Thanks for all the fish Blogger

Folks, I love blogger. It's a great, easy to use platform, so many great blogs around, but the time has sadly come to fully move my blog over to Wordpress. It takes longer than I thought to post everything twice, and so from now on I will only be blogging on Wordpress - aiming for 5 posts a week. You can subscribe by RSS, Email or through Wordpress, so there's three ways to make sure you don't miss a post!


Here is the World Journeys home - 

http://worldjourneysdiscover.wordpress.com/



 And here are some of the latest blog posts you may have missed -


 A Day in Hakone 

Sunday Spotlight - York  

Japan Survival Guide Part Five - The Classroom


My Travel Bucket List 


Please do continue to follow me at my new home!
May the journey never end!

Japan Survival Guide Point 4 – Food and grocery shopping.

So, you’re coming to live in Japan. You’re going to teach English probably, and you’ll have your own apartment and quite often you’ll be cooking for yourself. What’s that like? What is Japanese food like and what are my choices when I eat out?

Shopping in Yokohama for food.

These are all important questions. Let’s start with self-catering and seamlessly melt into eating out via the convenience store, a big part in the lives of people in Japan, foreigners and Japanese. The first question you may have is – ‘Are supermarkets significantly different to those at home?’

Well, yes, and no. Firstly, fruit and vegetables are very seasonal here. I come from Australia, and things are not so seasonal at home because of our mild to non-existent winters. In Japan there’s plenty of snow, so that affects produce. Also, there simply isn’t that much land here to farm, and so much of that land is used for, you guessed it, rice.

We studied chapters at school which talked about Japan’s importing of food, and there’s so much that is imported. A high percentage of the beef and meat comes from other countries, including Australia. They like to marble the beef with strains of fat, so lean beef is not so easy to find. That’s the way they like it here. You will also find that meat is often sold in small, thin ‘strips’, rather than fillets.

There are a lot of noodle products, usually plenty of vegetables with an unhealthy obsession with radishes. Vegetables, I feel, are pretty expensive, especially in winter. A tomato could cost you $1.50 or more for one, and they tend to price per unit, not by weight although that is not always true. There are plenty of chips on the shelves and it’s often hard to know what flavour they are by the packet.

Lots of ice cream too, and you’ll find green tea is a very popular flavour here for it. And many other things as well. Ham and cheese especially are disappointing for quality and choice. Sausages are hard to find, unless you are looking for wieners. Self-raising flour is very rare. Bread is ALWAYS sold as a half loaf, is usually white and sweet and cut into very thick pieces. 1.5 cm is pretty standard and it gets thicker from there. That’s why I have made my own bread for two years in Japan, I want it cut thinner, I want it brown and with less sugar and chemicals. You can leave you bread in the fridge for weeks here and it doesn’t change. Yes, bread is disappointing. I HAVE seen bread as thick as an INCH.

I could go on but you get the idea. Then you get home and most houses, apartments and whatnot don’t have an oven, just a stove. And that usually doesn’t come with your apartment, so you end up renting or buying a one burner stove and that’s what you cook with. So no baking for you! Or roasting. Keep that in mind when you try to whip things up of an evening. Also, I find prices more expensive here in Yokohama than I did in Iwate which makes little sense, unless it’s sales tax.

If you’re in a rush, you can do what everyone does and that’s go to a convenience store, or as they call it here, a ‘conbini’. 7/11, Lawson, Family Mart, Sun K us… there are a legion of them here, I have never seen so many. They carry bentos (a kind of prepared lunch pack), sandwiches (not advised, will send you to the loo!), hot dogs, some very nice fried chicken, hot pockets, chips… for a few dollars you can sort a meal out for yourself with a bit of variety. Of course, it’s unlikely to score well in being healthy. But this is what a lot of Japanese people do and they love their conbinis very much.

Then you could go to a restaurant. And truly, of course you must try some Japanese food whilst you’re here. Here are some examples.

Sushi – you know sushi and sashimi right? A sort of rice ball or tube with raw fish, or vegetables, or egg or maybe something else on top or inside? You’ll find them at supermarkets, conbinis and restaurants and they are actually pretty healthy.

