We are going to Osaka this evening. It’s been nearly 10 years since we were there.  It’s also been nearly 10 years since I started this blog and I was pleased to see posts about my previous trip.  I don’t remember liking Osaka much, but I think that part of that was the dodgy hotel we stayed in.  This time was are going to stay near Universal Studios and I’ve been researching food as some do claim that Osaka is the greatest food city in the world.

I’m excited about the journey as we will be travelling on the N700.  I realise that makes me sound like a train spotter but really the train is amazing. It has a top speed of 300 km/h (186 mph), though I’m not sure that it reaches that speed on this journey.  But it does mean that the 500 or so kilometer trip can be done in less than 2 and half hours.

I’ll try to blog about our adventures but I may end up being offline for around a week.

I’m waiting to board a flight, which is a dull way to spend an afternoon.  Given how often I do this you’d think I’d be good at it, but I keep watching the clock wishing time would move faster.  I have another couple of hours to wait in the airport before boarding a plane to wait about 11 hours for it to land in Tokyo.

Marty and I spent a couple of days at Ashford Castle during September. One of our planned activities was archery with “cupid in mind”. I don’t find the concept of being hit by an arrow a romantic one but thankfully the arrows flew mostly in the direction of the targets.

Archery Practice

I have been travelling for nearly a month and I will continue to do so until the end of September.  I have not found a good way to be online when away from home.  So I neglect Twitter, Facebook, and G+.  I stop reading blogs, and I find no time to write blog posts.  My inbox overflows with important email that isn’t urgent.  I connect to the Internet in bursts that leave me feeling like I’m never achieved enough.  I did want to write more, but I need to check out of this hotel room in 30 minutes.

Like many people growing up in Northern Ireland my concept of Australia comes from watching bad Australian soaps and animal programs starring Rolf Harris.  To me Australia is all about beaches, barbecues, and strange animals.

During my trip to Perth I went on my first ever Australian BBQ.  There really are outdoor barbecues at picnic spots that are free to use.  It was a bit different than I was expecting.  I’m used to barbecues being a wire grill with charcoal but this ran on gas and had a hot plate.  It was spotlessly clean and worked perfectly.  I can’t imagine having these in Northern Ireland, if the vandals didn’t destroy them the rain certainly would.

Australian BBQ

I also got to see kookaburras.  This is something else that I associate with Australia because of the song I was taught as a child, “Kookaburra sits on the old gum tree…”.  That’s as far as my knowledge of the birds went.  It turns out that they are a type of kingfisher. They were tame and rather cute with little short legs.  There was a whole group of them on the trees and ground around the barbecues.  (I’ve been trying to find a collective noun for them and they may be called “a riot of kookaburras” which is fairly appropriate.) They also like meat, maybe more than I do.  I was warned that they might try to steal my food but I was wasn’t expecting an aerial assault.  I mean seriously, one bird swooped down and stole the chicken kebab I was eating, grabbing the wooden stick right out of my hand.

Once I got over that shock I had to try to eat while defending my food.  I didn’t see the nasty little bird that stole my last piece of sausage until it landed on me and scratched my hand.  I’m not sure that I still think these birds are cute but they are certainly photogenic.

Kookaburra, sitting by the BBQ

I went to my first ever sausage sizzle last night. I have been told that Australians like to barbecue but it never occurred to me that they thought that everyone else in the world cooked the same way.  When I told them it was my first time someone yelled, “bullshit!”.

I have certainly been to a barbecue in Northern Ireland but they have always involved burgers.  There will probably be sausages but they will be one type, and they’ll probably be little processed pork sausages.  In Holland the barbecues I’ve attended involved chicken and vegetable skewers as well as burgers.  But it would never occur to me to have a barbecue and cook only one type of meat.  I’m not a fan of sausages but the sausages last night were really good.  (Well, I only ate one and it was really good.)

The other factor is the weather.  I’m in Perth and it’s dry and hot.  It’s perfect weather for eating outside in the evening.  In Northern Ireland it will probably rain during a barbecue.  My memories of barbecues involve Marty standing by himself in the garden trying to protect our tiny disposable barbecue from the rain so that we can eat hamburgers.  A fairly silly thing to be doing when it was easy to cook hamburgers on the stove and it doesn’t rain inside.

