damage control and must, at any potential moment, turn into firefighters, paramedics, psychologists, nurses, police and up til now, verbal punching bags.

As an example, one CA I trained was working on flight when a passenger committed suicide in the lavatory. The CAs had to clean up the mess and stop other passengers from using and thus discovering a messy and bloody body.

It's not an easy job. I hope now they exercise their legal power as much as they can.

They actually pay people...

...to come up with these products.

Driving it home

Last night on NHK news there was a story about the new (read: keeping up with the rest of the world) 'R'estricted material labelling on hard porn etc. magazines.

There was a 5 second shot of a row of porn magazines with the new plastic covers and labels. Then NHK cut to a 10 second clip of three senior high school students, skirts haphazardly hitched to their arses strutting down a Tokyo street, the camera honing in on their panty lines.

No guessing what demographic NHK caters its "news" to.

You call that news?

So you thought the lack of crime in Japan was a myth? On NHK news the other day, in a city of 12 million people, one of the top stories was of a policeman who took his gun home from work and accidentally fired it, causing the bullet to go through the walls of both his and his neighbour's house. No-one was hurt.

On the Wagon

I haven't played with my sexy new Nikon since Fujiyoshida. I would love to, but Dicky Knee has basically handcuffed me to the apartment.

It seems the petulant cow is refusing to heal. She's torn like, 4,000 ligaments (OK. There are only 4. Sue me for the good word) and the only thing keeping me going is the amusing irony that I keep getting these sports injuries without having to, ahem, do any sports.

But there is light in the form of new Photo Friday and Theme Thursday submissions. Gotta get my fix somehow...

"Motion"

"Funky"

But wait! There's more...

Bwa-ha-haaaaaa! You thought that once the trip had finished, I would shut up about it. "Just how many more sickeningly superlative descriptions could she possibly inflict us with?", I hear you moan.

Well, my friends, you can't get away without being subjected to the Top 5 places I found myself during our trip. H.e.l.l. n.o. Although the whole shebang was jasper, there were some definite highlights;

1. Itsukushima Shrine at dawn, looking out over a will-o-the-wisped o-torii (ah, the incurable romantic struggling for air time again);

2. In the rotenburo at Unzen at dawn, butt naked;

3. Roaming the streets of Shianbashi in Nagasaki, drunk as skunks;

4. In the beautiful and aromatic cedar wood bath at Kawaguchi Ryoso (The Mister and I had it for private use - no going and getting yourselves any kinky ideas, now);

5. Although draining, the Nagasaki and Hiroshima A-Bomb Museums and the 26 Martyrs Museum in Nagasaki.

Top 5 low-lights ('cos every trip has 'em);

1. Not being able to walk properly. Bummer, that;

2. The cold reception at that frigid ryokan in Unzen;

3. Our fitful 3 hour sleep in Fukuoka c/- the Stormtroopers invading the rooms above us;

4. The sheer expense of travel. Honestly, JR is the biggest rip-off in the free world. It costs as much to train it to Fukuoka as it does to fly. And as residents, we're not entitled to the coveted JR Pass;

5. Having to sleep on those infernal bean pillows. Whoever the HELL decided they were comfortable needs a solid shooting. It's like sleeping on.. well, a pillow packed full of hard, gritty beans. Nishiki-so and Seiun-so didn't have them thank CRAP. I could have gone down to the front desk and snogged all the girls in gratitude.

Oh, and having hatsumode in Miyajima to beckon the Year of the Monkey we thought we'd, you know, see some monkeys because its a famous place for them. No monkeys. Not a peep. Hope that's not inauspicious.

So its goodbye from me, and its goodbye from him (until tomorrow).

The Dicky Knee Tour:
Miyajima blog
Hiroshima blog
Fukuoka blog
Nagasaki blog
Unzen blog

The Funk of 40,000 eggs

Days 7-8 - Unzen

Missed Days 1-2? Day 3? Day 4? Don't tell me you missed Days 5-6 as well?

Unzen stinks. There's no nicer way to put it.

It is an active volcano on the Shimabara peninsula, about a 2 hour bus ride east of Nagasaki. When we got off the bus, the sulphuric stench invaded our nostrils and killed most of our smell receptors. Imagine 40,000 rotten eggs bubbling away in a ditch and you get the general idea.

"I didn't do it!"

I'd originally booked a ryokan (which shall remain nameless) which was pretty expensive, but we budgeted for it 'cos we wanted a truly sublime onsen experience to end our trip.

