Eating gyoza in Japan

Asia ~ Japan ~ Tokyo, Kobe & Kurume

Well, it’s official, my most favourite-ist place outside of my home country is Japan. I don’t know why I haven’t been back here since I first came in 2000, I’ll definetly be visiting more in the future. My Japanese is pretty rusty, I haven’t really practiced or studied it for about a year, but it’s coming back to me in droves. The customs guy at the airport pulled me up, saying ‘Hello, could you please open your bag’, to which I replied ‘Konnichi wa’. We then chatted in Japanese about the weather, where I learnt Japanese and where he thought I should go in Tokyo. He then let me pass, bag unchecked!

Tokyo was my first stop, as I had never been there. I stayed in a fantastic little hostel right in the heart of Tokyo. They say Tokyo is the most expensive city in the world, but I don’t agree (Dublin wins the award for that, in my opinion). The hostel I stayed at cost just 2000 yen per night – about half what I was paying in London. I also spent one night in a capsule hotel – something I just had to experience. Because trains finish up early, many Japanese business men (and women) miss that last train, rather than catch a taxi home (can be extremely expensive, particularily in Tokyo), they created the capsule hotel. In the room where I was, there was a long wall full of ‘capsules’ – tiny rooms, about 1 meter high and a bit over 2 meters long. In each capsule, there was a bed, tv, radio, light and tiny holes in the wall for a book and so forth. On another level, there was a [women only] traditional Japanese bath room. It really was suited to a person who misses the last train – they give you a towel, facewasher and pajamas. In the bath there was shampoo, conditioner, toothbrushes, everything for free. Lots of fun, very Japanese.

Tokyo Capsule hotel

I met up with one of my host sisters, Sawako, whilst in Tokyo, which was great. Sawako is on her last year of studying acupuncture, and she showed me around the city, helping me with the subway (a big blessing – the Tokyo subway consists of a heap of different lines, the map looks like a ‘messy plate of colourful spagetti’). We visited Asakusa Jinja – a huge shrine around the corner from where I’m staying and watched all the school kids running about. October is the official month when school trips take place and so everywhere we went in Tokyo had middle school kids racing about, taking photos. The next day I visited Akiharaba – electrical town. I had so much fun that I spent 3 hours in a single store. Just playing and looking and playing. Electronic dictionaries, digital cameras, mp3 players, rice cookers, even eletronic toilets! During my time in Tokyo, I also visited Ueno Park (and spent a couple of hours playing with a kitten and her ‘mum’ – a 3 year old Japanese kid), Ginza (very happening, busy area, full of ‘modern’ tokyoites – and the occasional kimono clad woman) and Harajuku (home of the Japanese ‘alterative’ lifestyle)

Next stop was Kobe, where I visited another of my host sisters. Asako came out to Australia in 2001 and spent 6 months living with us. It was great to see Asako and meet her family. Asako took me to see Kobe, where we spent most of our time wandering around, shopping and seeing the sights. The highlight of the visit was definetly the time spent around the dinner table – listening and talking with her family, watching her grandfather do magic tricks and listening to the concert they put on for me (Asako’s sister played the keyboard, Aunt played the piano, Cousin played the flute and Asako worked wonders with the xylophone). It was hard leaving, but I’ll be back!

Eating Okonomiyaki with Asako's family

The final stop on my trip around the world – Fukuoka – was fantastic. Kurume, a small-ish (about the population of Melbourne) city on Kyushu is where I lived when I was an exchange student, way back in 2000. Seeing all my host families again was fantastic, as was visiting all the places where I used to hang out. My host families took me all over the place, it really was weird seeing all the places from 5 years ago. So much has changed, but so much is the same. Also went to my old high school and saw my old home room teacher, as well as a few others. Managed to find my way to town and ride around where I used to, all on my own, which I thought was a pretty decent effort. Visiting my host families and catching up with them has been great, I wonder if Japan is where I should be, after all? Only the future will tell…

Me with 3 host families, at the local Chinese Family Restaurant

Of course, I’ve been enjoying the Japanese food too. Gyoza – Japanised Chinese dumplings – is probably my favourite, but sushi, gyuudon, yaskisoba and takoyaki are up there too. The food is reasonably cheap too, about $5 or $6 for a sit down meal, as long as you know where to go. I love being able to order food and know exactly what it is you’re eating. That said, it doesn’t always work out that way – the other day I wandered into a resturant, looked over the menu and realised I only understood one thing – yakisoba. That was fine, I thought, I love yakisoba. But when I ordered it, I was told it wasn’t available. Glancing over the menu again, I decided not to risk it and point, but rather to ask the waiter for his suggestion. He raced away and came back with a delicious dish, but I’m still not sure what I ate!

