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Sunday, October 31
[Tail end]posted by peter at 23:45 .......Of course (and I'm sure it's only because I forgot to arrange a dentist appointment) the tissue surrounding my semi-protruding wisdom tooth has become painful and inflamed. Of course it has.
I also forgot to organise an appointment with a financial advisor. Goodness knows I have to think about the future sometime, especially now that the Liberals are back in power and that my career has essentially decayed (again).
As for Adelaide... well... I love Adelaide and will defend it to the end but why, oh why, is it difficult to get coffee at 9pm on a Sunday night? Admittedly Deb and I were being pretentious and refusing to patronise the available establishments, but why wasn't there something suitable?? All we wanted was something young, fun and interesting, but everything was vile... we tried Hutt St and Rundle before finally settling on a previously unknown place on Hindmarsh Square which turned out to be so putrid that we left our unconsumed coffees on the sidewalk table and drove out to Golden Grove (Golden Bloody Grove) only only to find everything shut (of course), so we slithered into the last available option in that little slice of Americana, namely... no I can't say it... no, but the logo is yellow and red and Naomi Klein would have a word or two to say about it... yuck, but the coffee was passable.
Why, in a city of over 1 million people, do we find deserted streets in the evening? I just think it's so sad. This place has so much potential but it's wasted through television and home parties (last night I attended a great 40th in a beachside suburb, the night before a live folk show in a near-city neighbourhood with Lisa, Gerry and Gossy).
I spent a beautiful afternoon with Pippa who took me to three glorious different city precincts, including Hyde Park, Gouger and the very wonderful entire street of retro stores in West Croydon (you should see the sunglasses I bought). There is so much on offer in this city, I just think people in general need to get out more.
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[Navel gaze]posted by peter at 13:00 .......How to feel when you are "home" but "home" is half a world away and probably five degrees cooler? This Australian trip is intended to be all illuminative and abundant with springtime epiphanies but so far it has just been fun. Merely fun and interesting and wonderful – but not revelatory.
As if I know what I'm even hoping for. But being soul-searchy is so late-last-year. And jangly indy angst is so November 1997.
I've changed.
There's no doubt about it: my body has changed and my mind has altered. I don't know whether it's confidence, but I feel like my approach to things is different. Walking the streets here, interacting here, speaking to cafe staff here... something is different and I like it. Whether other people do remains to be seen.
It's a shame I've been so out of my mind with tiredness. I hereby apologise to all the people I have been vague with. As I said, I've changed.
I love knowing I already have plans for the days after I return to Tokyo. LOVE knowing it. Not just work either. I am, however, mildly stressed about whether it will be possible to get into my new house, given that I don't actually have a key yet.
Final question: should I just throw caution to the tropical breeze and stay somewhere semi-luxurious in Hong Kong? It is one very tempting idea, let me tell you.
[Antipodes]posted by peter at 13:00 .......Hi.
I have been reminded of everything I love about Melbourne and Adelaide. Food and friends in Melbourne were fab, gardens in the Adelaide Hills lovely, the New Buffalo concert in Adelaide was superb, time on the Fleurieu Peninsula hilarious. I've managed to catch up with many people in various places and loved it all.
My hair has been indelibly etched upon my driver's license until the year 2010. I quite like the photo at this point in time, but I can already envisage the jibes I'm gonna cop come my late twenties. At least I have an international license now.
Tomorrow I am heading farm-ward, which will be very strange given that the house is all but empty these days. Not too sure about the whole trip to be honest, but I need to retrieve my Carole King CD.
Other stuff has and will happen but I am too out of my mind to detail it now.
Did I mention my house in Tokyo has a resident kitten?
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[In Australia]posted by peter at 09:14 .......Although I was delayed for two hours in Hong Kong in the middle of the night, I am in fact safely in Melbourne and it is nice to be here.
I ate a cube of chicken on the plane. I thought it was fetta cheese. Silly me for forgetting to organise vegetarian meals (ridiculous) and making do with whatever they managed to assemble onboard.
