Greetings from Kyoto. Paul has requested that I sign the protocol while I'm here, not sure it works that way but I will do my best.
My time in the snow was great - had some awesome skiing days and a couple where the snow was not so good (due to unfortunate bouts of rain) but I was happy to have some quiet days to rest my legs. I had lots of fun at the backpackers as it was a very social place with the bar downstairs being the hotspot of the local area.
Miscellaneous observations from snow time;
Awesome!
- skiing on fresh snow
- clear days where you could see the whole mountain range
- sitting on a heated toilet seat halfway up a mountain when you are feeling a little bit cold
- skiing on fresh snow again
- listening to spanish lessons while skiing down slopes in Japan
- not being able to understand any announcements or signposts around the place
- $1 a glass Chu Hi night
- playing the Djembe with a Japanese African drumming crew
- Shinkansens (Bullet trains)
Less awesome
- Japan's idea of bread is terrible terrible sweet soft white bread that I'm sure turns to glue for your insides
- Japan's idea of coffee is hideous condensed milky stuff... even when it looks like it comes out of a big machine it's still press button rubbish
- Dont know if this is awesome of not, but the number of Japanese girls with heavy makeup under their snowboarding goggles, I even saw a bunch with false eyelashes! dedicated.
- Rain on fresh snow :(
- My half brothers' capacity to stink out a room with farts
Kyoto a town where you can't walk anywhere without falling over a shrine or temple of some sort so I did a fair bit of that today. Wandered around with another girl who showed me through the Geisha district, Gion. Lots of little wooden buildings and tiny streets, and we even saw 2 geishas in training who were kind enough to let me take their picture. We wandered through this group of temples and were blessed or cleansed or made wishes in one way or another many times over. The area is full of cherry trees and you can see how spectacular it would be if they were flowering... but I imagine fairly manic with tourists too.
In the arvo I particularly wanted to see this one shrine out of town that was full of Buddha statues that are all a bit offbeat... pulling faces or hiding behind trees etc. But because we had spent a while in Gion and on the train, it was closed when we got there. Damn! So we trekked back to the bus stop, but on the way saw a little buddha face on the hill. I dont know wheut there it was a back entrance or what but there were rows and rows of all these statues! Happily took photos of them with their little mossy heads... they looked great.
Spending tomorrow in Kyoto then heading to Hiroshima in the evening for a few days (loving this shinkansen stuff). I have informed Dad that I will be staying with him before I fly out so will see how far i get in this next week before heading back to Tokyo.
out
22 February 2009
15 February 2009
50 year storm
Hey all.
I'm sitting inside at our hostel with my legs under the heated table (I still can't get over what great inventions these are) while it RAINS outside. Very upsetting - we've had more than 30 mls in the last few days and it's really taking a toll on the snow. However the forecast is for a stack of snow over the next week (up to 2m in the next 5 days), and temp dropping to -20 at some point. I'm not sure what I will do. There are only so many layers of thermals I can fit under my Buzz Lightyear ski suit. It is so fashionable by the way - white suit with tight legs and waist, with big puffy purple and green manly shoulders. All I need is a clear spherical helmet and I surely will be going to Infinity and Beyond!
The 3 boys and Dad are playing cards which is a nice change from the boys constantly fighting. It's quite overwhelming being thrown together as a family. The brothers (aged 16 to 20) have had some very bizarre moments where I have just looked at them and had to walk away. One was this morning when they were allegedly getting ready to go skiing (I was left in charge of buying their ski passes so had to wait for them before I could go out) and I opened the bedroom door to find the 3 of them in underpants hitting each other with a snow shovel. Each morning is punctuated with a farting competition. They spend a considerable amount of time farting on each other's heads or having slap fights where the first to flinch loses. Apparently these are normal behaviours for teenage boys.
I've had 2 very magical experiences in the last week up here. One was the night I posted the last update, when it was snowing quite hard and I went for a night ski. It was snowing so hard I had to dust myself off after being on the chair lift, and wipe my (Nat's awesome) goggles so I could see. It was just wonderful skiing down, the snow was so soft and heavy it created a very eerie silence all around me. Adding to the moment was a lightning storm overhead which illuminated the skifield and all the snowflakes around me. Truly awesome.
