I've been pretty slack about updates lately, and I forgot to post
anything after constitution day, so this will jump around a bit. I'll
keep it concise by forgetting things that happened more than a day or
two ago. You know, *on purpose*...

So the 17th of May is the most important of the norwegian national
days. It celebrates the day that Morton Harket, with help from some
magical allies including Thor and Dumbledore, drafted Norway's first
constitution in 1814. Prior to this, Norway had been under the
control of Denmark and the Oldenburg dynasty, known allies of the
Decepticons.

Anyway, every May 17, the people take to the streets in their traditional dress:
http://s2.photobucket.com/albums/y23/ARowse/?action=view¤t=corner.jpg
There are multiple parades, and then every eats and drink too much and
lies around feeling a bit ill. Well, some people do that. I know for
a fact that at least one person did. Christian's sister and
step-mother joined one of the parades as it went by the house, and I
thought that seemed like a pretty good idea so I did as well. We
meandered around the streets of Risør in a complicated path designed
to prevent the parade from overlapping with itself and ending in
carnage, wishing people the very best for the special day. The parade
stopped in front of the house belonging to the oldest woman in Risør
and we shouted 'hip hip hip - hurrah hurrah hurrah!' until she came
out. I guess it's okay if it's traditional.

I need to get the photos of the parade off Christian. Then I might
need to destroy them for the sake of my dignity. Hey. Stop laughing.
I have too got some.

Jumping forward a little bit to the Midnight Sun Marathon in Tromsø...

Tromsø is right up the top of norway, well into the arctic circle, so
it has months of days without night. I would imagine that winter is
really crap, and fully expect never to find out for sure. Since I
wasn't sure that my body would tolerate a single marathon, let alone
multiple ones, I thought that the midnight sun marathon would be a
good choice, since it's a bit special. Also, it was something my dad
wanted to do as well! I'd been training since late january, with the
occasional week or so off grizzling about sore ankles and knees and
suchlike. Still, I wasn't at all confident that I was going to be
able to manage 42km.

At least the lead up to the marathon was stressful. Oh wait. It was!

The morning I was to meet mum and dad in Oslo, I had bought a train
ticket and asked Knut to give me a ride to the train station in the
morning. He said that it wouldn't be a problem. When he was 5
minutes late, I started trying to call him, but only ever got his
answerphone. I then tried Arild, my former landlord, on the basis
that I left his flat much cleaner when I left it than he did when I
moved in, so he totally owed me. Alas, he was going to Sweden, so my
attempt at emotional blackmail was to no avail. Then a quick scamper
to the taxi stand up the hill, where the taxi driver confirmed that I
didn't have enough time to make my train. Bother.

So I went to work, checked the bus timetables and worked out an
alternative plan. There may have been some swearing mixed in to the
proceedings as well. Hard to remember.

The bus was fine. Not quite as comfy as the train, but it was nice
enough to have a form of transport, so I wasn't complaining (yeah, you
all know that's not true - I WAS complaining, but nobody was
listening, so it totally doesn't count). Rocked into Oslo with plenty
of time before mum and dad were due to arrive, and took a short tiki
tour around Oslo. Fantastic day, beautiful city. And then a train
out to the airport.

The plane arrived, some people got off, but no sign of mum and dad.
Eventually I gave them a call. There seemed to be some problem with
their luggage. After a lot of getting mucked around, they eventually
discovered that two of their three bags had not been loaded on the
plane in heathrow. They left an address for the bags to be sent to
when they arrived later that day, since there were a bunch more
flights out and getting the luggage to oslo was not going to be a
problem.

Except it was. Getting information was nigh impossible, but
eventually (like, three or four days later) we were told that British
Airways had a 4000 bag backup of luggage and they had simply given up.
The luggage was instead being sent to Italy to be sorted, before
making its way back. That's nice. I bet Italy was really nice that
time of year. Not quite so cool for people who wanted to use the
stuff in their bags though. Luckily, the one bag that did make it to
Norway contained dad's running shoes and the glucose snackity things
to stave off death during the run. I kept on accidently saying "bag,
dad" at the airport, and I wondered whether it was going to get me
into trouble...
"Was there anything you needed in that bag, dad?"
"It's an Eye-raqi! On the floor terrorist!"

Tromsø was amazing - the water was incredibly clear and the weather,
while a little drizzly, was still great. Didn't actually get to see
the midnight sun, but did get to see the midnight clouds, with the sun
lurking somewhere behind.

Ah, the marathon. It went quite well. I was pretty slow, running
solid 6 minute kilometers the whole way, finishing at 4 hours and 19
minutes. Dad injured himself quite early on but still outran me most
of the way, though he was forced to slow to 7.5ish minute kms towards
the end. He finished at 4.11, so if I'd run a bit faster in the final
stretch I might have caught him. Except that I wouldn't have. I
would have simply fallen over.

My favourite bit was that after the first 5km, there wasn't a single
person who overtook me who I didn't later pass (probably - it's not
like I took notes, but it's still a pretty sweet story). In all
fairness, that's probably because I was incredibly slow going over the
first bridge (which had a fantastic view).

Anyway, here's me and my dad waiting for the race to start:
http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y23/ARowse/prerace_small.jpg

Here's the official photo of me coming in to the finish. I haven't
paid for the photo yet, so the quality is real low. The quality of
the image resolution, that is. Shut up.
http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y23/ARowse/finish_small.jpg

And here's me and my dad with our shiny new medals. In the background
there's a cake shop!
http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y23/ARowse/finished_edit_small.jpg

Then we went home and fell asleep in a room that smelt like cloves and
peppermint. Mmmm.

