Renshu ga owatte kara, I go for a walk.

My neighbours.   ClipClop Woman.   The Mechanic.   Always Running Woman.  Curious Old Man.  Boyfriend&Girlfriend, Burning Off Man, and The Old Gardener.

 

a funny bunch.  Clipclop woman wears wooden sandals and lives opposite, with her family.  The Mechanic runs the chichibu garage, which is across the road from me.  they were working on the Chichibu Fire Engine yesterday – the teeniest fire engine youve ever seen 🙂   Always Running Woman seems to always be late for things.  Ive never seen her stand still – shes always running past in a blur, leaping over the bonnet of her car and screaming off.  I sometimes want to flag her down and ask her what the story is.  Curious Old Man walks his pointy dog up and down while trying not to appear to be checking me out.  Boyfriend and Girlfriend are terribly cute.  they come home from school together holding hands and being funny with each other.  Burning Off Man lives behind me, and seems to enjoy nothing more than to get a good fire going in a metal bucket and burn off garden prunings.  You smell him before you see him.  The Old Gardener – she works the large vege plot behind me – always weeding this or pruning that.  I hear the snip of her garden shears regularly.  Shes the only one whos actually come up and talked to me – she walked around the caravan until i poked my head out, then we had a simple conversation in japanese, revolving around hot weather.  she also asked me if i was living alone, and then had a mighty chuckle.

 

Im going to send a CD full of photos home today.  so hopefully they’ll turn up on the web somewhere soon.

 

ok!  time to go!  im being booted!

Intanetto tsukatte mo ii desu ka?

Library again.  15 mins to work out how to get the keyboard to type in english.  🙂

 

The last few days have been great – getting settled, getting a practice routine going, getting bolder at the supermarket…

 

Bronwyn turned up yesterday, and I am no longer the only anglo face in town.  After seeing her apartment, i’ve decided that Im pretty happy in the caravan – her apartment is nice – larger than I imagined, but quite dark, and I think it just wouldnt work for me.  Kakizakai says there is a teeny house in his street that I might like, so i’ll have a look at that, but really i’m quite settled where I am now.

 

Perfect cubes of　crustless white bread. skink sized lizards with yellow stripes and cobalt blue tails. Rice crackers that taste *exactly* like vegemite on toast!  the most fantastic manhole covers on earth.  mountains!  forest!

 

hey nat!  I sat in a bamboo grove and played my flute for you!  when i figure out how, photos to follow!

 

Chichibu is an amazing place.  the town itself is not all that exciting, except in its Japanese-ness.  but the setting is extraordinary – most streets end up becoming little tracks off into the forest – each one a little adventure.  everything here is reduced　ｂｙ 1/3 (at least) – houses, cars, etc…  but instead of being cramped, this seems to strangely have the reverse effect – the place feels spacious somehow.  because everyone is sharing the same space, there is a huge amount of consideration and respect given – eg, there are no footpaths, so the cars share the roads with cyclists (of which there are many) and pedestrians.  and I mean *share*.  its just lovely. 

 

there appears to be a retro thing going on with the cars here.  many people get around in what appear to be modern versions of 1950’s and ’60s cars – imagine a 2005 version of a Morris 1100…  again, photos soon, I hope.

 

sayonara for now!

 

Shakuhachi o fuku koto ga dai suki!

This may work…

If you are reading this, then it does. 🙂

I’m at the local library in Chichibu, using the internet here – but it has some kind of url filter that is preventing me updating my blog properly. The trip here was fun, and plenty mind bending. Tokyo is a mad place – in steel and concrete it mirrors the tropical jungle that covers anything not continually in use. Pictures when I get a chance. The funniest thing i saw on the way in was a giant bookstore, whose sign instructed the world to “Book Off!”

Crazy monorails, vege patches in the middle of hyper-dense urban spaces, an interesting collision of old and new, ultra-modern and decay. city and forest. (theres a totoro in there for sure!). 　Captain Stag outdoor-wear, signage *everywhere* but none of it readable to me. The railway graf and tagging is almost exclusively in english though – bit strange.

And outside tokyo… **MOUNTAINS** real ones. pointy, steep and covered in impenetrable forest. Australia is an altogether slower, older place, where you have to take time to find the life of the land. Japan, on the other hand, will happily eat you alive the minute you stand still. Verdant and voracious. Movies like Princess Mononoke, and others make a more direct sense, even after just a day or two.

As for me, im temporarily housed in a caravan near Kakizakai’s house, waiting for an
apartment to become free, hopefully on sunday. Kakizakai and his family are great – very welcoming. I had dinner with them last night.

My Japanese is already being pushed. I successfully had a short conversation with a guy on the train, to find out whether i needed to change trains or not. Sumimasen… Chichibu ni ikimasu. Norikae wa arimasu ka? 🙂 Which seemed to do the trick. The helpful local then interrogated his mobile phone, which appeared to be connected to the net, and told me in japanese that it was good to stay on this train, and it would take about an hour to get to Chichibu from where we were.

I did, however, confuse one my new neighbours – an elderly japanese woman who was curious about the appearance of life in the caravan on the block next to her house. She did manage to communicate that she thought the weather was hot, and ask whether i was staying in the caravan alone. she thought it was all very humourous. 🙂

More tomorrow perhaps. This afternoon’s mission is to secure a phonecard of some sort.

w00t!

Passing Time

17J. That will be me for the next while.
China Airlines flight CI52. Airbus A340-300(C/Y).

Luggage went through no problems, despite being 5kg overweight 🙂 That was really the last worry I had. My hand luggage weighs a ton, thanks to a stack of books and a laptop. Saskia and Rick took me to the airport and helped me till I passed the point of no return. Cheers guys – so much nicer to be seen off by friends, and I got to see Sas before I went. 🙂

Boarding in an hour… La la laaa…

Damn – I just remembered I forgot to turn off the fridge. 🙂

Day Before

Yesterday, I was nervous. Today, im excited 🙂

I took some photos of my space the other day, to print out to show people in Japan where I live.

Packing is pretty much done. Just some minor tweaking to get under the weight limit. The reason I’m so close to it is all the camping gear. Tent, sleeping bag, thermarest, trangia, etc. If I didnt have that, it would be a cruise, but i want to try and do quite a bit of camping in Chichibu-Tama national park.

Ive had email from Kakizakai-sensei that he has an apartment waiting for me – which is great – I was a little worried. He is also going to pick me up from the train station in Chichibu. Getting there is going to be interesting. I land in Narita at 1pm. The train out to Chichibu from Tokyo leaves from Ikebukuro station. There are two main ways to get to Ikebukuro – there is a direct train that comes in from the airport, but it only runs every so often, or a much more frequent train that comes into another station that is on the tokyo ring line (the Yamanote line) – which would mean swapping trains, and going round the Yamanote line to Ikebukuro…

fun fun fun 🙂

Trancendent Spiritual Experiences, Talking Toilets and Ninjas

Dave has made the request that I report at least 1 bizarre gadget, 1 transcendant spiritual experience and 1 ninja attack per week.

I’ll see what I can do… 🙂

In the meantime, today I have my last Japanese lesson before I leave.

If anyone is looking for a great Japanese language teacher in Sydney, I can highly recommend Michiko Honda (email me for contact details) – she teaches Japanese at the WEA, and also takes private students. I guess I’m about to take the big exam 🙂

I’ll tell you how I go.