When I was 19 years old, I went to Paris. I
did all the things you’re supposed to do when you’re in Paris – at least, all
of the free things. I ate snails, I saw the Eiffel Tower, or Tour de Eiffel, if
you will ( I know French things); I saw the Moulin Rouge; I visited Pierre La
Chase cemetery, the Louvre, Notre Dame, the Tuileries, Versailles. And I did it
all while pressing through crowds of tourists, the nasal whine of
over-privileged American teenagers piercing the summer haze.
But do you know what I remember most
vividly about those few days in Paris? An antique chair sitting in a shop
window in Montmartre, with a wheel of rotating artificial tongues in the seat
like an anatomical ferris wheel.
And it’s still there, friends.
Eight years later, I was in the city of
love with Buckle. We went to Versailles, ate pistachios and pretended to
appreciate history. We went to the Musée de l'Orangerie, ate ice cream and pretended to appreciate art. We went to Le Musée des Arts
Forainsand rode a penny farthing
carousel.
Ours was an epic journey across Paris consuming
all foodstuffs in our path and leaving only crumbs in our bloated wake, the
last syllables of “Do you have an English menu?” still ringing in the air. If
the French call the orgasm ‘the little death,’ what is that moment of quiet
reflectionafter you’ve inhaled a plate
of potatoes roasted in rosemary and duck fat?
Another notable absence- the scoundrel! –
but hear me out, why don’t you? We moved country. We moved time zones,
continents, hemispheres. We arrived from the bright, eternally effervescent
sunshine of Queensland to London for reasons unknown. Because the option was
there, and why not?
Seizing opportunities, we made a couple of
stops during our transatlantic travel. The first destination was chosen out of
convenience more than any sense of exotic wanderlust. Is there an international
flight out of Australia without a stop over in Singapore? We stayed in a
converted opera house in the middle of Chinatown and swooned under the humid
vibrancy of the heaving street life.
The evening we arrived, Buckle was on a
quest to consume as many dumplings as his puny mortal vessel would hold. Tim
Ho Wan is the cheapest Michelin star restaurant in the world,
and therefore the only Michelin star restaurant the likes of me will ever be
welcome. Famous for dumplings, their menu is a pictorial encyclopaedia of the
little bundles of warm, delicious joy.
Obviously, you can’t visit Singapore without eating at least one chilli crab. Even people picked up by immigration at the airport are fed a spicy crustacean before being forcible ejected from the country. And understandably, because chilli crab is everything. Everything. Fragrant and juicy, it leaves your mouth tingling and your lips numb
We caught a taxi across the city to visit
the Singapore
Botanic Gardens. Like Dubai, and other young business centres,
Singapore is filled with strange architectural trophies-come-skyscrapers.
Misshapen altars built to the gods of economy.
The gardens sat in the middle of it all –
nestled amongst the concrete and smog. Stream rose off the plants and settled
in our lungs as we watched the orchids, hanging from their stalks, dance in the
breeze like delicate marionettes. All except one little pot of brown and maroon
flowers sitting on a stump, with a little plaque reading, “Lady Margaret
Thatcher.” I heard once that children grow into their names and it must
certainly also be true of flowers because those orchids had the look of a plant planning some strict reforms.
We spent the entire last week of our holiday in Tokyo and packed it with more pop culture than the Buzzfeed homepage. Buckle took some pretty spectacular shots of the Tokyo skyline from the giant ferris wheel in Daida,re we also saw an enormous Gundam statue and an exceptionally squeally crowd awaiting the arrival of the winners of Korean Idol. Of course, we had to bear witness to the K-pop power of Infinite (I can't help but raise my fist every time I say their name) performing their latest single - you could have bottled the oestrogen in the air and sold it to post-menapusal women.
It just so happened that the Sumo tournament was in it's final week while we were in Tokyo so we lined up early one morning to secure the cheapest, worst tickets in the whole stadium and watch fat, sweaty men grapple with each other for honour or something. I think I've found my sport. I don't mean to brag but I feel as though I've become somewhat knowledgable on the subject of sumo wrestling - I reckon I can strategise with the best of them. Plus, all that rampant testosterone really brought out a new side in Buckle.
If you're searching for the highest concentration of pop culture, sex shops and video games in Tokyo - the world, even - then Akihabara is the place to be. We spent a good 12 hours trawling through the streets, stopping at Super Potato to play vintage arcade games (Buckle opted for Street Fighter while I was all over Wonder Boy) and relive our furtive youth by browsing racks upon racks of old Nintendo and Sega games.
While in Akihabara I also took the opportunity to get my nails done at Ita Color Yellow, Tokyo's best nail salon specialising in anime and Japanese cartoon themed nail art. I knew exactly what I wanted on my nails...
Samurai Pizza Cats! Because it true what they say, "they've got more fur than any turtle ever had." Despite the language barrier (Buckle was not sticking around for 2 hours to act as translator) we got through it and the nail artist was the Michelangelo of nails.
I couldn't stop staring at my hands days afterwards.