The next day we toured around Tromsø and took in the sights, like the
Ice Cathedral and the cable car. Dad was wearing shorts, because his
trousers were on holiday in Italy, so we didn't hang around on the top
of the mountain very long.

Flight back to Oslo the next day. We talked to the man at the airport
who finally admitted that their bags were volare'ing, and then mum and
dad took the train off to Gothenburg. I did a spot of shopping, then
jumped on a bus to Risør.

A week later, mum and dad arrived in my little part of Norway. The
weather obliged by being sunny and wonderful, except for one time when
the heavens open while we were out walking in shorts. Whee. Went to
a restaurant that was a little pricey, but magnificent. And I got to
practice my shonky Norwinglish! The word for 'thing' is a key part of
my vocab. Mum and dad's other two bits of luggage arrived just before
they did. One piece came via Oslo, and the other via Kristiansand.
Odd.

We then took a train to Stavanger, where we had about an hour to visit
a supermarket before jumping on a ferry to Bergen. It was a very
bouncy ride. I spent a good portion of it out on the deck in the
bracing sea air, since inside was threatening to rearrange my stomach.

Bergen was throughly beautiful, and we really lucked out with the
weather. Bergen apparently has a lot of rain. Wikipedia says that it
rained every day from Oct 25 and Jan 20, and why would Wikipedia lie!?
We got no rain! We did lots of touristy things, and went up and down
cable cars, and it was a lot of fun. I found a t-shirt with a picture
of a pixelated viking on the front, which seemed perfect for a person
making video games in Norway. Lol rofl floan etc!

We originally planned to go see the Flåm railway, which is famous for
being, um, a train, or very pretty, or winding all over the show, or
something. Doesn't matter, since we ended up not having the time to
catch it. Instead we all caught the train across from Bergen towards
Oslo, though I got out at Drammen to catch the train back down to
Risør. Mum and dad had a couple of days in Oslo, which by all
accounts they enjoyed, then caught a plane to the UK and Ireland.

So I'm back in Risør now, pottering about and getting on with work and
projects. I went running for the first time since the marathon a week
ago, and managed to hurt my knees a bit, which is a fantastic excuse
to stay inside and watch movies!

Speaking of movies, watch Transformers before watching Die Hard 4.0.
Michael Bay's total inability to carry a coherent idea or comprehend
causality in Transformers makes Die Hard's physics seem completely
believable! John McClane really does kick some ass. If only he would
explode Michael Bay.

Take care of yourselves, and keep cool until after school!
Andrew.

Summer is well and truly here - 20-something degrees by 4am, sun from 2am-10pm (and more to come), and lots of people in boats. On friday we took the afternoon off, jumped into Knut's boat and went for a picnic on an island. Then we had some fun with Knut dragging us behind the boat in an unflatable doughnut - though only Simon and I were up for that.

Apparently, I caught some serious air, and bounced impressively. All I know is that I felt two discreet impacts, and my neck is a bit sore today. Hopefully it will stop being sore by next weekend, when I've got 42km to run. My parents get into Norway on the 15th, we'll spend a night in Oslo and then fly up to Tromsø, right up the top of the country. I'm reasonably confidant that I can make it all the way through in a moderately respectable time - I managed 32km a couple of weekends ago and was walking almost normally within a couple of days. I think it will help that it's going to be relatively cold - 5-10 degrees running through an arctic night. The weather in Risør at the moment is so hot that running leaves me with salt crystals all round my face - not the best look.

After the marathon, my parents are heading off to Sweden, eventually making their way back to Risør. Then we'll take a trip together round Stavanger and Bergen. It will be nice to see a bit more of Norway, and hopefully I'll have enough time to heal my legs back on before we head off traveling.

In my spare time I've being learning how to use a VERY basic computer graphics package called Doga, to design spaceships for my card game. I'm thinking of going to the Essen Spiel board games festival in germany later this year, and I'm looking into self-publishing my game and trying to find interest there. I think the images I'm producing right now are fairly good, though certainly not professional quality. After feeling out the market for self-published games in Essen, I'll have a better idea of whether I need to get a real artist to do the image design.

Anyway, I like how they're looking...
http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y23/ARowse/000_RoyalArk.jpg

Workwise, things are looking better and better - we have a large project from a client who is known for paying regularly and on time, so the pay situation is feeling much more comfortable. Still, I'd feel much better with all my back pay!

Arild, my (former) landlord decided that he wanted to move back into his flat for the summer. Which sucks. Accomodation in Risør over summer is at a premium, so the late notice that he was evicting me meant that I wasn't able to find a new place, so I have moved into the apartment that David originally had, then moved out of in favour of living above Trond's garage. The apartment has some interesting quirks. When the neighbour does his washing, the entire building shakes. And a new quirk just for the summer - the cafe downstairs has an industrial freezer or aircon or something, and it's directly below the bedroom. So the bedroom is subject to a low frequency, high amplitude vibration that makes sleeping unpleasant.

However - I have improved the apartment, turning it from a one bedroom apartment with bad vibes into a bedsit with a walk-in closet. In other words, I moved the bed into the living room, and things are much better.

Still, I'm looking forward to taking up the lease on a real place at the start of August. A place with a deck, and bedrooms that don't share a wall, a floor AND a ceiling with other people. And a dishwasher. Yee-ahh.

It's hot. I want an ice-cream.

A.

Ding dong fiddle-oh hey
Arbitrary Day is on its way
Everybody dress up smart
For Arbitrary Day!

Yes, that's right - less than a week to Arbitrary Day. It's a new celebration, and it takes place on the 10th of May. Perhaps a little history lesson on the origins...