When we showed up at the ryokan (backpacks in tow) Matt said to the guy that we had a reservation. Instead of treating us like guests and ushering us in (which, naively, we may have expected considering the price of the place), he automatically whipped out his calculator, added the taxes and showed us the total price on the calculator and asked us if we were sure we wanted to pay that much. There was an uncomfortable silence as he held out the calculator and waited for our response.

Now, I don't know about you, but when I confirm a reservation I usually know how much I'm gonna have to fork out. I'm no snob, but when a hotel knows we're coming, I expect at least a "Konnichiwa". Nothing. The ryokan was colder than a nun's tittie. In short? This place really sucked and we hadn't even made it past the foyer. It sucked all the more passionately, because we'd been welcomed with open arms everywhere else.

We confirmed that, yes, we understood how much it was. Matt muttered under his breath, "Do you get the feeling we're not welcome here?"

I nodded, "Uh-huh" and we informed our "host" that perhaps we'd go somewhere else. He hid his disappointment well. When we were out the door we both said in unison, "Fuck that for a joke".

I may not be in the hospitality industry, but I'm pretty sure that if someone walks in and offers to give you money to stay there, you do your damnedest not to put them off. It wasn't like the ryokan was teeming with guests either.

Roadside prayer

The Information Centre was renovating, so we turned to the trusty Lonely Planet for accommodation advice. Not knowing what to expect, we called one of the numbers for a kokuminshukusha (an inexpensive government subsidised guesthouse in so-called "scenic places") called Seiun-so.

"Did they have any rooms?" Why Yes! "Erm, we are outside the Information Centre; how do we get to the guesthouse?" Why! We'll come and pick you up!

Now, that's more like it!

Seiun-so is in a remote part of Unzen; a huge hotel with an onsen for guest use which is also open to the public. 24 hours a day. The Japanese style rooms were modern and comfortable and the front of house staff, friendly.

As soon as we checked in we had lunch in the public restaurant next to the onsen baths. One very typical aspect of onsen culture is that after a relaxing bath, bathers tend to retire to the restaurant and pass out next to the low tables. The onsen even provides cane pillows (not v. comfortable?) for convenience. While we were eating, there were maybe 12 people fast asleep, snoring their arses off.

And don't even start me on the baths. They were not as stinky as the town, but the sulphur content is very high and apparently very good for rheumatism and dermatological problems. Dicky Knee was in the rare and unfortunate position of onsen baths being very bad for her. DK needed ice, not deep heat. But damn, was it good. I also realised just how much I enjoy getting nude in front of others. Liberating, wot.

That night, Dicky Knee had a tanty and refused to work. Matt asked her, "So was the onsen worth the pain?" Dicky Knee, in her grumpy condition, countered, "Fuck yes" (mouthy little joint aint she?)

For 7,500 yen, Seiun-so offered stellar accommodation, 24 hour access to the onsen and an amazing Japanese meal and buffet breakfast. Exhausted after all our bathing activity, we spent the night drinking vending machine sho-chu (potato liquor) and playing "Waterworks".

At 6.30 a.m, we had another bath, just as the sun was rising. I scored the outdoor bath (rotenburo) all to myself, there was a layer of frost on the trees and the sky was just breaking into a flurry of early morning pinks and blues.

The moral of this story is that you don't have to pay a pretty packet to get fantastic hospitality, food and experience.

Before getting back on the bus to make the long (9 hours) journey home, we wandered around Unzen town to check out the jigoku (hells) - sulphuric water fountains bubbling away just above the earth's crust.

Onsen Tamago

We also tucked into an onsen specialty, "Onsen Tamago" which are eggs boiled in the hells. Considering the hells smelt like eggs it was no surprise that the eggs tasted like... boiled eggs. There was nothing particularly unusual about the taste. But you know, you've got to try these things.

Unzen Photo Gallery...

Tomorrow - back to the Tokyo grindstone

Dicky Knee does Nagasaki

Days 5-6 - Nagasaki

Missed Days 1-2? Day 3? Day 4? Well... get onto it!

Nagasaki rocked my world. If I ever come back to Japan, Nagasaki would be top of my wish-to-live list.

Everyone in Nagasaki seemed laidback and friendly. No. I mean it. Everyone. Some guy even stood back and let me onto the train first, even though I was behind him in line. I was like, "Huh? You what?" Unheard of in Tokyo. In Tokyo he'd be deemed certifiable.

Hell, even the cats were friendly.

