The blog is back.
Well, it never really went anywhere, nor did I, it just had a bit of a hiatus for a time, as its original purpose was to serve solely as a travel blog. Being the international jet-setter that I now am, I’m off to Thailand (Phuket specifically) for 5 nights next week, so I will make every attempt to have some blog posts about that trip. However, with the nature of the trip being one of my school mates’ bachelor parties, I might need to charge for a premium “adults only” subscription (which would still have the same material, just with more pictures – that’s how the internet works, yes?).
Anyway, today as a member of the Independent Education Union I participated in a 3 hour stop work industrial action to protect my rights as an employee. We don’t want MORE, we just want to keep what we have, a concept that seems lost on some. Anyway, I don’t want to turn my lovely blog into a political treatise, but the industrial action gave me an excuse to think about the nature of travel, even locally. (You gotta fight…..for your right……….for………fair work conditions!)
Firstly: Trains
This is a suburban train in Japan:
This is a suburban train in Sydney:
For the suburban trains in Japan, I either used my pre-purchased JR Pass (which was fairly expensive but covered pretty much any train travel, even across the country) or my SUICA card, which was pre-loaded with money and could be topped up anywhere. I don’t have an “Opal” card here in Sydney, so I don’t actually know how effective that is. What I do know though, is that $4.20 for a train ticket from Blacktown to Parramatta is patently ridiculous for the train service we have. Not only does it cost more than the Japanese service, but it is less efficient. To be fair, todays train trip was fairly straightforward. We bought our tickets and got to the platform, well, actually after the train was due to depart (it was just waiting around) and as we came down the stairs we heard the guards whistle. As a result, we sprinted down the last few stairs, I held my hand out to let the guard know to hold the doors for a moment so my colleagues could make it, and we scrambled onto the train.
I never ran for a train once in Japan. Why not?
Because I knew if I missed the train, another would be along in a minute, maybe 2 or 3 minutes. I think the longest wait we had for a train that wasn’t a pre-booked time was 10 minutes.
If I missed that train at Blacktown, the next train MAY have come along in 13 minutes. I’m not taking that risk.
Secondly: Walking
No one jaywalks in Japan. No one. It’s actually pretty weird. It’s also a weird transition from both living here in Australia and having travelled to places such as Italy and France where the only way to get across a road is to jay-walk (aint nobody stopping for you at a pedestrian crossing). Even just walking up the road in Parramatta from the station to Prince Alfred Park it was clearly noticeable just how many people were happy to saunter across roads without a by your leave. Japan had now conditioned me to wait dutifully at the lights for the little green man to appear, but I actually felt quite stupid watching people just happily walk across the road while we waited. In Japan, it was pretty normal for huge groups of people to wait at a set of lights, even when it simply crossed a tiny street where it is obvious to all involved that no traffic is coming. The sign says we should wait, so we will wait.
Which brings me to my final “travel” issue: Escalators.
Now, despite the fact the Japan can’t seem to make its mind up as to which side of the escalator you should queue on (left or right, it actually seems to vary from city to city, but also from station to station or platform to platform in some of the cities like Tokyo), they at least seem to have reached a common, albeit unspoken agreement that, unless you are power walking through, you queue single file on one side of the escalator so that this doesn’t happen:
This random couple I photographed weren’t intentionally being rude. Nor were they the only ones. I used escalators a total of 4 times today as I went up the road to get my lunch and to get my mate a birthday cake. 4 times did I tempt (random Greek god) in my journeys. 4 times was I held up by couples blocking my path. I’m the Odysseus of escalators. Can we, as Australians come to an agreement to stand to one side? Let’s make it the right side of the escalators. We can launch a campaign. Want to stand on an escalator? Not sure where you should be? She’ll be right, mate.
I doubt it will happen.
The last thing that happened to me that bears mentioning is an amusing phone call I received last night. The call came at a bad time. We’d just finally settled down to have dinner after both having long days at work, then having taken our cat to the vet.
More often than not the phone call is from a tele-marketer, or some form of scam. Occasionally it will be from someone we know such as a close family member, so we thus feel compelled to answer it every time. So I answered. This was not a telemarketer. It sounded like a “little old lady” who asked me if that was the “Nissen” family. That sounded close enough to my last name, so I figured she was after me. Then she started congratulating me on “my daughter who won that competition”. As far as I know, I don’t yet have a daughter. Let alone one old enough to win some form of competition. Then I realised I had been confused with this Nissen family:
#TeamAnja, recent winner of “The Voice” (the spinny chair show) who is from the same suburb. Her last name being sort of close to mine was enough for me to get the phone call. I informed the lady of her error, thanked her for the congratulations anyway and then settled in.
Turns out I can waffle on and write 1000 seemingly random words pretty quickly. If you’ve made it this far, I’d like to congratulate you. This congratulations is not an erroneous one, you fully deserve it for trudging through this random diatribe.
Next week: Thai-time!!
Moshi Moshi! Daniel Desu. 