This just in - Bedford Christmas pretty nice thanks

Merry Christmas! It's boxing day and as such we're eating leftovers and playing with our new toys :) Joe is playing his new game Red Alert 3 and having fun. I am eating candy and playing games on the computer. I've already stuck all my new Harry Potter stickers into my new Harry Potter sticker book :D and read The Tales of Beedle the Bard. Plan to next cook a nice meal with my new crock pot and recipe book. And maybe write some notes in my new notebook, while wearing my new thermals (sent by both Joe's parents and mine, great minds think alike!) and my new pink NZ tshirt (thanks Amanda :D) I like Christmas! Not that it's all about presents mind.

I cooked up a lovely feed yesterday, actually 3 of them - we got up to phone calls from Gail and Richard, and Alison and Kevin, around 8:30, then I cooked us delicious french toast (using eggnog instead of egg mix, yum!) with bacon and banana. After that was cleaned up, I cooked a yum roast pork with veges and sauces etc, yum yum :D

And then we indulged in baked vanilla and blackberry cheesecake. Oh so tasty. This is what Christmas is for, crazy delicious feasts and silly crackers and things :) Oh and being with loved ones and sharing the Christmas Spirit of course!

Joe and I are heading off for our Spanish New Year's on Sunday, equipped with a iPhrase ebook on my iPod - how great is technology these days? Very. Hmm what else have we been up to... Went to London on Christmas Eve and visited Harrods, checked out their toy department and christmas section which was pretty cool. Then headed to an Irish Pub and had bangers and mash sitting at a window overlooking Chinatown.


We were with a neat Aussie couple I met through Improv, Maddy and Jaime - very lovely and fun :) Now we have a couch to sleep on in Melbourne should we visit! They're heading home on New Years.

Anyways. We're getting our final travel plans sorted out, trying to book flights and trains around Europe, mainly Italy and France. Fingers crossed we don't come home with too much debt... Will write something up about Barcelona when we get back :) Love and cuddles!

Ireland concludes, now with 30% less detail!

Ahh I have left things far too long to remember the full details of what we got up to. But the rest of the trip included the following: A quite beautiful afternoon where we delivered Joe's Uncle John's ashes to a family plot on Beere Island, very touching and teary (see pics of Beere island to see what a lovely day it was and the view from the church); another delicious meal out in the only restaurant on Beere Island with a lovely waitress and flowing wine; an awesome night out in a pub where I got to jump up and do some Irish Jigs with the locals (so so SO much fun and quite similar to the Scottish country dancing I used to do - meant I was actually not the worst dancer in the group!)...

We drove back to Cork on the Sunday and Chris and Milly went back to London (work commitments and all). Joe and I got up the next day and checked out around 10, and then had the rest of the day until we had to get our flight and a paid up rental car, so we decided to go looking for something to do. And do you know, we found Blarney Castle! A great big old castle with the Blarney stone at the top, we went up and did the tour and kissed it of course, and then walked around the grounds which were just lovely, waterfalls and pretty trees all over the show. Then headed back home and got back to real life.

Which on this occasion was a couple of days of work followed by hanging with Jennie again! She came up to our place and we went through more of her junk (which is actually still exactly where she left it, I really should deal with that) and we headed to London for the Thames River festival. It was really good, lots of food and craft stalls, a big free running display, lovely weather, oo and I got a nifty hat (woolly with a peak) which I wore for the rest of the day even though the weather really didn't call for it :) See album 'triple J go to London' for the flattering pics of that outing.

Since then I have taken part in a couple of Improv shows, and will be coordinating a free show this Sunday with Impromptu Theatre which should be exciting! I've led a couple of workshops which is very exciting, and I hope I get to do it more. Need some more practice on planning lessons in advance, but I'm sure I can work on that later :)

WIT voted me most missed improvisor AND prodigious foreign correspondent which was awesome, cos I miss them heaps too, coming back in 5 months guys! I'm sure they'll manage until then :) I know I will! But mostly because we have other awesome things like Barcelona, Rome, Geneva, Pompeii and Paris to look forward to, not to mention New York and LA - we're going to try to get tickets for the Daily Show while we're in NY since they are free, you just have to get online at the right time. Fingers crossed!!!

Will write more later, less of a running commentary and more of a 'here's some things we've learned about Britain and the British' :)

Love Jen and Joe

More info but still incomplete, sorry :S

So, we headed off in a rental car to Castletownbere, Joe driving, me navigating and Chris and Milly playing relaxed drivees. While I am usually perfectly apt at map reading, turns out Ireland is smaller than I thought and we overshot two of our turn offs – I thought we had much farther to go than we did :) But that was no bother! For the roads of Ireland are green and pleasant, if somewhat meandering. Stopped at a lovely tea and gift shop along the way for a drink and then carried on along the right road.

Upon arriving in the wee coastal town we checked into our B&B and went looking for relatives. Aunty Ellen (that's Joe's aunt) and Marie Clare and Lyall were somewhere in town, and since town was rather small, we just wandered down the street. Popped into a wee pub for some Murphys (the local beverage of choice, and not Guiness to my surprise ) and after some texting and bad reception, they all ended up at the pub with us, along with Sean, the first slightly distant true Irish relative. We really had to concentrate to understand him, crazy accent!

That evening we all went out to dinner at a place I believe was called the Bakery – a misnomer as they did not sell baked goods. It was just a restaurant that I think had at one stage been a bakery. Most of us had delicious fresh seafood for dinner, presented in a manner of musical dishes (the seafood medley and the seafood symphony – was hoping for a seafood rock anthem or perhaps a seafood ballad)

Next day woke up to traditional Irish breakfast (eggs bacon sausages toast tomatoes and black and white puddings, pretty damn good) and then Joe and Chris and Milly and I went for a drive around the area. Popped out to Dunboy Castle (see previous posts for info about that fella), Ballaghboy and then to Eyeries where we picked up a neat shopping bag labelled 'O'Sullivans' from a store called, that's right, O'Sullivans :)

More to coooommmeeee.....

Slackers.

The whole month of September went by with nary a comment from us on this wee bloggy. And for that we are sorry and feel very bad and hope you will all forgive us.

