Hello again oztraylia

5am. Monday morning. We touch down at Cairns airport. We are whisked through customs on account of being Australian - they have no interest in checking our bags, as long as we aren't foreigners. Arrive in the lobby. Go to the toilet. The toilet roll has been put in the wrong way and doesn't work. Go upstairs to get some breakfast. The escalator is out of order. Order eggs on toast. For some reason it takes 30 minutes to make. Ah yes, we are well and truly back in Australia. Really, it isn't much to complain about at all, but these small differences between Australian and Japanese culture are at first very striking. We've been very spoilt by the cleanliness, order and general workingness of things in Japan. Luci wanted us to write a little list about the things we are both going to miss most about Japan, so here is mine:

Anni:
1. The thing I'll most miss is the positive and considerate Japanese attitude and culture, particularly of the Kansai (Osaka) people. A friendly chat with an assistant at a shop who would try their hardest to speak English, ask where you were from, and then compliment you, then still be really lovely and thankful even if you didn't buy anything, could put you in a good mood for the rest of the day. The entirely non-ironic friendliness and accommodation of Japanese people is something which I am desperately trying to remember and bring back with me to Australia. It's definitely the thing I will miss most about Japan.

2. Food. Good, good, cheap food. A bowl of udon and tempura and a rice set for $4, always served with ice water or tea and made for you in less than a minute after you order it. Enough said.

3. Everyone being dressed really, really well. And really eccentrically too, especially in Osaka - old ladies in sparkly heels, elaborate kimonos and purple hair. I will miss you.

4. Trains which come every 1 and a half minutes and take you anywhere you want to go really cheaply and really quickly. By far the best public transport system. You would never, ever need a car.

5. Things being open all night. Not great for the poor late night workers at the Convenience stores who have something just a little off about them (and who wouldn't having to work the 12am - 7am shift at a 7/11), but great when you're hungry in the middle of the night and can just pop downstairs and get a really good, cheap, heated up Bento box. And shoten-doris (pedestrian streets) with shoe stores that don't close until 10pm, seedy 24 hr ramen bars and night markets are the best, particularly when you don't get out of bed until really late in the day. Japan is a nocturnal country for sure, which suits me very well indeed.

I'll miss so much more than that, but I think those are the most important ones. We are learning to write Hiragana right now and are determined to get back to Japan within a year, we loved it and miss it that much. Don't know if we'll bother writing anything about Port Douglas - it's lovely, but really not that exciting and a blog post about it would only go something like "so we went swimming again today for a bit... then ate some food I guess... and then we went swimming AGAIN and then it got dark and then it rained and then we went to sleep". So i apologise if there aren't any posts from now on, but they wouldn't be much fun to read anyway. Luci's turn now, sayonara from me!

There are so many things I will miss about Japan. Leaving really was heartbreaking. On the flight back a small toddler sobbed uncontrollably because he didn't want to leave Japan and go home. It was symbolic for me I guess. We are in Port Douglas now and our hostel is really great, more like a resort, it has got a bar, pool, shop and cafe and we have tv and air con so it's great, especially for the price (about $230 each for 9 nights). It's tropical here, warm and lovely. Still, I miss japan a lot, japan is not a perfect place but it suited me and Anni so well. We fell in love with it. Anyway, enough of my ramblings I'm going to do as Anni did and say the things I will most miss about japan.

Being normal sized: everything in japan is built for a slightly smaller person, aka me. Going to a gig and be able to stand at the back of the venue and see over the crowd was great.

Everything is clean: let me be clear about this. Japan isn't clean in an obsessive or fetishistic way. It isn't sterile or cold. It's cluttered, chaotic and often grungey. But where it counts, it's always clean: bathrooms are always clean, train stations are always clean.

Food: everything is delicious and a lot of it is really cheap! The variety, quantity and taste of food that won't be over ten dollars is amazing! Even convenience stores sell pretty decent prepackaged meals, salads, sushi and desserts. The serving sizes are also smaller and you can feel full without feeling stuffed. People have small homes with small kitchens which has led to Japan being one of the best eating out cultures in the world. The food i will miss most is karaage, a kind of Japanese fried chicken that I've never seen in Australia, but in Japan it's everywhere.

People being stylish: in japan everyone takes great pride in their appearance, and whatever look they choose they do it creatively and succinctly. You sometimes see people with bizarre fashions but they make it work because in Japan there is more freedom to mix and match different styles of western dress for the best aesthetic affect. Me and Anni love fashion and clothes but in Japan we never felt overdressed because fashion is something for everyone (in the cities at least).

Politeness, friendliness and positivity: these qualities are so prevalent in Japanese society and our interactions with people, whether they were friends of friends or simply people we met on the street, all left me charged with a positive energy and made me appreciate what a huge difference it can make to have population density force you to have consideration for others. Some of the people we met were deep in the counter-culture but they portrayed non of the ego or apathy I associate with it, and were still so keen to be extra friendly and helpful and to give a good impression of Japan.

