Sabae and Fukui

Today I will be doing travel log number... four? I haven't really done anything massively interesting here in New Zealand yet so instead I'll take a trip down memory lane to talk about some more places I visited in Japan. You know memory lane don't you? It's just up from memory avenue, past the corner of memory way. You know... down the memory district.

While living in Galway, Ireland I made friends with a lovely Japanese girl by the name of Yukari and during my summer holidays from school I got in touch and told her I'd love to come and visit her. Ten hours of train journeys later I arrived in Fukui city in Fukui prefecture to spend a wonderful weekend with her in her family home. Her parents spoke no English and were absolutely lovely people who spent the two days feeding me traditional Japanese food and ice cream and making me feel very welcome. Yukari for her part organised that we would have something to do everyday that I was there. And here's what we did:

We made our own paper

Here I am making my own postcards

We made eye glass key-rings using real machines used to make glasses

We attended an amazing 17 course traditional Japanese meal

We went to a lantern festival held in the ruins of an ancient fortified hillside town

I ate sea slug. And never intend to again...

We visited a famous temple. Here's Yukari looking pensive

We saw some fireworks

A busy but incredibly fun weekend. A big thank you to my friend for organising it all and making it a super fun and awesome two days.

Hello Nelson

On the flight from Auckland to Nelson



This is where I'm currently living. Also today is my birthday. That is all. Peace out.

Update: Beginning life in Nelson

Hello all. I'm alive. I arrived in Nelson, New Zealand in one piece and stayed in a hostel for a week until my friend came to get me. At which point I was deliriously happy to see her having spent the week surrounded by young German backpackers who seemed to have no concept of how loud their speaking voices were. I'm living (read squatting) in a house that's on the market. It's a 7 bed house with a pool, basketball court and no furniture except our beds and one sofa. It's definitely the strangest living arrangement I've ever had. There's so much space that sometimes I just run from room to room for the fun of it. Tomorrow is my first night in a new job in a cocktail bar. I've never made cocktails before so it'll be interesting to see whether this works out or not. I haven't done anything particularly interesting yet so there's nothing really to report (and also our house has no internet so my only chance to use it is in the library in the city centre). Once we have internet up and running and we start taking trips around the country I'll be sure to start blogging again. Also I will have to change the name and address of the blog seeing as I'm not in Japan anymore. Suggestions?