A Long Time Coming...

First off the bat, I apologize for the major delay in updates. To wash away recent rumors, I am indeed still alive. I've simply been having too much fun :D

I am indeed in Tokyo at the moment, but we'll start from the beginning. And one thing I'll clear up also is the fact that I have Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS). Basically it just means sometimes I have to rush off to the toilet without warning. It's a reasonably common and between 10-20% of adults have symptoms of it. I won't write about it too much, but sometimes it can be incapacitating, forcing me to stay home. http://www.ibsgroup.org/main/aboutibs.html Seems to be a reasonably good explanation if anyone wants to read it. Anyway, on with the rest of the blog.

26/12
This is it. The day I leave country I call home. Temporarily of course. The reason I brought a ticket for the day after Christmas is because I wanted to spend Christmas in Australia, and Sachiko wanted to spend New Years Day in Japan. I originally brought a 35 day ticket (due to only being able to have 1 month off work), but then changed to a 1 year ticket when my situation changed (no more work). In total the ticket cost me about $2600 excluding insurance (which luckily I get free on my Credit Card).

Anyway, off I go to a foreign land. A land to which I've never been. Heck, this was the first time I had been on a plane before. I was armed with my suitcase, my backpack and my camera.

My first plane ride was to Melbourne, where we stayed for 2 hours. Sachiko seems to have problems with her ears 'popping' and getting a terrible headache if she doesn't use ear plugs, but I had no such symptoms. I quite enjoyed the plane. Lovely staff, free alcohol, and a comfy seat with a TV packed with 50 stations. In Melbourne we just walked around looking at the shops in the airport. I had a nice coffee at Starbucks which I normally can't do as Adelaide doesn't have any. I also took more than my share of the free toasted sandwich samples.

After a while we were back on the plane to HK. The flight took about 9 hours in total, but it wasn't too bad. Nothing really special happened on the plane - Met some nice people who we (Sachiko and I) chatted to. We arrived in HK about 10PM (HK Time). It was quite exciting thinking that I was in a foreign country.

The first thing that went through my head when we got off the plane was how fucking big this place is. The airport that is. Adelaide International Airport is essentially a shed. We even had to climb up the plane via a ladder thing as the Airport is too small to connect the plane to it. As I've lived in Adelaide all my life, I've been pretty used to things being small. But now here I was in HK Intl Airport, where they even have a subway connecting Arrivals to the rest of the airport.

So after about 6 escalators, lots of walking on travelators (those horizontal escalators) and a 40 second train ride to arrivals, we were finally at Customs. From there, we had arranged a bus to take us to our hotel - Island Pacific HK.

Unfortunately however, 1/4 through the bus ride I was forced to stop the bus to run to the toilet. Being on the main highway to Central Hong Kong, I was very lucky the bus driver could find a toilet. So I spent the first 20 minutes of my Hong Kong trip in a little porta toilet, but a squat type ones, without a flusher. Where you had to manually push you foot on a pedal to shoot this blue liquid though it. It was quite disgusting. Actually, it was probably one of the worst moments of my recent life. And what I've written here makes it sound so much better than it really was.

But once we were finally back on the road, within about 20 minutes we were at our hotel. It was quite cheap, costing about $300 for 3 nights including breakfast. The room was reasonably small, but not too bad. And we had a fantastic view from our ceiling to floor window of the harbor.

For the next 3 days we did lots of walking around. Actually, it's basically 2 days because we arrived late the first night, and our bus picked us up at 6:30am on the 29th.

Hong Kong in the suburbs is incredibly dirty. It reminds me of a dirty, smelly china town. But here, no one can speak English. I was quite surprised about this, seeing as HK is such a popular destination. But for the majority of the time, we had to play the fun game of charades.

I'll just jot down a few things we did, otherwise this first post will be incredibly long. We were staying in 'Central', which is on Hong Kong Island. We were about 5 mins taxi ride to the port, where we could catch a ferry to Kowloon - The main shopping district. I might mention how cheap many things are in HK. Taxis including. The flag fall for a taxi in HK is $15HK, which is about $2.40ishAUD ($1AUD = $6HK Approx). With that flag fall you get 2km of travel, and after which you are charged $1.2HK per 0.2km. Because of how cheap taxis were, we were able to take a taxi wherever we wanted.