I would first like to blame the insane weather - last week it appears that winter made a promotional appearance in the small towns of Bedford and Northampton and good GOD it was cold. I am not at all prepared for living somewhere where there are actual seasons - apparently it is going to snow!! I walk to work from the bus. This prospect both excites and saddens me...

Since the last post most of our time has been reasonably similar - working, hanging out at home, counting our pounds so that we know how much of a holiday we can afford on the way home! Coincidentally, if you'd like to mark the 8th of May 2009 on your calendars, that is when we will be returning to the fair lands of New Zealand :) We've booked and will be coming home via New York and Los Angeles - if anyone can suggest cheap and fun things to do in either place, or cheap places to stay, please let us know!

Oo! That's right. I've also been doing improv classes with the Spontaneity Shop which are going great. We'll be performing a Micetro on Sunday 9 November and I'm also doing a show with Impromtu Theatre at Halloween which will be a kind of horror/goofy long form story for kids. What is Impromtu Theatre you say? Why it's mine and Amanda Bolt's theatre company! I know. It's awesome. More info on that as I have it. Maybe. If I remember to blog.

The most significant thing we've done though is our trip to Glasgow and Edinburgh with Jennie, and our trip to Cork with the O'Sullivan clan. Here goes!

Started it all by driving to Glasgow and meeting Jennie at our hostel. The freaken awesomeness of seeing Jennie for the first time in two years was soon replaced by shocked hilarity at the abysmal state of our lodgings. The place was a Georgian house turned in to separate rooms with shoddy walls, smelly dark lounge and kitchen, and hilarious inappropriate room names. They were named after different countries, and ours was the Bahamas. Our room with a smelly couch, dank curtains, and a bunk bed with two mattresses squished on the bottom bunk in order to pass as a three bed room. Yeah - not so much Bahamas as god awful glasgow.

But it was great hanging out with Jennie, we went to a yum tapas bar and visited some nice parks around the place. After two nights staying in hell's hostel, we headed to Edinburgh via Stirling, and visited the William Wallace monument (see photo album). It was pretty cool! A big castle on top of a hill overlooking the town and lots of 'Scotland's freedom - England is the stinkness' stuff :) Then to Edinburgh where we met up with Kerry and stayed in the hostel where he is working. Compared to the Glasgow hostel, it was pretty much the Hilton. Really nice people, lots of light, clean and smell free rooms.

That night Joe, Jennie and I went on a walking tour of the streets of Edinburgh which was very cool. We met the guide at about 9pm, and a big group of us followed him round for about an hour, stopping at different places while he explained the historical significance of the spot. For example the car park. Which was on top of a huge graveyard. After wandering above ground we were then taken down under the roads and hills to some awesome tunnels and rooms and treated to a ghost story. Basically we went to a room and we were given a big speech about how back in the day, the tunnels were used by homeless people who all piled up in the dark and lived in the wet cold rooms. One day there was a huge fire and the doors caved in, which meant that all the people left inside were in an enormous brick oven. Baked hobos! About a hundred people died. Now while this story was being told, they turned off all the lights so we were standing in the dark, listening to a scary voice, and I was looking around (well trying to). There was a bit of light behind the entrance and as I watched it listening to the story I suddenly saw the shadows form the shape of a person.

Now, I'm sure we all know who my father is, and I'm sure we can appreciate that if he thought for a second that a daughter of his believed in ghosts then there would be hell to pay! My first thoughts were, gosh that is interesting how those shadows look like a person. Wait. It is a person. And I'm a hundred percent sure it is a real person. Well 99% sure. I could be seeing things. This is just my imagination. Of course! Wait she moved again. Okay what the hell. And then at the appropriate and planned moment in the story, she let out a great big scream. Yes I jumped. But most I was super glad that I wasn't imagining things!

Don't worry Dad, I don't believe in ghosts. But it was a neat set up :)

Anyways! After that, we went back to the hostel and the next day drove back down to Bedford, via the East coast and the scenic route. In fact the roads were actually labelled 'Scenic Route'. It was very nice, Joe drove all the way, Jennie in the back reading Harry Potter 7 (she threw the book at the end in disgust, a vocal critic :D ) and lovely scenery down the countryside. Saw lots of castle ruins on the way, the border between Scotland and England (it wasn't marked on the way up on the west) and general Englishness.

Jennie stayed the night with us and unpacked all her stuff (we are the new guardians of her junk) and the next day we all went to London on the train. Jennie went off to stay with her brother Peter, and Joe and I headed to Stansted to jump on the plane to Cork! Trains were running late which was frustrating for us, but scary for Chris and Milly who were meant to be on the same flight as us and only just managed to get there in time. Very dramatic but overall no fuss :)

We stayed one night in Cork (the city) at a hostel called the Bru Bar and Hostel, and turns out it's run and owned by Kiwis! Apparently we know how to do things properly cos this hostel was awesome. The bar was great, on a good street, lovely clean and good looking decor, NZ flags around the place. Figures the first time we go to Ireland we meet a bunch of Kiwis :) The next day we packed up the rental car and headed to Castletownbere.

And I will save our Irish part of the trip for the next blog as this is ridiculously long already :) Will do a new post as soon as I can! I would hate to leave you hanging again ...

Mwah

Hello World

Hi Gail and Richard! Hopefully you have the link for this now :)

Yes yes, long time no post, blah blah. There's just not that much been happening! Here's an update though.

Firstly, some of you may recall that before I left I took part in a Diva wrestling match. If you missed it you can in fact watch it on youtube! Here's the link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KcFhGLMjyEs

It's had over a thousand views in the week or two it's been up, awesome! Pretty funny I think :)

Joe and I have been working away at our jobs, trying to save up our pennies in order to have our fun holidays. Managed to have one of them last weekend - we went up to Glasgow and Edinburgh and saw Grant and Tanya, and Kerry! Very fun. Grant and Tanya live in Glasgow, doing their thing. Kerry is pretty much a backpacker, lives and works in a hostel and has been travelling around Europe, what fun :) Edinburgh has its fringe festival on at the moment, and we went to a show (it was by the Spontaneity Shop, which is the company I'll be doing some classes with in September). Was good fun. Check out photos, they'll be uploaded soon I hope.

