Welcome to 2011: Japan again

First trips for the year are now booked. I'm off down to Melbourne for a day next month to watch a concert of John Williams music. Then a couple of weeks later the three of us are flying back to Osaka courtesy of a very cheap Jetstar deal. We have 16 days there, but I was rather tempted to book onwards travel somewhere else - like Europe or the US while the dollar is strong. It still works out about the same as flying from Australia though, once the Japan fares are taken into account.

Why Japan again? Apart from cheap flights, there is so much yet to see there, so many railway lines to catch! Just doing some planning I realise that 16 days is not enough for all the itineraries I want to follow. There are so many railway themes I could choose, like the entire west coast of Honshu, or the length of Japan by rail, or every Shinkansen line... But I don't just want to take fast trains, I want the slow locals, I want to stop off at odd towns and explore. We did a little of that last trip and it was fun.

It's not just my trip and I have to make sure that B and Alex enjoy it too. At least Alex enjoys watching the Japanese version of Spirited Away and has managed to watch it twice, each time in two parts. He can even say "konnichi wa" now.

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One night in Canberra

It's the April school holidays and we are too busy to have a break but need one because of that. And because it's the Easter weekend the options are limited, so we just drive down to Canberra for the night. No, this isn't our first trip for 2023. I wrote about Japan on another site . I refuse to wake up early so we depart after 8.30 AM. There is not much to say about the drive except that the clouds seem so low and Lake George is very full. We stop at a rest area and at the lookout up the hill to take it all in. Everyone is hungry so we first stop in Dickson and then can't think of anything to eat, so I drive us to Civic, where we can't decide and end up eating at the Singaporean Killiney Kopitiam branch. The Canberra Centre has nice shops. I dream of getting an iPad from the Apple Store, we buy a blanket and toothbrushes from Muji and wish that Lego wasn't so expensive. Nothing we can't get in Sydney, but then we rarely go out shopping in the city. It'

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A selection of jams

We're home now. The last two days of our Brisbane trip involved a lot of driving but not always much movement. On Wednesday we arranged to met Sis and her family at Robina Town Centre, a massive shopping mall. That meant a drive down towards the Gold Coast along the same motorway we'd driven up along. What should have taken an hour took twice that due to the holiday traffic along the 3 and 4 lane road. Lots of people taking the turn-offs to three of the "Worlds" (Wet'n'Wild, Movie World and Dreamworld). The Town Centre hosts Artvo , a trick photography gallery where you use perspectives to make subjects look like they are part of the artwork. It was surprisingly fun, despite the aversion of we males to being the subjects of photos. Afterwards we had a long chat over lunch, which was sourced from a variety of eateries. I had roti and chicken curry from Roti and Buns . Passable, though the curry was more laksa like. We later took Sis to Daiso and she and her h

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