The second magical experience was my very first Onsen. I headed down with a bunch of guys from the backpackers who are seasoned in this kind of thing on cold days with sore skiing muscles. I even managed to get the protocols right (the guys went to a separate onsen so I was on my own in the ladies) after communicating by charades with a Japanese lady who didn't speak any english. She was just getting out so I had the place to myself - it was wonderful sitting outside in such hot water, against rocks that got colder as they were further out of the water, and eventually covered in snow. I just sat there watching the steam and meditating, and sticking the odd limb out into the snow when I got too hot. Following my hour's soak I had a kind of onsen euphoria which is similar to chilli euphoria and thai massage euphoria and involves being very vague for a few hours :)
The skiing has been very very cool up until today when the snow was really suffering from the rain. But it's such an experience being in mountains here compared to Australia. At the snow fields I have been to in NSW there were only 4 ski lifts each with a few different trails. Here you need to go up 3 lifts to get to the top of the mountain, where the weather and snow can be completely different to down the bottom. Each lift has a whole bunch of runs, and if you go up to the top of one you can jump across to the next skifield. It's wonderful having a good half hour or run to go down before you need to hop on the chairs again. And the views are just spectacular! There's one beginners run which casually zigzags down the side of the mountain into a valley. I have taken so many photos along that run which I can hopefully stitch into a panorama when I get home.
I should mention too that I'm almost sick of Australians! We almost outnumber the Japanese people here. It's insane to have travelled so far to be asking people where abouts they are from in Aus. It's fun to be able to chat to people in the bars but sort of missing the point of being in another country. Also there's a fair bit of similarity between snowboarders and surfers... you get the odd one who's hit his head on the ice a few too many times and is pretty hilarious to talk to. I had one conversation that went like this;
Guy: "So, are you a snowboarder or skiier?"
Me: "Oh, I ski"
"woah. So you like some fully sick powder, eh?"
"um, I guess so!"
"or, are you more into some fully sick carving down the mountain, eh?"
"haha, yep, that's good too"
"oh yeah, so some fully sick powder and some fully sick carving. Just, like, going really fast and stuff, hey."
"something like that!"
We also visited Matsumoto castle the other day. It's one of the few remaining wooden castles which hasn't burned down and been rebuilt at some point in Japan's history. There are some massive beams in there from huge trees circa 1500s - none of those left in Japan's forests these days!
Well good times ahead with the snow forecast. Hopefully we get snowed in with a 50 year storm. If not I shall revel in spraying snow on annoying snowboarders who take up the entire track by going slow and horizontal, or blocking up the lift exits with their constant boot clipping on and off and on and off... ;)
hope you are all doing well. send me an email with all the goss!
judy xx
I'm sitting inside at our hostel with my legs under the heated table (I still can't get over what great inventions these are) while it RAINS outside. Very upsetting - we've had more than 30 mls in the last few days and it's really taking a toll on the snow. However the forecast is for a stack of snow over the next week (up to 2m in the next 5 days), and temp dropping to -20 at some point. I'm not sure what I will do. There are only so many layers of thermals I can fit under my Buzz Lightyear ski suit. It is so fashionable by the way - white suit with tight legs and waist, with big puffy purple and green manly shoulders. All I need is a clear spherical helmet and I surely will be going to Infinity and Beyond!
The 3 boys and Dad are playing cards which is a nice change from the boys constantly fighting. It's quite overwhelming being thrown together as a family. The brothers (aged 16 to 20) have had some very bizarre moments where I have just looked at them and had to walk away. One was this morning when they were allegedly getting ready to go skiing (I was left in charge of buying their ski passes so had to wait for them before I could go out) and I opened the bedroom door to find the 3 of them in underpants hitting each other with a snow shovel. Each morning is punctuated with a farting competition. They spend a considerable amount of time farting on each other's heads or having slap fights where the first to flinch loses. Apparently these are normal behaviours for teenage boys.
I've had 2 very magical experiences in the last week up here. One was the night I posted the last update, when it was snowing quite hard and I went for a night ski. It was snowing so hard I had to dust myself off after being on the chair lift, and wipe my (Nat's awesome) goggles so I could see. It was just wonderful skiing down, the snow was so soft and heavy it created a very eerie silence all around me. Adding to the moment was a lightning storm overhead which illuminated the skifield and all the snowflakes around me. Truly awesome.
The second magical experience was my very first Onsen. I headed down with a bunch of guys from the backpackers who are seasoned in this kind of thing on cold days with sore skiing muscles. I even managed to get the protocols right (the guys went to a separate onsen so I was on my own in the ladies) after communicating by charades with a Japanese lady who didn't speak any english. She was just getting out so I had the place to myself - it was wonderful sitting outside in such hot water, against rocks that got colder as they were further out of the water, and eventually covered in snow. I just sat there watching the steam and meditating, and sticking the odd limb out into the snow when I got too hot. Following my hour's soak I had a kind of onsen euphoria which is similar to chilli euphoria and thai massage euphoria and involves being very vague for a few hours :)
The skiing has been very very cool up until today when the snow was really suffering from the rain. But it's such an experience being in mountains here compared to Australia. At the snow fields I have been to in NSW there were only 4 ski lifts each with a few different trails. Here you need to go up 3 lifts to get to the top of the mountain, where the weather and snow can be completely different to down the bottom. Each lift has a whole bunch of runs, and if you go up to the top of one you can jump across to the next skifield. It's wonderful having a good half hour or run to go down before you need to hop on the chairs again. And the views are just spectacular! There's one beginners run which casually zigzags down the side of the mountain into a valley. I have taken so many photos along that run which I can hopefully stitch into a panorama when I get home.
