8 seconds

japan rail recently did an audit of the punctuality of its shinkansen (bullet trains) - the ones that run the length and breadth of the country. it found after examining 160,000 individual train journeys, that the average delay in arrival for a shinkansen was 8 seconds.

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8 seconds?! can you imagine if such rampant punctuality was introduced into australia? people would go wild - run screaming from train stations frothing at the mouth. attendants would tell you that the train was coming in 5 minutes whilst looking you right in the eye. the loudspeakers would announce: "good afternoon passengers: the train to dandenong has been delayed, and is now expected in 8 seconds. connex apologises for any inconvenience caused". it would all be too much.
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but not in japan. if you catch a train 6 hours up the east coast and have only 3 minutes to change over to another train upon arrival, there's no more shitting yourself with fear that you won't make the connection - you can sit back and relax with the knowledge wthat you will have a full 180 seconds to change at the station.
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in fact, when travelling on local trains, you can go to the front carriage and gaze through the window at the driver with all the other window lickers (or did pottsie say that they were headbangers? i was too busy drooling on the plexiglass for it to register). these drivers (who all have autistic spectrum disorder) have a timetable (see the arrow on the photo above!), and this timetable tells them what time they need to arrive and leave each train station to the second. fetch the smelling salts!
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the shinkansen themselves are just awesome. on our first ride, i looked out the window at the blurred vegetation by the tracks, and felt like i was in free-fall - SIDEWAYS. in fact, when i later googled it, i found that the trains do indeed travel faster than the terminal velocity of a human being - still alive, but bound and gagged - who has been tossed into the sky over bass strait from an unidentified aeroplane. it was fast.
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the seats were a blessing too. with my buggered back, we couldn't have spent a lot of time on a train with normal seats - but in japan, even the dregs of society (like us) travel first class when they're travelling last class, as all seats recline to about 45 degrees.
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it meant that we could literally leave tokyo in the morning, pop over to a mid-western japanese city for a bit of breakfast and sightseeing, move on somewhere else for a late afternoon stretch in a world heritage garden, and then get back on the train and be home in tokyo for dinner with my sister. and that's exactly the sort of thing we did and the sort of thing you can do when you free-fall toward your destinations.
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special mention must be made of the JR pass - one of the worlds true travel bargains. for an amount that initially seems extortional, g and i bought three weeks of limitless travel on almost all the trains in japan - from metros to local lines to the glorious shinkansen. i reckon we saved about $1000 each as a result. cha-ching.
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the eastern capital

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of course my sister and her partner live in tokyo - that's the reason we came to japan in the first place. and seeing them was always going to be the best thing about coming to japan anyway. but there were other things to see and do in tokyo...
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even though i would go so far as to classify myself as a semi-professional tourist, more often than not the actual visiting of tourist sites has me wanting to put a knife in the nearest child. g and i are similar in that respect, and rather than suffer the nausea of looking at temples, we prefer to toss ourselves into the river of 'let's see what happens' and float on down.

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so what did we do in this massive alpha-plus megamegamegalopolis of over 33 million people all crammed into one pulsating, never-ending crowd? well...when i was able to pry gerard away from the japanese equivalent of the $2 shop (literally the 'hundred yen shop', where we spent countless hours, one of us with a dead and bored look in his eye, the other with eyes alight, arms full of copper and aluminium wiring, asking "but mon cheri, what do you mean we don't need a full body lyrca suit or a mini soldering iron?")...we did a few things.

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in a departure from previous blogs, i thought i could create some links to galleries if you're interested in seeing more. so...click on the picture below if you want to check out tokyo parks and gardens.

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click the pic below for tokyo streets.

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click the one below for temples (bleaughh) and tokyo castle

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or finally, click the shot below to see what we got up to when we met up with nicky in tokyo for her birthday!

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a city for people

hands up like astroboy if you're massively frustrated and angry about the state of affairs with regards to cars cars cars in melbourne?

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consensus.

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you ring up the local fishmonger to find out how to get there, and she'll tell you where to park, but she won't tell you which tram to take - even though there's a fucking tram stop right outside her fishmongery! what's wrong with this picture?