Around the start of the year, (the company I work for) Mixmedia's investor decided that he no longer wanted to pay us. What he didn't decide to do is to tell us about this decision, so it wasn't until mid-february that he stopped claiming that the cash was in the account. Blah blah blah, promises were made on a regular basis, and broken a corresponding number of times, and the end result was that none of us have received more than one month's worth of total pay. On the 10th of April, we delivered a collective ultimatum - pay something close to a month's salary within 30 days, or we do the employee-initiated bankruptcy thing, and (if I was reading the legislation right) get all our backpay from the Norwegian government's 'Salary Guarantee Scheme'.

Since the choice of date of getting all fed up with poverty was made with neither rhyme not reason, we decided a couple of days ago to give the date a name and celebrate it. Arbitrary Day! We might even dress up, randomly.

Good news is that it looks like the ultimatum is fairly likely to be met, keeping us solvent until the large company that wants to acquire us finishes with the procedures to do so. And when the sun rises over this brave new world, I shall ride my unicorn thru the fields of golden clover, or something.

So a fortnight ago I took a trip to London, partly to see a Jim Moray concert, partly because I have an well-developed sense of self-entitlement when it comes to holidays. London in April is really nice! It didn't rain, and I even managed to get a bit of sun injected into my two-winters-in-a-row pallor. Enjoyed some exceptional thai food, and completely failed to enjoy some appalling kebabs.

I made some new friends! At the Jim Moray concert / open mic folk music night. Folk music friends. I've never had folk music friends before! Next time I go to London I can meet up with them and do folk music stuff, like, um. I dunno. Morris dancing? Rhyming 18th century inuendo with accordian music? At any rate, I imagine that London will be even nicer once the pub-smoking-ban legislation takes effect.

I have discovered a great way to save money - you can save money on modern europop by instead playing 80s music sped up with extra bass. It's pretty much identical to the playlist on NRK's youth radio station. But a word of warning - don't have actual europop in the same playlist, especially if you don't want to stop running to fiddle around with the mp3 player. Scientists have proven that applying the [80s_music_to_europop] transform to actual europop results in year 2020+ music!

Work proceeds on the game that SHOULD be called Dancing With The Stasi, but in the interests of political correctness is getting called 'Magnus Darkflare - Disco Superspy', or something along those lines. The only problem is that wind up spending ages just sitting and giggling while watching the players run around dancing. Oh well

Here are the last two games I made, for anybody who hasn't seen them...

http://mixmedia.game-server.cc/Spill/Rotator/
http://mixmedia.game-server.cc/Spill/Jungel/

I should make a cake for next week. An arbitrary cake. Or buy one - I saw a marzipan cake at the supermarket, which pretty much seems to be the sort of cake that has no downside.

Fri 17
Today I thought I'd try some culture, rather than just shopping. I caught the deadly roller-coaster bus to central, then walked down to the waterfront and caught a ferry across to Tsim Sha Tsui. That's where Hong Kong has its Walk Of Stars, with names and palm prints of all the famous people of Hong Kong cinema. Jackie Chan, Jet Li, Michelle Thingbob, Sammo Hung (you know, the big guy from Martial Law who moves like a big guy shouldn't be able to). Recognising so many names made me feel all sorts of international. There was a Jackie Chan museum of sorts, but it was closed. Also ridiculous. On display was a jacket that explained Jackie's name's true origin - it's an acronym! Of course!

Justice Affability Cleanliness Kindliness Intellectual Equitable Courtesy Humbleness Artifice Nice. I think whoever put that monstrosity together didn't really know what artifice meant. Jackie Chan the subtle deceiver!

Then I walked north through Kowloon Park in Jordan. There were some people doing tai chi, and an old woman who seemed to be dancing like she was grooving to the Wiggles. Bless her. Caught the MTR to Shim Shui Po and picked up the shonky electronics I'd priced the previous day, and then headed up the formiddable Dragon Centre mall, which was a weird combination of big chain stores and tiny little shops that were less than a couple of square metres each. Then back to Jordan to check out the market get some DVDs. You can't go to Hong Kong and not get some DVDs! And then home, to pack for the trip back home the next day.

Sat 18, the next day
Bus and express train to the airport. Just after handing over my ticket at the check-in, a flustered looking german came running up - he'd misplaced his passport, or voucher, or something. The check-in person apologised to me, and I said it was fine - I still had three hours before the plane was due to leave. BUT I WAS WRONG! There was actually *minus twenty-one* hours til the plane was leaving. See, I didn't think that this day was a saturday - I thought it was a friday. I had managed to set my watch to the wrong date when I landed, and had missed my plane by a day. The plane at the same time on this day was completely full, so I went on standby, and had a really scary couple of hours wait before being allowed to check in and make a run for the plane.

The seat I got was in what can only be called asian-class. The back cabin was all asian people except for me and two Italian people sitting right up the front, and the second to back cabin was almost entirely caucasian. I never before realised that airlines split the passengers up by race. I get an aisle seat in the middle row of four seats, next to three chinese women who didn't speak very much english. For practice, I tried to speak mainly german to the cabin crew (it was Lufthansa), which had the pleasant side-effect of meaning my neighbours didn't think I spoke english. Hooray! No having to move to let them out!

Here's some interesting trivia - people who travel from Hong Kong to Frankfurt *love* to sleep with the light on. The cabin was lit up like a christmas tree even in the middle of the 'night' when everybody was asleep. The view from the window flying over Russia was amazing - the air was so clear that it felt like we were flying just a few hundred metres above the ground. It made me wish I had a window seat, since just about everybody who did have a window seat slept the whole way. But I guess it was enough to have *a* seat.

