Definitely not a moment too soon

So, to the right are several new albums.  When I saw new, I mean most of them are old, but the links themselves are new.  All I have to catch up with are the England and Ako albums and we’ll be all up to date – until next time I’m late…

Not the sharpest knife in the drawer

Poor Mark… his computer went into fits a few days ago so he commandeered mine in order to complete the report on time.  Thankfully, the meeting this afternoon went smoothly (and quickly, for once) so I have my life support machine back.

It was overcast today so a little cooler than yesterday.  Yesterday we drove to Himeji city to go to Himeji Castle, a four hundred year old castle on the site of a fort which was first established in the fourteenth century.

All I know is, it was about 35 degrees in the shade yesterday.  And The castle is, I think, 6 storeys high, with quite a few steps up the hill to get in the place.  But, what a place.  Inside it is dark, with low ceilings and small windows designed to protect bowmen from the invaders at the gates.  The beams above are huge, and the timbers underfoot are worn smooth from the thousands and thousands of feet which have paced them.  The weapons racks still line the wall; glass cases line the hallways and display artworks and letters, the works of the shogun of the time.

After Himeji Castle we visited a souvenir shop which sold the local specialty – wind chimes made from iron chopsticks.  They make a wonderful sound – more bell-like than common-or-garden variety chimes.  Unfortunately,  because of our splurge on Tosa forged knives, the 7000 yen they wanted was just a little much for us.  Next time, perhaps.

While Mark was in his meeting this afternoon I went in search of the beach, the location of which has (strangely enough) managed to elude us until now.  We’ve been thwarted by canals, guards, civic works and other obstacles.  Today I went in the other direction, determined to find the hideaway since today we have to return the bikes we rented last week.  And, I found it.  Finally.  It smells like home – the deep, salty smell of the shore mixed with the scent of partially rotten seaweed.  I sat and watched two swallowtail butterflies flirt with each other in flight.  I paddled in the water something I haven’t done since the summer at home.  I photographed the crabs and yelped when the armour-plated sea bug thingies climbed over my feet.  I’ve been missing the sea for so long, and it was wonderful to get up close and personal instead of watching from afar.

This whole town smells of home – the rivers, at low tide, are the smelly mudflats with oyster-covered rocks that I love so much.  I can’t say I trust the purity of the water though – Ako is apparently the most polluted city in Japan.

I will put the new photo albums up later – they’re all ready to go, bar the linking.  And I’ll update with Japan news, because of course we’re leaving in less than 48 hours and I wouldn’t want to be late with my updates.  We’ll fly to Kuala Lumpur on Wednesday, spend two nights there, and arrive in Sydney birhgt and early on Saturday morning.  Having sadly missed one beloved niece’s birthday, I’m excited to be home just in time for the other’s, on Monday.

Much love to Cuppa Tea, Chicken, Cricket and Dodge, and far down on an island off an island off an island at the bottom of the world, to Z, L and F.  I miss you all desperately.

As sad as I am for our trip to be coming to an end, I am thrilled to be able to spend time with my family.  Also, I am thrilled that Mark’s computer has died, as it means he has to come home before going to icky Indo.

Anyway.  More later.  I have a date with our good friends at KohiKan for an iced chocolate before we return our bikes.  Tomorrow I am taking Mark to the beach so he can swim.  The lucky sod, in this heat.  I stupidly sent my togs home in The Box Of Stuff from the US, and I have no clothes which even remotely resemble boardies, so I shall paddle and watch.

It’s not ‘ki-mo-no’, it’s ‘ki-MOAN-oh’

Kochi is a lovely place.  Not that I’ve seen much of it – it’s stiflingly, oppressively hot enough that going out is a chore.  The hotel has bicycles which guests can use free of charge, but I simply can’t bring myself to make use of them.  And, stupid me, I sent all my hats home in the 44 lb box from the US.  I need to check if my budget will stretch enough to buy me a hat.  Or perhaps an umbrella – although riding a bicycle and negotiating pedestrian traffic is not great with an umbrella held high.