Poster in Chinatown

Nagasaki has an elusive Euro-Japanese character with a healthy dose of Chinese spirit thrown into the mix. Rambling streets. Stone stairs that loop and wind through old dishevelled enclaves. There is something both ethereal and down-to-earth about the place. Unpretentious. The influence of the sea is evident. Although every day sent us blue skies, there was something a little dark and waterlogged about the city streets. The ghosts of centuries old pirates lurked around many of its corners. The thing Dicky Knee rued most about Nagasaki (and yet, paradoxically, the thing Dicky Knee's owner most loved) was its endless hills and steps.

But its still a city and a lot of it is just like any other medium-sized city. Gap Stores. KFCs. Road construction. But it felt alive. Nagasaki isn?t a jaded and self-absorbed town like Tokyo.

Hard yakka along Teramachi

And Nagasaki's history! I'm not talking about the H-bomb and its aftermath, although that aspect is certainly interesting - but the background of 16th century Japan when Christianity sailed into the country and Nagasaki was the main trading port with the West and China. In 1597, Toyotomi Hideyoshi tried to abolish Christianity and 26 Jesuits, both Japanese and Portugese (2 of them young teenage boys) were crucified on the hill which now overlooks Nagasaki station.

You don't get that kind of Euro-christian influence anywhere else in Japan. To be honest, I was hoping to really immerse myself in the history of the late 16th Century, but nowadays, museums chronicling that era are thin on the ground.

The "26 Martyrs Museum" was quite a find, though. It houses 2 floors of Christian artefacts from that time and information on the events leading up to the crucifixion and expulsion of Christianity from Japan (which marked the beginning of Japan?s seclusion from the west).

One aspect of the post-Christianity seclusion I found really interesting was the practise of "Ebumi", meaning "pictures to step on". From the early 17th century, a person was made to stand on a sacred Christian image, such as a crucifix or religious picture, the theory being that a staunch Christian would hesitate or be unable to do it. Many of Nagasaki's citizens were subjected to Ebumi right up to the mid 19th century, just before the Meiji Restoration.

Jeez, sorry to crap on. I lost my footing. Now, where the hell was I?

For the record, both The Mister and I felt that Nagasaki's A-bomb museum was better than Hiroshima's. Firstly, it was smaller, which meant you could absorb more information without having to bang your head on the nearest wall in order to fit more in.

Secondly, it was more visual. For some reason, photos of Nagasaki's aftermath were prevalent. One of the first things you see when you go into the museum is a picture of a charred and burnt body. You didn't see that in Hiroshima and the emotional impact was... well. You can imagine.

At one point, I nearly lost it. It took just one single photo. An infant feeding from her mother's breast the day after the bomb. The mother looks like she's about to fall over, but the infant is hanging on for dear life. The caption said that the infant didn't even have the strength to feed and died 10 days later. Man, that fucks with you. 70% of the victims of Nagasaki were women, children and senior citizens. Talk about crushing the soul of innocence.

But it wasn't a "woe is poor little old Japan" testament. There was a scathingly honest series of interactive videos detailing Japan's "15 years of war", from the Manchurian incident to the end of World War II and a memorial to the Korean victims apologising for the atrocities Japan inflicted.

You may know that Japan in 2004 is reluctant to change high school history textbooks that downplay the occupation of the Korean peninsula and this has caused a lot of resentment between Korean residents and the Japanese government. This frank plaque is an optimistic reminder that change can and does happen.

Crap, there goes Kinki again. I'm back. No, I am. I'm back. Oh, shut up.

Did I mention that everyone in Nagasaki was laidback and friendly? I lost count of the number of people who passed us and said, in English, "Hello! How are you! Have a nice day!" Occasionally, Matt's demeanour made me think that perhaps he'd met a few before, but no, they were always complete strangers.

The most priceless ducky of them all, however, was "Grando-mama-san"; the proprietress of Nishiki-so. I think she may have fallen in love with us. She was forever whacking us solidly on the arm in what we assumed was an affectionate gesture (?), and stroking or pinching my cheeks and cooing, "Kawaii! kawaii!" I mean, honestly, what does one say to that?

I had a bit of a cough still and she would stand in the genkan to see us off on our day's travels, clucking, "Grando-mama-san worry about you!"