Okonomiyaki – well this one is a sort of omelette thing I guess. It involves egg, cabbage and a mixture of various other vegetables, often sprouts, a bit of meat maybe, restaurants specialise in this one. You can often make it yourself with a little hot plate included on your table! Cook it yourself and then smother it in ketchup, mayo or brown sauce. It ends up not being really healthy, and I don’t much go in for it, but many love it.

Yaki-soba – can be really delicious. It’s a sort of noodle thing mixed with cabbage, pork (or some other meat) and other vegetables. Really really nice! My favourite Japanese food.

Natto – this one is more for the brave I think. Strong smelling beans in a sort of sauce served usually with rice. It hails from Iwate I believe, and to be honest is not my cup of tea. But it might be yours!

Ramen – and if none of these appeal to you, try a bowl of ramen noodles. I like it with pork slices on top, the ramen noodles are in a delicious soup with vegetables too.

Tempura – well tempura can be many things from chicken to vegetables to shrimp. It’s basically just a Japanese take on covering something in batter and frying it. And yes it can be pretty darned tasty, and no, it’s usually not healthy.

You might also want to try –

Yakitori – grilled chicken on a stick in a sauce, really nice.

Onigiri (Rice balls) – People here LOVE rice balls for lunch or snack, usually wrapped in seaweed. Me? Not so much.

Soba, udon – more interesting kinds of noodles. There are many!

Curry & Rice – known more simply as Curry Rice, it’s usually a curry with maybe a little potato or other vegetables, and rice. It’s very popular up in Iwate, tastes okay and is usually not particularly hot.

So there are a few quick ideas to start you off for eating in Japan. Japanese cuisine is varied and usually tastes very strong, they don’t like things mild here. Again, I have only touched the surface there are so many different Japanese dishes. Be adventurous, but be aware you may end up with a bowl of something you can’t stand! Japanese food is really a love or hate it sort of deal. 

An Evening in Shinagawa

If Shibuya is Tokyo being pretty darned trendy, Shinagawa is Tokyo perhaps getting down to business. Well, my wife told me it was a business district, although to me there seemed to be a few hotels and restaurants there. It features the most impressive, in my opinion, of Tokyo’s stations. There’s a big arched roof above a walkway that runs from the north to south exits that people bustle through. That’s where you find the Japan Rail entrance to the station. It’s a really big station too, one that’s pretty easy to get lost in.

I headed to Shinagawa yesterday evening to meet my wife and some of her friends for dinner, and I was a bit early. So I thought I’d take a stroll around and snap a couple of pictures. Pretty much attached to the station was a Pachinko/slot place. They are unbelievably popular here. I once wondered where the good people of Ichinoseki all were as the main streets were often dead, and one day I went into a pachinko place and found 90% of the machines taken and there were hundreds in that place, possibly over a thousand. Almost definitely. And there are dozens in my old hometown.

Pachinko is almost a cross between a pinball game and a slot (pokie) machine. You get a whole bunch of gold balls and try to guide them into a winning position – the machine is upright though, and you have very little control, much less than a pinball machine for example. Anyways, outside this place there were two guys dressed up and dancing trying to get people to go inside. They weren’t having much luck. I wonder if I could get a part time job doing that?

On the north side of the station, after passing people walking through the arched walkway which was seriously grand, was the part of Shinagawa I haven’t really explored at all. It seems a lot of restaurants are in that area, 6-8 people were out hawking for their restaurants with menus in hand and aprons on. Business men and women with stern faces took the escalators up to the station on their ways home, and every now and again one person would be smiling and laughing, relieving my worries that everyone in Tokyo is just working until they die with no enjoyment from life whatsoever.

Inside the restaurant.

There was little to none of the Harajuku colour, the artisan spirit, the outfits and non-conformity that you can see in other places in Tokyo in Shinagawa. And then it was time for dinner as my wife arrived and we met her friends at a French Restaurant on the other side of the station called ‘Aux Bacchanales’.

It was very ‘colonial’ in design, reminding me of décor more attuned to the 40s I guess, and somewhat reminiscent of a restaurant (also French) I went to in Yaounde, capital of Cameroon. I really loved the look of the place, although the waiter who served us, who was French, didn’t crack a smile until the end of the night when we were paying the bill and I said to him ‘Please smile, you look so stressed’, and then he did. Which was a relief.