It’s going to take me a while to adjust.  I no longer feel as if I am constantly swaying but I did have a lot of difficulty getting to sleep on the plane on the way here.  I kept waking up thinking that the turbulence was an earthquake.

I’ve read many criticisms about foreigners leaving Japan.  Odd that I hear almost nothing about the Japanese that have also left.   I was the only non-Japanese person in my cabin on the way to Australia.  The queues in the airport were also mainly made up of Japanese.

Australia is noisier than I remember.  Japan also has insects that scream at night but I wasn’t expecting the birds.  They start to make an almighty racket when the sun comes up and also when it starts to go down.  It can be hard to hear another person speak in the apartment.  Mind you, I’m on my own for a few days so for now it’s just me and the birds.

When you are hurtling towards a tree on the beach it’s hard to remember the instructions you were given just 20 minutes earlier.  I needed to stand straight and the machine would stop.  But instead I wanted to pull on the handlebars, effectively making the thing jump backwards.  (No matter what Marty tells you I did not hit that tree.  I stopped right at the tree, just before I hit it.)

Marty managed to talk me into riding a Segway.  I wasn’t convinced that I wanted to try this, but he was really keen.  Before we were allowed on we had to watch a safety video.  Seeing all the different ways that you could fall off and injure yourself wasn’t exactly inspiring but by that stage I was already committed.

Getting on the Segway wasn’t overly difficult, but once I was on it I could feel it trying to get away from me.  Every time I moved it responded.  Just the other night I saw part of one of the early Harry Potter movies.  Harry was learning how to ride a broomstick, and you could see the sticks hopping about eager to fly.  Well, the Segway felt like it was eager to be off on the island tour.  It’s built to respond to your movements but it still felt strange.  And I wasn’t overly happy when it started to move backwards.

It was fun though, and it responded very much like skis do, well apart from the ability to go backwards.  To stop all you have to do is stand up straight.  Sounds incredibly easy and it works as long as your body is relaxed.  When you are in a flap the Segway tends to get confused.

I like to take new things slowly and was perfectly happy riding the Segway along the roads and paths.  I wasn’t so good at the bumpy surface of the grass and I felt completely out of control when I got to the beach.  Turns out that not only don’t I like the feel of sand under my feet, but I’m not fussed on how bumpy it feels under a Segway.

Segway Fun

I’m sitting in the dark.  My hotel room doesn’t have windows, the electricity has gone off, and there is a  storm raging outside. The phone lines are back up so I image that the electricity will follow soon.

I didn’t notice that the hotel room had no windows until we turned off all the lights on the first night.  At first I thought that my eyes were not adjusting well to the darkness, but it really was pitch black inside.  We had to find a light to keep on through the night as we were likely to get tangled up in the mosquito net if we tried to get out of bed.

Having no windows can make it sound grim but this room is beautiful.

Hotel Bedroom

We also have our own front porch with a day bed, a balcony, and a private back garden complete with plunge pool.  They don’t let any light in though as they are hidden behind solid wood doors.  I imagine that the lack of windows helps keep the building cool, which is a good thing at the minute as the air conditioner is off.

The rain is amazing.  It’s been raining for hours and it’s still so heavy that it would take only seconds to soak you right through. For now I’m going to continue sitting in the dark.

Stormy Day

“What is that horrible smell?”, Marty asked as I was liberally spraying myself in the bathroom. I like things, including myself, to smell nice so he’s used to me wearing perfumes.   But today I reek of insect repellent. Unfortunately, this appears to repel Marty more than the insects.

I have my legs covered up when I venture outside so I assume that I’m being bitten in the bedroom, which is nowhere near as much fun as that statement might sound. The large four-poster bed is covered in a mosquito net and I did feel safe in it until earlier today.  It wasn’t a mosquito that bit me though, but a large ant.  The unexpected sharp nip made me yell, unlike mosquito bites that are painless at the time and then grow into itchy red bumps.

And talking of yelling, I frightened Marty when we got back to our room tonight.  I switched on the light and saw a huge insect scurry down the wall.  I made a girly screeching noise until I realised that the large insect was actually a small lizard.  So now I need to check my clothes and shoes for lizards as well as insects.  Of course Marty is thrilled and wants to adopt the lizard. I wonder if he is still going to want to keep me if I keep spraying myself with nasty smelly oils?