I should mention too that I'm almost sick of Australians! We almost outnumber the Japanese people here. It's insane to have travelled so far to be asking people where abouts they are from in Aus. It's fun to be able to chat to people in the bars but sort of missing the point of being in another country. Also there's a fair bit of similarity between snowboarders and surfers... you get the odd one who's hit his head on the ice a few too many times and is pretty hilarious to talk to. I had one conversation that went like this;
Guy: "So, are you a snowboarder or skiier?"
Me: "Oh, I ski"
"woah. So you like some fully sick powder, eh?"
"um, I guess so!"
"or, are you more into some fully sick carving down the mountain, eh?"
"haha, yep, that's good too"
"oh yeah, so some fully sick powder and some fully sick carving. Just, like, going really fast and stuff, hey."
"something like that!"
We also visited Matsumoto castle the other day. It's one of the few remaining wooden castles which hasn't burned down and been rebuilt at some point in Japan's history. There are some massive beams in there from huge trees circa 1500s - none of those left in Japan's forests these days!
Well good times ahead with the snow forecast. Hopefully we get snowed in with a 50 year storm. If not I shall revel in spraying snow on annoying snowboarders who take up the entire track by going slow and horizontal, or blocking up the lift exits with their constant boot clipping on and off and on and off... ;)
hope you are all doing well. send me an email with all the goss!
judy xx
11 February 2009
snow dance
So in true backpacker style, I got picked up at the Tokyo airport in an Aston Martin, stopped in at Dad's house to repack and pick up my 3 half-brothers, then hopped on the bullet train to Nagano then on to the ski resort we are staying in :D We managed to get a quick ski in on Tuesday arvo, I am so pleased that I actually remember how to ski, reasonably well if I don't say so myself! Bill is a decent snowboarder so we head out together. Some of the runs are massive, it's fantastic, they take about half an hour to get down even though you're going FAST :)
The place we are staying is more of a backpackers, but that is happy for me as there are heaps of people here my age, most are Aussies and Kiwis funnily enough! There is a bar downstairs with a pretty good social scene, lots of theme nights (tonight is Sake for 100Y, tomorrow is Ladies Night for all 3 of us, haha). They have the most brilliant invention here - a low coffee table with a sort of doona tablecloth, and are HEATED underneath. so everyone sits on the floor with their legs under the doona... just wonderful. Dad is torturing all the poor backpackers who exist on 2 min noodles by cooking up bacon for breakfast and having an 8kg slab of Wagyu beef in the fridge (really)!!
And the most exciting thing is that it's SNOWING right now... I need to go out and dance in it and take photos (same rules apply when it rains at Lorna Glen)
later!!
09 February 2009
Thaipusam
Uploaded some more photos the other day and thought I should just write a bit about the last few which are of the Thaipusam Indian festival which happens each year. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thaipusam ) There's a big Indian community in Singapore and the backpackers I'm staying in is right in the heart of it. So when one guy in our dorm had such bad sleep apnea that 4 of us could not sleep, we headed out onto the streets to check out the procession of people going from one temple to the other, carrying their "burdens" for the gods. These ranged from large pots of milk to big getups with hundreds of long pins sticking out of their flesh, or hooks in their backs attached to ropes pulling carts.
We followed the procession back to the first temple where the preparation (mutilation) was going on. It was so intense... people having their cheeks, tongues, lips pierced with long metal rods, and having the elaborate skewer canopies put on and pinned to their flesh. The part I didnt understand is why the canopies had shoulder cushions... surely when you have 100 pins in your body, some mild discomfort of weight on your shoulders is not a concern! Some of the men collapsed in a trace-like state... probably partly to do with the fact that they fast for 3 days beforehand. We stayed, watching in shock, until 5am, by which time our snorer had stopped but I was not that inclined to sleep anyway.
We followed the procession back to the first temple where the preparation (mutilation) was going on. It was so intense... people having their cheeks, tongues, lips pierced with long metal rods, and having the elaborate skewer canopies put on and pinned to their flesh. The part I didnt understand is why the canopies had shoulder cushions... surely when you have 100 pins in your body, some mild discomfort of weight on your shoulders is not a concern! Some of the men collapsed in a trace-like state... probably partly to do with the fact that they fast for 3 days beforehand. We stayed, watching in shock, until 5am, by which time our snorer had stopped but I was not that inclined to sleep anyway.
