It’s a fair way away, I was expecting a 2 hour train ride with about 5 transfers according to Hyperdia.com. I got up at about 8am, had a shower, packed my bag with some entertainment (my newly acquired PS Vita and my MacBook Pro) and set off.

I kinda had a false start – I missed one of my transfer stops. This naturally meant having to get off the next stop and getting the next stop back. 15 minutes wasted!

Or so I thought.

I continued on my way towards Iga. I made a couple transfers – by this time I was well into the Japanese countryside. I took a break from Rayman: Origins, and took in my surroundings. It was really nice.

Once I had arrived at Kamo station, I had to wait on a train for Iga-Ueno. Except, at Kamo, the trains for Iga-Ueno come once an hour. My hiccup a little earlier on meant I missed my train and had to wait another 45 minutes or so for the next one. Bugger.

Soon the dingy little Iga-Ueno train came along, it was 2 cars long. Iga-Ueno was only 5 stations away – but it took about 30 minutes to reach it. The little train weaved in and out of mountains giving some beautiful views of the Japanese farms and valleys.

It was nice. So nice, in fact, that the guy sitting next to me felt compelled to say “きれいな～” (“It’s so beautiful!”) or “すごいな〜” (“That’s amazing!”) every 3 seconds. Good thing I had him with me, otherwise I might’ve failed to see the beauty, or amazement, of it all.

I finally arrived at Iga-Ueno, then transferred for the last time and took a super quick train ride to Uenoshi. Total travel time: 3 hours.

Upon arriving at Uenoshi station I quickly noticed people dressed as ninjas as well as ninja mannequins hiding in various crevasses and hanging off light posts.

Also at Uenoshi, was my old friend.

That’s Annie. With her, was her co-worker Helena.

The fact that you’re reading this blog suggests there are a couple reasons why you, the reader, may already know of her. But for those who don’t: she was a good friend of mine back in the Kansai Gaidai days. She’s also sports a pretty happenin’ Youtube channel, in case you were interested.

The three of us decided to make way to a nearby castle. Along the way snapping photo’s of the tiniest, most adorable ninjas you’ll ever see.

I'm disgusted at the number of photos of children I have on my camera right now…

Might I also mention that the usual food punters were here too, selling the most expensive cheap food you’ve ever seen. Takoyaki, okonomiyaki, yakitori, taiyaki and even Crépes were on sale.

We strolled around the castle grounds before entering the castle itself. It was quite nice and wasn’t overcrowded. There were a few good views around too.

We went into the castle (500 yen entry fee – approx. $5-6). The interior had obviously been refurbished – which may sound like an obvious thing to point out, but there ARE castles out there that have been relatively untouched. But this castle hadn’t been refurbished to the extent of, say, Osaka Castle – where if I blindfolded you, took you inside the castle, and removed the blindfolds, you’d never guess you were in a castle. At least this castle did feel like a castle on the inside.

After the castle, we decided to walk around town and find some food. Oh, and throw shuriken (“ninja stars”).

It was about 2pm by this time, and the town of Iga was all but dead. There were people still walking around everywhere, but almost all of the shops were closed. After walking around for about 30 minutes we’d only had a selection of about 4 places to eat at.

We ate at a delicious Italian place. Annie fell into a self-induced food-coma, which Helena and I used as a source of our own amusement for a while.

After that, we explored some more, made a bunch of inappropriate yet hilarious jokes, before deciding to head back to our respective homes. It was about 5:30pm or so when we said our goodbyes at Uenoshi station. Annie and Helena had a 1 hour drive ahead of them, whilst I had an expected 2-3 hours.

However, after waiting an hour at Uenoshi, and more waiting at Iga-Ueno, I’m STILL at Iga-Ueno. It’s 7:15pm – approximately 2 hours since I said my goodbyes to Annie and Helena and I’ve probably only traveled about 1 kilometre. It has started raining, the storm clouds are up to no good and lightning flashing every few minutes for effect. It was good to see Annie again. It was good to meet Helena. Disappointing that we saw so many ninjas (in a good way). Overall, it was a good day.

No but seriously, I’m sick of waiting for this train…

PS. I arrived at home at 9:30pm. Travel Time: ~4 Hours. I suck.

PPS. More photos below. In fact, even MORE photos on my Gravity Release Me Facebook Page.