In fact this was the third French restaurant I have been to inside a week! And no, I didn’t choose any of them! The menu was limited, but we were in the lunch/bar area. It was great for my wife to catch up with her friends, and I must remember what it’s like when we move back to Australia to be at a table and understand less than 10% of the conversation. Although my wife speaks a lot more English than I do Japanese, it will still be very hard for her. Listening is always the hardest thing!

And so we walked back to Shinagawa station to take the train back to Yokohama and beyond (we are in the suburbs here). The train was packed, lots of standing, but apparently nothing like peak hour. Take care everyone, more coming tomorrow. From now on on Sunday I will be posting a retrospective on a place I visited in the past, in an attempt to not be posting everyday about Japan.

Don’t forget to have a listen to the podcast. It’s the main feature of yesterday’s blog. Each podcast will get its own dedicated blog post.

The station at night.

Tomorrow it’s back to the Japan Survival Guide – I’m going to talk about Japanese foods! And a little bit about grocery shopping! May the journey never end!

Japan Survival Guide Part 3: Getting around Japan by Rail!

Sleeping on the train is common.

Whether you’re here to live, or here backpacking you are going to have to get from point A to point B somehow. I was considering doing a post all about transport in Japan and including driving, because for many people coming here to live and teach driving is an essential part of the day and it certainly has been for me in my time here, however I feel that’s a whole post on its own. So I’m concentrating on trains today, and am going to take a look at getting around and surviving the locals/subway trains in Tokyo as well.

Firstly let’s consider getting around Japan. There is no contest for the fastest, easiest and most comfortable way to get around Japan – it’s the Shinkansen. The Japanese invented the bullet train decades ago now, and today you can take trains that are allowed to travel up to 320km/h (although that are able to hit speeds more than 440 km/h) and feature very comfortable seats, and have people serving snacks and drinks. What more could you want?

The only issue is the cost. From my city, Ichinoseki, to Tokyo it’s around $130US one way, and the distance is around 450km. It takes a touch over two hours. If you can read Japanese then you’ll find it’s possible to find websites where you can get discounts if you book around a month in advance, but most foreigners living here, even if they have some Japanese do not have the required skills for that. The overnight bus is around half that, and JR (Japan Rail) run many buses themselves so you could look into that at main railways stations. However, it turns it into a nine-hour journey!

Then you have local trains. The same ticket was more like $90-$100 by the local trains. It takes ten hours and you have to change trains 8 or 9 times. So it’s not exactly desirable. However, for the backpacker and tourist there is the ‘Japan Rail Pass’. Similar to the Eurail Pass, you need to buy it before you come to Japan.

http://www.japanrailpass.net/

At less than $500 for a 2 week pass, it CAN represent great value. But not if you’re going to use it so much, then it might not be worth it. The more you travel, the better value it becomes of course, and if you take long journeys – say Hiroshima to Tokyo, then you’ve already spent nearly half its value on one trip. So think about it. Regardless of what train options you plan on taking, there is one website that is extremely useful for planning rail trtavel, finding the price and more and that is this one –

http://www.hyperdia.com/

It’s in English and it will pretty much sort you out for any train journey in the country, even local lines and lines around Tokyo!

Even if you’re living, like I did, in far flung Iwate, odds are you are going to come to Tokyo once or twice, if not more often. Most backpackers and tourists to Japan are also likely to spend some time in Tokyo. The best, if not simplest, way to get around Tokyo is by the trains. The subway. Call it what you will the rail transport network in Tokyo is epic, covers so much of the place and even links Yokohama in less than thirty minutes. It’s above ground, below ground, it even includes a monorail for one line. Great? Absolutely! Easy?

Not so much.

Things you need to know about the Tokyo & Yokohama rail networks.

Busy Shibuya Station

Follow the signs to the different lines.

Actually, the same can be said for other major cities too, but none rival Tokyo in complexity and sheer busy-ness. Firstly, multiple companies run different train lines. Not such an issue for a single journey with no changes, but once you start changing trains, you may need to change companies and it’s not so obvious which lines are which companies to foreigners. This means you need a new ticket as well, plus when you arrive at the station you’re changing at, you will need to leave the ticketed area and find the entrance to the other line.

For example, JapanRail (JR) run different lines in Tokyo. If you go from one JR line to another at an interchange station, you won’t need to leave the ticketed area and your original ticket should be to your ultimate destination. If you have to change companies, though, to say Tokyo Metro (this is a collective of lines rather than a general term for using the Tokyo rail system, keep that in mind here because it can catch you out) then just buy a ticket to the interchange station, and when you change you find the Metro part of the station – which could be a bit of a walk depending, buy the ticket for the next stage of the journey there.