Kochi is a nice enough small city that within two blocks are stores selling Fendi, John Galliano, Chloe, Hilfiger, Chanel, Dior, and there’s even a two-storey Louis Vuitton store.

I found a little second hand store selling kimono, obi, and fabric offcuts.  Whilst it is the cheapest such store I’ve ever seen in Japan, it’s still fairly expensive.  I did splash out the other day – I was in need of retail therapy, and this shop more than satisfied my wants and desires.  My purse didn’t extend far enough to buy the very unusually-patterned kimono in the window of the store, though; had I not been so intent on buying presents for others, I could have bought it.  It was a snip, at ¥9000, which is about $AU107 – super cheap for a kimono.  It’s a beautiful pale aqua with interesting designs, and I’m stricken that I didn’t buy it.  In fact, I can’t go back to the shop because I’m likely to spend my week’s food money on it.

So far I’ve not really been sight-seeing, due to the aforementioned heat.  Last weekend we did go to visit Kochi Castle, though, which is apparently the last (or one of the last) remaining hill-top castle in Japan.  We saw it, at night, lit up and without crowds.  It was still, and the air was heavy, and the four of us wandered around the various levels of the grounds as if lost and dazed in our own worlds.  A black cat refused to cross our path, and instead slunk around corners, pressed into the wall like some sort of secret agent.  It pricked up its ears when I miaowed to it, though.

Mark has finished the hard parts of the job.  He got home early tonight, so we wandered out to dinner by ourselves.  Of course, the hamburger [ham-baagu] joint we chose proved to be the one that Joe and Makoto also chose, so once again we had dinner together.  I took along my knitting and worked on my double-knit scarf which I want to finish by the end of the week.  After dinner we wandered down to the canal and we read and knitted in the semi-darkness.  At 9pm Mark left me to go and watch the infamous clock, which has little figurines that pop out like cuckoos to dance in the hour.  This clock, while being fairly ordinary in every other respect, manages to attract a small crowd of people to watch at the ringing in of every hour; ten or twelve people standing around, necks craned, mobile phones at the ready to record every move in pictures and video.

Hopefully on Saturday we will get to the beach.  It’s only about 10km from here, which I would have happily traversed on my bicycle; however it involves travelling through a tunnel with all the cars and trucks, or adding an extra ten kms in detours.  So I have been biding my time in the hope that we could go in the car, and it looks like we will.  Also Mark will get to come to the markets on Sunday – we also hope to go to Tosayamada to buy some knives.  And Makoto is going to help me ask people where I can buy yarn, as I have no idea how to ask anyone myself.  I suppose I could muddle my way through the asking, but I don’t know who to ask.  I could ask anyone, but not everyone would know such a thing.  I could assume that the lovely ladies at the second hand shop would know, but as I said before I am loathe to return because of the delicious kimono in the window….

I will upload photos soon – I have a backlog from Memphis forward which I have to upload and I’m being true to character and procrastinating about doing so.

At least I started writing my novel yesterday – only because an idea for a plot appeared in a dream sequence and I had to get up and record it immediately before I forgot.

404

Wow, I’ve received some major kicks in the last week from people pointing out that I’ve been so lazy with this blog that my front page was blank.  Yup, blank, cos everything was in the archives.  My life is an archive, according to this blog.

So now I have loads of catching up to do.

Last you heard, I was in Indiana.  Logansport, Indiana was…..Logansport, Indiana.  The best thing was driving half an hour to Kokomo (ans passing signs pointing towards Peru along the way) to spend hours in Books-a-million playing Age Of Empires and buying knitting books.

Also, Logansport, Indiana has Hap’s Ice-cream parlour, the diner which has 102 different sundaes and 104 different milkshakes.  We spent a few evenings in there.  I learnt new terminology – a country fried steak is actually a schnitzel.  Who’da thunk it?

We also visited my online friend Laura and her husband Randy and their beautiful dog Lydia and also their pet birds and the tortoise in Chicago – Laura introduced us to fridge biscuits, which are like a cross between scones and croissants, and come in a little tube that pops! when you open it.  They taste soooo good..  And saw Our Lady of the Overpass – an appearance of the Virgin Mary as a salt stain in the wall underneath an overpass.  Mark, Joe and I were nearly wiped out by an SUV whilst trying to cross the road to see Our Lady, but she saved us from certain death, God bless her.