After arriving in Frankfurt, I noticed an interesting german trend. If there's a queue, and if a hole opens up anywhere in that queue, even for just a second, a german will run in and try to fill that hole. This queueing strategy seems consistent with the reputation german pornography has. For instance, in the queue for passport control the lanes were marked out with retractable cordons, and the woman just in front of me bumped one loose and made it retract. A german guy sees this happen, knows it's obviously not supposed to be that way, but still makes a play to cut through the gap right in front of me. So in a super helpful voice, I say loudly:
"Whoops! I'll just fix that for you" and put the thing back together. The german guy glowered at me and gave a look that seemed to say:
"Grrr! I'm totally going to annex your country and steal all the deckchairs and make you wear lederhosen and dance to oompah music!"

Going through security in Frankfurt was super fun. See, I bought a Playstation 2 while I was in NZ, and I had a modchip installed in it so that I could play japanese and american games. APPARENTLY, in an x-ray machine the chip and all the extra wires make the PS2 look like a bomb! Especially when your hand luggage has a bunch of other electronics in it as well. The security guy also took an interest in a little box I had in my bag, that had one of the card games I made a while back. I thought I might get to verse him in a quick game, but unfortunately he lost interest when he discovered that cards were, in fact, cards - and not a big block of semtex.

I was taken into a special room to have the PS2 sniffed for explosives. I asked the security person at this point if I could put my belt (which I'd taken off before the metal detector) back on, since my trousers were starting to fall down. I did not want to suggest any other places they might like to check for dynamite. Eventually they were satisfied that I was not a terrorist, and I was allowed to leave with both the PS2 and my anus intact.

I slept through most of the flight to Oslo, then stocked up in duty free and celebrated my return to Norway by eating Norway's national food - hot dogs, with or without bacon. Satiated, I wandered down to the seat I'd slept on the night I flew out of Oslo, and settled down for another night of sleeping like a hobo. Woke up about 4am, brushed the 1/4 inch pelt off my teeth, and found somewhere cosy to wait for the train.

On the train from the airport to Oslo S, I chat with the ticket collector and she confirms that there are no buses from Gjerstad to Risør on the weekend, so I formulated two plans:

A. Catch the train to Arendal, with one train change and 40 minute wait, then a bus to Arendal centre and another bus to Risor. Plan A is a crummy plan.

B. Text Knut and convince him to collect me from Gjerstad, using the premise of checking on the company's off-road car. Plan B was the good plan.

Luckily Knut was down with plan B. I slept well that night.

I had two fantastic weeks in NZ, catching up with people, buying stuff, singing the theme to Thundercats at Helen & Tangi's wedding as my gift to the happy couple, and seeing more than 6 hours of sun in a single day! It was funny how much harder it was to leave this time. I guess the first time I left NZ I knew I'd be back within a couple of months. This time I figure it will be at least a year or two before I make it back. There's a whole lot of Europe I need to see first. And I didn't really sing the theme from Thundercats, but that would have been pretty cool. Feel the magic, hear the roar, thundercats are loose!

Wed 15

After some last minute panic when it turned out my suitcase was a good 10kg heavy than it was allowed to be, I made it to the airport in plenty of time for the flight to Hong Kong. I don't really remember the flight over, which probably means I got a couple of seats to myself, or the person next to me was tedious, or something. At any rate, the plane arrived at HK airport (the sensible one, not the cool one where the plane drops through a hole between the high rise buildings) and dithered around trying to find somewhere to check email. Eventually I figured out that the payphones doubled as internet machines, and I managed to collect the message from my mum that had the address of Joan and Norman, the distant half-relations that I was to mooch off while in HK.

I caught the airport express to HK Central, then caught a taxi. The taxi was fun. Contrary to claims made in the tourist books, Hong Kong is not really all that bilingual. The taxi driver, for instance, did not speak any english. Or read english. He got somebody else at the taxi rank to read the address off the sheet I had written it on, but then must have forgotten or something, and after shouting incomprehensibly at me for a couple of minutes he pulled over and got some random man on the street to translate it for him. Then he careened along the crazy streets and eventually up Peak Rd. Straight past the place. I waved and made 'turn around' noises, and communication was effected. After a brief moment of excitement when the security guard quizzed me about what I was doing there (knocking on the wrong door, as it turns out), I found the right place and met Delia, Jean and Norman's domestic helpy person (I don't know what the proper word is - maid and servant don't quite sound right). She fed me and then I set off walking up the hill to explore.

At the top of Victoria Peak (that's probably a redundant preposition) there is a mall, all full of overpriced touristy things. I wasn't intending to buy anything, but then somebody came at me with an octopus shaped head massaging device. Normally HK$300 each, today's special was 2 for $300! Bargain! But no. Okay, 2 for $200. 1 for $100? For $50? Okay $30 because you're dreamy! (Okay, she didn't actually say I was dreamy, but I suspect she thought it) At $30, I kinda forgot what the merchandise actually was, and bought one. Five minutes later, I started to wonder exactly what I was going to do with an octopus shaped head massagey thing, but I shouldn't have worried. As it turns out, an octopus shaped head massagey thing is a very good conversation starter. Did I mention it's purple? And runs on batteries? A laugh a minute.

So octopus shaped head massager in hand, I decided to wander down the hill to see what I could find. What I found was lots and lots of steep paths and interesting trees. But not that interesting. After about 20 minutes I realised interesting trees were not actually all that interesting, and steep streets were exhausting. So back up the hill to take a more leisurely trip back down. The world's steepest cable car! At some points it was 45 degrees! That was pretty neat. Anyway, from the bottom of the hill I walked to the train station and then caught the MTR to Sham Shui Po. Sham Shui Po is great! It's like a dodgy low-price version of Akihabara! Lots of video games and every second shop sold knock-off hardware. I bought a tiny mp3 player and some Nintendo DS accessories. But mainly i just looked around at all the varied stuff and things.