Simply, travelling on the Tokyo rail system requires a bit of thought. You’ll get to the ticketing machines and above will be a map of the connected networks. If you are lucky, it will have English as well as Japanese as the one in the photo does, but quite a few do not. The map will tell you the fare to the station you are heading too, you click that amount on the ticket machine screen, pay the money and take your ticket. The fares shown are from the station you are at before boarding. Also, if you have under-paid you won’t be let out the automatic gate. However, they have ‘fare-adjustment’ machines before you exit. Put the ticket in the machine, it will tell you what you need to pay, you pay it, you get a new ticket and are let out.

One way around ticketing issues is the Suica or Pasmo cards. They are cards you can buy for a small fee and you top them up – you must top up with multiples of 1000 yen. They are good for all lines in Tokyo and Yokohama. They are a touch on/touch off sort of deal.

Give yourself time to navigate the system. Some of the bigger stations are insanely busy at the right (or wrong) times of the day. That’s Tokyo Station, which is the biggest and busiest for sure, Shibuya can be really confusing, Ueno, Shinagawa also rate up there. The picture doesn’t show it, but at the wrong times Yokohama station can be crazy busy too. The stations are often linked to (walking) subway systems with loads of shops, or even large shopping malls. You go through a door and you are suddenly surrounded by jewellery. So I say again, give yourself time to work it all out. I’ve found that the rail system maps you can get don’t show the whole picture, include every line or explain the different companies and when you get to the station, even though you had it all planned, sometimes you need to rethink how you’re moving from A to B.

Despite all this, I love rail travel, and rail travel in Japan is pretty awesome! Thanks for reading, see you tomorrow with the final instalment of my thoughts on Culture Shock, and may the journey never end!

Don’t forget my ebook - Short Journeys: Japan

Harajuku and Naked, Wet Sumo in the Park

Today I had a great day. I did three main things - I caught up with two people who went through training with Interac when I first came to live in Japan. Ravi and Kamillah are from Jamaica and  great, friendly people and after two years, it was great to catch up. They have both spent the last two years close to Tokyo teaching English, whilst I was up in Iwate in 'the sticks' as we would call in it Australia. So they have had quite a different experience living and working in Japan to me. They are also going to feature on the podcast where I will be talking to them about life in Japan and their home of Jamaica too. The podcast should be starting very soon, before April 20th I have set my date to have it all sorted.

When I was previously in Tokyo, back in August 2012 I tried to find this special spot in Harajuku where the cosplayers came out to play. It would make a really good blog post with lots of photos, I thought. But I failed to find them. Today I tried again. I headed up to Harajuku from Shibuya and went down the famous Takeshita street. The man at the tourist information tram at Shibuya advised me this was the place to go.

Except, it wasn't. I walked the length of the street, and the closest I saw to cosplayers were girls dressed up in outfits to try and attract people in to the shops. It's certainly a colourful street I should add, where you can find some of the more daring of Harajuku fashion, but no cosplayers it seemed. The shops also employed a few people from Africa - Guinea-Conarky it turned out for the couple we spoke to, to entice the customers in. Spoke to a couple of guys from Guinea-Conarky about the cosplay and they told me it was in Yoyogi Park, mainly on the weekend, principally on Sunday.

Yoyogi Park

Okay. Well we headed to Yoyogi Park, which was five minutes walk away, to see if we could find any there on a Tuesday. The park was busy, as today it was lovely and warm and sunny and despite being a Tuesday the perfect day to head out. But we saw no cosplayers sadly. However, as we were leaving we did see something perhaps almost as amazing - two men, possibly drunk, in the pond wrestling each other! They had colour-co-ordinated underwear, and some sort of cloth over their chests, so maybe it was intentional. I don't know. It certainly was a very strange thing.

With a little time left in Japan, I am looking to find the odd and different. It certainly took away from the disappointment of not finding any cosplayers - I am not done with THAT mission either.

Thursday I will be continuing my Japan Survival Guide, I'm going to look at catching trains and transport.