Driving up the country was pretty exciting, big three lane motorway the whole way with great big service stops every 10 miles or so, very convenient. It kinda made our little State Highway 1 and its desert road section seem a little inadequete... But I do miss that road, it's exciting ;)

Hmm what else is happening.. Next Monday is apparently a bank holiday, which means we get the day off. It's not a special day or anything, it's just the bank wanting a break or something. Fine with us! Three day weekend to chill at home and catch up on things like posting things to friends, cleaning the house and planning our holidays :)

Please write to us/me if you haven't heard from us for a while, I love emails and I want to know all the gossip!!

Mwah

We interrupt this radio silence to bring you..

I've been very slack. And I don't even have the excuse that I've been working so hard - I got that job 2 weeks ago and still haven't started! They're checking my credit history etc for the last 6 freaken years and when they're done then I can start work. I've written to my recruiter a bunch of times but haven't heard anything about a start date. Grr!

So instead of working and earning sweet pounds, I have read a couple of books, watched a lot of Buffy, and spent the last week sick with a cold. My sleeping is alll wrong (when you don't need to get up first thing in the morning, you kinda don't) but I am keeping a pretty good house while Joe is at work. He's a very lucky boy. When I start working he'll have to start helping more :)

The improv workshop I mentioned in my last post went well. It was cool actually doing some improv again, and interesting to work with new approaches. I can't say I totally agreed with all aspects of the new approach, but that's part of the experience of being in a new improv land, I get to hear different opinions about it all. The idea is that the workshop will happen again and repeatedly, potentially finishing with a long form show, so if the workshops are run at a time where I can actually make it, then I'll be there!

While at the workshop I met a couple called Amanda and Lucas, who took names and contacts for people interested in meeting up for more workshops, and I went to the first of such workshops on Sunday. It was really fun! If not a little long, it's pretty hard to work for a whole day without a really clear direction. I'm definitely planning to go to more of those (happily the Sunday train to London is heaps cheaper than a regular ticket) and potentially will be working on some show ideas with Amanda (she's mentioned some ideas but nothing concrete yet).

I may also actually lead some of the workshops, being one of the more experienced players in the gang of people, which is at the same time daunting and exciting! It's amazing how much I've soaked up over the last, wow, 12 years of improvising. And I've noticed that by explaining my approach to games/exercises etc, I'm able to define my approach. So that should be an exciting and fun new thing to learn over here!

In other news, Joe's work still loves him. We're heading to Ireland during September to visit some other O'Sullivans, and will also be seeing Jennie and Kerry while they are both in Edinburgh/Glasgow. I haven't seen either of them for ages so that is really cool :)

Ooo I know something else, a couple of weekends ago there was this river festival here in Bedford, the riverside was utterly packed with people and stalls and the river had a big parade of boats going up and down. Check out the photos, I will upload them now :)

Okay, miss you kids :)
Love Jen and Joe

Edit - I just remember the other super exciting thing - The other day we went to the movies (saw Wall-e which is super great and everyone should see it) and on the way we walked by some big old trees and saw A SQUIRREL!!! SO so cute. I took some pics on my phone, working out how to get them off the phone and onto the computer so when I do it will be added to the album. But yeah, how exciting is that! Probably not much for the locals, but it was great, it even did the little nibbly thing with its paws to its mouth, arrrrghhh so cute :D

Can I get a hallelujah

So I found this job last week and applied, and then hounded the recruiter, then had an interview yesterday morning at 10:30. Left the interview, waited at the bus stop, got a phone call from the recruiter - would I like the job? Why yes I would!

I will be an intranet support analyst for Barclays, working on online reference material for the customer support team and other teams. So it's kind of using my experience from my last two jobs combined :) Yay! They're also fine with the fact that I am planning to leave the country eventually, and I think I will have a 6 month contract with option to stay on as needed/desired.

In other good news, I'm heading to London tomorrow to attended a workshop on Long Form improv led by a fellow called Ben Hauck, who I'm fairly sure is the fellow on this site: http://www.benhauck.com/
I'm very excited to be doing improv again! The job however will mean I can't just swan off to London during the week for classes. But I might try to find something closer to home or in the weekend to do.

Oo and I found out that Bedford has its very own Fringe festival! Sadly it looks like there's no improv on the card, but there is some stand up comedy, so next Monday I'll be dragging Joe off to the opening comedy night :) If we're still here this time next year maybe I'll get an improv show in...

Not heaps else happening in the world of Jen and Joe - there has been talk of a trip to Ireland with the rest of the O'Sullivan family sometime in September, so that is cool. I'm starting to think about what we can do for Christmas, it could be pretty amazing to have it somewhere like Spain or France or somewhere Nordic and snowy! We'll see, we may have visitors at that time so it could be our first Christmas together at home :)

If I haven't written to you for a while, please write to me! I am slack but I love mail and promise to reply...

Kisses and hugs

The day I met Super Chris

My days consist of getting up late, playing computer games, walking to town, searching for jobs online and cooking dinner. Cooking dinner is the most fun part, made roast lamb last night (NZ lamb as it turned out, I didn't realise til I went to open it, oops carbon footprint!) and have been having fun with pasta. Joe is pretty stoked to come home to delicious dinners every night :)

I am yet to find a job, which is pretty frustrating. There's only so long one can spend doing nothing at home. And sleeping in is incredibly tiring, how does that even work? Signed up with a recruiter who is meant to be putting me forward for a decent 6 month contract at the moment, but haven't heard anything yet. Fingers crossed I get an interview this week, I don't think I can handle much more of slouching around...

I've finally met Chris and Milly! That's Joe's brother and his wife, who live in London. We went out last weekend (like a week ago) and stayed with them for a couple of days. It was really fun, they made us delicious margeritas and mexican food, and took us out to the London Eye and a neat Banksy exhibit near Waterloo Station. Check the photo album for pics (also nice sunset pics from our house :D)

Between the Eye and the Banksy stuff, we actually rescued someone. There probably should be some lead up to that...

When we went to get on the bus in the morning, we noticed a poster at the bus stop advertising a lost man. Apparently Luis had gone for a walk the night before, and hadn't come home, couldn't speak any English and was probably very lost, please call us if you find him.