Eventually it was time to go home, so I caught the train back to central and went looking for the bus back up to the Peak. Crap. I couldn't find it anywhere! I asked some people and nobody knew. In the end I found my way back to the tram stop and caught the world's steepest tram back up to the top. Thai green curry courtesy of Delia for dinner...

Thu 16

... And again for breakfast! Mmmm.

Bus to central, MTR to Mong Kok. Mong Kok has a market called the Ladies Market, which is full of clothes and toys and dvds. I bought some dvds, a remote controlled car (for parts for making stuff), and just wandered around for hours. I wore my Hutt Boyz Choppers shirt, with scary skulls and whatnot, and it made a huge difference to the number of people trying to do the hard sell thing. Clearly even Hong Kong market people know not to mess with the Hutt. Represent.

I swung back by Sham Shui Po on the way back to central in order to price a few things. Shonky knock-off pirate electronics, here I come! The bus back up the hill was cool. Imagine a double decker bus driving around the steepest, stupidestly narrow streets in Wellington. No, faster than that. Still faster. And the trees are hanging in the way. And lots of cars coming very fast the other way. And a REALLY steep drop-off down the side of the mountain. Why would anybody pay the entry to get into Disneyland when the bus is so much more scary and costs less than a couple of dollars?! The two chinese girls sitting up the front actually screamed for some of the trip.

Coming next - the day that wasn't the day it was supposed to be, and the time the people in customs thought I had a bomb.

2/Feb

I thought today was going to start badly when I rocked up to the train station with my suitcase and the first train to arrive was absolutely stuffed full of commuters. I decided not to try to squeeze in and instead wait and reassess my options. Then the next train arrived two minutes later and was practically empty, so everything turned out great. I went to Ueno and stowed my luggage, then headed off to explore.

Ueno had an impressive collection of pokey little streets full of strange little shops. Video arcades with about ten machines each, a shop that sold weird americana, a unicorn store, and lots of places that sold paper lanterns. I didn't really need any paper lanterns.

I wandered through Ueno Park to a little shrine in the middle of a cluster of lakes. One of them was a boating lake, that had three groups of kids rushing around on it in swan shaped peddle-boats. Colliding with each other. Having the boat-hiring-people shout at them. After that got boring, I went into a little restaurant next to the shrine and ordered some sake and yakitori. It would have been wrong to come to Japan and not have some sake. Or, you know, whatever it was that I actually got. Which wasn't sake. I guess I really need to work on my enunciation.

Ueno Park was really nice. As well as the nifty gauze-covered wireframe animals and cartoon-themed ride-on things, there were lots of people just wandering around looking happy. Something that was really interesting was the big group of homeless people lining up for a soup kitchen kind of thing. The interesting part was not that they were queuing, but the way they were queuing. I guess Japan is the only country in the world where anybody, let alone the homeless people, will gather about 30m away from where the food will be served, in a convincing approximation of a roman tortoise (or it's slightly dirtier sounding name, testudo) formation, and wait patiently to be told they're allowed to come over.

Although perhaps they were preparing to advance on the food as a unit, possibly with support from ballista and catapults. I left before anything happened, so I simply cannot say for sure. I boarded my train for the 70 minute ride to Narita airport. When I got there I spent the last of my change on some Takoyaki - octopus flavoured dumplings that have been popularised with the unfortunate translation of 'octopus balls'. Snerk.

Before the flight out of Japan, I had a chat to an Irish chap called Patrick who was moving over to Auckland to try his hand working there for half a year. When we discussed my irish passport, he said that APARENTLY there are about 6 million people living in Ireland, but 18 million irish passports in the world. That's pretty cool. Everybody's a little bit irish, though most of us don't have such clicheedly Irish names. Patrick. C'mon!

The flight from Narita to Sydney was pretty full. I sat next to Dave, a venue technician for the poncy singing group Il Divo. He was heading to Sydney to prepare for the group's tour there in a week. He explained what it was exactly he was going to do, but my brain didn't encode the memories because it was too busy trying to deal with the diabolical state of his socks. Then he downed five bottles of wine and drifted off to sleep so wasn't doing a whole lot of talking any more.

On the flight from Sydney to Wellington I sat next to an english guy named Trent, who was on his way to Wellington to visit a friend, having just spent a week and a half abusing his synapses in Thailand. He thought I was about his age, and was impressed with how terribly brave and talented I was to be working in Norway and travelling by myself to places like Japan. He was 17. I'm excited by the idea that even after a good 24 hours since shaving I can still pass as a teenager. Perhaps the disco downstairs from work will have to be visited. I will know all the songs! Because they are remixes of 80s hits. Neverending Story dance remix! Turn around, that's the mirror of MY dreams.

Arriving back in the NZ, I was collected by my dad and whisked home. Mum and Dad then went off to Ruth & James' wedding. I decided I could benefit from some chilling out and a substantial amount of bathing. Shortly after I had achieved 'vaguely presentable', Helen and Tangihaere arrived. Tangi was going to bail to go do something, but Helen was up for going to the wedding reception, which was at an amazing Italian restaurant/cafe/food shop in Petone. Funny story - while at the wedding proper, somebody told Helen and Tangi that they looked very similar, and it was obvious they were brother and sister. Teehee.

The reception was great. The food was spectacular, and I knew tons of people to slurfully (from tiredness! honest!) chat to. There was a tasteful and hilarious joke about typewriters, and then the mother of the groom congratulated my sister and I, and wished us the very best for our special day next weekend. Zing! Our babies are just going to have craploads of fingers. They will be the most dextrous invercargill residents ever! Oh, and did I say the typewriter joke was tasteful and hilarious? That's not entirely true. Which is not to say that I didn't find it funny that the joke was MADE despite it being astonishingly inappropriate. Awesome.

