...so we spent our last day (Sunday) with Sarah enjoying the summer heat of Cairns by ambling around, sleeping in parks by the sea, and drinking smoothies. As he was out-numbered, Martin also enjoyed the delights of a spot of shopping (lots of market stalls and lovely boutique stalls).
The thing about travelling is you are always meeting great people and then saying goodbye to them... we said goodbye to Sarah... and met some new lovely people, the Skeltons, our couchsurfing hosts.
They run their own successful tree cutting business, while raising two lively and fun little boys. We got to see a real slice of their life and enjoy time with them. Martin went running with Nathan, the world's speediest 11 year old, and we got to chill out at Palm Cove, a beautiful beach town, with 9 year old Jarrod.
We also got to see the joys of living in the Tropics. We stopped off at one of Malcolm's tree cutting jobs. Jarrod came running up to us going "There's a snake!". The snake in question was a taipan. The 2nd most venemous snake in the world. It is illegal to kill snakes (!) so Malcolm had to first try to relocate it (Kara almost passed out at that one). It tried to bite him in return. With no choice, he hit it with a garden spade before partially severing its head with a pair of garden secaturs. Woah!
Land of the Rising Sun
What can we say? Tokyo? We love it!
So far expectations lived up to. We made it to the train station to meet our old friend Jo and her husband Nate, only to totally fail to get through the barriers. Luckily having 2 fluent Japanese speakers meet you helps speed things up!
Within 3 hours of landing in the country, Martin and Nate were ensconced in a street corner ramen (noodles) bar.Very smelly. All food eaten standing up (in Martin's case banging his head on the air-con unit), leaning on the bar (or bent double to reach the bar). Served by a shouty dude wearing pyjamas and a headband. AWESOME! Kara stayed at the flat with Jo to catch up on the sofa.
We spent yesterday settling in to this new country. We went to a lovely park (Shinjuku Goyen) to see the Cherry Blossom. There were loads of locals, all snapping away at the cherry blossom. We also did our first Japanese lunch (a bento box - basically a box with some rice, potato salad, pickled ginger, and chicken - perhaps- nuggets; 2 steamy dumplings with pork (we think); some edamame beans) as a picnic. While a lot of the restaurants have only Japanese menus, there are a lot of places with 3D models of the food in the window (!), or photos, or as with lunch we went into a convenience store to pick up our food. We're going to be experimenting over the next few days with our new Japanese word "o-susume " which means "whatever you recommend" :-)
We met Jo when she finished work (hard life for some!) and went up a tall tower to see the views of Japan. Well, some of us looked at the views. Some of us (ahem, Kara) got distracted by the kitchsy toys and stuff that was on sale.
Jo then took us to an Okonomiyaki restaurant. This is a cook your own deal. As the menu is in Japanese, Jo translated. We then cooked our own plum pancake/omelette thing, some octopus balls and something else with cheese in. There's going to be a lot of eating stuff we're not sure is in it over the next few weeks.
Tokyo is great. It's busy but not noisy. People keep their voices low. It's bad etiquette to speak on your phone on the train (hooray!). Everyone is pretty ordered and calm. We get stared at but that's okay as we are looking at all of them too!
It is 10 degrees cooler here but this means we can wear our jeans again and thick woolly fleeces. We have the heating on in Jo and Nate's flat. It feels like Christmas!
We also have our Japanese Rail Passes and soon are off to use them for the first time (!). And we have booked our ferry to Korea too.
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