Shibuya was without doubt the coolest place in Tokyo - Shibuya crossing was what I imagined the whole of Tokyo to be. Naturally, no trip to Japan would be complete without visiting a cat cafe; we stopped in at Happi Neko in Shibuya which was filled with lounges, armchairs, book and, of course, cats. I have to say that I was left a little disappointed with our visit; I left feeling as though we'd just payed $20 to be ignored by cats - I have a cat at home that ignores me for free. However, I couldn't fault the sheer adorableness of the cats and felt a little envious that I couldn't make a living out of people coming to feed me treats, wave feathers in my face and watch me nap.
On our last night in Japan we lined up with hundreds of others for Disney Sea, which is apparently infinitely superior to Tokyo Disneyland. I'm not a Disney buff in any sense of the word but the lights and whimsy drew me in like a Venus Fly Trap.
Mermaid's Lagoon particularly appealed to the five year-old mermaid inside of me.
I've been pining for Japan ever since we got back on Sunday - Australia is just not weird or polite enough for me anymore, but I soothe myself by remembering that London is a mere 4 months away.
Continuing on from the last post with the theme of animal islands, on a particularly dreary day in Hiroshima we caught a ferry out to Miyajima. I was lured out with the promise of deer but other, less mad, people might recognise Miyajima as the island of temples festooned with the famous behemoth red gates erupting from the shallows on the shoreline...
... unless, of course, you accidentally visit at low tide, in which case the gates rise majestically from the mud and washed up coins visitors throw into the water. I weep at the number of Yoshinoya lunches I could have bought with those discarded coins. The temples and pagodas were adorned with characters whose significance, as an ignorant Westerner, I am unaware.
I think it's an especially wise fox. In robes.
En route, and yet very much out of the way of, Kyoto, we trekked up into the mountains for a monastery stay in Koyasan. The dreary weather and mountain mist perfectly offset the beauty of the rural village. If you ignore the hundreds of other wonderstruck tourists ambling down the streets, you do really feel as though you've discovered a little piece of ancient Japan.
Our first day in Kyoto was spent answering the many questions of dozens of Japanese school students with English homework at various temples and attractions. Buckle attempted to win the school kids over with jokes which he said wouldn't translate well in English, but didn't seem to translate too well in Japanese either, judging by the kids' reactions. Kinkaku-ji Temple was the most picturesque of the bunch with its towering Golden Pavilion glistening in the afternoon sun.
Come night we headed out to Gion to experience Kyoto's nightlife (a tame, in-bed-before-11pm sort of experience). The lights of the restaurants reflecting on the river made you want to swoon into the arms of the closest attractive man (I have a ring which ensures one is always readily at hand). The streets of Gion are so bright and alluring, welcoming but mysterious and alien.
One of the Transformer movies is playing as background noise as I write this so I have to end before Shia LeBeouf tolerance reaches maximum saturation, but my next post will be all about Tokyo and its many, many pop culture gems.
I have just returned from the land of ramen and polite bowing and I feel like Bill Murray in Lost in Translation without the overwhelming sense of loneliness and pervading sense of ennui. Buckle lived in Japan for two years almost ten years ago, and he's been eager to get back and who am I to stand in his way (provided I get to go along for the ride)?
The first week of our trip was spent travelling around the south - Osaka, Hiroshima, Kyoto and we even made a stop in the mountains at Koyasan. We had been planning to visit the Ghibli Museum while in Tokyo the following week but as it turned out the museum was closing for maintenance the day after we arrived so we had to make a dash to Tokyo for the day to catch it before it closed for a few months.
The entire building was specially built to house all the whimsy that Ghilbi Studios can churn out - it was filled with spiralling staircases, tiny archways, illustrations and a giant Catbus. You weren't allowed to take photographs anywhere inside the museum so this was all we could manage but Buckle got a great shot of a woman walking her cat in a wheeled bag in the bag surrounding the museum.
Buckle's Japanese skills made it much easier to take photos of people's pets.
We spent a few days in Osaka visiting Osaka Jo (which I imagined to be a loud-smouthed American with connections in the black market but which turned out to be an enormous castle), and the Instant Ramen Museum.
Yes, an INSTANT RAMEN MUSEUM.
Where you got to make your very own Cup Noodles.
By far my highlight of our time in Hiroshima was visiting Okunoshima. The Japanese govern t built a poison gas factory on the island in 1902 and produced gas for wars up until the end of the Second World War. When the factory was abandoned the island was overrun by the rabbits which were kept on the island to test the poison.
When you step onto the island rabbits coming running from everywhere and climb all over you to get at whatever tasty morsels you have on or about your person. It's adorable in a hope-I-don't-catch-a-disease sort of way. The factory itself is incredibly eery and beautiful, and casts almost sculptural shadows on the landscape.
This post is so laden with photographs that I'm going to split the first week into two posts, but in the meantime enjoy the photographs and some wanderlust while I sit quietly and lament my return to the mundanities of everyday life.
