Sydney (home sweet home)

We started September with an overnight bus trip to Osaka. The trip is from midnight till 8am, so the previous night we only slept for about 4 hours so we would be nice and tired and sleep on the bus there. This strategy seemed to work for Sophi, but unfortunately for Cam, he was unable to sleep until the last 40 minutes of the trip. When we arrived in Osaka the bus driver shook us awake and told us to get off the bus to get our luggage off the road. Being 8am and Osaka being a busy city, you can imagine what it was like. As we were putting our luggage into a coin locker we suddenly realised that we had left Cam’s suit bag on the damn bus! A quick call to the bus company revealed that we would have to wait until 10:30am for them to open. A little disgruntled, we had some breakfast and calmed ourselves down. We called back and the operator told us that the bus was on it’s way to Wakayama (who knows where that was?) and to call him back at 3pm. While in Osaka, we had about 14 hours to kill before our flight left, so we spent the day roaming the already familiar city. Once again, we were left feeling disappointed with it, mainly due to peoples attitudes there. We called the bus company back and we discovered that it was going to be impossible to retrieve the suit. This was a double blow, as the wedding presents for Damo and Val were also in the suit bag. We would have to wait until we got back to Japan to get it and then forward it on to them in Australia. We boarded the flight in Osaka at about 10pm, so happy to get out there, and back home to see friends and family. Luckily, this time we both managed to get some sleep on the plane, although Cam only managed about 3 hours!





It was great to see Sophi’s parents waiting for us at the airport when we arrived. We jumped in the car and headed back to the North Shore for the first time in over a year. We both went back to our respective homes to see our families properly and enjoy a feast of home-cooked food. It was so great to see everyone at home and actually have a normal conversation with someone. The following day we spent time with the folks and fell straight back into the Sydney life with enormous ease. It’s amazing how normal home is even after that amount of time away. That night Benny had organised a welcome home party for us at Café Lounge in Surry Hills. We arrived about 2 hours late due to Benny changing the time of the party without telling anyone and us getting caught in Sydney’s hopeless peak hour traffic. We dumped our shit at Hamsy’s new place (which is awesome) and headed into the city. When we arrived it was so awesome to see so many people there. It was great to catch up with so many people all at one time. We took the old route around the city, going from Café Lounge to The Lord Roberts Hotel, to The Gaslight, to Kinselas before finally giving it up at about 6am.

We had to drive the next day to The Hunter Valley for Damo and Val’s wedding which was on the Saturday. We had booked to stay at the Sebel for the Friday and Saturday nights. This being our first trip to the Hunter made it an extra special time too. On the Friday night everyone went to the local pub for some pre-wedding drinks. The wedding party and families all retired quite early but we kicked on till about 4am or so catching up with people that hadn’t made it to our welcome home party. We rose quite late the following morning and missed breakfast because Cam was too stubborn to go and find out what time breakfast finished (we would’ve made it on time) and decided to drive into Cessnock to get food. Unfortunately the weather had turned quite bad and so the wedding had to be moved inside. There was about 60 people altogether for the wedding and Val looked absolutely amazing when she walked in the doors. We all went for some drinks and hors d'oeuvres before the wedding reception took place. It was a beautiful wedding, and Damo even managed to say his vows in Val’s native Russian which really impressed her parents.

We were so exhausted and so we went back to our room to freshen up and have a quick power nap, and the next thing we knew it was 8 o’clock in the morning! We met everyone again in the breakfast room and spent the morning packing up and getting ready to head to Shoal Bay for a day or two. We said goodbyes to the new couple and went for some local cheese tasting and Smelly’s Cheese Shop. The drive to Shoal Bay from the Hunter is only about 1 hour so we made it there by mid-afternoon and had some R & R before going out for some Thai with Sophi’s parents. We took a walk around the area and went down to the beach to soak up the peacefulness of the area (living in Tokyo makes you appreciate open spaces) and visited the Odling’s apartment one final time before they handed it over to the new owners. As our time was limited we decided to head back to Sydney after that day and got a good nights sleep before going back in the morning.

