TRAVEL DIARY

SATURDAY
29 NOVEMBER, 2008
JAPAN, DAY 3 - OSAKA

End of the lane, turn left, 5 minutes, turn right. Easy enough. Up until that moment, I'd presumed the end of my street where my hotel sat was a dead end. Well.

Peered around the corner to find an entire arcade strip running up and down either way. I'd built up an appetite, and there was one thing I was hanging for: gyoza. I went on a mission to find some hole in the wall where I could sit in a corner and eat some rough and ready food.

After drifting through the arcade a couple of times, I settled on a tiny, near-empty joint. A stinging fluorescent light washed out the place, the room split by a row of booths on one side, and an eating bar along the other, with cooking area behind. Both the young waitress, standing to the side, and the older chef, arms crossed and leaning back onto the bench, were fixated on the TV murmuring high above in the corner.

They glanced over as I sat down at the bar. The waitress came to my side, and we danced that now-familiar dance. "[waitress chirps something incomprehensible to me in Japanese]" [blank face; a half smile from my end] [confusion, realisation]. A stiff silence.

Since this wasn't one of those Ameri-lite diners, there were no laminated food diagrams for me to point dumbly to. Instead, I put on my best Japanese accent, and gurgled "Gyoza?" Of course, I might as well have put a bucket on my head and flapped my arms for all the good it did. Eventually she understood me. Seven or eight tries later eventually.

After I ordered, a man came in, stout and stern. A shuffle of words, and the waitress bustled to get him a beer. I glanced at my watch: 10:43am. Right. I mimicked him to the waitress, and quickly an icy mug of beer the size of my head was placed in front of me.

As I struggled to get through the head of the beer, a sharp call to my right for another was made. I looked over at the man. He'd drained it. Just then, a steaming plate of gyoza arrived. Throughout my meal, I plunged my head back again and again as I tried to finish the beer. Finally, the end. As it was, I was a little hammered. I pulled out my 'To Do' list. At the top: the zoo.

HOT CROSS BUNNY

“Here comes another one,” my housemate snickers. It’s a balmy Good Friday, and we’re walking through Centennial Park with a friend of ours, who’s tugging on a thin red leash. And she’s been spotted, again. Kids are running up to us, squealing, wanting to pet the thing. We run off to stand under a tree and leave them to it.

Huddled at the end of this leash is a rabbit. A fluffy, grey, and by the looks of its quivering ears, petrified rabbit. In the distance we can see a couple cooing over it while our friend cradles the puff ball in her arms, nodding patiently while she listens to people’s Top Things to Say When You See Someone Holding a Rabbit in a Park:

“Is that a rabbit?”
"Aww, it's sooo cute!"
“Can I touch it?”
“I used to have a rabbit. Then our dog ate it.” (Okay, admittedly only one man says this)

Escaping interrogation, we go off and settle down at a garden near the lake. Our friend lets it down onto the grass, where it merrily hops towards the garden and munches enthusiastically on some leaves. I lie back and spy an Asian man taking the same photo of his wife over and over in front of various flower beds, her posing stiffly while he works out the zoom.

An hour later and the rabbit has flopped on the grass, over it. We place it in its cardboard box and head back. It peers its head out and leans on the edge, paws clutching the box, then slumps down. People mutter “…rabbit” as they walk past. Our friend becomes irritated.
“Fuck, it’s a rabbit, get over it.”
“Now you know what it’s like to be ethnic.”

HELLO, WHAT

I’ve zoned out. I’m in the bank queue, waiting to deposit a cheque. The muted tapping of keyboards and steady hum of the air conditioning has sedated me. I’m staring at a particularly mundane patch of grey wall when I hear something behind me.

It’s a low popping, at first. Then louder, clicking and smacking. Enss ensss enss busch enss enss ensss…some generic techno beat. I glance at my feet and see a shadow of a head jerking back and forth in time to the rhythm. Fucking mobiles. Someone’s got their little mp3 bullshit on on speaker.

I swivel around slowly, pretending to look at the clock, to see who this douche is. And my eyes pop out. It’s a scrawny Indian dude, all ill-fitting black microfibre pants and striped polo, hair flopping about over his face. And he’s beatboxing with abandon.

I whip back around before he catches me looking, and peer out from the corner of my eye, listening intently. He starts and stops, little skitters in between his impatient sighs. Occasionally there are flourishes of dancing – a slide here, a spin there. What the fuck are you doing, my friend.

Then his phone rings for real, blaring cheap eurotrance. “Hello, Darren speaking,” he murmurs, flushing his voice of the club and lasers. And I can no longer take it. The bell dings. “Can I help you?” I’m up. Thank Christ.

MOMENT OF TRUTH

I thought someone pissed on me the other day.

I live across the street from a small park – more of a courtyard, really. It doesn’t look that old – maybe 10 years or so, with that faded faux terracotta concrete tiling that had a brief resurgence in the late ‘90s. It’s a modest thing, with a couple of benches, some patches of well manicured flowers, and bordered with a neat line of hedges, all enclosed by a polite iron fence.

It’s nice enough. For about an hour each day, it’s littered with the lifeless bodies of the 9 to 5ers, sunning their pasty limbs before shuttling back to their offices down the road. The afternoons belong to the construction workers, who sit with their canteens and sandwiches, grunting and throwing their heads back, roaring with laughter in turn.

