July 20th, 2003
5:07 pm
There was a problem with the guest book entry system. I’m very sorry for those of you who have tried to put entry in, but it should now be fixed. Although please make sure you make a copy just before you submit it just in case it goes wrong again.
Many thanks to Mandela who pointed it out to me.
Also many thanks to those of you who praised my new photo gallery, I’ll put more photos on soon, and I’ll include some from Tokyo.
Just thought I’d note that apparently you do see people busking in Japan too.
I really want the big Mai Kuraki poster they have in many music stores, but they never seem to sell them. Went to Harajuku with my language exchange friend yesterday, she shown me some shops that sells idol photos, but I don’t want a small photo of Mai, I want big high quality ones, why don’t they sell them? Oh, and I really don’t like Morning Museum, they are everywhere.
July 9th, 2003
5:06 pm
Feeling really happy this morning, why? Well today is the release day of Mai Kuraki’s new album; the CD shops are full of Mai Kuraki decorations! I was about to go into Shibuya to buy the CD, but then I saw a big TV in the train station showing Kuraki Mai’s promotional video for the new album. It turned out that there’s a CD in the station, so I went straight up and made one of the best purchase in a long time.
I’m sitting in a café next to the station typing this while I wait for the CD to be ripped in to the Mac; so that I can listen to it on the iPod. So exciting!
By the way, services in Japan are absolutely amazing. I went to the photo developer yesterday, they had a machine in front of the shop where you can put your digital camera card in, I thought there’s somehow a printer attached to the machine and it’ll print your pictures out right away, so I’ve ordered one print, the girl there asked me for my phone number and name which I was quite surprised, then when my picture was transferred to the machine, the girl told me that it would be ready 9am tomorrow. I was surprised, so I said “ima ja nai?” which means “do I not get it now?” she then said, “oh hai” so she got the photo guy out, and he went on the developing machine and got my print out on a proper photo paper as if it was from a 35mm film right away. I felt so bad about it, I only ordered one print that costs only 20p, and they went through all that trouble and smiled all the way! I really didn’t know they actually have to do something to get my print out, I was used to the fully automatic that prints your photo out through a high quality inkjet printer, but these people actually get the photo printed out on a chemical based paper!
July 4th, 2003
5:03 pm
Wow what a week! I have to say that I really enjoyed the last three days. I got on a night bus on Tuesday bound for Osaka; I then spent most of the day by myself touring around there. I was very surprised when I saw a man wearing a kilt playing the bagpipe in Osaka Park, so I asked the man “sukotolando jin desu desu ka?” and he replied “oh no, I’m Japanese”, at the same time there were some old Hoken tourists there, and one old lady asked me where am I from, so I said Scotland, so the bag piper was stunned. So then we got talking to each other, it turned out that the bagpiper learned how to play bagpipe in Glasgow! Man, what a small world we live in.
I stayed a night with a family who I had met on the train going from Edinburgh to Glasgow last summer; the youngest son of the family was a visiting student in the UK, and that summer his mom and sister went over to visit him. When I told them that I’m going to visit Osaka, they immediately invited me to stay with them!
It was the first time that I met the father of the family, to my surprise he was able to speak English really well (I knew the mother and son could speak English), when I asked him how come he was able speak English so well, and he said to me that he didn’t go to any special English language class, nor lived in a English speaking country, the only time he learnt English was when he was in junior high school! Then he continued, “so I guess I’m a genius”, and I replied, “you are very humble sir”, and we all laughed!
What I thought was kind of interesting was that in a way he kind of reminded me of my own father, both of them have a vast knowledge in many things, and both of them gets carried away talking about some historical things while rest of the family gets bored. I just find it quite fascinating that people from different culture who play the same social character can have so much resemblance.
It was really nice there; I felt that I was treated like an old friend even though we’ve only met once.
The next day I went to Kyoto, there I met up with a friend who was an exchange student in my university last year. She shown me around Kyoto, and at the evening she introduced me to Karaoke with her father. I was really embarrassed to try at first, I asked that they’d sing first, but after hearing them my confidence dropped even lower (they were pretty good), however I thought I’ll give it a go, as I had expected I was really bad at first, I couldn’t even sing in time to the music, I thought the lyrics were really difficult to follow. By the second song I had a little bit more confidence, which was probably a bad thing for my audience, since my voice must have been terrible. But anyway, it was a fun, and I would go again. That night I went back to stay with the family in Osaka.
I woke up at 5 o’clock the next day, and also woke the son of the family off who’s seeing me off (we had only slept for around two and a half hour), then I got the 5:40 train to take me to Osaka centre to catch the 7:30 bus for Hiroshima.
Hiroshima probably doesn’t need an introduction. 200,000 people there were immediately wiped off when the world’s first Atomic bomb was dropped on August the 6th 1945. It is a living proof of the horror that can be caused by mankind.
I woke up an hour before the bus arrived in Hiroshima, and I thought I’d better read the guidebook before I arrive there. To my surprised I cried when I read the bitter story about a girl named Sasaki who was 12 years old at the time, she suffered from leukaemia caused by radiation, she was told that she doesn’t have long to live. The girl believed that if she could fold a thousand cranes she would get better, so she did, but her condition did not improve after she folded the thousand cranes, so she decided to start another thousand, unfortunate she never did finish another thousand, she died in 1955 after she reached a 1500 cranes. Her classmates finished off the second thousand.
I was a little disappointed to find my bus arrived two minutes late. The first thing I wanted to go and see was the Bomb dome, this is a one of the few building that was left standing (just) after the explosion, the city council received funds from all over Japan to strengthen up the building while preserving its look just after the explosion. Later I went into the Bomb museum, which costs ¥50 to get in, I was very impressed by the museum, the museum really did convey the horror of the incident, and again I cried. I was really impressed by the people’s ability to get back into normal life and reconstructing the city in such a sort time. It always saddens me whenever I see little children suffer, I feel that the museum’s message was world peace, and admitting that Japan are not innocent to human cruelty in the past too.
Instead of taking the bus back to Tokyo, which would have taken more than 13 hours, I decided to take the Shinkansen. Of course I decided to take the cheapest Shinkansen, since I really can’t afford to spend much money, but the price was still ¥18000, although it did cut the journey time down to 4 hours and 43 minutes (exactly).