06 February 2009
Island Hopper
Hey all,
Had a rough first couple of days in Phuket. I discovered it's not really my kind of place and was made worse by being on my own for the first time. The bus dropped us at Patong Beach at about 9.30pm ... if you read anything about Phuket it will say not to go to Patong. Prostitues and fat white men everywhere, drunk tourists, rubbish, pollution, flashing lights, heaps of traffic, and expensive to boot. Everyone tries to rip you off in one way or another. Patong's idea of entertainment is having people fight each other or do things with ping pong balls. So I got out of there ASAP. Perhaps it would be good if you booked a resort and just hung out at the beach + got massaged, but trying to navigate through ladyboys with 2 backpacks at night was not my idea of fun.
I went across to the other side of phuket, to the town where it's mostly locals. Not very scenic but they did have a very cheap backpacker's with friendly travelers who could help me plan my next few days. I ended up island hopping to Phi Phi, a very touristy place (but a lot of fun) where The Beach was filmed. I partied till the wee hours on the "pamphlet trail" - each bar has free drinks for a designated time so if you have good organisation you can hop from one to the next and pay nothing. Dancing on the beach with free alcohol and fire twirlers is always a good thing (except if you decide to jump a flaming skipping rope...). Next I hopped to Ko Lanta, a very sleepy island with cute bamboo huts for accomodation. I met up with an Aussie girl who came with me to Lanta and we stayed in places on the beach made of sticks. Travelling with 2 is so much easier, and we did some cool stuff including a day boat tour (during which i got shamefully burnt, yes mum, I know...) and a PIRATE CAVE omg. We also hired a moped which we burned around in. She is into photography too which was cool, so we could both stop at every nice lookout and not annoy each other!!
I've just ferried back to the mainland again and am staying in a town famous for it's caves, and the random rock standing out of the sea which was apparently in a james bond movie. I have half a day tomorrow to do something cool, like paddle through a cave or be boated around to see some stuff. Then off to Phuket airport and back to Singapore. I'll be quite happy to leave the touters who harass you at every opportunity and try to rip you off, but at least I have had a taste of this area and can figure out what I'd like to do if I came back. Apart from eat Tom Yum (which has been very good).
Back to Singapore tomorrow, I am looking forward to staying in a backpacker's on Dunlop st in Little India, the suburb full of indian restaurants (can you believe it)!! And this time next week I will be freezing my nuts off instead of sweating in a singlet - at least it should cure the sunburn!
j
Had a rough first couple of days in Phuket. I discovered it's not really my kind of place and was made worse by being on my own for the first time. The bus dropped us at Patong Beach at about 9.30pm ... if you read anything about Phuket it will say not to go to Patong. Prostitues and fat white men everywhere, drunk tourists, rubbish, pollution, flashing lights, heaps of traffic, and expensive to boot. Everyone tries to rip you off in one way or another. Patong's idea of entertainment is having people fight each other or do things with ping pong balls. So I got out of there ASAP. Perhaps it would be good if you booked a resort and just hung out at the beach + got massaged, but trying to navigate through ladyboys with 2 backpacks at night was not my idea of fun.
I went across to the other side of phuket, to the town where it's mostly locals. Not very scenic but they did have a very cheap backpacker's with friendly travelers who could help me plan my next few days. I ended up island hopping to Phi Phi, a very touristy place (but a lot of fun) where The Beach was filmed. I partied till the wee hours on the "pamphlet trail" - each bar has free drinks for a designated time so if you have good organisation you can hop from one to the next and pay nothing. Dancing on the beach with free alcohol and fire twirlers is always a good thing (except if you decide to jump a flaming skipping rope...). Next I hopped to Ko Lanta, a very sleepy island with cute bamboo huts for accomodation. I met up with an Aussie girl who came with me to Lanta and we stayed in places on the beach made of sticks. Travelling with 2 is so much easier, and we did some cool stuff including a day boat tour (during which i got shamefully burnt, yes mum, I know...) and a PIRATE CAVE omg. We also hired a moped which we burned around in. She is into photography too which was cool, so we could both stop at every nice lookout and not annoy each other!!
I've just ferried back to the mainland again and am staying in a town famous for it's caves, and the random rock standing out of the sea which was apparently in a james bond movie. I have half a day tomorrow to do something cool, like paddle through a cave or be boated around to see some stuff. Then off to Phuket airport and back to Singapore. I'll be quite happy to leave the touters who harass you at every opportunity and try to rip you off, but at least I have had a taste of this area and can figure out what I'd like to do if I came back. Apart from eat Tom Yum (which has been very good).
Back to Singapore tomorrow, I am looking forward to staying in a backpacker's on Dunlop st in Little India, the suburb full of indian restaurants (can you believe it)!! And this time next week I will be freezing my nuts off instead of sweating in a singlet - at least it should cure the sunburn!
j
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