Hey people,
I don't really have anything to say here - so this update is really just to tell you that I'll be in NZ from Friday until Mon 7th (well, till 7am!), so I will NOT be doing any updates and you MAY see me around. I will be doing a flying visit to Hamilton and will be spending a bit longer in Auckland - catching up with family mainly - it's Kate's engagement party my last weekend :D
Hmm... that probably wasn't public knowledge so before you read it and feel upset you weren't invited, I think it's really just immediate family meeting immediate family. Kate and Paddy are really happy because they chose that weekend because Paddy's brother would be in NZ. Then, fortuitously, I happened to be in NZ then too, so all the siblings will be in attendance. Pretty good show for a Saffa and someone from a family of our size and travellingness!!
Other than that... if I don't get to catch up with you in my rather short stay, I apologise. But if we do get a chance to catch up... yay! My 021 cell will be in action during my stay so feel free to flick me a text and see what I'm up to. Offers for exercise will be particuarly appreciated as I am still too big for my jeans after my excessive culinary sampling in Taiwan! Having said that, everyone on facebook keeps moaning about the temperature, so I may want nothing more than to lie in the shade sucking ice cubes, lol. Currently we consider 2 degrees 'warm', so I think NZ will be a shock to the system!!
Anyway, take care and maybe see you round...
Charly
Monday, January 24, 2011
Monday, January 17, 2011
First day of the rest of my life... well, maybe the next month, anyway...
Hey there,
Last night we had 30cm snow - fairly record-breaking for Jinseki - and it's still going, due to continue until tomorrow. Jeff has gone to work and it's my first day of 'freedom' since my work dropped to one week a month. So far I have bullied myself into doing a workout, had warm porridge, warm tea, warm shower, warm soup, more warm tea... do you notice a pattern here? Currently I am sitting with my legs tucked under the very warm heated table. In fact, in all honesty, that's really the only reason you are getting an update... I needed an excuse to not leave the heated table!!
Ok, so I promised to give you a bit of an update on Taiwan... We spent the first three days in Taipei in a hostel. The first thing we noticed about Taipei was how Europeanised it was, relative to Japan. We saw white faces and plenty of European food on offer - including KFC, Pizza Hut and Maccas! In fact, I'm ashamed to admit it, but coming from Japan where it can easily set you back $50 for two pizzas, we went a little crazy on European food. In the first three days almost every meal was from a pizza joint or European-style cafe. We knew it was bad, but coming from Japan we were missing food we knew, not hankering after trying more crazy stuff! (This was particularly so because all the signs were in Chinese, so we had no idea what most of the food was! It made us realise how much we have learnt/understand in Japan).
Most of our time in that three days was taken up with just wandering the streets seeing what we bumped into. We bought about a million secondhand books (another sign of how Europeanised it is - lots of secondhand English books!) and visited a different street market every night. We bumped into some awesome temples, wandered round some cool parks/gardens and spent a lot of time chillaxing in our hostel room.
After three days we took the high speed train down to the south of Taiwan. I had visions of us swimming every day and lying on the beach soaking up the sunshine. Unfortunately I had misunderstood the area of the accomodation I booked and it was about 4km from the local swimming beach - not exactly the jandalled stroll I was hoping for! The designated English speaker at the hostel (whenever we turned up at reception they just phoned him!) assured us it was easy to catch a bus from the main road, and that they left every 20 minutes. The first day we managed to fail entirely to get ANYWHERE - a combination of factors including being unsure of the bus stop, being unsure of which bus we needed, a sporadic service due to New Year's holiday crowding and not knowing we needed to hail the bus like a taxi. We finally gave up and went back to our hostel in a sulk.
We had burnt through most of the cash we had changed over during our first three days in Taipei, so while in Kenting (Kenting National Park covers the southern tip of Taiwan) we bought most of our food from the supermarket. This sounded like a great plan EXCEPT we had no microwave, bowls or cutlery. We managed to improvise, using our coffee mugs and disposable spoons to eat our cereal, using a cereal box as a plate and using coffee stirers as knives. We spent the next four days living off cereal, peanut butter and jam sandwiches and instant noodles. Our one treat meal was New Year's Eve, when we went to a place which was, we suspect, a fairly typical Taiwanese restuarant, serving a mix of different Asian dishes. We had a delicious prawn and pepper dish, a tasty beef and garlic dish and an average dish of wild pork, all washed down with copious amounts of beer. Beer in Japan is ridiculously expensive, so we made the most of the more modestly priced drinks in Taiwan.