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[Homestay]posted by peter at 20:14 .......It happened again. Not the bowling, but the lack of forewarning. Honestly: dinner at the family home with nary a moment's notice and all the associated "difficult vegetarian" awkwardness, despite many earlier explanations of my self-imposed dietary restrictions and heartfelt assurances that Japanese tea and nibbles alone would be lovely in the event of a home visit which presumably I would have been forewarned about.
The root of it all is that I need warning. I had no chance to purchase anything gorgeous. Just a small gift... maybe a Coach handbag for the mother or something... would have been sufficient.
The dinner was absolutely lovely but I was uncertain of etiquette and felt stressed.
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[Shortly after Friday]posted by peter at 01:09 .......As I said, I'm fragile.
Hence the fact that I became emotionally devastated by Murakami's short story Landscape with Flatiron (which I read in Segafredo, where they have recently upped prices and changed the music, but retained an unremarkable ambience), leading to a somewhat shaky start to the working day. But I persevered, lesson by lesson, doing my primary school motto proud.
The morning's wreckage of jittery stress was soothed by a decision (or an over-the-phone mandate from Genta, whichever you prefer) to shift the rest of my belongings by taxi, despite the exorbitant costs involved.
I think I am almost ready for everything. I have located the missing documents, sent the money, bought the tickets, obtained the visas. All is go, so to speak.
And how did I miss saying goodbye to Kate? Oh that would be because nobody heard the phone ring. Eight or nine times over three consecutive nights.
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[Have energy, will flow]posted by peter at 09:16 .......Everything about simultaneously moving house and visiting Australia and Hong Kong is stressing me out. It just seems like a physical impossibility at this point.
I've realised that I'm a sucker for psychological organisation, in the sense that I had to get up at about 2am last night because I felt compelled to arrange everything into ordered groups... not in an OCD way but in a feng shui way... I think seeing bundles of ordered belongings, clearly earmarked for their exact destination, is psychologically far more endurable than the absolute chaos which reigned on my floor earlier in the evening.
Oh this is sounding weird; I think I'll just go now.
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[Accidentally Kelly St]posted by peter at 01:25 .......My current landlord is rumoured to have been a torturer in the war, but it's hard to discern fact from fiction in this environment. Bamboo shoots under the fingernails anyone?
The new landlord is quite a character as well. In a ramshackle office high above a busy Aoyama intersection I sat signing lease papers.
"Peter..." he said. "My best friend was called Peter."
I feign interest.
"And then I lent him four million yen."
"That's a lot of money," I remark.
"He was gay. Not that I cared about that, but four million was a lot of money in those days."
Something to do with investment schemes in South Africa.
He then went on to show me a prototype for some fold up reading glasses he has patented. When pressed I reluctantly suggested that the enormous blue oval panels on the sides of the spectacle frames be made transparent. He agreed. When pressed even more I said I might not wear such an apparatus. And he saw fit to ask me whether all of the lease paperwork should be consolidated onto a single A4 sheet. I said I would prefer such an arrangement.
More snapshots of life in this country.
I went to another punk club tonight (this one being a far lighter venue, they played Frente for goodness' sake, I thought I would die from 100% perfect happiness) and met some wonderful people.
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[As it unfolded]posted by peter at 01:34 .......I went ten pin bowling again.
This time I just abandoned myself to the hi-fives. It may have been a survival instinct. And I still didn't come close to scoring 100.
If there's one thing I would appreciate from my Japanese friends, it's more warning. The simple message of "We will meet at Mitsukyo station" contained none of the details such as the sheer absolute distance to the said station nor the fact that I would be attending a dinner party that one of my friends had slaved over for an entire day nor that afterwards we would head into Yokohama for drinks with another bunch of insanely happy people.
Warning, people, warning.
Needless to say I looked dreadful.
Many Japanese people seem to find my sedentary lifestyle difficult to understand. That I could possibly prefer sitting around in gorgeously decorated coffee shops with select friends to other more active pursuits such as, you know, billiards, seems borderline incomprehensible to many people.
"But what do you do?"
I'm not alone in this. Sarah too was interrogated, specifically about what she and I talked about when we spent hours drinking coffee. But she doesn't live in Japan anymore, the cow.