Saw some people on their way back from the Sevens on my way home. They looked like they'd had fun.

31st Jan, afternoon

Having spent a pleasant afternoon strolling the streets of Akihabara, it was time to indulge in some non-geek tourism, so I hopped on the train to Kamigacho. I grabbed some sushi of some sort from a little shop and then started walking toward Tokyo Tower.

On the way I ran into Beth and Mike, the americans I met on the train the previous day. It turns out that they are paying more for accomodation EACH than I am paying, and for that extra money they are staying in dorms. Looks like my plan of 'get the airport information people to find me somewhere to live' worked out nicely. Not enjoying the dorm, they had even decided to pay more money to get a proper room. Zing.

When I got to Tokyo Tower, I was disappointed to find that you're only allowed to walk up the tower in summer, and so I had to take the lift instead. On the way up, a recorded voice announced that we were not to worry if we heard loud cracking noises - this is just a safety device working as normal. Once at the top, the view was pretty good. Quite hazy, but still clear enough to make out most things. It was amazing just how much of the area around the tower was devoted to cemetaries. Also amazing was how ill I felt when standing on the transparent floors and looking down. I'm not sure when I developed such intense vertigo. It's kinda exciting.

I took the train to Roppongi, which the guide book said was great for shopping and partying. Alas, all the shops were things for girls. Clothing and makeup and shoes! After trying in vain to find somewhere that sold DVDs or robots, I took the train back to the ryokan, picking up some dinner and random cherry cocktail-in-a-can. The cherry stuff tasted like bad vodka mixed with bad cherry-ade. Later that evening i checked my email and it turns out the British Airways strike had been called off, so there was no need to get flights rebooked after all! But I'm glad I did, because I was pretty confidant that I could make use of the extra day in Japan.

1/Feb

I left early, enjoying another cosy train ride with sleepy businessmen. Went to Hibiya, to see the imperial palace. In the outer grounds, there was a statue of a guy called Kusunoki Masashige. He probably did something amazing once, but quite frankly, it doesn't matter. He deserved to get a statue just for his hat, it was that awesome a hat. Here is somebody else's picture of him:
http://www.sarukoen.com/archives/0506%20120-thumb.jpg

The inner grounds were quite amazing, especially when you considered how overpopulated the civilian areas around were. Lots of space, with meticulously groomed pebble streets everywhere. And a strange sign, that forbid 3 things:
A. Going on the grass
B. Putting tents up on the grass
C. Lighting fires on the grass

Personally, I think B and C are a little redundant. Why would you lean over the rails to put up a tent, only not to be allowed to get in it? Same with fires. Japanese signs seem quite often to be a bit silly. I saw this one sign that I think was saying 'watch out when crossing the road because cars hurt if they hit you', but what made it really cool was that the picture of the car had lightning bolts coming out of the wheels,

Also went to a small park called Wadakuribashi, which was impressive because of how they laid the flowers out by smell as well as the way they looked, so as you walked around, the smell changed in interesting ways.

Getting back on the train, changing at a couple of stations, went to Shibuya, and to Yoyogi Park, to see the dinosaurs. Unfortunately I had got confused, and Yoyogi Park is actually the one with the fountains and flowers, not dinosaurs. I practiced my terrible japanese a little more and ordered yakisoba from a kiosk, totally misreading the kanji for 'yaki' and mangling the whole thing horribly. I ate my hard-won yakisoba near a group of people who seemed to be doing improv, which was... interesting. Seeing japanese people pretend to flip out is an experience I heartily recommend to anybody.

I wandered north to Meiji Jingu (shrine), with a long and peaceful walk along a gravel path flanke by all sorts of trees and some sort of lantern display. The shrine was amazingly big, but all the culture and mysticism was a little overwhelming to my heathen sensibilities. Heading further north towards Shinjuku, I took a detour through Harajuku...

Harajuku is where the cool kids hang out hoping to get discovered by the fashion industry. When you see photos of japanese teenagers dressed in crazy clothing, they are probably taken in Harajuku. There were tons of them everywhere, mostly dressed in luridly bright colours or - the currently popular fashion - gothic lolita. Lots of black lace and victorian style. How very, very, odd.

In Shinjuku I found a kebab shop, so had to get a kebab. It was mediocre, but the guy serving spoke very little japanese or english which was an exciting challenge. After eating my mediocre kebab I headed up to HMV to track down the Merry Andrew song I'd seen in the catalogue. Turns out it was an entire CD. After some trial and error, I eventually figured out that the HMV listening posts were barcode based - you wave the CD under tham, and they have 45 second samples of each track on the disk. That's awesome. I spent a lot of time there, and eventually bought the Merry Andrew CD, which was a kind of jazzy japanese lounge music. Of course, it had my name on the front, which was by far the most important bit!

After that, I took the Maranouchi line to Ginza, to go visit the Sony building. I was hoping that, being Sony, they would have wifi-downloads of PSP game demos and cool stuff like that, but it wasn't to be. Instead it was just a whole lot of overpriced stuff I didn't need. So Back to Akihabara, my new Mecca. Or Mecha. Bwa. I took a different route this time, visiting a lot of out of the way stores I hadn't noticed the previous day. I sort of abandoned a lot of my usual shame and went into a bunch of stores that looked a little bit dodgy. Around 80% of them were not really at all dodgy inside, though it really seems that you can find something dodgy almost anywhere if you try.

All the shopkeepes look at me like I'm a scheming gaijin criminal, which is great! As a white guy, I hardly ever get to be discriminated against like that. I'm sure it would get old very quickly, but for a couple of days, it was fun to feel like the bad guy.