Well kiddies, I’m now ready to go back to Tokyo for a few more days, then I head for home. What a fantastic year, I’ll miss the traveling, but am quite looking forward to having my own bedroom, a bathroom where I can leave my shampoo and a kitchen where I can store stuff… And of course my family, friends and pets!

xoxo Bobbi!!!

All roads lead to Rome

Europe ~ Italy ~ Pisa, Florence & Rome

I don’t think I have ever been as exhausted as I was when we were standing there looking at the leaning tower of Pisa. Keen to save money on accommodation, we arrived in Italy after spending the night at the Girona Airport and the night before that on a bus from Madrid to Barcelona. Finding a hotel in Pisa turned out to be a little harder than expected, for some reason most of the hotels were full, mid week. We spent the morning seeing everything in Pisa – i.e. the Leaning Tower of Pisa, which was another great thing to see. What was even better was watching all the tourists standing on the lawn (right next to the sign saying ‘keep off the lawn’), with their hands in the air, trying to get the perfect photo of themselves ‘holding up the tower’. Of course I had to get out there and do it myself! After 19 hours of sleep we headed off for Florence…

Bobbi holding up the Leaning Tower of Pisa

Florence provided the first (but not the last) opportunity for us to indulge in gelati and pizza. Yum… We spent our time wandering about town, went to the Academy Gallery and spent over two hours in line to see David – it was worth it. I think. Very impressive statue, he stands over 4 metres tall. We considered going to see some other galleries, but decided we couldn’t hack any more lines. We instead spent our time wandering about town, getting lost down narrow alleyways and doing some general people watching.

Rome came with a shock – people. We thought we’d been clever, leaving the big city to the end, tourist season was supposed to end in September, but no, there were people EVERYWHERE!!! We visited all the big tourist sights, including the Colosseum, the Cappaccini Monk Crypt and St. Peter’s. For me, the Colosseum was the best of the lot – its so amazing to think that the structure has survived so much and is still surviving the latest test – tourists. We waited in line for absolutely ages (seems to be the norm for all tourist attractions in Italy), eventually got in and spent our time tagging along to different tour groups, so that we could hear about the Colosseum. One invention that we have noticed and not enjoyed on our recent travels is the tour group radio set. Nowadays, instead of the tour leader holding a microphone and shouting out to everyone in their group, they now talk into a mouthpiece, and the rest of the tour listens via headphones. Makes it really hard to overhear what they’re talking about!

Tash hanging out in the Colosseum

They say all roads lead to Rome, and perhaps it is true, as Rome was the last stop for our travels in Continental Europe. Indeed, if you don’t count our last week in London, it was the last place that Tash and I will be traveling together. Next week we split up – Tash goes back to Edinburgh to make the most of her work visa, whilst I head home via Japan… It’s been a great trip together, but I guess it’s time to move on…
xoxo Bobs

Chomping on churros

Europe ~ Spain ~ Girona, Barcelona & Madrid

Getting here turned out to be harder than we thought… Cast your minds back to a week ago, when poor, exhausted Bobbi and Tash stumbled out of bed to catch the 4am bus to the airport. What really happened is we got to the bus station at 4.05am, consequently missing the bus. The next bus didn’t leave until 5.30am which meant we would have missed out flight. As there were no other busses or trains to the airport, we were just about to catch a taxi (would have been about $280 AUD) when… a Swedish girl rocked up to the bus station with her parents, to find out she’d missed the bus also. So, in return for the money we would have paid the bus driver, they offered us a ride to the airport, and we all caught our respective flights. Looked bleak for a moment there though…