Prior to dinner on New Year's Eve we had again attempted to catch the bus down to Kenting Village, but had given up after an hour and taken a taxi down. The permenant shops were restaurants, clubs and surf stores (and yes, Rip Curl is just as expensive in Taiwan as it is in NZ!), clearly catering to the tourists, with even a Starbucks (Jeff's fav coffee here! Guess it's the Maccas of coffee - you know what you're getting everytime). Lining the road on both sides were numerous smaller stalls selling glasses, hotdogs, watches, stinky tofu, jewellery, sliced fruit, or the chance to win an ugly soft toy through shooting the target. We took our time perusing these and sampling some of the wares before we went in for dinner.
After finishing at dinner, I dragged Jeff into a club that promised a hiphop and dance party. Although I admit I haven't exactly been a party animal here in Japan - only going out drinking twice in the six months we've lived here - I have been craving a chance to go clubbing. But I haven't heard anything about it... I don't know whether clubbing is just not a popular pastime here in Japan or what, but I really really wanted to dance. We hung out in the club for a while, having a few drinks and waiting for the party to get started. However, the dance floor was monopolised by a small child in her pink rain jacket, happily dancing on her own watching the lights on the floor from the disco ball. Sometimes women would come up to dance with her, which she was happy enough with, though she ran back to her mum whenever blokes tried to dance with her. As cute as that was and all, I didn't feel comfortable letting out my inner Christina Aguilera while sharing the dance floor with a two year old. Jeff understood my concerns - or perhaps just got sick of my attempts at conversation in a super loud club - and we moved on.
We ended up in a bar with a random Philipino band playing shouty rock music, while the DJ playing Britney Spears on the band's breaks. They had 'entertainment' consisting of a bad stripping act (we only caught the end but they had blokes from the audience in compromising clothing and the grand finale involved the girls trying to a suggestive pose on the blokes with the aid of a pole, but they looked so nervous about kicking the blokes or each other it lost it's 'omph') and a group of six girls doing a boring dance to a pop song, wearing outfits that were more skimpy than was flattering for several of them. Very odd.
At midnight there were fireworks on the street, so everyone poured out of the restaurants and clubs to come have a look. The wind was so strong most of the fireworks happened almost out of sight, having been swept over towards the beach as they shot up, but the crowd was exhilarating, everyone excited and cheering and wiping ash out of their eyes/hair. The dancers from earlier stood on tables, trying to dance sexily with no music and just looking very uncomfortable. I jumped on a chair to get a better view and managed to put my foot through the sun-weathered straw seat, but it all seemed like part of the fun. Strange, imperfect, crazy night.
When we came back in, I had a massive hankering to see what I could remember on the pole. I had a couple of drinks quickly for Dutch courage, rolled up my leggings to over my knees and went down to the dance floor. Jeff was up above on a balcony watching, laughing and taking photos as I pushed my way onto the all male dance floor and approached the pole.
Hmm... computer switched off here, to install anti-virus updates, so this is the next day:
Anyway, with the pole dancing. Consider that I was drunk, unfit, hadn't done any pole dancing lessons in over a year, and didn't even have bare legs to grip the pole and you will have a pretty good idea of how successful I was. However, I did manage to go upside down and do something that vaguely resembled the lotus (one leg off the pole, upside down). Which the crowd seemed happy with, even if I wasn't. I quickly ran out of steam, realising I wasn't going to manage much at all with leggings on, and let the boys have their pole back. After another drink or two Jeff consented to dance with me and we have a bit of a turn on the dance floor until the wee hours.
Over the next couple of days we explored Kenting Village, went for a walk on the seashore and went on a cool little morning tour of the area - including cool gas leaks from the ground that got lit on fire and are now eternal flames. Sounds more impressive than it looks, but it's a cool idea!