Please note that slowly, but surely, I will be moving over to the Wordpress site, and this one will be phased out. It's a lot of work to repost the same thing on both sites. My Wordpress site has been a work in progress but it's starting to look like what I want it to now. Here it is -
worldjourneysdiscover.wordpress.com

Culture Shock Part Two: First Experiences in West Africa

Grim reality of Accra

When I went to India, I was a very green traveller. It was my first solo trip, the first time I had travelled alone. When I went to West Africa in 2006, I couldn’t claim the same. I had been to India three times, I had visited Bangladesh twice and been through Pakistan and Iran to get to Europe by land. So, I felt I had the necessary experience to deal with whatever Africa could throw at me.

I was wrong. I arrived in Accra, Ghana, with the plan to make it overland via a number of countries to Senegal. I planned to go through Togo, Benin, Niger, Burkina Faso and Mali on the way. But I was to immediately face culture shock in Accra, and the plans would flux and change and revert back to the original whilst I was in West Africa in 2006.

I was immediately struck with culture shock. In fact, on my way to Ghana I had already felt misgivings about going to this part of the world. Strange perhaps, because I had spent years researching and planning and imagining the good and the bad, the challenges and the adventures I would face there. I was, admittedly, worried that my peanut allergy was going to be a big problem, it’s a common ingredient in cooking in West Africa, but I had learnt how to deal with it by then. Or so I thought.

Life in Accra

When I arrived at Accra airport, I was a little surprised that despite an extremely long runway, the airport was very small. I was in sub-Saharan Africa for the first time! I flipped from panicky to excited and back again. I took a taxi into town, and with a little time, he found the Date Hotel. This place was a bit of an institution in Accra, there aren’t that many budget options so here was a place for less than 20 bucks and I took a room there.

Whilst the staff were really friendly, and the outdoor bar was nice, the rooms were poor to say the least. I was sharing with mice, the bathrooms barely functioned and the fans were loud. For a night or two it was ok, but I was there for quite a while.

Room at the Date hotel

The atmosphere in coastal Ghana is a little oppressive thanks to the humidity. It was well into the 90s (percent) and so very difficult to deal with, and for the first week or two I panicked at pretty much every meal I had worried that there might be peanuts inside. I was not coping well. I couldn’t get a handle on Accra – the way it was laid out, where I was, it seemed to be really big but flat. On top of that the only foreigners at my hotel were aid workers, and they were all too happy to pay for Nigerian hookers who were also staying at the hotel.

And the hookers were nice really, to chat with. And I should have expected something along those lines but well, it was all new to me and combined with quite a bit of poverty in parts, and the madness of the place (despite not being anywhere near as mad as India), and the fact that I felt completely on my own – no other backpackers around that I could see, well this flipped me out somewhat and I spent a couple of days with no-one to talk to much and certain that I was way out of my depth.

Cape Coast.

I eventually, after four days, moved on to Cape Coast, a quite pretty town down the… coast. I arrived at a cheaper, nicer, far cleaner guesthouse, and met a Canadian who on the spot was happy to see a backpacker and invited me that day to join her and her mother going to some tree houses in the jungle. I was very happy suddenly, I felt things were on the turn. I accepted, only for an hour or less later to be told that the mother had vetoed the idea as she wanted to spend alone time with her daughter. Well, feelings reversed again.

I tried to enjoy my time at Cape Coast, but I couldn’t connect to the other couple of backpackers. I went back to Accra, deciding possibly to skip Benin, Togo and Niger and go to Burkina Faso through to Mali and Senegal, quickly to, and get out to the UK where I was headed next. BUT back in Accra I met an Australian and we hung out for a couple of days. We saw the museum and a few other things around Accra, and like that, suddenly things were not so bad.

Market in Niamey, Niger.

Kindness in Miger.

He had been to the three countries I was considering cutting from the itinerary and in the end I decided to go there – I had a visa that covered them all anyway. And I moved on to Togo, which was strange, and Benin which was good although I had a bad moment where I lost it. Niger was again confronting with extreme, in your face poverty, but that was balanced by meeting a local with very little that offered me a bed for couple of nights. A warm and generous soul. I never forget these people. I had bought an electric stove because I wanted to cook to get around my peanuts fear, but then never used it. I gave it to this kind man.