The rest of the time, it’s a fucking goon bag convention. Greasy men with ratty beards grinning toothless grins, converging on a corner of the park. They sit on upturned milk crates in a circle, sometimes chattering to each other, sometimes not saying much at all. Just sitting there, kind of looking at each other. Clutching their brown bagged goods, clutching onto each other with their eyes.

And then, the other day. I walked past the fence, tired and clammy from the uphill, the sun beating down on me. Suddenly, a shower of something landed on me from my left. I looked up, confused, thinking it had started raining. Dry as a bone. I peered through the fence. Past the hedges, I could just make out a shadowy figure.

Oh shit. I’ve been pissed on. By a bum. Or a drug addict. Or a drug addict bum. Gingerly I touched some of the droplets on my shoulder, and brought them to my nose. No smell. That bit of CSI work over, I rounded the corner, where the hedges ended, and looked into the open park. A man in overalls stood there, languidly moving his hose back and forth. A gardener. Oh thank fuck.

HERE WE ARE

Nine days in already? 2009, you're consuming me all too quickly. So far have spent the year:

Not seeing any of my friends. Ever. My hermetic lifestyle has gone from 'forced upon me' (see skin-related drama below) to 'voluntary'. Is it wrong to relish being able to count the amount of people I've seen in one week on the hands alone?

Listening to Britney's Circus. Coooonstantly. The whole thing (ignore the shiteous ballad 'My Baby'). That shit is like crack.

Date-filling. Trying to find things - appointments, events, things to do - to scribble in my gleaming fresh diary. I've taken to writing everything with a red felt tip, so that even 'buy cheese' looks super important.

Going through Stephen King books like chips. It started years ago, when a lady down the street was offloading a bunch of the things on a table in her front yard. The literary equivalent of watching a whole season of Gossip Girl in one sitting. Currently in the final stretch of The Shining.

Being broke. Rent shooting at me from all angles, no food in the cupboard, can I really afford that slice of pizza 'cause I might want to put it towards a beer later. I almost prefer to be broke sometimes. Each moment becomes a delicious puzzle of 'how will I spend my last twenty before pay day?'

Making plans. Doing it at the start of the year makes you Feel Productive. Mind maps, lists, new stationary, blah blah. It's that beautiful time between wake and sleep, when the whole year stretches in front of you and anything seems possible. This is the year we're gonna Do Shit. Let's close our eyes to the possibility that we might end up doing Fuck All.

ABSENT

Six weeks away. What does that amount to? Me, sitting in my living room in a world of pain.

Yesterday I accepted a last minute beach invitation. I hadn't been in the water for two summers, and I was excited. We lugged our towels and body boards along the Manly coast, to little Shelly Beach. The sight of the sun and sand made me giddly. We dumped our gear and dived in.

A couple of hours of splashing and sunning ourselves later, we dropped into a cafe. I ordered the fish and chips, of course. While we waited, I rubbed at my neck absentmindedly. 'Dude, you're neck's red. I think you're sunburnt.' Laughs and indignation. 'I never get sunburnt!'

By the time I got home, the redness had spread along my upper arms, and oddly, to my knees. I scratched at them curiously, having never known my body to do this before. They responded by reddening further, but the dumb relief the scratching brought prevented me from stopping.

11:43pm and I still could not sleep. My torso too was now covered with odd islands of red itchy rash. It was grotesque and fascinating at the same time. I couldn't stop staring at the protrusions, running my hands over them slowly. Within a few hours my body had morphed from my plain self to an irritated, bump ridden mess, something I had never seen it do before and did not recognise.

Now I sit in my living room, ointments carefully rubbed into the inflamed areas, while Lost In Translation runs on the TV - that comforting familiar murmur. I must've seen this movie a thousand times. The cotton Japanese hotel robe I'd stolen is draped over my shoulders - the only thing I could find light enough to allow my skin to breath.

The robe was carefully folded into my backpack two weeks ago, the night before I checked out of my Tokyo hotel. I'd hesitated before burying it underneath my jackets and scarves. When I checked out I'd hurried out into the rain, before they could realise something was missing and deport me.

Two weeks ago, I was running around Shibuya and Kyoto, navigating crossings and watching maple leaves turn. Now, I'm back home, sitting in my living room in a world of pain.

26 DAYS IN SIX PARTS OF APPROX. 200 WORDS EACH - PART TWO

HALLOWEEN

“Ooh, that’s a good one.”
“Yeah. He, on the other hand, clearly made no effort.”
“I know dude. A novelty shirt does not count.”

The MacBook Pro and the gothy witch girl bitch about the couple crossing Oxford Street. It’s Halloween night, and it’s a weird mix of cardboard and glitter extravagance, and ‘we don’t do shit like that in Australia, mate’.

I blow the bits of synthetic wig out of my face. Being gothy witch girl is high maintenance. "That one. Go in." We roll over the the Lick-Her Shop, where behind the counter a sparkly devil-horned guy in a mesh top is sneaking a sip of something-something.

I turn to the street while he gets our six pack. Four girls strut past in a row in matching red stilettos, tugging at their too-short tartan skirts, white shirts tied to bare their bronzed up bellies. School Girl Betty’s been a bad girl and deserves a good spanking.

We elbow each other and laugh. “Fucking slu-“
“Hey Vivian. Hey!” One of them's looking at me.
Oh my God. I know her.
“What are you doing tonight?”
Oh my God. I was at her house last week.
“We’re going to Moulin Rouge later.”
Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God.