Everything works! Appliances, systems, maps: everything actually functions as it's supposed to, with clear instructions in Japanese, English and often Chinese, Korean and Brail. The best example of this is the amazing public transport system. Low fares, trains to anywhere you want to go, easy to use fare system, trains leaving EVERY TWO MINUTES. The transport system even has women only carriages for late night train journeys. In japanese cities not having a car is never an inconvenience with the amazing train system, easy bike travel and the mass of pedestrian streets walkways and bridges.

Pop culture especially visual kei: in japan the pop culture is for everyone not just children or nerds and the proliferation of j-pop, manga and anime makes the cities feel colorful, vibrant and alive, the real and fictional worlds mixing together like salt and fresh water in a tidal estuary. Seeing visual kei without actively looking for it, going to visual kei record stores and seeing visual kei bands live is something I will miss so much.

I'm sure there are so many other things but this post is getting huge, so suffice to say the first thing me and Anni said to each other when we woke up on our first morning in Tokyo was "we have to come back here".

Sayonara from Luci

Osaka is amazing. Japan is amazing. The end.

Well... not the end (of this blogpost), but we have inevitably and unfortunately reached the end of our trip. Tomorrow we fly out of japan on a comfy overnight jetstar flight (haha, sarcasm) and get to cairns airport at 5 in the morning, where we will then have to wait 6 hours for our shuttle bus to Port Douglas. Fantastic. All super witty sarcasm aside though, our last few days in Osaka (and Japan) have been filled with unbelievable new experiences, amazing foods and lovely people. In the last 5 days we have hung out with a bunch of sound artists at a party, visited Osaka Castle, tried Okonomiaki, visited a contemporary art gallery, been to an amazingly huge aquarium, witnessed a mantaray trying to get it on with a diver, been on Hep-5's gigantic ferris-wheel, rode on some lame 3D rides by ourselves in a games arcade (but still had heaps of fun even though it was so cheesy), accidently wandered into the wrong part of town and stumbled across the weirdest brothels, visited an Onsen (Japanese gender-segregated bathhouse) and walked around in the nude, walked all the way down the longest shoten-dori (covered pedestrian shopping street) in Japan, visited America Town and did some more shopping. But the one thing that has really made this part of the trip is the super cheerful, friendly, positive atmosphere of Osaka and the Kansai people. What both Luci and I are seriously going to miss is the deeply ingrained posivity and politeness of Japanese people. We're very sad tonight about leaving but hey, it can't be too bad, we are after all off to a tropical beach tomorrow. Sayonara Japan, we've had the most unbelievable adventures.

More from Port Douglas!

Pictures: views from Osaka castle (daytime), Hep-5 Ferris Wheel (nighttime), picture of Osaka castle, jellyfish at the aquarium, more parfaits, Fukushima-dori (the street of our hostel), some totally crystallised cars in Amemura, eating Okonomiaki, the scary statues on the 2.6km shopping mall, an entire bottle of Yakult (yum) and a photobooth photo from Hep-5.

Namba, Osaka

Only in japan can you leave your wallet sitting outside your hostel all night and have it returned to you in the morning, all 50000 yen still inside. Oh god. Anyway apart from that, Osaka is amazingly amazing amazing. We have already had two amazing days and nights exploring Namba (an amazing downtown prefecture of Osaka that is like our favourite parts of Tokyo all smooshed into one - Busy and bright like Shibuya (and it has a tower records too) trendy like Shimokitazawa, grungey like Ueno and Ikebukuro and with many shopping streets - like shin-saibashi, which extends for about 1.5 kilometers and has no less than 5 McDonald's along its length) and hanging out with Tomomi and her friends, who have been so lovely and welcoming towards us. Here are some pictures because I don't have time to write about it all in detail just now because we are leaving soon for Osaka castle and the Umeda district (which contains the LONGEST shopping mall in Japan, at around 2.6km in length). There are sooo many stories still to tell!

Sayonara, Annika

Photos: view of Osaka from our hostel's rooftop, some weird statues, the Namba district at night, a friendly Octopus advertising fried balls of itself (only in Japan), amaaaaaaazing Okunomaki(?) (Japanese style) pancakes, and suuuuuper cheap cocktails at a bar we went to in Namba (normal price for Japan though, we are going to be so sad about going out in Australia again now. These cocktails are about the price of a schooner of bad beer in aus :( )