Well, as we wandered around near Waterloo Station looking for Banksy, Chris turned back, and then said to me 'Jen, is that the lost guy?' I wasn't sure, but he went back to talk to him. The dude was looking very lost, and didn't speak any English, looked a bit dirty and tired too. We worked out that he spoke Portugese, and so I tried out a few spanish phrases (they're kinda similar, right?) Worked out that his name was in fact, Luis. Was that the name on the poster? We thought it was.

So, Chris went into the Station to find some bobbys and we stood on the street with Luis waiting. Joe then shared our delicious banana cake with him (we bought it at the Borough food market, which is by the way AWESOME) and he very much liked that :)

Cops came out, we tried a bit more to communicate with him, then the coppers told us to move on and we waved him goodbye. Moved on to the Banksy, lots of warm fuzzy feelings and slaps on the back for Chris (he was of course modest :D)

We got back to the bus stop at the end of the day trip, and realised that yes, we had in fact found the lost man! Chris then called the number on the poster to check that he'd gotten home, and he had, yay, and then Chris said 'No no I don't want you to send me anything, we're just happy he's home, no no really. You're welcome. You're very welcome ..etc etc ..."

Basically, High Five Chris and you rule :D

The next day we went to the British Museum and checked out some of the Egyption, Greek and Roman artifacts, which were pretty cool but kinda lacking context. I think I'll enjoy going to Greece and Rome and seeing the actual things in their proper place. Should be awesome :D

Anyways, since then it's pretty much been Jen the homebody, Joe the hardworker. I'll apply for some jobs before I go to bed. Soon I will start knitting or something. Oh noes...

Coming to you LIVE from Bedford, Bedfordshire

It's odd being in a Shire.

So not that much more has happened since our last post, although I have finally uploaded the rest of our pics from Japan so go check that out! Joe started work yesterday and it looks like it's going to be fun - Joe described it as a good balance between the fun of games development and the well paying but souless pure IT work :D It's good and casual, he was overdressed in a nice shirt and jeans yesterday, which he's happy about (back to scruffy jeans and tshirts) and he doesn't have to get to work until 10 if he so chooses. Still needs to do an 8 hour day, but yay for optional sleep ins!

I'm still job hunting; had an interview on Sunday but the position was a little too high pressure and demanding for my tastes. 10 hour days with sporadic breaks and two weekends a month doesn't really sound like a good arrangement to me. So I have continued to scour the online job adverts for interesting roles.. Hopefully something good will come up soon. Although my objections to being a lady of leisure are as yet reasonably few :)

We're moving into our flat on Thursday, a day later than we thought but still good. I'm oddly excited about the prospect of making house - there's a bunch of charity shops in town and a reasonably well priced homeware store so that will be my project while Joe is at work. How very domestic..

I think once the house is set up I'll put a lot more effort into job hunting. I'll sadly need to do some shopping (sob) and get some more dressy type clothes for interviews, I currently have a wardrobe designed for travelling comfort :D

Bedford is a pretty nice place. There's a few pics of the area on the online album, it has a nice river (tis a bit brown but oh well) and nice shops. Observed a bit of unnecessary chav violence the other day, which was a bit scary. We were sitting at a cafe (a rubbish cafe unfortunately) eating some hamburgers and had just enjoyed a fantastic performance from a three year old (he climbed up on a park bench and belted out a song, when finished yelled 'shall i sing it again mum??' ) when there was a bunch of shouting from across the street. Two gentlemen (read: chavs) yelling at each other, one smashed a bottle on the ground, the other retreated and they walked away from each other.. Five minutes later the one who retreated returned with some mates, and headed towards where the first fellow had gone.

A bit scary but apparently a rare happening, at least during the day. I think we'll avoid central town on Saturday night :)

Anyways here's a list of wee observations I have made in my first week of being in the UK :D

Every house, business, building is made of red bricks. I don't understand. Lucky brickmaker.

The news here is awesome - I heard the word 'cockup' used on prime time news, what the hell

The money is annoying. I finally worked out the pattern for how to tell what money I'm holding. Two and one pound coins - gold. Fifty and twenty pence - silver, seven sided. Ten and five pence - silver, round. One and two - bronze, round. However, ten and two pence are bigger than twenty, and fives are the smallest. I have been standing at shop counters looking confused, and finally just handing over a twenty and getting yet more confusing change. Grrr

I love London tube station names. Such as: Old Street, Bank, Borough, Temple, Monument.. It's like they're the only ones in the city :D Surely there's more than one Temple? Or Monument? Other names are just funny, like Elephant and Castle, Canada Water, West Ham, Mudchute, Cockfosters... Teehee :D

Kisses

UK? OK!

Or Jen will what? Lack of punctuation creates suspense, Joe!

Anyways, so after hanging out around the Tokyo central JR station, and have possibly the most expensive bad coffees ever (500 yen and they were rubbish) we headed back to Narita and checked into our second hotel, the Holiday Inn. Not quite as flash as the Hilton but still very comfortable.

The next morning, we got up at 6:30, took the complimentary shuttle to the airport and started the next long haul flight to London. We got to the airport at 8, flight left at 11, arrived in London at 2:30 UK time, then through customs and off to the Tube at around 4, and finally got to Comber House in Camberwell around 6. However in Japan time (and our personal body clock time) it was 2am by the time we could relax... Suffice to say we've been pretty jetlagged the last couple of days, hence the delay in getting this up..

After a very long sleep, we spent Sunday pretty much doing nothing; we went outside only to find a supermarket for food supplies. It's really hard to work out good prices on things when you're working in a currency that is worth three times as much as the money at home. Let alone deal with apparent rises in prices (it all seems like a rise!)

Anyways. Since arriving we've pretty much been doing paperwork - applying for bank accounts, looking for flats, getting cell phones sorted out (if anyone wants our numbers just email!) and watching BBC news. Took some time out from our busy schedule last night to go to Spamalot - it's pretty much Holy Grail as a musical, and was so so so funny... Best line was from Patsy, King Arthur's servant and coconut clacker:

Arthur - Why didn't you tell me you were a Jew?
Patsy - Well, it's not the sort of thing you admit to a heavily armed Christian...