On the way back to the Ryokan, I stopped at Ueno station to find out what the story was with baggage lockers - since I had to check out early-ish the next morning and my flight wasn't until much later in the day. Then bought things whose labels I could not read for dinner. Turned out to be a fish burger, a bean curd cakey thing, and what I'm pretty sure was a croissant with a sausage in. All surprisingly good.

Coming soon - my last day in Japan, and the most well behaved homeless people I've ever seen...

Part two of Andrew's trip to Japan...

30th Jan, 5pm-ish:

With what seemed at the time to be supreme effort, I woke up. I had a
day pass on the metro that wasn't going to get full value from
*itself*! There was work to be done. I shaved, showered, and
eventually approximated something human, and then I wandered down to
the train station around 6pm.

I got off at the Akihabara station. Akihabara is the 'electric town'
of Tokyo, with gadgets and toys and video games galore. Except all
the shops seems to be closed. It was like I hadn't left Norway,
except people were a little bit shorter and looked less like
murderers. Or at least differently like murderers. At any rate, I
strolled around the streets for about 30 minutes, picking out a few
likely stores to visit when they were open. Might have visited a
7-eleven, though that would hardly be a good way of getting into the
culture now.

Bored of quasi-norwegian closed-for-the-night akihabara, I jumped back
on the Hibiya line to Ginza, then took the Maranouchi line to Shibuya.
Shibuya was a bit more lively! I fought my way through the throngs
of people (many of whom still looked a bit murderer-y) and eventually
found an enormous HMV shop. I looked and listened to lots and lots of
J-pop, and bought an anime soundtrack I'd been meaning to pick up some
time. More importantly, I liberated a fat advertising catalogue full
of quirky japanese bands. On the way back to Minami Senju on the
trains, I happened upon an ad for Yuko Ando, and her CD 'Merry
Andrew'. Oooh, that sounds like some quality engrish music! But it
mentions me, so I MUST HAVE IT. And can it be any worse than the
Cranberries' 'Desperate Andy'?

Rocked back to the ryokan about 10pm, with a sushi triangle of some
description and a strawberry ice cream. I probably bought them from a
very authentically japanese place, steeped in tradition and culture.
Certainly not the 7-eleven.

Trying to get to sleep, I realised that the futon was not as
comfortable as I first thought. It now felt suspiciously like a
couple of duvets piled on a rather solid floor. But still pretty
tired, so it wasn't hard to get to sleep.

31st of Jan. (wednesday)

Tuesday had not been a day of Maximum Train Value, so it was important
that I ride as many trains as possible today. I left about 8.30,
stopped at a pokey little shop on the way to buy the small towel that
I really should have remembered to bring with me in the first place.
Hey! Do you know when rush hour in Tokyo is? 8-9! Cosy, cosy train
ride. Frottastic. I disembarked at akihabara, having reached my
quota of sarariman-sandwich for the morning. It turned out that last
night, I was not in the electric town part of akihabara. Today, with
the sun to tell me which way south(ish) was, I did a much better job
of navigating. Had I gone to the correct place last night, I would
have found tons of shops that were open, because most of them are open
until 9 or 10. And they open at 10 or 11. Which was in a couple of
hours...

Here's where the story gets a little less respectable. I did
something I'm just not that proud of. Borderline disgusting.

So we all know how McDonalds has McMuffins at breakfast time, right?
With the sausage pattie and the 'egg' and the cheese, all between a
couple of toasted muffins? Imagine if they took those muffins away,
and replaced them not only with pancakes, but with pancakes that were
stuffed full of little pockets of maple syrup. Then imagine that they
called this creation a 'McGriddle', and that I was not of sufficient
moral fibre to resist it. And the whole conversation to order it was
in japanese, *even thoug* there were questions and words I was not
expecting. Turns out that when high sugar, high fat food is part of
the equation, watashi wa nihongo ga yoku dekimasu! (That says that I
am good at japanese, or at least it would do if I actually were - I'm
pretty sure it's not quite right)

I looked in tons of stores at tons of DVDs and games, carefully
averting my eyes from the random anime and idol pornography that
seemed to occupy every second shelf. There's just something horribly
wrong about putting dodgy cartoon erotica less than half a metre away
from Mario Kart.

At the top of one huge department store, they had a Draonball t shirt
with the quote "I want to give you my romantic". I had to think
carefully about whether I needed that. I don't like Dragonball, and
I'm not sure that particaular slogan would help me in any social
endeavour I can think of, but maybe....

No, I left it there, though I did have a (all japanese! though not
very quick) conversation with the girl in the store about where I
could find something I wanted to pick up for a friend's birthday
(unfortunately that friend reads my blog on occasion, so I can't say
what. rest assured that almost everybody I know would not really be
that interested in knowing!) Anyway, she directed me to a funny
little store in the basement of an electronics store, next to a cafe
called 'Maido in Jappan'. That's right! A maid cafe! Where the
waitresses are dressed as anime maids, and they welcome you to the
cafe as though are the master returning home from work. I've heard.
Didn't go in. I have some dignity, you know.

The funny little store took up a lot of my time. More on that later...

Andrew

Sunday 28/1...

British Airways' cabin crew union had called a strike on the day I was supposed to fly out of Oslo, through Heathrow to Japan, so everything had been bumped a day earlier. After some packing and sorting-things-out that was a little more frantic than intended, I wound up boarding the bus from Risor at about 6pm. It turns out that little suitcase wheels are not very much use in gritty snow.