3 months. That’s about the time where the culture-shock roller coaster ride takes a nose dive before climbing back up again.

But then again, I don’t really think I’m shocked by the culture here. So maybe I’m not on the culture-shock roller coaster, but instead on some other one.

Or maybe, just maybe, I’m not actually in a theme park, a carnival or The Ekka and thus not actually on a roller coaster.

It’s a sad day when one must censor their own blog.

Bleh. Cherry Blossoms:

日本！ FUCK YEAH!

1) Friday: go to an International Bar called Bridges
2) Saturday: Survive Friday night, and be in a good enough form to partake in Hanami from 10am
3) Sunday: Get some work done on my current project

Friday:

Work was out, I packed away my MacBook Pro, threw my bag over my shoulder and my workmates and I made our way to Bridges.

Bridges was nice! It was cozy, they sold Pizza, and the beer was on special (only 300 yen!). I met a few new people. It was great! Nothing particularly noteworthy happened whilst there, but it was a great evening.

I took the last train back home. Once I got to my home station, I proceeded with my daily ritual:

1) walk to my house
2) open the door
3) walk inside
4) lock the door
5) take off my shoes
6) head upstairs
7) whip out my laptop to check emails and Facebo-

… My laptop wasn’t there. Where was it? … oh it was in my bag. Where’s my bag? At Bridges.

Smooth.

I was incredibly tired and a wee bit drunk. Also the fact that I needed to be well rested for Saturday weighed in my mind. I tried to get a hold of my workmates but had no luck. Oh well, it’s sleep time, no point worrying about the single most valuable item I own.

Saturday:

First of all, it’s worth mentioning that about 2 weeks ago, a couple of my colleagues at work invited me out to an English pub for a sort of meet-up with some local, predominately foreign, game developers. There I’d met some seriously cool people. After the pub, we went to a gaming bar that was very reminiscent of the Mana Bar back home in Brisbane. Good times.

This Saturday, however, I was to meet up with the same group of people at a Hanami event. Hanami literally means “flower viewing” but more specifically refers to “cherry blossom viewing”. This means 2 things:

1) The sakura (cherry blossoms) are out!
2) Much beer is consumed.

But before I could even attempt my Saturday objective, I was to retrieve my MacBook Pro – somehow.

I made my way back to Bridges at 9am, hoping that my bag would still be there and that someone would be there to give it to me. After getting lost for about 45 minutes, I found Bridges, looked in the front window and sure enough my bag was still sitting exactly where I’d left it! Yay! Buuuut no one was there to give it to me.

That’s ok, I thought I’d just wait around for a bit. Maybe they’ll open for some lunch thing around 10 or 11. I went and got a coffee and chilled out at a nearby cafe. On my way out of the cafe I had a stroke of genius (well I consider it genius – let me have my moment). I quickly grabbed a napkin from the counter, borrowed a pen then wrote a quick note that I’d slip under the door of Bridges if no one was there.

I returned to Bridges (it was 11am by this time). No one was there, so I slipped my piece of genius under the door (the napkin; grow up children…). I pushed the fact that my most valuable asset was, for the moment, in the hands of a dodgily written napkin and made my way to Sakuranomiya for a great day of Hanami.

I’d brought my camera along to take lots of pictures, but in the end I easily drank 3x more cans of beer than I did take pictures. Partially due to the fact that the organiser brought 96 cans of beer and an obscene number of Costco pizzas to the event. I also got to meet up with a bunch of new developers and everyone I met there were incredibly awesome!

It’s worth mentioning that all aforementioned pictures were lost. With great skill and accuracy, whilst alighting from a train, I managed to throw my camera’s SD card through the crack between the train and the platform. I also hope that people reading this paragraph do so literally, and not pick up on the fact that losing my SD card was, in fact, an embarrassing accident. But here’s a photo I took on my phone:

Shortly after arriving at the park, I got a phone call. It was the owner of Bridges informing me that he had my bag and that I could pick it up anytime after 5pm – yay!

We sat about, drinking, chatting and joking till around 6pm or something. I got to hear about the various projects the other developers had worked on/are working on. Then we all jumped into a cab to make our way to another nearby bar.

The bar was small, grungy and the name had something to do with a gun. It was cool, and everyone was in high spirits whilst deep in spirits. After a while, I checked the time: 10pm. I was gonna have to go and pick up my MacBook at some point. I announced my quest and managed to recruit 2 noble adventurers for the journey.