Just beaaauutiful. Apparently you can't make it to West End if you don't have any Jews, so good thing really.

Also had dinner at Porters, an English restaurant, was pretty delicious and sooo filling. I had yummy sausages and mash (but flasher) and Joe had salmon and prawn cakes (not as good as my sausages).

Today we'll be trying to set up viewing appointments at flats in Bedford, we've got our eye on a couple and I have my fingers crossed for one in particular...

I took a few photos around the place yesterday so will put those up asap. Write to us!

Sapporo to Tokyo

Phew, sorry we haven't posted in a while. We've spent most of our time since the last post travelling.

So now we are in London relaxing at my brother Chris' flat, which is awesome. But there was a lot that has gone on so this may be another long one...

So where Jen left you we were going to head out to the Sapporo Beer garden. We went there and it was nice. Sadly there wasn't any english so we just looked at the pictures and models. They had a big diarama setup of how beer is made, but it was elves in a magic garden making it, but they covered the basics.

We tried out some beer there and it was very nice. Jen had one and i had two, so we were feeling a little tipsy :) as we headed back to Sapporo to meet Olivia for one last night of Yakitori which was delicious.

So the next day we did the mission down to Tokyo, which was going to be 12 hours spread across three trains. During the section to Hakodate the conductor went through checking tickets, but when he saw ours he said something in Japanese at which we responded with "huh?". Our tickets were entirely in Japanese and i wasn't even sure that they said Tokyo on them. He looked a little troubled then went and got someone who spoke some english. She told us that we couldn't transfer at Hakodate to Hachinoe as our tickets said, but would instead transfer earlier. We we're a little concerned, thinking perhaps we had stumbled onto the wrong train, a reasonable assumption.

So after a small amount of panic between us, i went off to find the english speaking lady again and verify what our tickets said and to just make sure. Her english was pretty bad so i couldn't use sentences. But after a bit of trial and error i figured that our tickets said what i thought they did, and we had got on the right train. But that today there was some sort of problem at Hakodate and everyone would be transfering. So everything was fine, they transfered us where we needed to and we didn't miss any trains :)

We got to Tokyo before 8, and took a train out to Narita airport. Tonight we would be staying at the Hilton :D

The Hilton was pretty awesome, we had arrived late and decided to have room service for dinner. We donned our free robes and lived like kings for the night :) It was soo good to have a big soft bed.

In the morning we went out to Tokyo to see some of the sites. We missioned around a little bit didn't go too far from the station, went to the Imperial Palace, which you can't really look in, but we milled around the outside anyway. Took it easy for our last day in Japan.

I'll stop here because i'm getting tired :) Hopefully i'll finish this soon, or Jen will

Thanks for reading

So many trains...

Long time no post! So anyways, after we got back to Kobe we prepared for the next leg of our journey, heading north. Spent Wednesday having a break at Becky's house (you can't sightsee every day!) and then headed out for dinner and pool with Becky, Raukura, and Tim who came out from Shin Osaka again.

Thursday - Sendai! The best thing about the train system here is that you don't really have to worry about knowing where to transfer etc. You just go to the counter and say 'Sendai?' in a hopeful voice, and they sort it all out and hand you your tickets and off you go. So we left for Sendai just before lunchtime, arrived around 5ish, and no dramas. Met Nigel, which was cool, he met Joe (we started going out after Nigel left for Japan) and we headed out to Ochiai which is the suburb Nigel has lived in for the last 2 years.

After leaving our bags at home, Nigel took us to a local yakitori bar (specialises in grilled chicken) and we had a few beers, ate a few interesting skewers, and I attempted to eat a baked potato with chopsticks. Not so easy. Then we headed down to a quiet little bar called Asa, and met Kumiko (hope I've spelt that right), Nigel's lady friend. She is lovely, and we played darts and learned to say 'hitta' and 'joysu' which mean bad and good in terms of skills. Oh and ganbate! Do your best!

The next day Joe and I headed out to Yamadera which was just awesome. Just the train ride out there was gorgeous, the Japanese countryside is so peaceful and such a difference to the big cities. At Yamadera we started with an ice cream from some super cute locals (chorushing Irashaimase! Welcome!) and then headed up the hills. Lots of steps, and as we were going up we passed all the school kids who had just been up there. Which was nice, because when we got to the top they weren't there :D

Came back, went into Sendai, met Nigel, and this is where some super awesomeness comes in - We went and watched Sendai Girls Pro Wrestling - AHHHHH So cool! I'd kinda hoped to see some Japanese wrestling while we're over here, but hadn't been sure how we would find out about it given how lacking in Japanese we are... But Nigel found a flier in the bathroom of the bar from Thursday for it, and so we went...

It opened with a chick singing what is most likely their theme song - ' Sendai Girls are rocking the world, Sendai Girls are Wres-u-ring' - and moved into some tag matches. The girls seemed a bit green in these openers, but everyone's got to start somewhere :) One girl, who was heaaaaps bigger than the others, looked like she was channelling Kevin Nash, slow moving and leather pants, hilarious. After the tag matches there were 4 matches that I'm pretty sure are part of a tournament, and the winners of the matches are moving on to the semis and final at the next show in a month. These girls were goood.. And they really don't seem to pull their punches. Maybe they're just really good at selling, but they really seemed to be smacking each other in the head, and kicking in the gut, and elbowing hard. Good times :)

The audience was almost more entertaining that the performers - it was so weird! Most of the crowd was silent during a bunch of big moves and then once the series of moves was over, there would be this super polite golf clap. And they really didn't get that excited. Up on the balcony with us, though, were some awesome dudes with drums who cheered super loud. And we just did our regular cheering, booed the ref sometimes and called out things like 'Ganbate Murasaki! Go Purple!' We didn't know their names...

Anyways, that was super fun and as soon as we have our lap top connected we will upload photos and videos :)

The next day we set out for Sapporo. We had booked tickets the day before and were due to be on the Shinkansen at 10:38. Cept we stuffed up and missed it :S Which actually turned out to be useful! See, when I booked the tickets, the lady handed me four tickets and told me the second train was full so we'd have to try our luck at the non reserved seats. I took this to mean that there were two trains. How foolish! When we rebooked our tickets the dude handed me 6 tickets, and I thought, my how fortunate. Had we gotten the early train, we would have not known to change trains quickly after the first one, hung around waiting for the second one, and then found out we were in the WRONG CITY. Yay for lateness!