Osaka - the friendliest city in Japan

We were not even in Osaka for 10 minutes, just looking for our hostel like confused westerners, when a small, friendly woman approached us and asked (in pretty good English, too) if she could help us find where we were going. She walked with us for about 5 or 10 minutes to our hostel. Being conditioned to be wary of strangers and automatically think that someone must have a hidden agenda if they go out of their own way to help us, we thought maybe she wanted money for a charity or maybe was going to lead us down a dark alley and murder us. However she left us at our hostel with a "good luck, and enjoy Osaka" and waved us a friendly goodbye. We have been informed that people in the kansai region, and Osaka in particular, are very outgoing and friendly, and our first impressions of Osaka and the first few people we have talked to have most definitely confirmed that. And we also thought that SURELY, this time, we would have a crappy small hostel room. No, it's amazing and even bigger than all the others. Ahhhh Osaka, we are in love. We also just had a quick wander around the streets and have decided we REALLY like the look of Osaka - our hostel is on a cute cobblestone pedestrian shopping mall, and the suburb (Fukushima (don't worry, we're not in THAT Fukushima) ) that we are in is a grungey, restaurant filled downtown district much like a cross between our favourite suburbs of Ueno and Koenji in Tokyo. Now we're just really sad that we're only here for 6 days. Anyway this was just a quick post to express my love for Osaka. Tonight we are going to a dinner party with Luci's brother Karl's friend Tomomi and a whole bunch of her friends. Will keep you all updated and I should also have some photos to upload soon. For now, enjoy some photos of amazing parfaits (I think we may actually write a separate blog post just about parfaits - like all things from the 80s, here, rather than fading into obscurity, it has become massively popular and exaggerated about 5 times. We have become slightly obsessed with eating parfaits here because they are so good - it's like 8 contradicting desserts all shoved together in a glass with cornflakes - there are always cornflakes. This place we went to in Kyoto last night served over 200 different kinds of parfait. Oh my goodness.)

Kyoto

Kyoto is an amazing place. It's completely different from Tokyo. Where Tokyo is modern, crowded and fast paced Kyoto is serene, traditional and much more sparsely populated. The city is very concentrated and there is a building limit so from our 6th floor room in the hostel we can see all the way to the densely forested steep mountains that surround the city on two sides. Many of the famous temples are nestled at the base of these mountains and you can ride to the edge of the city in as little as half an hour.
Despite a tumultuous history as Japan's feudal capital, Kyoto was spared much of the WW2 damage inflicted on other Japanese cities leaving many of the traditional houses, castles, canals , theaters and many many shrines and temples. This has made it the Capital of traditional culture in japan.
Kyoto people seem to us a little colder than the people in tokyo which adheres to the stereotype. We certainly seem to get a lot of long stares. However I think this may be more to do with the fact that almost all the foreigners here are tourists (as opposed to Tokyo where many are expats). I can see how this would give Kyoto people a worse impression of foreigners or at least make them seem more of a novelty. Especially if most of the tourists are like the American guys at our hostel ( they are nice but obnoxious and loud. Very loud.)

The philosophers walk.

We took a bike ride along the famous philosophers walk. It is a walk that runs along an old canal surrounded by beautiful forest and temples on one side and a panoramic view of the flat Kyoto valley on the other. It is hands down the most beautiful place I have ever been and even despite it's tourist status it is not overdeveloped, just dotted with nice restaurants.

The manga museum

We went to the Kyoto manga museum, an ambitious museum which explains the history and concepts of manga (and it was co-founded by a brain scientist). It is however mostly devoted to amassing a huge collection of manga for the public to read. It has now over 200 000 titles and 800 yen will give you a free pass to read manga on the lawns all day. It was so relaxing lying on the fake grass in the afternoon light and reading from the huge selection of manga in English.

Kinkakuji

We also went to the kinkakuji temple, known in English as the golden pavilion. This group of temples was constructed initially as a retirement villa for the shogun yoshimitsu in the 1200s. It was later taken over by a sect of buddhist monks. The actual pavilion that gives the area it's name is a magnificent three leveled pavilion covered in gold leaf. The whole area was so beautiful and detailed. We saw it on a day shrouded in mist which created the perfect effect: the surrounding forest and moss covered hills dripping with the last night's rain.

Gion district

We spent a day in gion district: a shopping and restaurant area famous for it's traditional food crafts and its many geisha houses. Everywhere we went we saw maiko (geisha in training) . It's strange to see them in their kimonos shopping and smoking, but in general I think japanese people see less of a partition between traditional and modern elements. To the people of japan a Shinto shrine with a vending machine at the base is not so incongruous. The food in gion (and Kyoto in general ) is great and we have eaten some great local dishes like folded Kyoto omlettes and delicious brown rice which is somehow turned violet.

The imperial palace

Luckily the day we arrived in Kyoto the imperial palace was having it's autumn open days. So we got a rare treat. It was amazing walking around the huge stark and beautiful palace complex. I couldn't help imagining the emperor Meiji living there as a boy totally isolated while the world changed outside. Japan transformed in his lifetime from a feudal isolated nation to an industrialized world power and by the end of his life he would be wearing western clothes eating western food and living in his new modern Capital Tokyo. But when I saw the emperors private garden I imagined him as he is never shown. A child in a traditional world. It's amazing so much of his world is preserved for tourists like us to see.

