Japan

Despite a little bit of anxiety about organising a taxi for the early hours of the morning, we managed to get out of Russia and on our way to Japan. Two flights, one to Frankfurt then one to Osaka. The check-in staff at St Petersburg badly misinterpreted our request to have seats between us on the trip to Osaka by putting seats, and the aisle, between us on the flight to Frankfurt, but filling those seats with other passengers, and then actually putting no seats between us on the flight to Osaka. But the agonising seven hour wait at terrible, terrible Frankfurt airport with a restless toddler made the flights seems positively relaxing.

We arrived at Kansai International exhausted, unwashed and laden down with too much luggage. Pretty miserable in other words. But stepping out the doors at immigration, we were suddenly back in Japan. It was an amazing, uplifting, Proustian experience. It was like being transported back five years to the very point in time when we had left Japan. (And slightly shifted in space, because we left Japan from the 3rd floor of Kansai airport, but now we were on the ground floor.) So much came flooding back in the instant that we stepped through the doors, and even more on the one-hour train trip into town.

We had arranged to stay with our friend Richie, who had lived in a neighbouring town when we lived in the Japanese countryside. He had since moved rather closer to Osaka, to a place called Sasayama. Unfortunately he wasn't going to be available until he finished work, some 9 hours after we landed. This situation left us with two possibilities, heading up to his place and waiting for him or killing time in Osaka. The problem with the second option was that we had far too much luggage to cart around Osaka. The problem with the first was that we really, really wanted to revisit out old haunts without delay. Luckily, the baggage lockers at Osaka station are huge and we were able to fit everything in one, leaving us unladen and free to explore the city.

Without really consciously deciding where to go, we wandered down to Namba, the centre of the area where we used to live:
"Subway?"
"Sure. Which stop? Namba?"
"I guess so, yeah."
We then got lost in the Namba Walk underground shopping maze. But while searching for a toilet we stumbled across the basement entrance to Muji. It was as if some strange force was attracting us there. So naturally we had to buy ourselves some clothes and stationary.

Finally the time came for us to head up to Richie's. We managed to get the right train and we met him when he got on at Fukuchiyama. We talked all the way to his place.

Richie is still living with Hiro. They have a small house together, in a little enclave with Hiro's parents and brother and sister-in-law. As with his place in Yoka, they have set up their house up really well, with lots of character and innovative variations on traditional Japanese design. The photo I have added gives a little sense of this but without doing it justice.

Over the next couple of days we managed to re-discover a tiny bit of Osaka. It had changed very little in the years we had been away. It occurred to me when we were looking for a new camera in the giant electronics store Yodobashi that they had been playing their annoying jingle over the loudspeakers every single day while we were away. We felt very familiar with the place as well. Except at one point, when we walked through to Dotonbori street. Dotonbori was one of our main thoroughfares when we lived in Osaka and we would walk down it several times a week. However, going back to it after several years was like encountering it for the first time, with the disorientating confusion of sights and sounds making our heads spin. We did manage to get a snap of the Kuidaore Taro clown though.

We also managed to meet up with heaps of our friends. Horace was still in Japan and we caught up with him over dinner. (He's back to the States later this year to do his law studies at last.) Kevin and Jenny are also still in Japan, and we stayed with them for a couple of nights, sitting up until late talking about old times. We were also lucky to be able to fit in a short trip back to Hidaka to meet up with some our old friends from there, Shinobu, Masako and Setsuko. It was just the briefest of trips however, barely overnight. In fact our whole visit to Japan was far, far to short. Almost serving merely to remind us what we had left behind.

So it was very sad to leave Japan, and sad also that our holiday had to come to an end. But after three weeks I was close to exhaustion, physically and mentally. I was looking forward to sleeping in my own bed, getting away from the travails of travelling and getting Bucky back into his routines.

Anyone still reading?

I still have to write about our visit to Japan, the third leg of our trip. As always, it is not easy to find time to blog, but what has really stopped me is a flu bug that we all caught. It has kept Deirdre home from work and wiped me out too.

I'm feeling much better now, so I can only rely on traditional excuses for not getting round to writing it. It will be up eventually though, trust me.

Home again

Good God it is cold in this country!

We got back on Monday and flew into some awful weather. It was a quite emphatic end to our holiday.

But we had a fantastic time while we were away. Thanks heaps to everyone who put us up – thanks to Sam and Row and to Richie and Hiro and to Shinobu and to Kevin and Jenny. It was great to spend time with you guys and I hope you will one day let us return the favour.