Then, Burkina Faso. I had slept a night outside at a bus station in Niger as the buses leave at around 4am for longer distances, and to be honest it was fine if not a sensible thing to do. The bus took me to the capital of Burkina Faso, Ouagadougou. At the guesthouse there I met some backpackers and we had a fun day around the town, and when I moved on to Banfora, well, I was feeling finally that I had conquered my misgivings about the place.

Happy times in Ouagadougou.

So then I caught malaria. Well, probably from a bite I received sleeping outside at the bus station in Niger to be honest. It takes a little time to manifest. Then the doctor gave me Larium, which induced panic attacks. I was suddenly in hell. The initial treatment did not cure the malaria either. I had a guy in Banfora who took me on a tour around to see things who kept turning up at my hotel asking me for money, and eventually I left Banfora, still sick and panicky, to get away from him.

I still remember when the malaria came on. I was hanging with a couple from the Czech Republic. We watched a drum performance which was really cool and I felt very happy about that. I was really digging Burkina Faso. We went out for dinner and I had a really nice steak. Then to an outdoor restaurant/bar and were sitting around a table having a beer and I started coughing. Very quickly I had a temperature and in the space of 30-60 minutes I felt really sick. I went to hospital and was diagnosed with malaria.

Drumming performance in Banfora.

The hospital provided its own culture shock. Just a flat bed, not sheets, no nurses, and a doctor who couldn’t find my veins. He used a plastic glove and wrapped it around my arm, and then got the other patient in the room to assist. The toilet was locked at night and I had to drag my drip and myself outside to piss on the wall. To say it was basic is an understatement, but they did have clean needles and the medication which is something, right?

I spiralled from there, still sick I went to Bobo-Dioulosso. I got angry and stressed when suddenly I couldn’t change money at a bank. It can be difficult in some places in West Africa, they ask for receipts and other things. In Ouagadougou again I was taken to another hospital which dealt with westerners thanks to a kind soul I met on the bus, and there I received, finally, proper treatment.

This trip to West Africa ended in ignominy, and I returned home to Australia in my only aborted trip. Was that all ‘culture shock’, no certainly not. Some of it was bad luck, much was in my own mind but I did learn that you have to be in the right mental place to travel, especially if you are going somewhere special. I would returned to the region in 2007 and see Mali and Senegal, I went with a friend this time – a very good idea if you go to Africa. Do it with a friend, it really does help.

For more on my time in West Africa, the third book to the Dhaka to Dakar adventure covers Ghana, Togo, Benin, Niger, Burkina Faso, Mali and Senegal. It’s available on Kindle.

Dhaka to Dakar Book Three: Across Africa

You can also find the individual chapters on Amazon.

Next Sunday I will talk more in Part Three of ‘Culture Shock’!

May the journey never end! 

Short Journeys India and a travelling lesson from Jaipur

I've been very keen to get the latest 'Short Journeys' up on Amazon for kindle, and finally it has arrived! 'Short Journeys: India' is a collection of tips, information and some experiences too - stories and so forth, from my three trips to India. It covers Delhi (the good, the bad and the ugly), a bit of Rajasthan - Jaipur, Udaipur and Pushkar, it covers Punjab - Chandigarh, Jalandhar (great story) and Amritsar with the amazing Golden Temple, and then it covers Agra, Varanasi, Kolkata, Darjeeling, Mumbai and Goa. It talks about the places I stayed and how I got about. So if it interests you, it's just $1.39 at the US Store, 85p at the UK store and 99 Euro cents at the European stores!

Short Journeys: India (US Amazon)
Short Journeys: India (UK Amazon)


The overall product page is here.

From the book, here's an experience I had in Jaipur where things got a little hairy for a while :

Jaipur and I

Jaipur was a bit of an awakening for me I guess as a backpacker. It all boils down to one strange day that could have ended pretty badly for me but fortunately didn’t. At the Ever Green there was a notice plastered on a wall in the restaurant advising people that if someone should approach them asking them to buy gems and sell them overseas for a small profit they should decline. I thought it was an interesting note as I scoffed down my breakfast, but my main thought was basically ‘I wonder what that’s about’.

Turned out I would soon discover. I had seen a bit of the town on my first day in Jaipur, and on my second I had a few things to do – principally to get an overnight train ticket to my next destination, which was Udaipur, and to send a parcel home.

Lake near Jaipur.