Shianbashi street at dusk

Nishiki-so is perched high up one of the winding knolls and our room, which had the feel of a cosy Japanese holiday shack, overlooked Shianbashi's "pleasure district" (with low-key establishments like "Screw", there was no doubting just how pleasurable it was). Shianbashi's vibe is top shelf. Reminded me a lot of Gion and Pontocho in Kyoto. Long narrow alleys with a canopy of electrical wires to fuel the love festas going on behind closed doors.

Matt and I spent both nights in Nagasaki boozed up on soba wine (like sake but tastes a bit more like vodka), stumbling down these ambiently lit streets and watching the endless procession of (kicking and screaming) men being lured into the hostess bars. Good fucking fun!

And we thought Fukuoka had the market on funny signs - Nagasaki surely shat all over it with this pearler:

Nagasaki Photo Gallery...

Tomorrow - The Funk of 40,000 eggs

The Stormtroopers of Fukuoka

Day 4 - Fukuoka

Missed Days 1-2? Day 3?

Where the Kawaguchi Ryoso was a tranquil oasis, Kashima Honkan in Fukuoka was, ahem, not. At least, not the first night.

Entrance to Kashima Honkan

The ryokan itself is gorgeous. It was once an old tea house - a rambling wooden labyrinth of tatami rooms and corridors, all opening onto the central Japanese rock garden. You could almost hear the echoes of giggling geikos long gone.

The hospitality was also obliging. We originally had a second floor room, but Dicky Knee protesteth so the staff were kind enough to set up and warm a ground floor room. Bad move.

It would have been fine had it not been for the Stormtroopers, 5 peroxided Japanese 20-something boys, who invaded the two rooms above us. Stomping. Drunken cackles. At one point it sounded like the tatami mats and shoji screens were being defiled. I don't begrudge anyone having a good time, but the ryokan was a creaky old structure and every sound of this boozy blitzkrieg took on a life of its very own. And it was 3 a.m.

It was all I could do to stop myself breaking down their door and yelling, "Urusai, yo!" ("You're being pretty fucking noisy, aren't you!"). Happily, The Mister, with his delightful command of diplomatic Japanese (and, you know, cos he's the man and all) came to the rescue, climbed the rickety old stairs and asked them "Would you mind awfully if you piped it down a little?"

Ah, peace! Shortlived peace! Just as they shut the fuck up, the heating units of their room kicked in, offering us a range of sounds from a quiet hum to a jackhammer to what sounded like a muted wailing banshee.

At 6 a.m the Stormtroopers decided to check out and we were woken from a fairly decent 2 hours sleep. Tails between our legs, we begged for our old room back and that night had the sleep of angels...

Detail of Kushida Jinja's portable shrine

There was nothing I particularly wanted to see in Fukuoka. Just meander. We ambled through Kushida Jinja where we ran into the Mother of all Mikoshi. "Mikoshi" are portable shrines - decorative shinto altars which men and women carry through the streets at festival time. Usually, they are impressive, but only about 5-10 feet high. This one was probably about 30 feet. How the hell they expect anyone to propel that Mama onto their shoulders I shudder to think.

We ended up at Canal City, touted as a "futuristic shopping and entertainment extravanganza". It was. OK. It was just a shopping centre, although it did have a lovely aspect over a man-made canal.

Dicky Knee liked Canal City, though, for its plethora of places to sit down, so we took in "The Last Samurai", which I thought was excellent. And lets face it, you could do worse than Ken Watanabe and Hiroyuki Sanada for eye candy.

I'll take their word for it

Fukuoka's piece de resistance was its funny signs/shop names. Among the many we spotted during the day, was "Excellent Room" in Fukuoka station (the facade was very anonymous so no way of telling how, exactly, it was excellent), the "Colon Booth" (a health and beauty store) and "Labia Cum MREV". Unfortunately, we only saw this on Canal City's directory - we never did get to find out what it sold... anyone care to enlighten us?

Fukuoka Photo Gallery...

Tomorrow - Dicky Knee does Nagasaki

We interrupt our scheduled programme...

...for a peep at the bod that made Anan's cover this week.

"Oh-ho-ho!" I hear you scoff; "how very strange that a member of SMAP is on the cover of a magazine!"

Well this, my friends, is no ordinary bod. Now, I'm not a massive perve, but when it comes to the most delectable piece of eye-candy in Japanese pop-history (the delightfully buff buffoon, Katori Shingo), I'm happy to shell out a measly 350 yen for my piece of the pervy pie.

OK Kinki, put your tongue back in your mouth and get back to work!

History tends to repeat

Day 3 - Hiroshima

Missed Days 1-2?