We hopped on the subway and went to Bridges. When I got there, I found the owner and told him I was there for my bag. He fetched it for me. As soon as he gave it to me, I opened it up and checked for my MacBook.

Me: “Ahh good, my MacBook Pro is still there!”
Bar Owner: “Oh, lucky you didn’t tell me it was in there or I might’ve taken it!” *smiley face*
Me: “Not funny.”

With that, we made our way back to the gun bar. It was good to have some quality company to interact with during my trip out to Bridges. I feel as though I should have felt more relieved to have retrieved my MacBook – at the time I felt that it was just a pain in the ass to have to go an get it. Alcohol does wonders for ones priorities it would seem. Write that down kids.

Upon returning to the bar, I seemed to have sobered up a bit. I know this because now I have a clear, re-tellable memory to actually tell you.

Our nerd-army had suffered some casualties along the way, but we were still 7 strong. For some reason I came up with the idea of doing a round-table of everyone’s “classiest” moments – by which of course I mean the most embarrassing, un-classy moments. Let me tell you, the people I was with were classy people! The host of the event by far stole the show, but not before the lone female survivor of the group had one hell of a crack at it.

However, those classy moments need not be repeated.

The time was somewhere between dusk and dawn – specifics weren’t important at this point. The host called for some karaoke. He knew of a karaoke place upstairs from the bar we were in – convenient. We went up there, scored an all-you-can-drink deal, sat down and karaoke’d our hearts out. I’m certain that there is video on a certain someones iPad that I would like to retrieve to either release as an in-depth instructional video on how one would correctly roll a blunt, or just to use as leverage against a workmate… That honestly sounds much more incriminating than it actually is. Nice.

I was told that this karaoke bar was actually some kind of “snack” bar. Basically there were a couple of middle aged, dodgy women there who came and sat at our table. I think they were supposed to talk to us and entertain us but apparently we had no need for that. Not only that, the woman who sat across with me either smokes like a chimney or did a marathon of Cold Chisel before we arrived. Given the smell of the place, unfortunately, I’m gonna have to go with chimney.

After karaoke was done, we returned back to the gun bar from before to resume beveraging. Everything from this point on is a blur. I remember carrying beers to a taxi for the organiser of the event. I remember doing a Yoshinoya run (kinda the Japanese equivalent of a Maccas Run) with a couple of the guys and making drunken, tentative plans to visit them in Tokyo. Unfortunately for them, I remember that I made those plans and will probably follow through with them. Oh btw, technically this is-

Sunday:

Apparently I Instant Transmissioned to Kyobashi station before the gates opened. I remember that I caught the 4:50am train back to Hirakata. I also remember sleeping past my stop and waking up in some country town, then grumpily catching a train back home.

I groaned as I missed the keyhole to my front door about 8 times and stumbled inside, up the stairs, then passing out on my bed. Not before cleverly setting an alarm for myself so that I could wake up and do my laundry – how responsible of me right?

I awoke to my alarm and to a blistering hangover. I don’t really get hangovers, but this is a top 5 for sure. I put on my laundry, fixed lunch and checked my email. I had an email from my friend Ashley, with whom I work with on my current project. He had asked whether we wanted to meet online during the day, or the night. I thought for 0.3 seconds and replied with “Tonight. 7pm.”

I slept for another large portion of the day to then wake up at 7:21pm. Guh… oops. But we got right into it and made some progress. We finished up our Sunday meet with a decent session of Borderlands. After which I ended up watching an episode of Garth Merenghi’s Darkplace, 2 episodes of The Ricky Gervais Show and the first episode of Lupin III. Then it was bed time.

This post has a lot of fat – almost as much fat as I accrued from the beer and pizza consumed this weekend. But honestly I feel I can’t post this without throwing subtle shout-outs at the universe of all the fun times that were had.

Needless to say, my weekend was Teeth Gnashingly awesome, and a success.

Which, I suppose, is no different to any other post.

One thing I’ve taken for granted in Australia is the weather. I remember thinking the same thing whilst I studied abroad at Kansai Gaidai 2 years ago, but I guess I seemed to have forgotten it upon returning to Australia. Well now that I’m back here in Japan, I can strongly agree with my past self. It rains, all the goddamn time here. It rained a bit yesterday. It rained today. I think it might not rain tomorrow, but it’ll probably rain the day after.