Getting the train ticket was easy enough, although it was my first real experience of standing in a queue to buy something in India. I stood back from the person in front of me, relieved that there was only one person in the line between the ticket window and myself, and from nowhere as I stepped forward after they were done, a guy basically ran in and pushed in when I was within half a step on the window!

I kid ye not – this does happen in India. Regularly. You’ll have to decide how you want to deal with it but when there are many people in a line it is just a huge group of people jostling like a crowd. It’s not just India, but the sub-continent is where it happens most and with the biggest numbers (although places in China are pretty bad too). It’s a cultural thing really, perhaps a strange defence of the behaviour, but with so many people it becomes a case of ‘if I don’t push in, everyone else will and I will never get my ticket’. And that’s the long and short of it. Play the game or don’t, it’s up to you. Just be aware that getting angry and self-righteous never EVER won a fight in India.

So to be honest at this point I was just ‘Ummm excuse me, but I was here first and you appear to, probably by accident not realising someone was here and all, just jumped in front and….’ or something to that effect. Or lack of. Yes, pretty poor form but I was still the small fish in the big pond that is India and today I would have pushed and glared. When I have stood up for myself, I seem to have been able to out stare them and win the day.

Once I had my ticket in the sleeper I headed to the nearby post office to ready my parcel and send it home to Australia. Well, it was another chaotic scene in the post office with crowds of people clamouring to get to the counter and I probably wasn’t feeling all too keen to dive in. When I got the customs form I had to take it away and write the details and then I would have to fight my way back to the front to actually have the thing posted.

So I took the parcel away to a bench where I started to fill out all the information. It wasn’t huge but was a little bulky. A guy came up to me and offered to help, and I didn’t have the smarts at this stage to say ‘I’m right thanks’. He helped me get a really professional job done on the parcel, he took me to a counter where the parcel was sewn into a hessian bag, and then was sealed with wax. The customs form had to go to one window to be approved and then to another to post. He managed to get it done very quickly as if my parcel was top priority.

I was very thankful to be honest and in the end the parcel made it to Australia with no issues. He then invited me to his house for a something to eat and I agreed and hopped on a rickshaw. I was taken to a pretty nice house maybe fifteen minutes or so from the station. I sat down outside in a courtyard area and chatted away to my new friend and his pal about – well me mostly. They gave me a bottle of Coke and I drank.

Somehow the conversation turned to gems. They were mining gems. I had unwittingly told them the next destination for me after India would be Europe. They started saying that I could buy some gems from them at a very low price and then sell them when I got to Europe and make a lot of money. Uh-oh… THAT was what the sign at the hotel was going on about! So now I had to extricate myself from the situation as best I could.

They were quite insistent and turned a little aggressive. They were offering me an easy way to make money so what was wrong with me not wanting to take a swag of gems with me to Europe to sell? I just kept saying ‘no’ but was starting to worry they weren’t going to let me go to be honest! Eventually, after more than half an hour of insisting, they let me go without any gems. Although they asked me to pay for the Coke!

Rickshaw speeding along.

They signalled a rickshaw and it took me back to the station area. I had probably made up a story about meeting someone there which is why they let me go. I didn’t want to tell them which hotel I was staying in as they would know where to find me and I suspect would have turned up at some point to at the very least pester me. I got off the rickshaw and paid and my ‘friend’ got off too. I then went the longest way possible back to the Ever Green to make sure I wasn’t followed.

And so I began to learn about the difficulties travellers can face occasionally in India. You can trust SO many people India, really. I dropped my wallet at Delhi station and someone picked it up and ran after me to give it back. But there are those who will prey on travellers if you let them. You can sense it usually – they are too friendly, they make up unlikely stories, they ask you to take gems with you for a price. Odds are anyone out for some sort of scam will speak excellent English and be somewhat slimy and overtly polite in their approach. Use your instincts, you should be fine!

Shibuya

Hey folks. It's been a lovely day. I am whiling away the hours editing the latest Short Journeys here at the Shibuya City Lounge in the Loft building, which is just perfect! It's got the perfect sort of space for working with a drink and good service! Very nice. Shibuya is the funky 'in' part of Tokyo, or if it isn't that's because I'm too old and mouldy to know what's what. Here are some pics I took when the sun was shining. Next blog on Wednesday!

Meanwhile, there's my ebook - Short Journeys: Japan

You can still find a small Ramen shop in amongst Shibuya, hiding not far from a big hot dog!