I'm sure the seitai meant my knee would be better after a few days of rest, but dammit, I had a holiday to attend!

Matt, bless him, carried my backpack for me and we spent the day in Hiroshima, mainly at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum and the lesser known (but more emotionally affecting) National Peace Memorial Hall for Atomic Bomb Victims.

A-Bomb Dome in quiet reflection

Peace Park, which used to be the downtown area of Hiroshima before the bomb, is quite lovely. The A-Bomb dome, one of the only buildings within a 2km radius that was not shat to bits, has been preserved as a poignant reminder of August 6th, 1945 and is also a convenient landmark when getting your head around the extent of Hiroshima's flattened pancake.

For me, the museum was definitely an education (at 50 yen a pop, you sure as hell can't beat it) and a well-balanced one at that. It articulated the horrors of the first atomic bomb used against a population without sublimating Japan's role in the chain of events leading to it.

What was particularly interesting was the commentary on the current status of world-wide nuclear testing. For some reason, it really hit home for me the reality of a (near) future nuclear war. I mean, I was always aware of the possibility in an abstract sense, but seeing the effects on Hiroshima, it became a truly viscerally horrifying thought.

The museum is enormous and the second building is the "bring it emotionally home to mama" part, with exhibits of charred school uniforms and the like. But we definitely reached saturation point. You can only look at so many burnt artefacts before crying, "Enough already! I get the point!"

Although I'd highly recommend the museum, I felt it did keep you at an arm's length. This is probably not the museum's fault - there was a policy imposed by the U.S after the bomb to suppress photos of the devastation (god forbid that the world discover that dropping the bomb may actually have been an atrocity) so whilst there were a few hands-on exhibits and plenty of reconstructions and harrowing eye-witness accounts, there was not much in the way of photographs or film depicting the aftermath.

Cityscape over Motoyasu River

As we ambled back to the shinkansen station, it was nearly dusk, and the cityscape of the river, A-bomb dome and T-bridge (which was the Little Boy's target) looked beautiful. Hard to imagine that 60 years ago, it was a wasteland of rubble and death.

Hiroshima Photo Gallery...

Tomorrow - The Stormtroopers of Fukuoka

The Kindness of Strangers

Days 1-2, Miyajima

Before we left for Kyushu, I whacked my knee on the side of our couch. It cramped. I screamed like buggery. I whacked the renegade knee back into its socket and we departed on our journey.

Miyajima was our first port of call - a divine atoll of inspiration. We battled the O-Shogatsu (New Year) crowds for Hatsumode (first shrine visit) at Itsukushima Shrine, a sprawling wooden shrine set on wooden legs which at high tide, is surrounded by water.

We fed the deer (considerably more docile than the cantankerous buggers at Nara who would sooner eat you than let you leave without giving them some sembei). We watched the sunset over the red torii, one of those top 3 Best Views in Japan. Life was grand.

Sands through the lantern

That evening, after a nap, I stood up from my futon and my knee siezed back up again. I rolled about in the foetal position. I implored the gods "Why me?????. Did I say something wrong at the shrine?" I could walk, but my leg felt like a dead weight. I felt like Jake the Peg. Without the good leg.

The next day I limped up Misen mountain. Going up was slow, but fine. Coming back down was crap. The frustrated waterworks started again. Every step felt like me knee was gonna cramp again. Not. Happy. Jan.

We were staying at Kawaguchi Ryoso, a beautiful Japanese villa behind Omotesando, about a 10 minute walk to the shrine. Our hosts offered to make me tonkatsu for dinner (rather than the usual fare of sashimi and assorted Japanese delicacies which leaves me cold) so we didn't have to drag dicky knee to dinner.

Torii at dawn

On the third morning, I woke early and pegged it to Itsukushima Shrine for sunrise. At around 7 a.m, a Bugaku performance started on the wooden platform which jutted out into the bay.

The Bugaku - a stylised traditional court dance, fairly ponderous, accompanied by monks playing Gaguku music - was OK. But with the backdrop of the sun rising over the torii, the platform highlighted by candles and a film of early morning frost coating the boards, it was magical.

Not so idyllic was the temporary swag of feisty obbatalllions in their early morning velocity, who kept trying to push people off the platform to get a closer look at the four fancy costumed men. But all up there were only about 30 viewers, most of them professional photographers, so it felt like an intimate gathering. A rarity in Japan for such a scene.

"Who the hell gets up this early anyway?"