After four days we headed back to Taipei, this time staying at a hotel that was a bit more expensive (yay for the luxury!). Actually I was really grateful we had chosen to treat ourselves to some nicer accomodation, because my back was hurting from sleeping on really solid beds in the last couple of places - I appreciated waking in the morning because I had finished sleeping, not because my back was aching!
Anyway, enough of the whining... on our last couple of full days in Taipei we went exploring some more park/gardens, went to the Taipei Zoo (165 hectares! We were finally kicked out about ten mins after closing time... dammit!), treated ourselves to a massage (yes, we actually had little Taiwanese ladies walk on our backs! I had forgotten about that when we booked for back massages! I had no idea how good it would feel to have a small Asian woman walk on my bum... not somewhere you can get massaged the way we do it in NZ!) and got brave enough to sample some of the Taiwanese fare on offer at the markets. The total winners were the crusty freshly baked bread buns filled with pepper pork... although filled with black sesame they also tasted bloody good!! We also took the opportunity to allow ourselves a little shopping, as we had used less money than we had allowed for. I got two handbags for NZ$37, Jeff got a cool leather wristband and a new bag for work (his other one's strap was tied in a knot because it had snapped and he thought it was still ok for work! What would he do without me!!!) and we got a few gifts for people (just wait to see what we are dressing your son in, Huia!! I expect facebook photos!).
On the last day we put our packs back on our backs - pretty heavy by this point from all the books we bought! - and trudged off to the bus stop. Waiting for the bus we were asked by about a million taxi drivers if we needed a lift, so we had to repeat each time that the bus was cheap, so we would take that. They would then all ask us if we were cold - standing in tshirts and shorts while everyone bustled past in big jackets and woolly hats. So then we had to explain each time that no, we were from Japan and that our house was currently buried in snow, so no, we weren't cold and that Taipei was warm (was lovely actually, sitting between 10 and 20 each day we were there).
I won't bore you with the details of our mammoth task of getting home (oh, ok: bus to airport, flight to Osaka, bus to Okayama, night in a hotel, train to Onomichi, ferry to Mukaishima and a drive back to Jinseki!), but we got back safely to find a blizzard had been through Jinseki while we were in Taiwan and there was lots of snow everywhere.
Speaking of snow, I need to go dig my car out. It's -10 degrees today and everyone keeps nagging me to get my car out. I think it is understandable that I'm not keen on digging my car out of 60cm of snow, on my own, with no shovel, but I guess it has to be done! I'm not sure WHY I'm bothering because I will only have to park it back in the same space, where it will continue to be slowly hidden by snow, but I guess I have to do it at some point!
I also SHOULD go snowboarding today because we didn't make it in the weekend and the mountain is less than an hour away. But I feel so weird about going snowboarding on my own... I know it's a good idea, because I can do some of the bigger slopes without worrying about Jeff, but I've never been to the mountain alone before. I totally consider snowboarding a team sport!
Ah well, I will have to put on my snowboarding pants to dig out my car anyway, so we will see it I'm more enthusiastic once I'm dressed anyway! Wish me luck. If you don't hear from me, it's because I'm lost somewhere in the snow behind Jinseki elementary school...
Charly xoxoxo
Last night we had 30cm snow - fairly record-breaking for Jinseki - and it's still going, due to continue until tomorrow. Jeff has gone to work and it's my first day of 'freedom' since my work dropped to one week a month. So far I have bullied myself into doing a workout, had warm porridge, warm tea, warm shower, warm soup, more warm tea... do you notice a pattern here? Currently I am sitting with my legs tucked under the very warm heated table. In fact, in all honesty, that's really the only reason you are getting an update... I needed an excuse to not leave the heated table!!
Ok, so I promised to give you a bit of an update on Taiwan... We spent the first three days in Taipei in a hostel. The first thing we noticed about Taipei was how Europeanised it was, relative to Japan. We saw white faces and plenty of European food on offer - including KFC, Pizza Hut and Maccas! In fact, I'm ashamed to admit it, but coming from Japan where it can easily set you back $50 for two pizzas, we went a little crazy on European food. In the first three days almost every meal was from a pizza joint or European-style cafe. We knew it was bad, but coming from Japan we were missing food we knew, not hankering after trying more crazy stuff! (This was particularly so because all the signs were in Chinese, so we had no idea what most of the food was! It made us realise how much we have learnt/understand in Japan).
