'Allo 'allo. I'm packing up everything now for when I leave on Tuesday morning for Chicago.
I won't have my computer for a bit, but I'll be sure to keep in touch with all of you.
See you in January.
And hey, if you want to take me out for a coffee or something before I go, give me a ring.
I won't have my computer for a bit, but I'll be sure to keep in touch with all of you.
See you in January.
And hey, if you want to take me out for a coffee or something before I go, give me a ring.
VIEW 12 of 12 COMMENTS
Sorry everyone, I've only been able to get on sporadically since I got here, and most of the places wouldn't let me on SG. But, I got my laptop today so I figured I'd make up for everything by giving you all some sweet photos of my travels.
The winter holidays have been flat-out amazing. I've spent them mostly with my family and step-family (my sister's husband's family), so it's been alright. But let's start at the beginning...
When I left Sydney for Tokyo, I had an awesome plan to combat the jet lag: Drop my luggage off at the hotel, rock in to downtown Tokyo and bar hop all night. Catch the early morning train back to the hotel and pass out on the flight to Chicago. Wake up at 8:30 am, when the plane lands and I'll be set. Right? Wrong. Though it wasn't too bad.
It just so happens that the airport is about 70km out from downtown Tokyo, so I drop my shit off and pay $30 for a roundtrip ticket on the JR line (the fast way between the airport at the city). It was already dark when I got on the train at 8 pm. When I got out of the station and through the utter mass of people (you've never seen anything like it), I looked around and was just blown away. The city-scape is beautiful:
And you can't go far without seeing one of the massive karaoke bars, in this case, BIG ECHO!:
So, of course, most of the stuff is closing at around 10, so I start hitting bars. A few down the line, I realize it's almost 2 am:
I figured that a city of 30 million people would be open 24 hours... oh how I was wrong. The only place open in a two kilometre radius was this dodgy-as-fuck internet cafe in Ginza.
After sitting in a place and realizing that there's an old guy masturbating to hentai a couple booths down from you... yeah... you kind of want to get out of the country. But I did get to smoke and see some funny Engrish:
Also, Tokyo is the most smoker friendly city I've ever been to. You can smoke everywhere, and get cigarettes for $3 a pack in VENDING MACHINES on the STREET!
Fucking A!
After spending the rest of the night in that cafe, I caught the train back to the airport and could finally admire how beautiful the Japanese country side is (sorry, train was moving to fast for any good photos to come of it). Acres of rice fields and small squat houses... surreal, to say the least.
When I got in to Chicago, I spent the first half of the day with my family, and the second half with my friends in a hookah bar. Quite nice. When I got back in to my house, I got there just in time to see some of the first snow of the season:
Yeah... it's good to be home.
Since then I've spent a lot of time with those I love here, and I got to meet my new nephew:
His name is Griffin, and he's the coolest baby I've ever met.
Other than that, my life up here hasn't been that interesting. And that's a good thing. I've been getting a lot of reading done and spending a lot of time partying with my friends. It sucks not being able to drink here, but I'm coping
I'll write about it later.
I'm looking forward to coming back to Oz in a few days, and I'll see all of you then.
Hope everyone is having an awesome summer/winter, and sorry again for not updating.