travelling allrite

We've gone through the city of Narita so many times, never stopping to take a look. When I arrived at the airport most of the facilities were still closed and I had about six hours before my next flight. So I thought, why not Narita? The private Keisei line is by far the more frequent service to Narita, so I caught the commuter train past the verdantly green fields. Already I could feel the summer humidity. The area around Keisei's Narita station was not particularly attractive, but the path to the main attractions is well signposted and attractively decorated with stone statues of the Chinese/Japanese zodiac. Omote-Sando is lined with small shops selling souvenirs and local delicacies, including unagi, or eels. It was too early and all the shops were closed, unfortunately for me. It's a bit over a kilometre to walk to the Narita-san Shinsho-ji temple complex. There are so many temples across Japan that it's easy to become blase about them. But just when you...

"The map showed me the place; it was so small a place as to appear just like the point of a needle. It must certainly be a poor miserable place. What the town was like, or what sort of people lived in it, was entirely unknown to me; yet it gave me neither trouble nor anxiety. The only thing I had to do now was simply to go, and it was a little bit troublesome. That was all." Natsume Soseki, Botchan To go was more than a little bit troublesome, the destination was neither small nor miserable and I certainly was feeling anxious. But like Soseki's titular character I was headed for the Japanese city of Matsuyama on the island of Shikoku. We departed on the day of my fortieth birthday. My only cake was a "Cherry Hype" pancake while overlooking Sydney Airport across Botany Bay, but that felt like over indulgence, for I had no room for a birthday dinner at the Qantas Business Lounge. I was having a mid life crisis. Well, a crisis in my ability to cope wit...

Sweet hearts and dreams bring you a roman. Or so says the cover of the Matsuyama brochure handed to us at the tourist office. What it means, I have no clue. It's been a day of strange things. We squeezed on a subway train to Shin-Osaka station, exchanged our JR Pass vouchers for actual passes and hopped on a Shinkansen Hikari Superexpress to Okayama. It was one of those purple coloured sleek Shinkansens like the one that runs around my desk at home, only this one wasn't N-scale. Okayama is known for its peaches and grapes and we couldn't resist some peach sweets from the gift shop. While waiting for the train to Matsuyama we also found a branch of one of B's favourite clothes shops. When we arrived at our platform we noticed people crowding around the train with their kids. It was colourfully decorated with Anpanman , a very popular Japanese childrens anime television series. Before boarding we also purchased a bento box full of yummy goodies, like wasabi potato salad a...