Arrival in Spain went really well, considering how much trouble we had just getting to the airport in Sweden. We spent our first two days in Girona, a small town about an hour and a half north of Barcelona. We were lucky enough to find a bed at the first place we looked – a pension run by an motherly Spanish woman. A pension is basically a flat that the owner has opened up to guests – for a double room (with bathroom, yey yey yey) it turned out cheaper than a hostel would have been. We spent our first day seeing the sights of Girona (cathedrals, river, Arab baths) and our second day bathing in the beautiful Costa Brava – the Spanish sea. We lathered ourselves in sunscreen and ‘baked’ away for 5 minutes – and got sunburnt in the weirdest spots. I got burnt in two places on the small of my back, whilst Tash has bright red ankles.

Standing in the entrance to our pension in Girona

We rocked up to Barcelona with the intention of buying a ticket on the night bus to Madrid. Which we did. Kinda. Having brought the ticket, we spent the rest of the day wandering about, idly looking at hostels for when we returned to Barcelona later in the week. It wasn’t till about 8pm (our bus left at 11.30pm) that we looked at the tickets and realised the bus left the following night. Whoops. Rushed down to the station to attempt to change the tickets, but quickly realised there was no hope, so concentrated our efforts on finding somewhere to stay. Did I mention that Barcelona was in the middle of a fiesta (festival)? Luckily, we once again found a bed at the first place we looked, so it wasn’t all bad. We were able to spend the second day seeing the sights of Barcelona (mainly Gaudi’s cathedral – La Sagrada Familia and some of his other buildings), wandering along the main street of Barcelona and watching the going-ons of the festival.

We spent the better part of 3 days visiting our cousin, Katy, in Madrid. She’s over here improving her Spanish (not really sure how, it seems pretty fluent to our ears!) and is really living it up the Spanish way. She took us around town, showing us some of her favourite haunts. One night was spent in a hookah bar, where we used a giant pipe to smoke flavoured (in our case, apple) tobacco. Very laid back, cool atmosphere. Katy also took us to the big park in Madrid, where, on a Sunday, everyone congregates to dance, fire twirl and play bongo drums. Once again, fantastic atmosphere, everyone really gets into it. We went to the Sunday market (so many people, luckily our experiences in Asia taught us how to act in a crowd) and tried chocolate churros. Yum – you’re served a big plate of churros (long, Spanish donutty things) and a mug of thick hot chocolate, used to dip your churros in. Mmm.

Katy, Tash & I trying hookah

We spent last night on a bus from Madrid to Barcelona, arriving here in Barcelona at 8am. Tonight we are camping out at the airport before our 6.30am flight to Italy. Traveling is fun, but I sure do appreciate a bed!!!
Take care peoples, let me know how you’re going,
luv bobs

107 days to Christmas

Europe ~ The Nederlands ~ Amsterdam & The Hague

107 days to Christmas is what the sign in Amsterdam’s Christmas Shop read. And to think I wasn’t counting! Amsterdam is a lot of fun, in some ways the town reminds me a lot of Surfers Paradise, probably very similar to what Queenland is like during schoolies time. We’ve been staying in a hostel in the middle of the red light district, 24 people in our room. We are the only females, the rest are mainly 20 year old English schoolboys. And they act it. Although one of the boys had us in stitches the other night – whilst he was getting ready to go out he pulled an iron out of his bag and proceeded to iron his shirt. Guys back home have a lot to learn from the Europeans!

Wandering around the streets is a lot of fun – you never know what to expect. There are always a few unsavioury guys hanging around the front of our hostel, always trying to sell us some ‘fun’. Tash says it reminds her of back home in St. Kilda. Next door to our hostel we have signs promising ‘live sex show’ and ‘fun girls’, whilst only a couple more doors on there are girls wearing next to nothing waving at men through their windows. Of course, there are coffee shops all over the place, most are tiny little cafe style shops, proudly displaying their green and white sticker that claim they are a registered, government endorsed coffee shop, legally allowed to sell marijuana and other cannabis related items. Each has their own menu of what they sell – almost none of the shops sell alcohol as well.