Anyways! We're now in Sapporo. Met up with Liv (yay!) and went to an izukaya (drinking restaurant) for some snacks after the long train rides. On Sunday we went out shopping a bit (the weather was pretty yuk) and Joe and I now have cute summer weight Kimonos. At least I have a Kimono and he has whatever the boy version is called. We had a quiet night at home which was really nice.

Yesterday we went to Odori Park and went up the TV tower, which is pretty much a replica of the Eiffel tower. Apparently there is a mascot of the tower with a french moustache, we bought a badge with him on :) Lunch in the tower, interesting pasta (mine was on a hotplate and had a raw egg on each end of the plate that cooked while I ate the pasta.. a bit weird) and then walked through the park in the rain. Had a bbqd corn cob while walking, delicious! And odd. But yum :)

Liv took us to a local sushi place for dinner, and then we had another early night. Well, Liv did, since she had work today - Joe read into the early hours of the morning and I finished Memoirs of a Geisha and tidied our luggage, what fun! I'm pretty sure we won't exceed our weight limit, now that we've delivered the marmite, pineapple lumps, 42 below, baking soda, gingernuts and other goodies we were asked to bring over :)

Today we are off to the Sapporo Beer Garden, which I've heard means a brief tour through a museum and then very cheap beer... Mmmmm could be messy! I'm sure we'll be sensible drinkers. (yeah right)

Edit - PHOTOS! Five more albums. All up. Have a look :)

Ignorant Gaijin!

Hi all,

Feels like a long time since i've posted, Jen's been hogging :)

So when you last read we were in Kobe having just come back from Hiroshima...

The next day we did not much, it was nice to have a little break from travelling and siting seeing. We just went into Sannomiya and shopped a little with Becky and Raukara. Also we met up with Beth who is another english teacher, but she lives out in the rural lands. And later that night met Tim, who is an expat New Zealander living near Osaka, and Ryota and we all went to "all you can eat and drink japanese" - i know there is a name for this but i can't remember it... Ignorant Gajin!

Anyway it was good times we tried some new foods, everyone got a bit tipsy and some food was thrown :)

Now we were off to Karaoke but on the way we meet some equally tipsy japanese men in the lift, who did a strip dance for us. I'm not sure how that happened but they were good fun.

Then at Karaoke we all sang and drank and had a jolly good time. There are photos to prove it. Jen might post them soon, once the messier ones are culled :)

So the next day we were on the train to Nara where we would be staying at a nice traditional style hostel. After a bit of to and fro on the train (we missed our stop) we got to Oji and found Yougendo.

Yougendo was awesome. Everything was little paper doors and pretty gardens. But amongst all these traditionally restored rooms was a massive TV and a Nintendo Wii :D
Our room was nice, we got Kimonos to wear, hmm i don't think that's the right spelling and they are probably not called that. Someone will correct me :)
In the morning they made us a nice breakfast, i ordered bacon and eggs, but they gave me ham and cheese sandwhich anyway :( maybe there was a miscommunication.
The Yougendo was run/maintained by cute little japanese women and the bar managed by an english guy. The girls were so nice, they even remembered which shoes were ours and laid them out, and when we left all the ones there came out and talked to us and waved us good bye down the street. Those cuties :)

Anyway that day we were in Nara, we got some bikes which was awesome! (I love biking around tourist attractions in Japan! :D ) And saw a bunch of cool temples, most of which you couldn't take photos of :( and the ones you could all had a bunch of markets inside where you could by trinkets and cute little cats. Kind of cheapened it a bit. Also all these places seem to have hundreds of school children on tours, and heaps of tour guides with mega phones calling out hilirious commentaries (i assume they were hilarious, or japanese school kids like to laugh in unison a lot)

We got a bunch of photos where we could, Jen took a few secretly in places where you shouldn't. But we paid our 500¥ so hopefully Buddha will forgive us.

Also there are dear in Nara, seems to be a common theme for tourist attractions in Japan. These ones looked nicer but were no less desprate for our food.

The main attraction in Nara is the Todai-ji, a massive, statue of Buddha, and a whole bunch of equally impressive statues around it. There is this hole in one of the support beams there, which is apparently as big as the Buddha's nostrel and if you can fit through you will be guaranteed enlightenment. Seems a little bit like silly lies to make Gaijin do funny things, I guess there is a weight restriction on enlightenment. Needless to say Jen and I are guaranteed enlightenment, and we bought some trinkets to prove it :)

So then we were off to Kyoto where we met up with Tim for dinner. After a bit of a mission we managed to locate a Ramen house, this one was pretty nasty and had a pungent aroma, but that could have just been all the Japanese business men in there, who all watched us as we came in and then continued to watch us while Tim talked about the atmosphere and the fact that twelve japanese guys were stairing at us. Apparently one of them knew a little english and it was all very funny. The Ramen was quite nice, although apparently our standards of good ramen are not high.

It was getting late so we got into our hostel, this time we were staying in a dorm with bunk beds, so it was a little less comfortable. Made worse by two major faux pas on my behalf within the space of fifteen mintues. First i opened the door on a girl in the toilets. That was bad enough, then i walked into the wrong dorm... the girls dorm no less, and girls were changing and screaming at the crazy guy who was peeping in. So i was pretty glad when we checked out of that place. The beds were crap anyway.

So in Kyoto we didn't really see that much, we underestimated how long buses would take to get everywhere. But we did manage to see the Golden Temple, which is another temple, but this time its plated in gold, which was pretty. What made it even cooler for me was the awesome garden and lake around it, which was immaculately maintained. We bought some trinkets there and moved on to the Gion district which is known for Giesha and other cool things apparently. We looked around a nice park that was built there which also had the most impressive cemetary i have ever seen. But we managed to miss most of the awesomeness of gion apparently. But by this time we were both getting pretty hot and sweaty, and i had my first poo experience in a squating toilet, so that put us in a mood to go home.