Tomorrow we are off to Osaka. I'm sad to leave the peace of Kyoto but I'm itching for some more Tokyo style craziness. More posts to come so watch this space!

Luci

Visual kei, bullet trains and Kyoto

Luciano and I had a deal that if he went on a roller coaster, I would go and see a visual kei band, so keeping my end of the bargain we went to Shibuya O-West live house (in Shibuya) on Tuesday night to see this band called Kiryu (see the pictures I've posted below the writing). We waited around for a while with a crowd of tiny, fake-eyelashed, high-heeled and extravagantly dressed up girls (and about 1 boy), feeling very tall and western. We were then packed into a smallish moshpit area where everyone stood in perfect rows, waiting for Kiryu to come on stage. They began exactly at the advertised time, 6pm, which would be very unusual for a band anywhere but in Japan. What followed was probably one of the weirdest moments of my life. Five of the prettiest drag queens I have ever seen ran out onto the catwalk part of the stage and posed in their massive platform shoes and boutique metal guitars, and all the sweet little girls in the audience suddenly developed these very manly, terrifying voices and began screaming the names of their favourite band member while doing either the devil/rock worship sign or making a little loveheart with their hands. The lead singer (the purple drag queen) then began with a very metally scream and everyone in the audience all began this sychronised dance. Everyone seemed to know the same dance moves and every 16 bars or so they would change at the same time to a slightly different move. Whenever the singer screamed and the song got really metally, the girls would all at the same time start this crazy headbanging, which looked particularly impressive (once you got past the totally bizarre part of it) because they all have very long hair. And every single person in the audience would be doing it so it looked like a swishy, stormy sea of hair. Then there would be a nice pop-metal kind of song where the audience could sing parts, and suddenly all the girls (there were about 3 men in the audience) would have their cute little child-like voices back on again. Then the song would end, and it was back to creepy, manly devil voice "yeeeaaaaahhhs" and so on. It took a while to get into the dancing and such because I was totally weirded out, but I eventually figured out some of the moves. Apart from this one which I still don't really understand: About 6 songs in the crowed suddenly smooshed forward and crammed themselves right up against the stage, leaving 3 quarters of the mosh suddenly empty, and at every "on" beat the girls at the back on this crush would literally throw themselves up against the crowd. Then after 16 bars they would just move exactly back into their perfectly formed lines. There was also a "move" where the crowd became a violent "death ring", little high heeled girls suddenly pushing each other over and slamming up against each other (for only 16 bars though) and then going back to being completely still. It was so weird. We had gathered after talking to both Hana and Quan (from regurgitator) about the music scene in Japan that crowds never dance or even clap if you don't tell them to, almost because they don't want to do anything that they haven't been told to do. So we figured out that the members of Kiryu were doing subtle hand gestures (whilst playing very complicated metal guitar) to tell the hardcore fans (everyone in the audience) what moves to do. They do this so they can get the crowd to actually dance, but it also gives the whole show this kind of creepy robotic quality, which really weirded me out. What I did really appreciate about the band, however, was their constant interaction with the audience - they were really lovely and much easier to like than some Indie bands in Australia, or from America or England etc, who are too cool to chat with the audience or even acknowledge the audience's existence. They even took a picture with the audience which I thought was really cute. Anyway, there is just so much more I could write about this bizzarre experience but I've written HEAPS already and you're all probably beginning to look like when Luci doesn't stop banging on about Visual Kei, so I will stop. The day after seeing Kiryu, we sadly said goodbye to Asakusa and Tokyo and hopped on a bullet train to Kyoto (which come every ten minutes and go at about 250 km per hour - cityrail is going to be a very depressing reality when we get back to Australia). So yeah, bullet trains go really really really fast! Unfortunately the stupid business man next to me had the blind down over the window for most of the journey, but we did get to see My Fuji out another window, which was so cool. Kyoto is very very different to Tokyo - quieter, less crazy, more traditional and a little less friendly to tourists, I think. We're stopping here for 5 days before going on to Osaka, which is another city just next to Kyoto. So far we have visited the Imperial Palace, the Manga Museum, eaten in a traditional style restaurant and rode our bikes down the extremely gorgeous Philosopher's Path. I'll leave it up to Luci to write about Kyoto in more detail.

Hope everyone reading this is doing well and that the mountains has warmed up a little since last weekend!

Much love
Annika

(Photos: Kiryu, Luci with a 800 yen (about $9) lunch - the food here is so amazing and cheap, this was a whole set for $9!!!, and shots from around Kyoto - a man on his laptop with his cats, watching the sun set and the main river which divides east and west Kyoto.