The bus took about an hour to get to Gjerstad, where after a short wait at a snowy station, I caught the train bound for Oslo S. I was directed to my seat in a thing of four seats, diagonally opposite from a young girl with exceptional earrings. Shortly afterwards, everything went horribly, horribly wrong. Large Norwegian Puffer Jacket Man was directed to the seat next to me. Let me tell you a couple of things about LNPJM. Firstly, he was large. Secondly, he had a huge jacket on. Thirdly (and this is the bit that is not so immediately obvious from his name), he enjoys being very warm, and does not like to take his jacket off for any reason. Anecdotal evidence suggests that he is not a huge fan of clothes or person waching.

After about three hours of feeling a little encroached upon, I was rewarded by LNPJM getting up and leaving the train. The girl diagonally opposite put her feet back up on his seat (having spent the previous hours with them tucked up next to her because LNPJM liked to have foot room as well) and I relaxedly reverted to my 1.2 seat lolling. We shared a silent smile, as if to say:
"Hooray, we finally have back our foot space and arm space, respectively. And it doesn't feel nearly so close in here any more. Also, I'd kinda like to smell your hair."
Though perhaps I might have misinterpreted some of what she was thinking. We'll never know for sure.

Before long, the train rocked into Oslo S station, and I was flabbergasted to see that there were shops open. 10pm! On a sunday! This is not the Norway I'd been led to expect! I took a short stroll around the streets (suitcase in tow, or at least drag though the snow) and wondered quite why there was a giant statue of a tiger. I'll ask Christian when I get back. Also there was a shop called Outland, that sold board games and books and all sorts of geeky things like that. Unfortunately they were closed, so I had to press my nose up against the window like an urchin.

Just after midnight, the train left Oslo S for Oslo Lufthavn Gardermoen (the airport train station), arriving at 1am. There were people sleeping almost everywhere. After a little bit of searching, and taking a photo of a sculpture that looked suspiciously like a willy, I found some empty seats, pulled my hoodie over my head, and grabbed a few hours of sleeping like a hobo. At 5am, they opened the checkins, and the international part of the journey was officially underway!

Heathrow has a new anti-terrorist rule - that you're only allowed one item of cabin baggage. This was a surprise to many people, especially those in first class who had previously been travelling with two. Surly, surly germans. Between people being told they had to go and check their hand luggage over the other side of the airport and the thorough patting down everybody got after walking through the metal detectors, the security stage would up taking a little over two hours. I'm glad that I'm going through Frankfurt on the way back!

On the plane I was right up against the front wall, initially next to a couple of germans. They were very angry about the fact that the front wall had no TVs, and had decided to sneak off and try to find seats elsewhere. I didn't tell them how to fold out the TVs, because I liked the idea of having all the seats to myself. And I did! And then a 50ish year old japanese woman was bought over to one of the spare seats. But that's alright - there was only one of her and japanese people are pretty small. Her name was Sakiko, and her english was EVEN WORSE than my japanese! That's quite an achievement. She had been visiting her daughter in New York, and was now on her way back to Nagano. She said (I think!) that she's part of a social group of tea drinkers, but it's really a group of people who travel around the world together, but tea drinking sounds classier.

Also within bothering distance were an indian man and a lithuanian women, both of whom worked for a japanese company and were going over to Tokyo for some training stuff. The indian man, whose name I never caught, had moved to the UK when he was 15, and was now 65ish. I thought that sounded rather brave. The lithuanian women, Kristina, was 25 and still living in Lithuania. I talked to her for quite a while about the country, and am now convinced that I need to add it to my list of countries to visit when I take a trip around Europe (hopefully later this year), ESPECIALLY now that I know somebody there and can sleep on her couch. I invited her and her husband and anybody else she knew to come stay in Norway. They can sleep at David's house. He won't mind :)

30/1...

Arrive in japan at 9.30am, which is 1.30am norway time. I mucked about at the airport a bit, picking up maps and getting the information desk people to help find me somewhere to live, than jumped on the Keisei line train to Ueno. On the train, I met Beth and Mike, a young american couple. They were planning to be in Japan for 8 days, then head off to other exciting parts of Asia. I tried to remind them that 'thank you' in japanese was 'domo arigato', like in the song, 'domo arigato mr roboto', but they'd never heard of it. Made me feel old.

Changing at Ueno and jumping on the Tokyo metro, we set off north together. They got off one stop before me, for some backpackers type place. I got off at Minami-Senju, and after turning around a couple of times, figuring out where the sun was and making a couple of guesses, I decided that I knew where I was and set off to my ryokan - the Hotel New Azuma. 2900 yen a night, which wasn't too bad. About 1pm japan time, 5am norway time, 36 hours-ish after getting on the bus in Risor, I finally got to sleep, in a tiny little room in north tokyo, on a futon on the floor. It was incredibly comfortable!

I just finished watching the Doctor Who xmas special. Ordinarily it would have been a wonderfully camp bonanza of silly sci-fi. BUT most of it was set in London, so with all the London landmarks I've only recently seen for the first time, the episode was also a case of "Oh! I know what that is! And that! I been there!"

I went for a walk today, but I haven't worked out where. I was wandering around somewhere that was probably south-westish (I really need to acquire a compass, so I can explore more thoroughly. And perhaps an anorak) that I hadn't been before. There was a track with a sign saying "Åmlandstjenna 2,5km", and it looked vaguely interesting. It was. Lots of rocks, deep puddles of mud, run-down farmhouses that look like murderers live in them, and fantastic views of the sun setting over the sea.

Yeah, the sun setting. Should have thought that one through a bit more. I never quite made it to Åmlandstjenna. Made it back to the road just as the last of the light was going. Need to go back and see if I can make it the rest of the way tomorrow, a little earlier in the day.

But right now there's some bar staff down at the pub that need to be schooled in the art of Dr Pepper cocktail preparation.