Across the sea and far away

I am a liar. I said I would update as much as I could… and I haven’t.  10 months have gone by without any updates and truthfully I have lost a lot of motivation to do these small side projects. A lot of things have happened, and a lot of things have changed. So to help you keep a timeline I’ll give you a brief outline of the past year.

JULY 2016: Big travel plans here. I have always wanted to go to England, and explore the Motherland, so at the end of July, Jenny and I went for a 2 week vacation to London. I caught up with old friends and explored ancient ruins to modern city streets. It was a kerfuffle coming back, along with Jetlag comatose.  (Full post coming soon)

AUGUST 2016: Peak summer vacation time in Japan, so off to Taiwan for another adventure. P.s I did not escape the humidity. Taipei was beautiful with the contrast of city skyscrapers and the jungle green mountains. I plan to go back. (Full adventure coming soon)

SEPTEMBER 2016: This was a busy month, filled with the school festival, school drama contest and a side trip to Hiroshima for the weekend.  I even had the interesting encounter with a SWAT raid.  Long story short, my neighbour held himself hostage with a crossbow, so the police barricade the area to keep the media out. But that did not stop them from using my apartment balcony to station 12 TV cameras and film it. Ughhhh I was so pissed off, I wanted to go out for dinner but I end up prisoner in my own home because some shitty TV station want better angles.

OCTOBER 2016: This was an emotional month. Along with working hard at school, my student won the Tokyo English Speaking Contest. I was very proud of what she had accomplished and that I was able to help her get there.  At the end of October, the week before my little sister’s 21st, my beloved Grandmother in Adelaide passed away suddenly. Being in another country and trying to offer support where I could, left me with a bit of anxiety. I dropped everything and flew back home to Brisbane to help support my family.  It was the first time I had seen my whole family in a year and it wasn’t on happy terms. I spent my time grieving from a great loss in my life and trying to help where I could. It felt like it had been a very dramatic ending to 2016.

NOVEMBER 2016: This was a slow month before I returned back to Aus. *expect for one incident early November*.  On my way back from the airport, 5mins away from home, my bus slams the breaks before it hits an oncoming car. The car was trying to get away from police, so it had crossed the opposite side of the road and got wedged between a parked bus and my bus. With front row seats to this encounter I watched police fail at negotiations with a clearly uninterested man * he was slowly smoking a cigarette, staring off into the distance*, cut to police smashing the window, ripping open the car door and pulling the man out, onto the ground in handcuffs. At that time, I had realised that I had moved to the wrong side of Tokyo.

DECEMBER 2016: I signed my contract to stay a third year and returned back home for Christmas and spent time with family. Sadly I did not catch up with friends at this time, due to circumstances.

JANUARY 2017: I returned to Tokyo, to catch up with JET friends, we all had a good Christmas break and it was nice to share our experiences.  

FEBURARY 2017: In early Feb, my student competed in the National English Speaking Contest. She worked really hard, but did not win. I was still very proud of what she had done. I also went to the Sapporo Snow festival, and experienced -3 temperatures, curry soup and real snow. (Post coming soon)

MARCH 2017: Along with work, exams, senior graduation, class matches  and teacher farewells; March was very busy.

APRIL 2017: CHERRY BLOSSOMS!!! NEW STUDENTS!!! SISTER ARRIVES!!!  Flick arrived in Japan, for a 2 week holiday. I took her to some classic locations like Miyajima, Osaka, USJ and Asakusa.(Coming soon)

MAY 2017: At this point in time, I was left exhausted by my sister’s trip. I am currently working and sleeping at the same time.  I am making more plans to travel in July/August, but this is all in the making.

Yes, its been a very long time, but I have been busy. 

More than 3 months ago during late April and May while the weather was still cool. The girls and I decided to do a big driving trip and head toward Mt Fuji and Kusatsu Hot Springs. It was the first time driving in Japan officially for me and It was considerably easy, apart from sticking to the ridiculously slow speed zones of the Highways.  Our first stop was Kawaguchiko, to experience Fuji Five lakes and the spend the day exploring the area with our hire car. It was a great time to go, the skies were clear and the air crisp, so no matter where we went we saw Fujisan. We stayed one night in a romantic Ryokan with an onsen,. It was a super relaxing start to our week. Our next trip was to Kusatsu. It’s famous for its natural sulfur hot springs and skin softening water. It was a 4 hour drive from Saitama (our resting destination). It was up in the mountains and most of the trip was spent driving up and down twisted roads. We spent a full day hiking/shopping and also stumbled across a hillside that looked into an outside male onsen... we saw a lot of bushes and twigs that day *wink, wink*.  

We arrived at Incheon at 2am, and camped out again at the airport. We didn’t leave till 9:30am. But we made it and checked in at our hotel by 2pm. We were so exhausted and a little unimpressed with how rough the people were and how messy Seoul Station was. Jenny explained to me that it was similar to China. That kind put things into perspective when we were surrounded by many Chinese tourists at certain points on the trip. Neither of us had been to South Korea before so we were both learning the ins and outs of what to do and where to go. Our first day of exploring was Gyeongbokgung Palace and  Changgyeonggung Palace. We ran around and looked for food adventures. Myeongdong shopping street has good street food *egg buns*, cheap cosmetics and skincare. I bought a lot of skincare products because I’m aging like crazy. 

The next day we had an early start for our DMZ tour. It was worth it. The DMZ in South Korea is kind of a weird safe potential war zone. Its a nice reminded to know the there are good looking military boys there to save you if anything goes down. I’ve never seen so much barbed wire fences, camouflaged buildings and live mines everywhere. It is common to hear an explosion because some deer walked into a minefield. We went down an infiltration tunnel North Korea dug to try and invade Seoul. There are meant to be many more tunnels unknown around the area. We were able to look into North Korea from an observation deck and see many childish things North Korea had done to try and seem superior, e.g creating a flag pole that’s 1.2km tall, and creating  ghost buildings for an illusion of wealth.  We were also able to hear the North Korean Propaganda being blasted from huge speakers across the valley.  It made an interesting live example of modern age tyranny. To end the day, I caught up with some other JETs who were traveling in Seoul and watched the sunset from 63 building. 

So over the Spring Break, Jenny and I decided to do a big trip to Hong Kong and Seoul. We both had been wanting to go explore and this was the best time.

Hong Kong was our first leg of the trip. We had to camp out at Haneda Airport to be able to make the flight, however we both were able to sleep though the flight, and the whole plane heard the mystical calls of the snorlax called Amanda. Our Hotel was in Causeway Bay central Hong Kong Island, which made it easy for us to travel around. Jenny was my guide and took me to all the best food places. I’ve never had a headache from eating too much before, but this was a trip with many firsts. We traveled to Victoria Peak and saw amazing views, Shopped for a lot of makeup and toothpaste. We even went to Ladies Street Markets and tried bargaining. My god I sucked, I also ran away when they started screaming prices at me.