I'm hoping to do a bit more on this blog, writing about our time in Japan and adding a few photos to the St Petersburg post. So do check back in a few days.

"Welcome to the White Nights"

It is so hard to sleep when it is still light at midnight.

St Petersburg is unlike any city I have ever visited. It is a very charming city, cut through by canals lined with stately stucco-clad buildings. And dotted through the city are countless breath-taking buildings and monuments, such as the Winter Palace, St Isaac's Cathedral and the headquarters of the Singer sewing machine company. It is a much less brash city than Moscow, but all the more impressive.

We travelled up from Moscow by overnight train. This promised to be an interesting journey, with several hours of daylight in which to watch the Russian countryside passing by. Instead it was a trial of patience waiting for the boy to stop bouncing off the walls and go to sleep.

We're staying in a little apartment in the very heart of St Petersburg. It is on the 5-½ floor of a 6-½-floor apartment building. When we were let into the building by the apartment owner, it didn't look promising. The entrance was into a dirty, run-down stairwell, like we had stepped into some derelict factory space. However, the apartment itself is just great. It is owned by a slightly Bohemian couple – a doctor and a photographer, Sasha and Andrei, who are in fact now in Paris working on a fashion shoot. They have filled the apartment with all sorts of eclectic stuff – old bottles on every spare surface, seltzer bottles, a samovar, antique scales, musical scores papering the bathroom, a pair of antlers – making it a really homely place to stay. (Though perhaps not up to embassy staff standards, Row.) It think they live there themselves when they have no guests, though they have another apartment and sleep in the studio when both apartments are full. Before they left, Andrei marked his favourite places in town on a map for us, including the best jazz bar and a bar where every night is New Year's Eve. Very cool, but not that practical for people who are in for the night from about 6. We're currently sharing the apartment with a Finnish business woman (who reckons Bucky looks like a Finnish boy) and – due to a double booking – a student from Norway (who says Bucky looks Norwegian).

There is so much to do in St Petersburg that it overwhelms me. We've taken a cruise on the canals and walked about half the floor area of the Hermitage (while Bucky obligingly slept in his stroller). We might not do any more pure tourist activities however, as it takes time away from exploring the city. St Petersburg, which seems to be actively cultural at all times, is particularly buzzing at the moment, celebrating the White Nights. There are all sorts of exhibitions and shows on in the city and we hope to be able to catch some of the excitement.

Travelling with a toddler

Travelling with a toddler is very, very hard. It is immensely stressful dealing with Bucky when he doesn't sleep during journeys and when he reacts badly to the lack of sleep the next day. It is also very difficult for us to get around and see the sights, as we have to fit everything around his sleeps and attention span. But for all the difficulties we have, it is that much harder for Bucky himself. We try to get out to parks as much as we can, but he still spends so much of the day in his stroller or cooped up inside the apartments we are staying in. The dramatic changes in routine and surroundings have also clearly affected him, and I am sure he is missing Playspace and all the other fun things in Wellington. For the first few days in Moscow he was quite short tempered and was seriously off his food. I felt really terrible and worried for him.

He did get his appetite back, thankfully. His mood has also greatly improved. He is dealing with things really well, all things considered. He is finding a lot of fun in the new places we are taking him to, particularly the apartment in St Petersburg, which is a treasure trove of interesting knick-knacks for him to play with. His language is also developing in leaps and bounds, just like Corina said it would. He is picking up so many new words and is much better at copying what we are saying. He is even developing an understanding of grammar – he corrected himself when he said "me turn" to "my turn".

So while it is tough for all us, it is very, very rewarding.

The Kremlin

After several efforts, we finally got inside the Kremlin. Here are some photographs we took there.

A phenomenon

I have been struck by an interesting phenomenon after discovering the book Confederacy of Dunces. After hearing about this book, I began to find references to it. And not just the occasional obscure reference; I find references everywhere. Presumably I must have come across countless references before my discovery of it. However, none of them made any impact on me ­— I simply don't remember ­­ever having come across a book called Confederacy of Dunces. Clearly I was completely overlooking those earlier references; they were disappearing in some sort of blind spot of ignorance. Alternatively, the book only started to appear in my phenomenological world after I became aware of it.

Looking in the local bookstore for novels by contemporary Russian authors, I bought a book The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov — another book I had never heard of. The very next day I took Bucky to Patriarch's Pond for a run around. Reading up about Patriarch's Pond in my Lonely Planet I read "This peaceful fish pond was immortalised by writer Mikhail Bulgakov, who had the devil appear here in The Master and Margarita..."