Most of our time in that three days was taken up with just wandering the streets seeing what we bumped into. We bought about a million secondhand books (another sign of how Europeanised it is - lots of secondhand English books!) and visited a different street market every night. We bumped into some awesome temples, wandered round some cool parks/gardens and spent a lot of time chillaxing in our hostel room.
After three days we took the high speed train down to the south of Taiwan. I had visions of us swimming every day and lying on the beach soaking up the sunshine. Unfortunately I had misunderstood the area of the accomodation I booked and it was about 4km from the local swimming beach - not exactly the jandalled stroll I was hoping for! The designated English speaker at the hostel (whenever we turned up at reception they just phoned him!) assured us it was easy to catch a bus from the main road, and that they left every 20 minutes. The first day we managed to fail entirely to get ANYWHERE - a combination of factors including being unsure of the bus stop, being unsure of which bus we needed, a sporadic service due to New Year's holiday crowding and not knowing we needed to hail the bus like a taxi. We finally gave up and went back to our hostel in a sulk.
We had burnt through most of the cash we had changed over during our first three days in Taipei, so while in Kenting (Kenting National Park covers the southern tip of Taiwan) we bought most of our food from the supermarket. This sounded like a great plan EXCEPT we had no microwave, bowls or cutlery. We managed to improvise, using our coffee mugs and disposable spoons to eat our cereal, using a cereal box as a plate and using coffee stirers as knives. We spent the next four days living off cereal, peanut butter and jam sandwiches and instant noodles. Our one treat meal was New Year's Eve, when we went to a place which was, we suspect, a fairly typical Taiwanese restuarant, serving a mix of different Asian dishes. We had a delicious prawn and pepper dish, a tasty beef and garlic dish and an average dish of wild pork, all washed down with copious amounts of beer. Beer in Japan is ridiculously expensive, so we made the most of the more modestly priced drinks in Taiwan.
Prior to dinner on New Year's Eve we had again attempted to catch the bus down to Kenting Village, but had given up after an hour and taken a taxi down. The permenant shops were restaurants, clubs and surf stores (and yes, Rip Curl is just as expensive in Taiwan as it is in NZ!), clearly catering to the tourists, with even a Starbucks (Jeff's fav coffee here! Guess it's the Maccas of coffee - you know what you're getting everytime). Lining the road on both sides were numerous smaller stalls selling glasses, hotdogs, watches, stinky tofu, jewellery, sliced fruit, or the chance to win an ugly soft toy through shooting the target. We took our time perusing these and sampling some of the wares before we went in for dinner.
After finishing at dinner, I dragged Jeff into a club that promised a hiphop and dance party. Although I admit I haven't exactly been a party animal here in Japan - only going out drinking twice in the six months we've lived here - I have been craving a chance to go clubbing. But I haven't heard anything about it... I don't know whether clubbing is just not a popular pastime here in Japan or what, but I really really wanted to dance. We hung out in the club for a while, having a few drinks and waiting for the party to get started. However, the dance floor was monopolised by a small child in her pink rain jacket, happily dancing on her own watching the lights on the floor from the disco ball. Sometimes women would come up to dance with her, which she was happy enough with, though she ran back to her mum whenever blokes tried to dance with her. As cute as that was and all, I didn't feel comfortable letting out my inner Christina Aguilera while sharing the dance floor with a two year old. Jeff understood my concerns - or perhaps just got sick of my attempts at conversation in a super loud club - and we moved on.
We ended up in a bar with a random Philipino band playing shouty rock music, while the DJ playing Britney Spears on the band's breaks. They had 'entertainment' consisting of a bad stripping act (we only caught the end but they had blokes from the audience in compromising clothing and the grand finale involved the girls trying to a suggestive pose on the blokes with the aid of a pole, but they looked so nervous about kicking the blokes or each other it lost it's 'omph') and a group of six girls doing a boring dance to a pop song, wearing outfits that were more skimpy than was flattering for several of them. Very odd.