The next few days were spent having dinners catching up with people and basically just having a holiday. We went and had a $7 steak at the Captain Cook Hotel which brought back a few memories, and we went out for a dinner with Cam’s school buddies which was cool. We met up with Cara, who since we left has had a baby girl with Sydney Swans player Amon Buchanan. Lou organised a huge dinner with about 25 people in Coogee for a Brazilian all-you-can-eat meat-fest. We all stuffed ourselves stupid and drank countless bottles of wine. The night transgressed and we ended up at the Regent Hotel in Kingsford (Hamsy, Liz and Lucy’s new local) until some disgusting time in the morning.

Sophi’s sister was turning 30 while we were in town, and she had her party at the Lord Roberts Hotel with a 1920’s gangster theme. The same night, Zoe was having her birthday party at Hugo’s so we dropped in there quickly before going to Sal’s party. We ended up making our way back to the Cross the meet up with Zoe and the stragglers at Iguana Bar. We were terribly disappointed to see the transformation that has happened at Iguana Bar since we left. They have made a “disco” room out the back, complete with flashing ceiling lights and shitty dance music. It has gone from an awesome un-pretentious hang-out to another bar that is undisguisable from the rest. Shame. Cam and Hamsy continued right where they left off over a year ago, by kicking on relentlessly and then going off to the casino in the morning and not leaving until it was time to go to James’ welcome home party at the Clock Hotel. James had decided to end his stint overseas prematurely due to not being able to find solid work in the UK, so his welcome party kind of coincided with us returning too. The interesting thing was that for James’ farewell he had it at the Clock, and Cam arrived to that without having slept too….coincidence?!?! (I think not). James’ welcome home went much the same way as his farewell (no guesses there really) and once again Cam found himself the lasting companion until it was eventually time to hang it up at about 4am Monday morning.

We decided to spoil ourselves to a nice dinner and chose one of our favourite restaurants; Kobe Jones for an amazing degustation meal for two. It was great to be back enjoying dinner by the beautiful harbour, even if we had decided to indulge in Japanese food.

This was unfortunately about all we had time for in Sydney this time around. We had one last dinner with everyone at Cantina’s Spanish Tapas restaurant and a few drinks at the Beauchamp before a quiet and small happy birthday dinner with Sal and some of her friends before Liz could drop us off at the airport the next morning. 16 days went by extremely quickly but we had a great time while we were there and it was so great to see all our friends and our families again after so long. We boarded the plane after grabbing some shit, over-priced, airport food and making our way back home to Japan. We flew back the way we came, to Osaka, and got a hotel room for the night as we had missed the final Shinkansen of the night. We got back to Tokyo and to our little room the next day. It is strange how easy it was to fit back in in Sydney, but when we arrived back in Tokyo, it really felt like returning home.

Party Time!

August was looking like being one of the busiest months so far here in Tokyo. We had numerous parties, festivals and events lined up for the hottest part of the year.

First up was Kumi’s farewell, she was packing up shop and heading for Sydney on a working holiday visa to spend some quality time with Dave, and improve her English some more.

Kumi organised a small get together at a cool little restaurant in Shibuya. There was quite an interesting crew there; some of her old Japanese friends, us, some guys from her English school, and other foreigners that have been met along the way.

Sophi shipped herself home at a reasonable hour and Cam, Andrew, Stefan and Kumi stayed until first train.

As we walked towards the train Kumi suddenly decided that she was going to meet another friend, and Cam looked around and Andrew had disappeared. So being left on his own proceeded to jump on the train and head home. Almost 1 hour at about 6.30am later Cam woke up somewhere in Kanazawa (not even in Tokyo anymore) and quickly jumped off the train to head back the way he just came. After about another hour, the same thing had happened and Cam found himself back past where he had started. When he finally walked through the door at about 9.30, Sophi was just waking up and Andrew still wasn’t home. Andrew stumbled in the door about an hour later and we found out that his story was almost identical to Cam’s, except he was on a different train going back and forth.

The day kicked on with Andrew and Cam drinking beers until about 4.30pm and then finally passing out.

During the month of August in Japan there is a national holiday period called O-bon. O-bon is the celebration of deceased ancestors. Most Japanese head back to their respective hometowns to get together with their entire families in one place. There are loads of festivals around Tokyo, and we visited one in Jiyugaoka. There is loads of people dancing around a temple looking thing for a couple of hours, all wearing the summer yukatas.