I remember when I first started studying Japanese I was taught the phrase:

“いいお天気ですね”

Which means:

“The weather’s nice today, isn’t it?”

pwetty

Which has now evolved (via the process of natural selection) to:

“いい fuckin’ 天気だよ!” 

Which can mean:

“Thank fuck it isn’t raining!”

Or it can sarcastically mean:

“It’s raining again, brb hanging myself”

I dare Japan to not rain for an entire week. No rain. For a week. Cold turkey. Japan, bro, you couldn’t do it.

"Fuck this."

That is all.

The other 100% of the reason I’m writing this post is because I fuckin’ love Ricky Gervais, Stephen Merchant, and lastly, but by absolutely no means least, Mr. Karl Pilkington. They are hilarious! Allow me to tell you about how I found out about these 3 gentlemen (in chronological order):

Ricky Gervais

I know of Ricky Gervais because I was born and raised on Earth.

Stephen Merchant

I saw a tall, funny, strange-looking guy on Extras once. Then I played Portal 2 and fell in love with Wheatley. Then I looked up the actor who voiced him and finally put a name to that strange-looking face. The face-person was Stephen Merchant.

Karl Pilkington

An Irish friend of mine told me about a TV show called An Idiot Abroad, featuring an elaborate prank organised by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant. The victim of this prank was none other than Karl Pilkington.

It’s only recently that I’ve been completely hooked on their content and Karl Pilkington is solely to blame for all of this. Here’s why:

Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant are comedians. Karl Pilkington is not. Karl is one of the most simple, un-touched, sheltered, innocent human beings of our time. Karl doesn’t think the same as everyone else, he’s on a completely different wavelength (Ricky would no doubt bet he doesn’t think at all). Ricky and Stephen fully realise this, and they both exploit this by placing Karl in strange situations just to see how he’ll react. They’ll ask him questions on their podcast (The Ricky Gervais Show) just to hear Karl’s explanation. They’ll send Karl all around the world, followed by a camera crew, just to see how he’ll react to other people and cultures. Granted, at times Ricky can be quite harsh to Karl, but it ends up creating an atmosphere where Ricky is the bad guy and Karl’s the underdog that you can’t help but love. I also believe that no matter how ridiculous Karl is, there are gonna be times when you think to yourself: “…actually he’s got a point there.”

But what you really need are these guys in action:

Then I catch the 8:34am train to Hirakata-shi station. Where I make my way to platform 4 and jump onto the front carriage of the semi-express train to Yodoyabashi. At around 9:10am, I arrive at Yodoyabashi and exit the front carriage. I try to get onto the front carriage at Hirakata-shi because it is right by a staircase leading up to the western exit at Yodoyabashi. It is here, that the magic happens.

Everyday, without fail, I spot a Gaijin (foreigner) walking up this staircase towards the western exit. Everyday it is always someone new. But every single time I spot them I think to myself:

“I’m onto you, Gaijin.”

Why? No idea.

However, a particular franchise has my geek-rocket flying higher than a grandfather on the blue pills sporting a 9 hour horn. Which you ask? Assassins Creed of course! Over the past week (or two?) details about the new Assassins Creed 3 (set to be released at the end of October, 2012) have been splooging out all over the internet, and boy does it look sexy.

I believe that Assassins Creed: Revelations was wonderful, however it juuuust placed it’s pinky toe over the “we-need-something-new” line – which considering we were 4 instalments into the franchise is pretty damn good. However, Assassins Creed 3 needs to change things up much more than it has before. The same “wait for a counter attack” (whilst in battle) and “running around on roofs” (whilst not in battle) formulae just won’t work again after 4 instalments.

Luckily, Ubisoft are a clever bunch and have things under control.

Assassins Creed 3 will follow a spiffing chap named Connor, who despite my selection of adjective, is only half British and half Native-American. AC3 will take place between between Boston and New York during the American Revolution (1753-1783). This means a completely new culture and landscape to explore (no more Turkey and Italy). It also means a new time period – which may affect combat via the availability of new technologies/weapons for Connor, as well as his foes. I’ve also read that Connor will carry himself as a more aggressive individual as opposed to his franchise predecessors, Ezio and Altair who were rather reserved. This will, no doubt, further contribute to a different, more aggressive style of combat. A welcome change.