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living next to the freeway, i have spent many a choking minute gazing down from above upon the endless tide of cars flowing into and out of our great city, wondering what life could be like in a modern metropolis built for people - not for cars. and then: tokyo!
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what boundless joy to be in a city with public transport infrastructure! where humans dominate the landscape, and suburban roads are so narrow and inconvenient that cars are too frightened to come out, and only do so under exceptional circumstances, blushing with irrelevance. c'mon melbourne - we can do it! let's build up some density and make our reliance on private vehicles a dirty joke from the past!

i'd rather die than have a fat arse

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what better characterises japan than the toilet? clean, convenient, modern, efficient. the most advanced version we encountered sensed your presence and lifted its lid when you were near, only to reveal a heated seat for your pampered bottom. when the excitement of voiding was over, there was one button to squirt your bumhole, another to squirt your fannyhole if you had one (or jet your balls if you didn't have one but wanted to know what happened when you pressed that button), another button to massage your arse with rhythmic squirts of water, and a final button to fan dry your pudendum, dripping wet after all that fun. when it was all over, you simply had to walk away - no need to even look back - the toilet flushed and closed automatically. before leaving, one could wash their hands under the automatic tap - not that you've touched anything but a few laminated buttons anyway.
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and that was basically our experience of japan - convenient, clean, efficient and modern, but slightly distanced from reality and not particularly interactive.
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6 weeks on from our holiday, it's time to refocus the retrospectoscope back on the land of the rising sun. join me as i reminisce! expect multiple small entries - and feel free to leave a comment/not leave a comment/get fucked/eat 4 king size cherry ripes in one sitting like i did last week and arrive at a higher level of existence. the choice is quite simply yours :)

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and by opposing, end them (the twisted girl)

as many of you know, it has not been smooth psychological sailing for me over the last few years. when i consider myself at the age of 29 with a weak leg that's been getting gradually weaker since before my 26th birthday, and a fucked back that won't let me sit for more than 10 minutes without making itself felt, i have experienced deep feelings of disappointment with my lot. the recent addition of a C-spine disc prolapse has had me wallowing in self-pity - the brunt being graciously borne by the love of my life.
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but i know that my lot is infinitely better than that of most people in the world, and i am always brought back to this by the memory of a girl i once saw as i was waiting at an overpriced physiotherapist for an ultimately useless session of pilates. this girl was twisted - her legs were different lengths, her spine was folded back on itself twice over, and every movement was clearly agony as she staggered from one side of the room to the next. and yet as she talked to her carer, she laughed, and it was the quality of this laugh that left me awe-struck. it was not the laugh of someone who was tolerating her pain, or laughing politely, or laughing despite herself. this girl was laughing with complete abandon. the girl with the twisted body - in pain, disabled, dependent - was giving herself up to the joy in her life.
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it's impossible to feel positive 24/7, but life is a joy regardless. i am inspired by the twisted girl, and my desire is to be able to live the joys of my life with the same abandon that she lives the joys of hers - whether i get better, stay the same, or get worse. anything less than this sort of life is a life half lived, and grounds for taking arms against a sea of troubles. peace!

your money or your life

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when i was leaving H+R block last year, the fat accountant - who hadn't been able to stop shifting uncomfortably on his seat the whole time we'd been talking - turned to me, gazed over his glasses so that his meaning could not be adulterated by a high refractive index, and said in a tone of voice 1/3 serious, 1/3 dripping with sarcasm and 1/3 charged with disgust: "other doctors in your place would have claimed much much more..."

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i suspected that i had been reprimanded, but wasn't quite sure. what exactly had he been trying to say?

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i've just come away from this year's visit. different accountant, same old same old. again, words of wisdom, but this time in earnest: "ondrej - in the next 12 months you need to spend a lot more so that you can claim".

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the funny thing was, he actually meant it. i opened my mouth and uttered a few words about materialism, society and true happiness, but he had already turned away to plug himself back into the wall.

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one thing's for sure - if you cut them, they do not bleed.