i’m here
Thursday, Dec 26, 2002.
My new apartment in Fujiyoshida. Minus 2 degrees and snowing.
Well I just had my first white christmas. My first day at work! Crazy, huh. It all seems like a dream.
Shinjuku Highway Bus Terminal
Tuesday, Dec 24, 2002. Christmas Eve. TOKYO: Shinjuku Highway Bus Terminal waiting room.
It’s almost 5 pm Brisbane time on my first day in Japan. What an insane 24 hours! Well, actually, insane week..insane month..sleep deprivation is kicking in and i’m swinging from giggling hysteria to faded exhaustion to sheer grinning exhilaration! I did it! I made it to this crazy place. anyway…here’s the last 24 hours…
The flight was hell, we ended up making 2 stop overs – Denpasar (Bali, Indonesia) and Jakarta before finally heading north to Japan. The security was so tight on departure in Brisbane, we had to go through 3 seperate security checks, the third one being very intense, where they took our hand luggage apart piece by piece, and did extremely thorough metal detectors scans, making women lean forward hunched as they scanned bra straps… all in all, very weird, and made the flight very late indeed – I think we eventually flew out at about 5:30 instead of 4:15. Landed at Narita airport, Tokyo, at 9:45am Brisbane time, so in transit for about 17 hours, got about 4 hours sleep on the last leg, which on top of 2 nights in a row of 5 hours each means that i have started to short-circuit and twitch…
Landing at Narita (Tokyo’s main international airport) was amazing. It seriously took about 20 minutes just to taxi from the landing strip to a docking gate. The (absolutely MASSIVE) airport is in a large industrial area, it all looked very depressing = cold, grey, rainy, polluted, over developed. Landed to 4 degree temperatures, pretty damn chilly. Changed into my thermals, washed my furry teeth then caught a bus into Tokyo. It took me through some very different landscapes. After the airport development, we passed through beautiful, spacious, well tree’d areas, then through the large suburb Chiba which is possibly the ugliest and most depressing area i’ve seen yet here. Tokyo Disneyland is here, the towers looked great from the bus but the rest was very depressing and run down, polluted, over-developed, over populated.. I think Christian lies here, must ask him how he copes with being in such an ugly area. Anyway, then we hit an insane traffic snarl and groaned our way over the top level of a three tiered freeway system than was in virtual gridlock. It took about two and a half hours to get into the central part of Tokyo, the place is just massive! 26 million people, I shouldn’t have been so surprised, but I was. Seriously – the main part of the city (skyscrapers and office buildings and apartment blocks) would be as big as the space from Logan to Caboolture at home. And then there’s the urban sprawl…
I got off the bus at Shinjuku, the very cool, hip, modern part of Tokyo, found the right bus station for Fuji-san, bought my ticket to Fujiyoshida, dumped my bags then went off to literally get lost! It is such an amazing place. Wandered through dozens of backstreets and laneways and have seen probably no more than 15 westerners the whle day – 4 of them at Starbucks, where I shamefully admit I made my first purchase in Japan: a Cafe Latte. It’s funny, the foreigners kinda nod at each other in a kind of serious, secret way, like they’re all in on this big secret.
Some words I wrote in my notepad at starbucks:
facemasks (yes, the pollution is REALLY that bad); cute couples, hip kids, great coats, greater scarves, mobile phones, people EVERYWHERE, business ladies in highheels riding bikes loaded up with shopping bags, hip kids sit beside me with music charts spread out on their table trying to tranpose some tricky piece, cigarettes everywhere, lots of asian signs i can’t read, lots of sign language and dictionary-searching, can’t believe i’m in Tokyo, busy back alleyways, kabuki shops with western tits and bums, some CRAZY hair – mostly on boys, i LOVE it, gorgeously cute kids. and oldies.
i am so exhausted that i have had to retire to the waiting room at the bus station. need to sleep for a day. got a chance to check my email earlier, beautiful letters from home, especially one from my brother who feels like he’s absolutely tuned in to what i’m doing and has been getting goosebumps all day. Yay. the laptop is getting hot on my lap, time to put it away. Ciao for now.
Leaving for Japan!
Wed, 18th Dec, 2002
Empty house, no furniture, lots of cleaning. Holy shit! I’m going in 5 days.
Planning some nice good bye things – Saturday night at the Zoo is (the very wonderful) Jeff Lovejoy’s fundraiser, so a perfect event to say good bye to the Zoo and all my music buddies. Sunday arvo will be magnificent down at New Farm Park, a lovely picnic with a bit o’ frisbee, some games, some nibblies, beer…Then a chrissy dinner with the fam. I’ve started to get nervous, the first tickles of butterflies have hit. Gonna miss this town and all these beautiful people. All the little secrets of a town I know too well.