Plenty of other things have kept us busy, in particular, the hunt for good food. Amsterdam has lots of food, unfortunately not all of it is very delicious. We’ve been rather impressed with the fries stores – you get a ‘cone’ of fries, and then a choice of sauces. Some places have up to 30 sauces, quite impressive. And I am [proud/disgusted/surprised/forced] to admit that I have now eaten my first burger from a vending machine. FEBO, a fast food chain all over Amsterdam (possibly all over the Nederlands, I’m not sure), specialises in its burger vending machines. The burger wasn’t too bad, tasted a bit better than McD’s, to tell the truth.

Hmm, what burger should I get from the vending machine? (answer: none!)

We spent the better part of two days visiting friends in Den Haag (The Hague). It was great to see a different part of the world from a locals point of view, there’s so much you miss just being a visitor. Maureen and Michael, who are avid travelers, showed us many of the sights, including the Escher museum (fantastic), the cute town of Delft and the beach in Den Haag (very interesting, a whole heap of restaurants are temporarily set up for the summer, along the beach front, and are taken down at the end of summer). Whilst in Delft I tried the national food of pickled herrings, and convinced Maureen to as well. Not really my favourite food… Maureen also took us to see a panorama painting, which was fantastic. We stood in the middle of a 1880’s painting that went all the way around us, made you feel like you were in the painting itself.

Mmm, pickled herrings with onion

Well, we’ve just arrived in Stockholm, so we’re now getting ready to take on the Vikings. Hope every-ones looking after themselves,
luv bobs

Baguettes, baguettes, baguettes

Europe ~ France ~ Paris & Versailles

Well, everyone had better appreciate the trouble gone into writing this… It turns out that keyboards in France are different to those everywhere else. Just small differences (the letters ‘q’ and ‘a’ have swapped places, as have ‘;’ and ‘m’) but its enough to make the thought of typing an email horrendous. Anyway, enough complaining, we are in Paris, after all! Arrived after a very long night of sleeping in Glasgow airport – we were 3 of at least 100 other people who decided to make the smokers lounge our bed for the night. We were the odd ones out – we didn’t bring mattresses or sleeping bags, unlike the many others. Although it was nice and sunny in Scotland, Paris was windy and raining. So very typical of our luck!

We’ve been eating our way through all the delicacies of Paris – baguette with jam for brekky, baguette with cheeses for lunch and baguettes and snails for dinner. Well, at least that’s the way it seems. We also have nutella crepes for desert, accompanying each meal. Of course, if we get sick of all the cheese we can take a break and have a bottle of 2 euro wine instead…

Of course we’ve been seeing the sights as well as eating. Kinda. We make sure our sight-seeing fits around the eating, don’t want to miss a meal! A couple of nights ago, we climbed the Eiffel Tower. Alot of steps (not as many as the Yellow Mountains in China), but definitely worth it. The view across the city at night was fantastic. Last night we had a picnic in the gardens in front of the Eiffel Tower, thankfully the small children didn’t come near our area, we must have been scowling enough to keep them away. We’ve also gone and seen Le Sacré-Coeur, a really big churchy thing on the hill behind our hotel. The dome was amazing to see, all the tourists filing past, one-by-one was just hilarious. Notre Dame was similar – an spectacular building, but the amount of tourists around was just frightening.

The Eiffel Tower at night

The catacombs were great. A couple of hundred years ago, it was decided that the cemeteries were too full, so the French decided to dig up all the bodies and dump them in an abandoned mine. At some stage, the person in charge decided to do it decoratively, and so all the bones are lined up, using a combination of skulls and femurs to create patterns in the walls. The over-all effect is quite unique – eerie and intriguing all at the same time.

Skull and Crossbones at the Catacombs

We’ve also seen the rest of the traditional sights, such as the Louvre (got to see the Mona Lisa, should have seen the tourists at that place!) and the Arc de Triomphe (huge huge round-about, so many cars). We also spent a great cuople of hours wandering around Versailles, enjoying the gardens and looking over King Louis XIII and his son, Louis XIV’s chateus. The rest of our time has been spent soaking up the atmosphere (whilst eating crepes) and enjoying our very own bathroom. Now we’re preparing for our week in Germany, should be a heap of fun, will swap from bread to snags… luv yas, bobs