Hawking around

Howdy all
Just checking in with everyone to say hi! It's the first day of Autumn in Japan but it's been hot again. C'est La Vie I gues! Nevertheless I think we'll be seeing a cooling down over the next few weeks. School is about to go into exams, and I have started working on a new book, so more info on that soon. I will be revisiting my time in Ethiopia in the first of a new series called 'Short Journeys'.

Amazing birds

Yesterday I journeyed down to Ishinomaki to go and see a movie (Star Trek: Into Darkness) which I very much enjoyed. I'd heard bad things but I was happily surprised. I ventured down with a friend, Kevin, and we met my wife at the station (she had been in Sendai). It looks like a really nice interesting place, it was devastated by the tsunami in 2011 but we didn't head to the coast.

A hawk in flight!

The road we took to get there though was quite treacherous, on the top of a cliff high above a river on a road that was broken in parts and sloping down towards the river in others. We were lucky that on that stretch of road we didn't pass a single vehicle. Actually, the condition of the road was probably why no-one was using it.
A bit further on and we saw a bunch of hawks swooping around beautifully in the sky. It was quite a sight. Big, beautiful birds.

Ishinomaki harbour.

At Ishinomaki we had dinner at 'Big Boy', an American chain I have never visited although there is one here in Ichinoseki too. Their salad and soup bar was good value, as it was all you can eat. We also briefly visited the harbour for a quick snap! Took in the movie and went back via a different route. The heavens opened and kaboom! We were well and truly dumped on! The rain was so heavy it became very dangerous, and yet people in this part of the world don't seem to think they should stop tail-gating or turn the high beams off! Well, that's driving in Japan for you!

Bog boys at Big Boy!

Next week I hope to return, because the place looks interesting and there is a Manga Museum there I am keen to see. So stay tuned.
AND if you have any interests in my travel writing, don't forget the website now up and running.
The writings detail the journey I undertook from Dhaka to Dakar (Bangladesh to Senegal)  and you can buy the twenty chapters individually for Kindle via Amazon, or it's also compiled into three volumes -Asia, Europe and Africa. If you like the blog, please consider!
Thanks!

Dhaka to Dakar the website

Approaching 8000 and expressway madness

Thankyou all so much! I am almost at 8000 page views! I'm sure there are millions of blogs with more, especially over the time frame that this blog has been going - since late 2005, but still, it's an achievement of sorts. After the next couple of posts, I might do a retrospective perhaps!

Last Friday we hopped into the car at around 3.30pm and started the driving down to stay with my wife's family in Yokohama. It's around 500km, so no Sunday arvo dawdle, we hoped to be there not too late. And it went mostly to plan, despite the inordinate amount of trucks on the road. We took the expressways for around 70% of the journey - otherwise we'd probably need two days. Students are often amazed in my classes when I try to give an idea of distances in Australia. I was telling students about a drive to Uluru from Sydney - well I've never done it, but that it would take a cgood 3-4 days minimum. That journey is nearly 3000km by road via South Australia as chosen by google maps.

See, Google Maps knows all! 30 hours driving but good luck doing that in two days. You'd have to be mad. At least the roads move at a good click back home. Non-expressway travel can be tedious, as it was on the journey, at times. To save money we did some stretches on expressways and some not. Turns out that it would have been cheaper to stay mostly on the expressway - I guess you get a charge every time you enter the expressway, because on our way home today we used it all in one long stretch, further than on Friday, and it turned out cheaper.

The expressways get crazy once you hit Tokyo. It had a futuristic feel with so many bridges and roads spinning around in circles, all lifted mightily above the ground. Sometimes there are like four levels of roads held up by pylons it's like the States in that respect. There are plenty of trucks,  just like at home, and just like at home tail-gating is a keen sport here. The limit is supposedly, I believe, 100, and generally cameras and police let you get away with 120 ish. Still there's always the odd car going at 150 km/ph and with the trucks trying to pass each other it get's pretty stressful. Then around Tokyo area the signs get very difficult to read. Thank you to the internet and wikipedia for the following pic:

Good luck figuring that one out! We made it to Yokohama at about 11.15pm I think. So nearly eight hours of driving. On the way home we did it in six and a half but boy is my brain frazzled from the concentration.

SO what did I do in Tokyo? Next time folks! Next time!

PS. don't forget this page - link to my travel book!

Winter driving me crazy. Or Miss Daisy.

Well folks, another blog back in the cold reality of Iwate, Japan. Winter here is long. I was informed that they call winter over on the 4^th of February. This seems a tad hopeful. That was three weeks ago, and it has snowed the last three days! Things are certainly warmer in Tokyo and the south, but still colder than a Melbourne winter!

Here in Iwate the hardest thing of late has been adjusting to the winter. I’ve had to organise a few things like a new visa recently, and in particular a Japanese driver’s licence. My international driver’s licence is good until the 2^nd of March. That’s this coming weekend! So anyways after one year you need to organise a Japanese licence.

Well, it’s not so straight forward, however comparatively for myself it’s not too bad. If I was American or Canadian, I would need to sit a proper driver’s test. Thankfully that wasn’t necessary – I understand it’s almost impossible to pass on the first attempt. To be thorough the driver testers almost feel obligated to fail people on their first attempt!

Then there is a huge pile of paperwork. Basically I had to prove I had been in my home country for three months in a row since I got my licence. One thing they look for is the issue date of the licence. Well, the state of Victoria doesn’t put that on the licence! So, I had to get a ‘driving record’ sent here. The fact that in the past five years I have had two speeding tickets (both for less than 10 km over the limit!) worked in my favour. It proved I had been driving in Australia. I also submitted over 30 payslips to prove my continuously being in the country. However, it still wasn’t enough to grant me a full licence.

I am on a beginners licence for a year now. I have the special mark/sticker/magnet on my car to say I am in my first year of driving. I think I have less demerit points to lose, but I am not sure. I’ve only been driving since 1995!

Anyways, such is life and if I don’t speed I should be ok. The roads are something else I’ve had to get used to. I woke up one day in January and the usual 35-40 minute drive to work suddenly took 75 minutes! I had allowed for delays thankfully and made it on time by five minutes. When there’s snow, the roads are slow. When there’s ice, they are dangerous.

What tends to happen is driving on snow churns it up, turns it to water etc. Then at night the temperature drops, maybe to minus five, sometimes colder. Last night was more like minus ten. The water, even though there’s not a lot, freezes. The winter tyres don’t grip very well the next morning. Breaking is something to be done very carefully. I’ve experienced a little bit of skidding on the ice. The key is not to break hard, but gently, and leave plenty of space between you and the car in front.

I was driving home one very cold day when it didn’t reach 0 and this post van zoomed over the hill the other direction to me. The downhill slope (for him) was iced, and suddenly he lost control. He went from side to side, desperately swinging the steering wheel (which I’m sure was a bad move) and I thought – I was a goner! Somehow he missed me and regained control.

Downhill is the worst, the scariest part of driving when the road is icy. Usually people are painfully slow on those parts. Hence a 35 minute trip turns into over an hour. Patience and being careful is the only remedy here.

The forecast is for more snow this week.