Anyway.. after a while more in Indiana, we drove across..jeez.  I’m terrible.  I can’t even remember what State it was we drove across to get back to Sioux City.  I know we stayed on the banks of the Mississippi for a night (in a hotel, y’all, not all Huck Finn-like or anything).  Illinois!  And Iowa too, we drove across.  I had to look it up.  Heh.  The drive was good but very windy.

In Sioux City I got to spend more time with the Evanses, and we got to spend about 6 hours of talking, sitting in travel agencies and driving to and from Omaha airport to have our tickets changed.  We also hung out with Joe and his partner Kim and little Max and Mia, which made me very homesick for all my little nieces and nephews and sisters and brother and parents and everyone I hold dear.

And then we flew to New York.  One of the two flights involved a surprise upgrade to First Class, which was nice except for that old feeling of hell, why couldn’t they have upgraded us on a flight that lasted more than an hour?  Kacey and John, with whom I stayed on my last jaunt to New York, picked us up at Jersey airport again, which was wonderful of them considering the awful delays we had with our flight.

Help me Kacey!  I can’t remember what we did in Jersey.  Oh, we went to another BBQ with friends -two BBQs actually, both of which were great nights.  And I got to cook!  Apple crumble.  I miss cooking – funny that it’s one of the things I miss most about travelling.  I am desperate to cook for anyone and everyone – I think I’m scaring people with my need to cook.

The biggest highlight of the weekend, I think, was going to Coney Island.  We rode the Haunted House, got not-as-wet-as-expected on the Log Flume, got whiplash on the roller-coaster, and I watched Mark, Kacey and John get absolutely soaked in the bumper boats (so soaked that all three of them bought whole new outfits at Gap).  And I won a stuffed toy!  On the train to Coney Island we were entertained by a guy doing the hard sell on manicure kits, followed by a three-piece mariachi band who performed in our car for several stops.  I also learnt to love funnel cake – kinda like donuts but not really.    I feel horrible that I’m not remembering more of the weekend, because it was fabulous.

And then we flew to London and navigated to pauline’s house; she welcomed us, set us up and then took us to eat meat pies for lunch.  Ah, meat pie with sauce!  The strange things you crave when you’re far from home.  That day I was too tired to do much, so we wandered in to Westminster Abbey and slept on the lawn outside.  We also visited the inside, but unfortunately i was close to closing time so we didn’t get as in-depth a visit as we might have liked.  It was amusing to see the tomb of Queen Elizabeth I with Mary Queen of Scots – ah, the irony.  QEI must be spinning.

We discussed renting a car, to get outside London and see the countryside; pauline discovered that to put Mark’s name on the insurance for their car for three days would cost us a mere ten pounds, so we gratefully accepted the offer.  Who would pay ~$100 for a rental instead of 10 quid?  So we were off to see Stonehenge.

It’s such a shock, to be driving and driving and suddenly, smack bang next to the road, is this enormously old and famous site.  As with many such sites, I get irrationally irritated at the fact that other people dare to visit as well, and mess up my view.  I hate it when people do that.  It was dreary and overcast and mizzling; the grass was all wet, my jeans were wet, and I was deliriously happy to be there.

Then we drove all over the countryside and through the Cotswolds (I love saying that) until we got to Chadlington, where Mark’s father grew up.  We stopped to ask a man for directions to the pub; his accent was so marvellous that afterwards, we discovered we’d stopped listening to his actual instructions because we loved the sound of his voice.  "The Toight Inn?  You want to toirn roight at the bo’om of the hill, then the road veers left, then doin a bi’, and there’s the Toight Inn."  So off we went, to the Tite Inn.  Mark rang his uncle, just a few hills over, to find out the actual address of the house; we wandered up the road a few doors and there it was.  Hard to believe the house is several hundred years old.