The following weekend we had organised to go to Summer Sonic, a 2 day music festival in Chiba. Since Chiba is on the east side of Tokyo, it takes a little over an hour to get there from our place. This being the case, we booked a night at the Sheraton Hotel at Disneyland, which is about a 10 minute trip from where the festival was being held.

The first day of Summer Sonic, we took it pretty easy to start with and found our bearings. The area was huge, and had about 5 or 6 stages, one of which was a beach stage. We checked out some bands and got stuck into some drinks.
Highlights from the first day were The Verve, Hot Chip, and Zebrahead. But the day was owned by The Prodigy. None of us had seen them before, and they totally blew the place apart. It was awesome hearing all the old tunes and some of the new ones too. Those guys are pretty old now, but they can still put on an amazing show.

We got back to the hotel pretty late as last train was about midnight, and we checked in and had a few drinks back at the room before passing out from exhaustion.

The second morning started with a swim in the pool and a spa to get refreshed and ready for the next day of onslaught. Beers were cracked just after breakfast and we scooted over to the festival again. We also booked an extra night at the hotel, so we could relax after the 2^nd day of partying.

The festival had 2 main areas, which was separated by a huge highway. The pathway to get from one side to the other was stupidly long, so we decided to jump the fence and run across the highway. Once getting the other side though we realised that we had to then jump over a tall fence and get through some bushes to be inside again. After doing this a few times back and forth, we realised that the area we were jumping over the fence from, wasn’t even inside the festival, and we could’ve just gone to the festival without tickets……trusting Japanese again!

The 2^nd day was loaded with a lot more music than the first and stand-out performances by Junkie XL, Justice, Fatboy Slim, Polysics, and Xavier Rudd made it an excellent overall festival.

Cam was in good form all day, sinking an uncountable number of beers. When we were heading back to the station, he was trying to get pictures with Japanese people, but nobody was interested. Once he started telling them that we worked for a magazine it was a different story. They all became keen to jump in the photos, even though we clearly didn’t look like we belonged to any form of mag. This went on for a few hours, before we returned to the hotel and died once again.

Day 3:

We woke up gingerly and got ready to check out and we decided that we should finish the weekend by going to DisneySea (again!!)

We though being a Monday that it would be reasonably quite, but we forgot that it was O-bon week. It was really, really, really busy!

We had heard from Dave that they put Webster in a wheelchair when they came and that stopped you from having to wait in lines, they were right. We put Stefan in the wheelchair which only cost $3 for the day, and he played the part like a champion.

Every time we went to go on a ride, they escorted down special pathways and back door entrances and we jumped straight to the front of the queue. The wheelchair probably saved us about 4-5 hours over the course of the whole day. DisneySea is great because you are allowed to drink booze there, so we continued the trend of the weekend and drank constantly the whole day, which really enhanced the whole Disney experience. On one of the rides which takes your photo as it drops down about 20 floors, Andrew took his shirt off, and this was the photo that they gave of us!

It was probably the most fun we’ve had at Disneyland and we probably remember the least from it!

On the way home we thought it would be smart to go somewhere for a few drinks, so we stopped at an izakaya and kicked on there till about 1am before hobbling home and crashing out hard. It was the end of a top weekend; we haven’t let loose like that for some time now, and boy did it feel good!

A couple of days later, still feeling pretty out of it, we set out for Kumi’s hometown to spend a couple of days with her family for O-bon. We arrived and had a late lunch, and then went to meet her relatives. Her family don’t speak any English so there was a lot of gesturing going on.

Their house was decorated beautifully as Kumi’s grandmother had died this year, so they were having quite a large celebration. We were treated to some traditional Japanese cooking (some of which we couldn’t eat!) and the beer glasses kept being re-filled, despite our hang over from Summer Sonic still gnawing at our heels. We joined in some rituals with Kumi; lighting incense at her grandmother’s grave, saying a prayer at the vigil, and trying to smash a watermelon with a blindfold on.

It was really great to experience all this in a true and authentic Japanese environment. Some of their traditions are quite strange to us, but it was a cool thing to do. Thanks so much Kumi and your family.