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..."

Moskva

Our first experience of Moscow was rather a disappointment. Sam came and picked us up from the airport and we took a taxi together to the centre of the city, where their apartment is. The taxi crawled through clogged streets while we sweltered inside. It was flat and grey with a brown, pollution-laden horizon. It seemed to me that the focus of the city was on the roading, rather than on the buildings, a sure sign of urban blight. From the main street we passed into a labyrinth of narrow lanes, enclosed by bluffs of apartment blocks. The taxi slowed further as it negotiated the banks of parked cars that narrowed the street to a single lane. Even here the cars were overtaking the city.

Arriving at the apartment was a great relief. Sam and Row's apartment is spacious and comfortable and — most importantly on such days — it has air conditioning throughout. We passed the rest of the day catching up with them and letting our tiredness overcome us, insulated from the rest of Moscow.

The next day we headed down to the Kremlin and Red Square, a short walk from the apartment. Seeing the city from foot, I immediately changed my early, uncharitable opinion — Moscow is in fact quite an attractive city. The inner city is made up of stately stone buildings, many of them neoclassical or art moderne. It is true that the city is cut apart by huge roads with heavy traffic, but while walking you can look in pretty much any direction and be impressed with the architecture. Even the subway entrances look like museums.

Down in the Kremlin area, the architecture is particularly grand. We still haven't got inside the Kremlin, but most of the buildings around Red Square are very fitting for the capital of a former empire, such as the former state-run department store GUM. Another rather impressive series of buildings is the so-called Seven Sisters — towering buildings commissioned by Stalin, in a kind of neo-gothic style, such as the building in the picture to the right.

There is something of a tendency to the baroque in some Russian/Soviet design however, which occasionally is taken too far. St Basil's Cathedral, for example, is very close to being gaudy, though it is a very cool building. I have to share the most extreme example of gaudiness — a statue to Peter the Great that we saw from a boat ride down Moscow River. It is twice as tall as the Statue of Liberty (minus platform) and is absolutely hideous, but wonderfully hideous. Apparently it was originally a statue of Christopher Columbus, but with the head replaced by Peter's.

But enough architecture and tourist snaps.

Russia was in the middle of a heat wave when we arrived. After we failed to get into the Kremlin (the ticket booth was empty), we took a walk through the park underneath the Kremlin walls. It was wonderful. The park was full of people, wandering the grounds and lying on the grass. And drinking — some of the ice cream stalls were selling beer by the pint. Dozens of people were jumping into fountains. The Muscovites were all out enjoying the summer. It was so much fun.

The next day it rained however and temperature dropped 20°, demonstrating that Moscow is a cold city that just masquerades as a hot city in summer.

Moscow is a very interesting city. It is full of people and extremely busy (on weekdays at least — on the weekend most of the population seem to leave for their countryside bachs). It has loads of fashionable shops on its main shopping street (which also functions as a four-lane highway) and there are cafés everywhere. Being good Wellingtonians we had to try them. Coffees in Moscow cafés cost about $7, and we can report that Coffee Mania is pretty good, while Coffee House (spelled Koφe Xays, which I consistently parse as "Coffee Days") is kind of the Burger King of Moscow
cafés.

Our best culinary experience (apart from the meals we've been having in the apartment) was on the evening we took the boat trip with Sam and Row. They took us to their favourite blini stand, where we had Russian crêpes with a variety of fillings.

We're in Moscow until Tuesday, when we take an overnight train to St Petersburg.

Our hosts

For those who don't know, we are in Russia visiting our friends Sam and Rowena and their 7-month old son Eddie. For those who do know Eddie, I can tell you he is thriving. He's sitting up and enjoying his tummy time. He is all bright-eyed and curious, and very vocal.

Bucky is really keen on Eddie. He's giving him heaps of hugs and pats and even lets him pull his hair. As soon as he wakes in the morning he starts asking for Eddie, and when Eddie is in his cot napping, Bucky asks after him with a plaintive "Eddie gone?"

In transit

It is great to be overseas again. Apart from a couple of trips to Australia, this is our first trip overseas since getting back from India.

We have made it to Moscow, but we stopped off in Hong Kong for a day, to break the huge journey up for Bucky. It turns out that this was a fantastic plan, not just for Bucky's sake, but for ours. The 11 hour journey from Auckland to Hong Kong was extremely hard going. Even though the plane hadn't left until midnight, the cabin was busy for a couple of hours while the staff prepared our dinner and served it to us. Perhaps the plan is to keep us up for a few hours in the expectation that once we have then slept for eight hours, we only have time to have breakfast and brush our teeth before the plane lands.

However, this enforced late sleep was a disaster for Bucky; already awake many hours past his bedtime, he was frantically overtired. The poor thing was so restless during the night that he didn't stay in one position for more than an hour. He switched between lying on Deirdre and lying on the seats. (We were lucky to have two seats between us for him to lie down on.) Between helping Deirdre lie him down and lunging to catch him as he squirmed and tipped towards the floor, I got very, very little sleep. I did get to watch two whole movies (Children of Men and The Prestige) and read most of the book I took along to past the time in-flight. All three of us arrived at Hong Kong shattered.

Our objectives in Hong Kong were to simply recover from the trip and to prepare for the next leg. We were largely successful in that. We also found time to walk up and down Nathan Rd a few times and take a ferry trip to Hong Kong island - here is a photo of Bucky on the ferry trip (click on it for a bigger version of the photo). We also got to have yum char for one of our meals.

Hong Kong really reminded me of why I love travelling so much. Just being there, with nothing much to do, was exciting. It is a fascinating place, Hong Kong. It was hot and very humid, and had that quintessential, indescribable tropical smell to it. And then on top of that it had its own characteristic smells, such as barbecued duck and five-spice and the exhaust from the fleets of double-decker buses.

Bucky was a real hit in Hong Kong. Every second person we passed gave him an adoring smile and he had people leaning into his stroller to wave at him or to shake his hand.

However, we were only there for a day, before flying out to Munich and then to Moscow. Again we left late at night, but Bucky, still feeling the effects of the first flight, fell asleep before we even began to taxi. This made the night much easier to get through, though it did mean we had to entertain him for hours after he woke, as well as for most of the flight to Moscow. If I never have to read Hairy Maclary again I will be very happy.

25 hours in the air and numerous connecting bus trips - the trip over to Moscow was one of the more exhausting and stressful things I have been through as a parent. Now that we are here, it was all worth it of course. Also, Bucky was a real trooper. Despite developing a fever on the day we left and enduring everything we put him through - broken sleep routines, hours of boredom, little chance to run around - he kept his spirit through it all. There have been a few little tantrums when we prevented him from trying to getting into stuff he shouldn't be playing with (born of extreme tiredness of course), but he has otherwise been his usual charming, exuberant self. If anything, all the changes and new stuff to see suit his curious nature.