When I returned to the ryokan, my leg still couldn't bend, so we asked Kawaguchi-san if there was a doctor nearby.

"Oh yes" she replied. "Very close! Let me ring him and have him come back from wherever he is."

"No! No!" we protested. "We don't want to trouble him! We'll just go over when he comes back."

Kawaguchi-san waved us away and returned 5 minutes later, beckoning us us to come with her. She lead us to a tatami room in the ryokan where the "seitai" (osteopath) was kneeling ceremoniously next to a single futon.

He took one look at my swollen knee, turned me over, and started massaging the back of my knee. It hurt like a fucking (fuckit, there goes my new year resolution) bastard. True to the style of Japanese doctors, he didn't tell me what he was doing, so when he bent my knee back and I felt it cramp again, I kicked back involuntarily, narrowly missing his face.

To this he patted my leg and, quite the joker, giggled in English;

"No! I am professional. Ha ha ha!"

It turns out I'd been walking around for 2 days on a dislocated knee. He was merely trying to snap the joint back. The fee for this exemplary in-house treatment? Nada. Zip. Zero. The knee didn't feel quite normal but he assured me it would be better in a few days.

So began what would come to be called the Dicky Knee Tour...

Miyajima Photo Gallery...

Tomorrow - Miyajima to Hiroshima

Kyushu Travel Serial

Ah the stories! The photos! The sights! The hell-bent urge to see everything EVERYWHERE!

We've been back two days from Honshu/Kyushu, and damn, I'm not looking forward to going back to work tomorrow. Holiday mode has been impossible to break.

My lazy arse certainly can't condense the whole trip into one blog, so I'm gonna break it down into a series of stories over the next few days.

For the time being the photos will be using the old blog format, while The Mister fiddles with the new template. Enjoy!

Someone to watch over you...

Whoops. Well, that was fun, wasn't it. I don't know why the front page went blank there (or how long it was in that ugly state for) but there will probably be other little hitches like it that we come across while I get my head around Movable Type. Leave it alone and I thought it would remain unchanged. Anyone?

We limped into our apartment an hour ago after 8 days on the road. Rest assured that there are plenty of photos and a few stories too, and Kinki will share all of them with you tomorrow, no doubt...

Leaving on a Shinkansen

Hope everyone had a sterling New Year!

Ours was quiet - we had a boozy night at home with a couple of buddies and played Risk til 4am. Saw the New Year in with the Kohaku Song Contest (SMAP giving a golden rendition of "Seikai ni hitotsu dake no hana"), the much hyped face-off between Akebono and Bob Sapp (no guessing who kicked who's arse) and Okamura freezing his arse off before sending an exploding canon into the new year. Ah the wonder that is Japanese TV.

Haven't had a hatsumode yet - I woke up on New Years Day with a fluey reprise, so have yet to take on the shrines begging for good luck (and health!). It's all good though - The Mister and I are off to Miyajima tomorrow to start our 9 days in Western Honshu and Kyushu, so will appeal to the gods there.

Probably won't post again til we get back to Tokyo; to be honest with you, I'm kinda looking forward to getting away from the computer. I'm so in love with the new design and with Movable Type, but have got. to. get. out.

See ya in 9 days!

Okamura freezing his arse off on national TV

A New Look for the New Year

Do you like it?

The changeover isn't quite complete - all of Kinki's pages outside of the blog (most notably the photo pages) still have the old template - but we'll get round to the rest of them eventually. We have finally severed the reliance on Blogger and are up and running using the excellent Movable Type software.

Because of the numbering system Blogger used, previous links to individual posts have unfortunately changed. But the incredible flexibility and a much more reliable commenting system that comes with Movable Type were incentive enough to make the switch, and now that it is in place she will get around to bringing over all the old comments.

Eventually.

It was a team effort. Kinki had a vision for the layout, images and colours that she wanted 35 Degrees to be redesigned as, and came up with the original design in Powerpoint as a kind of pipe dream (some of you might recognize the pattern in the banner). She then went off to Fujiyoshida for a couple of days to take pictures of mountains and stuff, and I secretly went to work and surprised her with it when she got back.

For the techies, the formatting and layout is done completely using CSS (no tables anywhere!) and the navigation links are all PHP server-side includes. It even passes the XHTML and CSS validation tests (read about why web standards are important).

Anyway, if anything looks out of place or you see any weird behaviour please let us know by leaving a comment.

Now, I think it's time that old opinios got a facelift too...

HAPPY NEW YEAR!