We took the Shinkansen (bullet train) back to Kobe which was pretty uneventful. And today we did pretty much nothing, having a wee break from all this holidaying :) which is awesome.

So tommorow we are off to Sendai, where we will be staying with Jen's friend Nigel for a night, maybe we will stop in Tokyo for a little bit too.

Phew, gratulations for reading this far. Most of the preceeding is mindless brain fartings, so feel free to comment on my lack of gramma and hilarious speeling mistakes.

kthxbye!

Conceit. Inflated.

I would like to draw your attention to this awesome top Joe bought in Hiroshima:

http://picasaweb.google.com/starring.jenbee/FoodAndSigns/photo#5200981730506633554

It's kickin rad. We're not sure if it's pro or anti creation but we love it all the same :)

We're off to Nara today and Kyoto tomorrow, so an update will come after that.

Oh and the people!

I totally forgot to mention that Joe and I bumped into Amy and Nigel on Hondori St!! It was insane. Turned out we were actually staying in the same freaken hostel. How awesome :)


(For those that don't know, I worked with Amy at Trade Me and she left a month or so before I did to go travelling, I had no idea that she was going to be in Japan, let alone Hiroshima, at the same time as us!)

The things I have seen

It's been a short time between posts but we have done so much in that time that this entry is going to be annoying long...

So as Joe said we went to Himeji Castle. It was absolutely bucketing down with rain, and we had to buy some awesome umbrellas as we had failed to bring our own, but even so the views and castle were just amazing. Lots of photos (see the new album) which pretty much speak for themselves. My favourite part - overhearing a women describe this weird little alcove off the side of the castle that we'd gone into only to find there was no exit. Apparently that is the idea - in a battle, your enemy runs down into it looking for a way out, and you proceed to shoot them through the holes in the wall.. neato!

After Himeji we had a quiet night at home with Becky and some of her Jet friends. Watched The Castle and laughed at Australians.

Wednesday - Hiroshima! We got on the Shinkansen (super comfortable, awesomely fast) and got there pretty late in the day. Got to J Hoppers (hostel) around 7ish, got comfy, and then walked out in the Peace park in the dark. It was very beautiful, I think more so than in the day time. Photos of course to come.

Looking for food brought us to the Hondori area, a big old street full of shops and food. I have no idea the name of the place we ate dinner at, cos it was all Japanese characters but it was delicious and the waitresses were very patient with our terrible communication :) Had the best dessert - rice dumplings with vanilla ice cream, soy bean jam, some kind of sweet powder, and cornflakes. Yes I know, odd, but it was so so yum!

Thursday took us out to Miyajima Island, which was utterly awesome. Half hour walk, half hour train, and ten minute ferry from our hostel. It is one of Japan's three best views apparently. The shrine I mean. We rented bikes and rode all around the island, around the shrine and various temples, saw awesome treasures (and replicas thereof) and rode up and over the hill along a nature walk. Dad you'd be so proud, we even took a wrong turn, realised we were going much higher than needed and kept going! The bikes were just rubbish too, totally not built for uphill travel, and the rear brake on mine was NOT designed for safe downhill descent. Oh and did I mention the random deer all over the island? We got some ice cream and went to sit on the waterfront to eat it, and were promptly accosted by not less than four hungry and persistent deer. Some businessmen (why were there businessmen on a tourist island!) laughed at my dancing about but oh well :)

After getting back to our hostel, we headed out for some okonomi-yaki - japanese pancakes with cabbage and pork and stuff, pretty tasty! Had them cooked for us by some cute ladies at their pink themed eatery, yum yum.

Today took us to the Peace Museum, which was breathtaking, heartbreaking, and sadly got a bit repetitive. Incredibly interesting to read about the lead up - America deciding who to bomb, Japan refusing to surrender and the Emperor announcing that he preferred 100 million honourable deaths on the mainland.. But then horrific to look at the photos of burned bodies and destroyed city. It was also packed - like wall to wall - with school kids all visiting the museum with their school books and filling in worksheets.

Came back to Kobe and Becky's place this evening and we're having a relaxed chill out, playing with photos and having an early night. Joe has been loving the vending machines and taking photos of all his canned coffees, and I managed to cook us a meal at the flat with bags that we correctly guessed to contain rice and stir fry veges :) I had hoped to indulge in some Kobe beef but apparently it costs like a hundred bucks a meal. I don't think the steak could be a hundred bucks good.

Don't miss us too much, we're having heaps of fun :)

Coffee Machine 3 - Joe 0

Hi Guys

We've stolen some internet from someone in Becky's building. So this post is brought to you with help from megumi, who doesn't secure their wireless connection. Yay! >:D

So Sushi the other night was good times. I just ordered what ever Ryota had. Which was a few orders of various raw fish, some eel, some shrimp and some miso soup. All quite delicious.

Kazu and Ryota are quite funny. Becky and the other Jet teachers have taught them all sorts of dirty words which they like to practise every now and then :)

So yesterday we went to Himeji Castle. We didn't go straight away we dawdled around Beckys for abit. And then went to Sonnomiya on the train. The first carriage we got on Jen noticed there were only girls on it. And at the first stop we got off to transfer and noticed that the carriage had alot of signs on it saying "Womens Only" Opps :o So anyway they didn't call the police or anything. I guess that silly giajin must do it often.

The trains are pretty awesome. If you have trouble working the ticket machine, or your just lazy you can order the cheapest ticket and then once you get to where you want to be, you can get a fare adjustment and it will tell you how much more to pay.

So in Sonnomiya we hung around looking at shops and even played a little Dance-Dance-Revolution. Which was a silly idea because we were going to be on our feet all day. Also there are a massive number of Pachinko and Slot machines. Every second shop is one of these and has a handfull of old guys in it.

Speaking of machines there are a massive number of vending machines here. And they are everywhere too, not just the cities. You could be walking through the bush up Nunibiki and find one. And often they have hot drinks in them. Which is pretty exciting, getting a hot can of coffee from a vending machine. :D Also on the topic of machines there are also heaps of Catcha-Catcha machines, i think that's how it is said. They have in them small toys that you can hang off your cellphone and bags. Mostly they are pokemon or Dragon Ball. But i saw some yesterday that were of naked, and semi-naken girls in degradingly submissive poses. These are just on the street for anyone to have. Some of them had girls in them that looked like they were six! Sifty hentai girls seem to be the norm here.