At midnight there were fireworks on the street, so everyone poured out of the restaurants and clubs to come have a look. The wind was so strong most of the fireworks happened almost out of sight, having been swept over towards the beach as they shot up, but the crowd was exhilarating, everyone excited and cheering and wiping ash out of their eyes/hair. The dancers from earlier stood on tables, trying to dance sexily with no music and just looking very uncomfortable. I jumped on a chair to get a better view and managed to put my foot through the sun-weathered straw seat, but it all seemed like part of the fun. Strange, imperfect, crazy night.
When we came back in, I had a massive hankering to see what I could remember on the pole. I had a couple of drinks quickly for Dutch courage, rolled up my leggings to over my knees and went down to the dance floor. Jeff was up above on a balcony watching, laughing and taking photos as I pushed my way onto the all male dance floor and approached the pole.
Hmm... computer switched off here, to install anti-virus updates, so this is the next day:
Anyway, with the pole dancing. Consider that I was drunk, unfit, hadn't done any pole dancing lessons in over a year, and didn't even have bare legs to grip the pole and you will have a pretty good idea of how successful I was. However, I did manage to go upside down and do something that vaguely resembled the lotus (one leg off the pole, upside down). Which the crowd seemed happy with, even if I wasn't. I quickly ran out of steam, realising I wasn't going to manage much at all with leggings on, and let the boys have their pole back. After another drink or two Jeff consented to dance with me and we have a bit of a turn on the dance floor until the wee hours.
Over the next couple of days we explored Kenting Village, went for a walk on the seashore and went on a cool little morning tour of the area - including cool gas leaks from the ground that got lit on fire and are now eternal flames. Sounds more impressive than it looks, but it's a cool idea!
After four days we headed back to Taipei, this time staying at a hotel that was a bit more expensive (yay for the luxury!). Actually I was really grateful we had chosen to treat ourselves to some nicer accomodation, because my back was hurting from sleeping on really solid beds in the last couple of places - I appreciated waking in the morning because I had finished sleeping, not because my back was aching!
Anyway, enough of the whining... on our last couple of full days in Taipei we went exploring some more park/gardens, went to the Taipei Zoo (165 hectares! We were finally kicked out about ten mins after closing time... dammit!), treated ourselves to a massage (yes, we actually had little Taiwanese ladies walk on our backs! I had forgotten about that when we booked for back massages! I had no idea how good it would feel to have a small Asian woman walk on my bum... not somewhere you can get massaged the way we do it in NZ!) and got brave enough to sample some of the Taiwanese fare on offer at the markets. The total winners were the crusty freshly baked bread buns filled with pepper pork... although filled with black sesame they also tasted bloody good!! We also took the opportunity to allow ourselves a little shopping, as we had used less money than we had allowed for. I got two handbags for NZ$37, Jeff got a cool leather wristband and a new bag for work (his other one's strap was tied in a knot because it had snapped and he thought it was still ok for work! What would he do without me!!!) and we got a few gifts for people (just wait to see what we are dressing your son in, Huia!! I expect facebook photos!).
On the last day we put our packs back on our backs - pretty heavy by this point from all the books we bought! - and trudged off to the bus stop. Waiting for the bus we were asked by about a million taxi drivers if we needed a lift, so we had to repeat each time that the bus was cheap, so we would take that. They would then all ask us if we were cold - standing in tshirts and shorts while everyone bustled past in big jackets and woolly hats. So then we had to explain each time that no, we were from Japan and that our house was currently buried in snow, so no, we weren't cold and that Taipei was warm (was lovely actually, sitting between 10 and 20 each day we were there).
I won't bore you with the details of our mammoth task of getting home (oh, ok: bus to airport, flight to Osaka, bus to Okayama, night in a hotel, train to Onomichi, ferry to Mukaishima and a drive back to Jinseki!), but we got back safely to find a blizzard had been through Jinseki while we were in Taiwan and there was lots of snow everywhere.