We ate at the Inn; soup and samosas and pate with cranberry sauce.  The we drove another hour or so to visit Mark’s uncle and aunt.  It’s marvellous, being in a country in which the sun doesn’t set in summertime until almost 10pm.  You can get so much more done in a day.  Of course, we didn’t get back to London till nearly twelve.

Following day we set out towards the east.  First stop, Bodiam Castle, built in the 14th Century as a defensive fort.  So many curly staircases to climb into the battlements!  Then lunch at the pub across the road, then on to Battle Abbey, in (you guessed it) Battle, at which the Battle of Hastings took place in 1066.  It should properly be called the Battle of Battle, but apparently it doesn’t have quite the same ring to it, so the Battle of Hastings it is.  The Abbey is quite large, although a lot of it is now a school so access is limited; as it was late in the day we didn’t take a walk around the battlefield.

Then we set out for Dover, hoping to see the white cliffs.  Unfortunately I slept all the way there, and the fog arrived as we did, so there wasn’t much to be had by way of splendiferous views, unfortunately.  A flat-footed drive back into the city took us to meet some other friends, with whom we shared cups of tea and conversation (we didn’t get to spend enough time with you!  We’ll be back to see you next time!), and back home at midnight, again.

Hmm.  Next day pauline and I visited my new favourite store, Rigby&Peller; we had to take a little number and sit in a waiting room for the privilege of being correctly fitted for bras.  What a revelation.  I walked out of that shop in a daze, nearly crying (in a happy way, not because I realised how much money I had just spent) with the knowledge that my life will never be the same again, particularly because I’m never going to be able to buy a bra in the correct size in Australia.  Eek!  I walked around for the rest of the day in a giggly, girly, delirious haze.

pauline took us to the markets whose name I have forgotten.  We ate venison burgers, and then visited Neal’s Yard Dairy, the most fabulous of fabulous cheese shops, at which I was treated to samples of various goat’s and sheep’s milk cheese, as well as several bries.  I was swooning in the shop – it had been months since I’d had decent cheese, and definitely I have never had a cheese experience like it.  In case anyone’s interested, I can definitely recommend the Tymsboro goat’s milk cheese, the Brie de Meaux, and the Crockhamdale sheep’s milk cheese.  So very tasty.  I decided to cook dinner for pauline and fred, so we went into the market and bought fresh salmon and celery.  The celery was sold to me by a grocer who sang opera to his customers.

Before dinner we sat in a bar and drank mojitos and lollypopulars and beer and ate hot chips with garlic mayonnaise.  Dinner was, as always, celery with salmon and rice.

The following day we met up with Madeline at the station, Mark went wandering on his lonesome, and we three went shopping.  We bought yarn at Liberty, more yarn at some other store, and did a bunch of other wonderful girly shopping things and had a blast.  Finally we decided that we were going to stay in for the evening and knit instead of going out on the sauce.  I rang another friend in Cambridge, who was unable to visit in the end because of silly train timetables, but a very successful knitting evening was had by all.  I’m learning techniques other that knit and purl!  I can do cable cast-on, shaped work, and now I can even double knit.  Which is a long and tedious process, but the results are so obvious it’s the world’s most satisfying occupation of time.  I’m also knitting a mistake rib scarf out of a Japanese yarn, which I’m trying to find in Japan  but so far without luck.  I have no idea where to yarn shop here; I’m guessing it will be almost prohibitively expensive, too.

And then, one last morning in the UK before flying to Japan.  We visited the Tower of London, saw the Crown Jewels, trained it to Covent Garden so I could buy some beads with which to make stitch markers for knitting, and then rushed home so I could pack my suitcase, with half and hour to spare.  At the airport we were a surprising 23kgs over our baggage limit, but the airline didn’t charge us.  The flight was long and uneventful until landing; as we made the final approach the plane lifted again at the moment of touchdown.  We circled the airport and came around to approach again; no explanation was forthcoming in English as to why we couldn’t land the first time, which was a little alarming, but nevermind.  At the airport we met Joe and bussed to Haneda to find our hotel.  An overnight stay in a room too tiny for words and it was time to fly to Kochi.

My dinner calls me so I shall continue later…