I'll let Jen talk about Himeji, but i'll finish my rant about machines with my arch-enemy the coffee machine.

I had bought a coffee when we went bowling. And i had totally screwed it up. There are buttons on there for selecting milk and sugar, and if you just leave them it defaults to none. Ryota saw me do this and laughed as I tried to drink my bitter black coffee. So anyway i had another attempt at these machines in Himeji. This time i ordered my coffee and then pressed the milk and sugar buttons. But nothing happened. Each coffee is 110¥ which isn't too bad so i thought i'd give it another go. This time before i selected which coffee i wanted. I pushed the milk and sugar buttons which lit up and made sounds so i thought i was on the right track. But then the sounds turned to a more piercing whining sound and all my lights went off. So i thought perhaps its because i had made all the selections avialable to me and could now order. But when i did the coffee came out again with no milk and sugar. Coffee machine 3 - joe 0. I guess i'll get an interpreter the next time i try and have a coffee :(

if you're reading this..

You should do two things
1 - notice that we have added a link on the side that takes you to our picasa photo albums where you can see a bunch of pretty pictures of our travels :)
2 - subscribe to this blog so that when we update you are notified. We're not going to email you all everytime we update it!!

Went out to dinner last night with Kazu, Becky and Ryota, yummy sushi goodness! Photos up.

Today we're off to Himeji Castle, excitement = us!

I saw a snake

It is day 3 of our trip and we're not crazy yet...

Picking up where Joe left off, we jumped on a bus ride out to Sannomiya Station in Kobe, a 70 minute ride that took us past 2 ferris wheels and the Sega building (Joe was so excited).

It was so so tiring though, after the longhaul flight i just wanted to sleep, or eat then sleep..

We met up with Becky after a bit of a wander outside the station in the rain, and after meeting her we chucked our stuff in some lockers and went to a bar called the Polo Dog for food and drink. Nothing traditionally japanese yet, just the language barrier :) Met several of her friends, Eugene Suki and Dwayne, who also teach english and are Canadian, very fun and friendly.

Finally got home between 10 and 11, which for us was like 2am (and we had been up since 5:30am!) and got to sleep on some interesting futons in Becky's lounge - hard but fair...

After a good sleep in yesterday we wandered down to Tanigami ( the suburb where Becky lives) and had some kare - japanese curry. It's pretty much curry powder curry, and reminded me of Dad's curry sausages and rice, yum :) After that we went bowling with Becky and her japanese friend Ryota, who was quite frankly awesome at bowling. Another guy, Kazu, joined us later on and he too was freaken amazing. Made our skillz look drastically bad even though we played pretty much the best games of our lives...  

Had a quiet night at home with all 5 of us having pizza and then watching Hot Shots Part Deux with japanese subtitles, damn that's a glorious movie. It was also amusingly relevant for today, what with the bumbling moron of a president and the situation in Iraq. Poignant. 

Today we missioned about on the train system on our own, Becky having to go to work, and went to Sannomiya for a bit of window shopping. We then headed back to Shinkobe, which is the train stop between Tanigami and Sannomiya, and went up to the Nunobiki Herb Park. This meant a super awesome gondola ride up the hill that gave us spectacular views of Kobe, and when we get our laptop to the internets we will show you all the lovely pictures :) Had a buffet lunch at the top, and then wandered down the hill through the park, it smelled delicious and herby and was quite peaceful. If it had been in New Zealand we're fairly certain it would have a luge ride down the hill but thankfully it's not :)

Also on this trip, WE SAW A FREAKEN SNAKE - it was green and just hanging out in the herby bushes. Took pics of course. We tried to get closer to get a better pic but it got scared and ran away. Or possibly slithered... Quite glad it didn't go into attack mode... But yeah, first wild snake experience, what fun!

Now we've found an internet cafe so have been able to do this big old update.. Hopefully will get another done before Hiroshima, but otherwise will write around then :) 

Tonight we're meeting up with Becky and her friends for dinner somewhere, probably sushi, we asked for a good japanese meal :) Until then we're going to hang out in this insanely huge timezone style place with games for africa, yay!

peace out 

wa-ka-ri-ma-sen

Phew we have made it!

Hi Guys and Mum and Dad :D
I can't speak on Jen's behalf but i have been pretty excited. Everything seems to make me laugh. From the talking escalators to the awesome monorails that take you to bagge claim :D

I'm suffering a little bit of culture shock after having only glanced at the phrase book in the last half hour of the flight. So i have two phrases so far. Konechi-wa and arigato. But so far that's all i have needed.

The flight itself was alright. There weren't too many screaming babies and the guy next to us was from Christchurch and he knows a little about Japan and was able to fill in some of the more obvious gaps in my ignorance.

I watched two movies, some flight of the conchords, played a few games and ate some of the fine inflight cuisine.

We have taken a few photos of stuff along the way, but for the greater part photography was prohibited :(

Anyways i think Jen will be back with our bus tickets so i'm off.

We'll post our full itinerary and maybe some photos soon.

I Can Blog Too

Woot, First post. Thanks for the ad.
kthxbye :)

T minus 18 hours 19 minutes

It's 12:41am and I just created the promised travel blog. Our first flight is tomorrow at 7pm... We're not yet packed, but we have all of the other requirements sorted:

• visa (boo ya!)
  
• passports
• yen
• euros
• a few british pounds
• lonely planet guides
• pineapple lumps and 42 below for our adored hosts in Japan
• marmite
• probably far too many items of clothing but eh

I'm sure we will suddenly remember something vital once we arrive in Japan, but really, what's the likelihood that it's actually important? As long as we have passports and money we should be fine.

Apparently the first thing we're doing when we arrive at Becky's house is heading out for all you can eat and drink karaoke. Possibly the Japanese have not encountered appetites like ours so this is a foolish arrangement on their part... However I'll probably be quite tired so we'll see how keen we are once we've navigated customs and the japanese bus system. I'm very excited to use our phrase book that we possibly should have opened at a point earlier than two days before needing it :)

Watch this space, there will be hotpix