And the cheapness doesn't just stop there. The ferry ride to Kowloon is $2.20 - About $0.35. And arcade games! There are many arcades in Hong Kong, which a majority of relatively new games including Initial D 3 etc. All of which are either $1 or $2HK! So basically, you'll get 6 games of Initial D 3, compared to 1 in Australia for the same price! Even Initial D cards were only $4HK, compared to $4AUD in Aust. I probably spent a good $35HK in Arcades.

One reason I wanted to come to Hong Kong also, is because of one of my favorite games Shenmue 2. Basically just so I could go to some of the places in the game. So I went to Wan Chai, Kowloon and Man Mo Temple. I was so excited at Man Mo Temple, it looks basically the same as it does in the game. I took some pics there, so I'll see if I can do comparisons. It really feels very strange going to a place in real life that you've only ever been to in a game. Man Mo also is filled with an amazing amount of incense as well. Never smelt anything so strong - There was hundreds hanging from the roof.

We did a lot of shopping in HK. I brought many online games from the local 7/11 very cheap. One game was even just $2HK. No idea if they include a free month, but I'll try them out later.

We did so much more in HK, but I'm falling so far behind with this blog that I'll leave HK at that. If I remember anything exciting, I'll write it down later.

Anyway, on the 29th we made our way to Tokyo. A dream come true. I had been waiting so long to come here, but never getting enough money together. And probably if I wasn't with Sachiko, I would still be working at Dick Smith. We arrived in Narita Airport quite safely, however our plane was stuck for 20 minutes waiting for a free space to dock, as someone stole ours. And Snow! Outside the plane it was snowing! It was the first time I've seen snow falling from the sky before. When we left HK, it was about 20Cish, and now 4 hours later on a plane, it was 2C and snowing.

We met Sachiko's parents just outside of Customs, and a good family friend of there's (Tomiyama San) drove us home. While walking out to the car, I saw 2 brand new Bentley Continental GT's in the car park. Not something you see everyday - Someone parking an $800,000 car in an airport car park is rare enough, but 2! Unfortunately, they didn't own one, but it was a nice new car nonetheless. Narita is well known as being far away from anywhere, so it took us about an hour or so to get home.

I was so happy to get out of the car when we arrived here. Took off our shoes at the front, and I donned the new slippers the family provided me with. So cool, I started to feel like I was in Japan. Unfortunately, it wasn't just the cool things that were Japanese like. In Japan, you can't really sleep in your partner’s bedroom until your married, so I have my own room here :( Even though the parents know perfectly well we've been living together for the last 7 months in Aust. Luckily however, my room is adjacent to Sachiko's, which can prove convenient. Ironically, my room is also next to the parents.

Just to bring us up to date quickly, I'll just run though what I've done the last 1.5 weeks here.
I'll explain alot of these things in more depth soon enough. With photo's of course.

- Brought hot coffee from vending machines.
- Played Pachinko (I think I did anyway. It's like Pokies, but less interaction. If that's possible)
- Played addictive as crack coin games, that 10 year old kids spend thousands of yen on a day (Photos and manual coming shortly)
- Ate lunch at a place called 'Mos Burger'. Very nice btw, you gotta try it.
- Used fantastic heated toilets that spray water to clean you.
- Used awful run down, squat type toilets in stations.
- Gone to 2 Ramen shops. I love these things, will write and photograph more.
- Brought second hand games from the local game store 'Famicon House'. I love that place
- Complained how PSP is sold out though Japan. And how noone know when it's coming back into stock.
- Went to Ginza, and shopped at huge Louis Vuitton , Hermes, Chanel, Ralph Lauren stores
- Went to the big Sony Building in Ginza and complained about how PSP is sold out though Japan.
- Went to Nikko - It's very cold there.
- Prayed at Shrines.
- Went to Shrine at midnight on NYE and donated money, rang a bell and prayed.
- Drank Sake, and Beer.
- Complained about how slow this computer is at home countless times to Sachiko.
- Threatened to buy new computer
- Went to Akihabara
- Went to huge department stores
- Went to 8 floor store of just anime/manga stuff
- Brought Hellsing box set thingo
- Brought Bandai Wonderswan and game set from Sofmap

And I'm sure there's more, but will update daily (or so) from now on, so there will be no shortage of things to write about. w00t.
And plus in half an hour I'm going to Yokohama to meet Sachiko's friend, so no more time.

Photo's to come too! Once I work out an easy way to post them.

jyaa neeee

- Wade


P.S - Just to mention it, I can speak Japanese. Or at least enough to hold a very basic conversation.

EDIT : Thanks Eclipse! It did seem a bit strange without it..