Strange lifestyle, strange living arrangements too apparently. It's all very well to live in a massive vile 'Gaijin House' on the edge of Yokohama-Kawasaki, but mention the fact that you're going to move into a near-city house with two chicks and two guys and it seems one really is pushing the 'strange barrier'.
(All this is of course only with some people.)
Ultimately, another day, another bunch of odd experiences... and really what more could I ask for?
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[Politics]posted by peter at 21:42 .......I just heard the election result.
Fucking fuck. (It's the only thing to be said.)
Why don't we just have another war? Kill 'em all. Greenhouse emissions, sorry, what? And indigenous Australians... who are they?
It makes it a lot easier to live in another country when you know that the majority of people in your homeland think a government this fucked is worth keeping in power.
* I'm so angry that I cannot even begin to collect my thoughts, and in fact I don't think I'll ever bother. So much is summed up in a single expletive I think. Really I should just be thankful that I'm alive, as I've just weathered an intense typhoon here in Tokyo, which was in fact made all the more endurable by a good book in the pleasant surrounds of Tamagawa Takashimaya Starbucks... *
[Because I could]posted by peter at 20:53 .......Frosty frosty air won't stop this thing now but last I saw of you, you were wearing sandals which may have been German and you stood in front of the billboard in the space between 'and' and 'and', and how very very difficult it's been to forget you.
[The house]posted by peter at 00:02 .......Did I say 8 people? Well I meant 5, me included.
My new place couldn't be more perfect... high ceilings, big windows, good kitchen, wicked people, close to the station etc. Oh to have found it sooner. Cannot wait to move in!
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[City rooms]posted by peter at 18:11 .......Something I do enjoy about my life (and maybe it's no different from anybody else's) is that when things happen, they tend to happen in a rather tumultuous fashion.
So I get an email this morning to say that the French guy that everyone hates in my friend's house has been kicked out for smoking and therefore the room I have wanted for a while is suddenly available and so I find myself in an office in Aoyama signing a lease for a new place I will move into, oh, at about the same time as I GO TO AUSTRALIA.
Time management: my buzz phrase for the next two weeks or so.
So I'm going to be living in Komazawa, Tokyo, just three stops from Shibuya and walkable (reluctantly, it's not close) to Shimokitazawa. My mate Sareh (not misspelt) already lives there and it's much smaller than the place I'm currently in (8 people vs 50) and it's on the same train line as Futakotamagawa, so I'm all a little bit excited but frankly the thought of moving is stressing me out.
I wore my Autumn jacket today and it rained constantly but Genta and I sought refuge in the very welcoming Pure Cafe before moving on to a very requisite stand-up coffee (or hot chocolate in my case) at Dean & Deluca's.
I'm going to go up to my room and start the drastic cull, although in reality I don't have time before a very fabulous dinner date with my French friend Audrey.
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[Lower frequencies]posted by peter at 01:10 .......Shakin' from the quakin' and again I scampered for the cupboard. All the biggest quakes on record came after unusually hot summers, and this one was the hottest in living memory. A pleasant thought, no?
Restless, oh so restless, and why does life seem like one big waiting place? Waiting to hear back after a job interview last week; waiting for payday; waiting for people to call, to email, to arrive... I swear if I wasn't going to Australia this month I'd be losing my mind.
And all of this leads to April. Waiting for April, in which I think I will sail to Vladivostok, board the TransSiberian and chug off to Europe... oh yes indeed London in the summertime, hello world, hello earth.
We'll see.
Sometimes the best ideas get foiled in the blink of an eyelid. It's strange to be simultaneously so happy and so utterly displaced, jumbled up in every aspect of human experience. Damn it, I'm fragile.
And I hate all living things. Have I said this before? Hate them.
(Especially those vile oh so vile things that live and multiply beneath the skin of fingers.)
[Hold]posted by peter at 00:37 .......And exactly when, might I ask, will love come to town?
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[Autumn]posted by peter at 19:12 .......People seem awakened in the city. I got smiles today, genuine ones. And one unsettlingly mingey smirk from a housewife (with child and possibly husband in tow).
Things are changing at work but it's all looking ok thus far.
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