New computer
Fri, 6th Dec, 2002
Well my credit card has been approved and i’m off to buy me an ASUS L1400 notebook. The Plane ticket arrived in the mail yesterday. Attended a very lovely small soiree with Crag & Deb Spann and Stu & Andy on Wensdee night, borrowed about a hundred CD’s to make a stack of compilation CD’s for my travels. Attended the Zoo’s 10th birthday soiree last night. Very pleasant to catch up with the old crew, although the room was typically steamy (some things will never change!). House is starting to look a little dissassembled although I feel like I’ve hardly made a dent in the overall packing-scheme-of-things… only 17 more sleeps. Can’t wait.
Garage Sale
Sat, 14th Dec, 2002
Currently sitting in my garage at Mark St waiting for customers to come to my garage sale and help pay for me to get to Japan! No customers for quite some time now, might have to pack up soon before I die of boredom! It’s been an interesting 24 hours, got a dose of food poisoning last night at the “pre-garage sale sale”, had to get a locum around to give me a nausea shot and some stuff for dizziness. Very yucky indeed, thank god I have beautiful friends to look after me. They helped set up the garage sale and arrived at 7.30 this morning to help with the first wave of collectors. Yay! The sale hasn’t been as busy as I’d hoped (are they ever?) so I think the first month in Japan will be very lean indeed!
Been a great week of excellent music (Sleater Kinney, Iron-On, Decoder Ring, Tylea, Speedstar) and lovely dinners with friends. Bought my new notebook computer and set it up, very exciting! Having a lovely week in general, and now only 9 sleeps to go! Yay.
21 sleeps
Monday 2nd Dec 2002
21 sleeps to go! Thanks to all of you who came to my birthday/bon voyage on Saturday – it was a beautiful day, one I’m not likely to forget in a while. Special thanks to B-Grade for playing for so long, and so well, and for setting the comfortable vibe for a great barkyard lounge party! Also huge thanks to Dad and Rowena for hanging out and helping me set up. Took some great digital pics so when they arrive on my computer i’ll upload them to the site. Must say that I now feel ready to go. Nice to have so much time to process this life changing move! Now all that’s left is the packing and cleaning and some snow clothes shopping! It’s gonna be quite a shock to go from 30+ degree hot and humid weather to minus 10 and snow.
They say it’s yer birthday…
Thursday, 28th Nov, 2002
They say it’s yer birthday…
blur
Fri 22nd Nov, 2002
I leave Australia on Mon, Dec 23 on Garuda Airlines at 4:15 pm. It’ll touch down in Tokyo (Narita airport) at 9 pm. So I’ll be in Japan for Christmas. Wow, it’s all moving so damn fast! 4 weeks left in the country!
Japan
Wed, 20th Nov, 2002
Well… the news is in! I’m off to Japan, probably much sooner than I expected. Joe wants me there by boxing day so I can sit in on some of Mia’s classes before she leaves. I have to check with Woodford that they don’t need me at the festival, then book my ticket and pack up my life! Oh my god! I only just found out about an hour ago. Called Dad at the golf club straight away and pretty much been on the phone ever since – Jackie, Dave & Elissa, Mandy, Johnny, Rowie, Mirko… ha ha ha ha ha…I can’t believe I’m actually going. I have so much to do! I’ll be taking Mia’s spacious 3 room apartment – the postal address is: Heights KST #102, Shimoyoshida 879, Fujiyoshida-shi, Yamanashi-Ken, Nippon 403-0004 for anyone who wants to know.
o.mi.golly.gosh
Wednesday, 13th Nov, 2002
Last night I took a call from a man named Joe who is the head teacher for the Unitas school in Fujiyoshida. My friend Mia Kempel has worked there for the past year and is leaving the job in late December. She has been pushing for me to take her old job, and it’s looking pretty good. If they decide to offer me the job, I will have to fly out on Jan 2 – the day after the fire event at Woodford. It’s 7 weeks away. I will have to pack up my life in 7 weeks, and have a family christmas in the last week, as well as look after my stages at Woodford. Should be an entertainingly manic time.
I am planning a birthday BBQ for Sat 30th, and asking all my friends to make me a small A5 sized self portrait. I plan to bind them all into a softcover book and take them travelling with me. Should be a fun experiment!
My good friend Saul Jarvie from the band Rival Flight leaves for Europe tomorrow night. This will be a very bittersweet occasion indeed.
Bye bye baby
Friday, Nov 8, 2002
My beautiful 1985 Toyota Carona station wagon was declared officially dead today. This is the little gem that drove me around Australia in 2 months almost 4 years ago. Today is a sad day. I have spent much of the day trying to work out how to load java applets onto this site, to no avail. I’m getting very frustrated.
Entry #1
Thursday, Nov 7, 2002
Today I had a job interview with a Japanese English Teaching School called Interac. I think I did well. Unfortunately the job doesn’t start untill March 2003 – 4 months away. What am I going to do between now and then? Started doing some project work for some young bands, and in particular, the search is on to find Sekiden a new record label. So that will be fun. And today I started work on this website. Exciting huh. Started at about 5 pm and it’s now almost 2 am. Love it. Now I have to find a host for my new site.