Speaking of snow, I need to go dig my car out. It's -10 degrees today and everyone keeps nagging me to get my car out. I think it is understandable that I'm not keen on digging my car out of 60cm of snow, on my own, with no shovel, but I guess it has to be done! I'm not sure WHY I'm bothering because I will only have to park it back in the same space, where it will continue to be slowly hidden by snow, but I guess I have to do it at some point!
I also SHOULD go snowboarding today because we didn't make it in the weekend and the mountain is less than an hour away. But I feel so weird about going snowboarding on my own... I know it's a good idea, because I can do some of the bigger slopes without worrying about Jeff, but I've never been to the mountain alone before. I totally consider snowboarding a team sport!
Ah well, I will have to put on my snowboarding pants to dig out my car anyway, so we will see it I'm more enthusiastic once I'm dressed anyway! Wish me luck. If you don't hear from me, it's because I'm lost somewhere in the snow behind Jinseki elementary school...
Charly xoxoxo
Monday, January 10, 2011
Sorry for the lack of communication!!
Hey there,
Sorry for the lack of communication... Jeff and I only got back from Taiwan on Friday, hit Jinseki on Saturday, spent Sunday unpacking and doing laundry (We had no clean underwear, and those who knew my underwear collection in NZ should be impressed and amazed at how much I cut down coming here, to actually manage to run out!!) and on Monday we went for our first snowboard for the winter! Now it's Tuesday and I need to head down to my job for the week, so I won't be back in Jinseki (and therefore on the internet) for another week.
Today was also Jeff's first day back at work. He had a nice surprise (well, actually it wasn't really a surprise, we kind of expected it) when the hot water wasn't working, so no hot shower to warm up. On cold mornings our pipes have been freezing (while ironically our freezer doesn't freeze and we had to throw out a bunch of stuff!!). So right when you most need a hot shower... you can't have one! Jeff will have to talk to his supervisor at the Board of Education about it, but it probably won't be able to be sorted until next week, when I'm home to let the workman in, so it's probably a week of really cold mornings for Jeff!
Ok, I'm thinking I'll head down to Onomichi early, so that I can have a shower at my accomodation down there (assuming our water hasn't defrosted in the time I've been bumming on the internet, sitting under the heated table :) ). So apologies for not telling you ANYTHING about our Taiwan trip in this update, but I need to pack for a week away from home and then drive two hours to have my shower!!
Will update better next week!
Cheers,
Charly
P.S. Re. the snowboarding, just a note to say how impressed I was at how much Jeff remembered from his four hours of snowboarding three years ago. By the end of our three hours on the slope he was confidently scooting off down the mountain, linking his turns nicely, travelling with some speed and only having the occasional bail!
Sorry for the lack of communication... Jeff and I only got back from Taiwan on Friday, hit Jinseki on Saturday, spent Sunday unpacking and doing laundry (We had no clean underwear, and those who knew my underwear collection in NZ should be impressed and amazed at how much I cut down coming here, to actually manage to run out!!) and on Monday we went for our first snowboard for the winter! Now it's Tuesday and I need to head down to my job for the week, so I won't be back in Jinseki (and therefore on the internet) for another week.
Today was also Jeff's first day back at work. He had a nice surprise (well, actually it wasn't really a surprise, we kind of expected it) when the hot water wasn't working, so no hot shower to warm up. On cold mornings our pipes have been freezing (while ironically our freezer doesn't freeze and we had to throw out a bunch of stuff!!). So right when you most need a hot shower... you can't have one! Jeff will have to talk to his supervisor at the Board of Education about it, but it probably won't be able to be sorted until next week, when I'm home to let the workman in, so it's probably a week of really cold mornings for Jeff!
Ok, I'm thinking I'll head down to Onomichi early, so that I can have a shower at my accomodation down there (assuming our water hasn't defrosted in the time I've been bumming on the internet, sitting under the heated table :) ). So apologies for not telling you ANYTHING about our Taiwan trip in this update, but I need to pack for a week away from home and then drive two hours to have my shower!!
Will update better next week!
Cheers,
Charly
P.S. Re. the snowboarding, just a note to say how impressed I was at how much Jeff remembered from his four hours of snowboarding three years ago. By the end of our three hours on the slope he was confidently scooting off down the mountain, linking his turns nicely, travelling with some speed and only having the occasional bail!
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