I remember reading a loooong time ago that Assassins Creed 3 was supposed to be more Desmond focussed. I really hope it is. People say he’s boring etc. Of course he’s boring! Because there hasn’t been any attention paid to him! But this means the story could go anywhere with Desmond. I really think taking advantage of the shroud of mystery around Desmond’s role within this franchise would be brilliant.

Overall I’m psyched for Assassins Creed 3. Although, I am a fanboy. If you think Assassins Creed sucks then you’re opinion is wrong, you’re stupid etc. etc. All that ridiculous fanboy stuff that makes no sense.

PS. Free-running on trees. That is all.

“When it rains, it pours”

Aptly put. But why? During the initial/hardest times I’ve had in Japan this time around not a soul wanted me. But now they do. My outlook is that those times were my trial and my current job is my reward.

That was until I got THE EMAIL.

Hmm... not that scary looking.

THE EMAIL will remain a mystery to the public for now for 2 reasons:

1. It being public could affect my current situation
2. Think of all the fun I can have with THE EMAIL until I release information about it!

THE EMAIL changes everything. It turns my current job (aka my reward) into… well… it’s still a reward but… it’s like a pair of second hand shoes that aren’t really all that old yet. Like they’re still pretty good, but they have scuffed heels.

THE EMAIL is huge. Not in length, or physical size – and definitely no innuendo suggested. But it’s big. It’s big enough to force me to write a blog post about it at 12:37AM when I should be resting for work tomorrow. It’s heavy too. Like, you’d better stretch, bend your knees, and use your best form when lifting.

THE EMAIL isn’t bad or gloomy. No one is sick or dying. But the mere sight of THE EMAIL changes everything – key word being “change” – it isn’t good or bad per se. It destabilises my little, comfortable life here in Japan that I have blissfully enjoyed for.. 8 days now. There’s always SOMETHING going on. Always SOMETHING I have to think about and consider. I was finally free the past week – but now it’s back. I don’t mind it as such. But I’d like a rest. Even though I’d like a rest, THE EMAIL means I cannot.

I love the mystery. Feel free to speculate and have fun with it. I like to think the email came from the Assassins Guild looking to recruit me in their endeavours against the evil Abstergo (Assassins Creed reference…). But I’m a loon. Got any other crazy ideas on what THE EMAIL could be? Go crazy in the comments section!

As the title suggests, this post is just going to be a meaningless bit of waffle.

So, last Sunday, I received a text from a friend asking if I wanted to attend a fashion show she was going to be in at a museum in Kyoto that afternoon. However, that afternoon I was actually filling in for a friend at his job – it was just the one shift at an English Conversation Cafe. So as great as the fashion show would have been, I had to decline. I asked her when she was free next, she said Thursday.

That afternoon, as mentioned before, I went to work at the English Conversation Cafe. It was great! I just talked to a couple of old-ish Japanese women. They were most interesting – although talking to anyone for 4 hours straight does get tiring. But I enjoyed it. After the customers left and we closed up the cafe the boss said she was very happy with my work and wanted to offer me more work. Unfortunately, my friend would normally work on Sundays – he was just away on that particular Sunday. But she said they have another day with an availability. Which day? Thursday.

Oh, and the date of the interview that landed me my current programming job? February 23rd. Thursday.

I’ve recently been in touch with the guys at Kyoto Journal to do some web dev/consultancy. When I got in touch with them they were very keen to get into a meeting and discuss what’s been going on. The guy I was in contact with was in America at the time, so he said that once he gets back he will schedule a meeting. After a few days, he sent me an email with the meeting time and date. 6pm, Thursday.

This year was a leap year. What day did February 29th fall on? Thursday. <— fail. It was a Wednesday. Thanks Tyler haha.

Avid readers may recall from this post that it was in my best interest to purchase a return flight instead of a one way flight for the sake of my visa eligibility. This means that I do, in fact, have a return flight to Australia scheduled (which I will just keep pushing back if I want to stay longer). Well I received an email from Jetstar (the airline company I flew with) the other day informing me of changes to my flight details for my return flight to Australia. I checked the date. Then, because of all this Thursday madness that’s been going on lately, I proceeded to check the day that I am scheduled to fly out of Japan. It is a Thursday.

Come to think of it, I really should have posted this on Thursday.