I remember when I first learned the proverb from one of my students the first time I was in Japan, but I forgot about it until I read it this morning in The Blue-Eyed Salaryman.

Cover included because I can’t even begin to tell you how much attention it garnered this morning on the platform waiting for the train. I love the “salaryman” font myself. I haven’t gotten too far into the book yet, but in many ways it reminds me of The Accidental Office Lady, which I read earlier this year.

So when talk of well dwelling frogs came up was back in 01-02. I remember asking a student if she ever tired of the crowds in Tokyo and she said it was all she knew, she’d never ventured further than Kamakura, about 50 km from Tokyo.

I guess the same applies to a question I frequently ask of those who never leave their home town. I can understand leaving, and realizing you prefer home, but how do you know that if you’ve never left. I guess when you have nothing to compare it to, what you have is perfect.

Anyway, I love this book. Perfect blend of interesting but not too taxing on the brain.

Much like For Love and a Beetle, Unlikely Destinations/Once While Travelling tells the story of travel in days long gone. I’m finding it interesting to see how Tony and Maureen Wheeler got the idea to start up Lonely Planet and what their own early days of travel entailed. It’s also causing me to get LP some slack. I was a long-time LP devotee until I get fed up. I still find it frustrating that their guides are under-update, but I understand it isn’t easy to find someone to research and update the books. I no longer automatically reach for Lonely Planet, though I still end up reaching for them more often than not. I wasn’t wowed with Rick Steves’ Guides this summer when I tried them and was never overly thrilled with dk/Eyewitness either. I guess I just see LP as being good but would love to see them be great. There’s something to be said for their continued success over the last thirty years.

Also like this book and some others I’ve read, I find them interesting in that they cover some areas where I have very little interest in travelling. I’ve heard wonderful things about SE Asia and know many friends and coworkers who travelled there from Japan. There are some places I would like to see: Angkor Wat is the one that comes to mind first, however I don’t do heat and humidity well. I know that I’d be highly unlikely to enjoy these places, but they’re wonderful to read about. There’s also the other side of the backpacker culture that I don’t find to be much fun, the partying to excess. I think that’s part of the reason I have little to no desire to visit Bali, some of the Thai islands, etc. Nothing wrong with it, I just wouldn’t enjoy it. I remember looking hard to choose a Whitsunday trip where the focus wasn’t drinking to excess and in the end, I enjoyed the Port Douglas reef trip far more, although the views in the Whitsundays couldn’t be beat.

But I think that’s the best thing about independent travel and, along the same lines, the Lonely Planet guides. They allow you to pick and choose among activities that you would like and still have an amazing trip. A better trip, I tend to think, than being herded around. But that’s me…

Unlikely Destinations,  although billed as being written by both Tony and Maureen, is written primarily from Tony’s point of view, much in the same way that For Love and a Beetle was. Maybe I’m strange, but I’d like to hear more from the woman’s point of view, to see what their takes on the trips would be.  The interesting thing, having just read Bad Lands also about Tony’s recent trips, is seeing where the two converge: in both he reflects on missing the Buddhas of Bamiyan in the 1972 trips and consequently never having the chance to see them.
I’d love to one day meet the Wheelers and just have the chance to pick their brains, but for now this book is a good start. Can’t wait to read more tomorrow.

create your own visited countries map
or vertaling Duits Nederlands

I also came to realise just how odd that sounds. New countries since June. Adding New Zealand is a bit of a technicality but no worse than Singapore or The Netherlands.

Although this has been a very different kind of visit than previous trips, it’s been a lot of fun. A lot of wedding stuff and some general catching up. Between the 30 hours travel time from New York to Melbourne as well as the paper being done, I’ve read! Completed so far: The Bullfighter Checks Her Make Up, The Economic Naturalist and The Kill Artist with another few in progress. Renders the list of books I’ve read relatively complete but still pathetic compared to years past.

Picked up a couple of brochures but I realize I won’t have the time. Not the end of the world. On a random note, I’ve had lamb x3 in the last week: baa!

It’s been a wonderful trip. Not missing the camera. I’d only be taking pictures of things I already have hundreds of photos of. o:)

RIP Scooter

I expected to like it, both from some reviews I read and from others’ journals, but I don’t think I expected to identify with it as much as I did. In a way the transient friendships/relationships that were a fixture of her life were similar to those I experience while travelling. There’s something in the moment that bonds you, but when that common element is gone, I’d find there wasn’t much to the ‘friendship’ after all. Japan was different because these relationships were over a longer term, but I found it very common in Australia.

I found myself trying to relate her Australia of 1990 with the one I saw while traveling, and I found that to be a challenge. I spent my time mostly in the cities and didn’t spent all *that* much time in any one spot. Brisbane was the longest at ~four months but that’s not quite Halls Creek.

In reading through the author’s experiences with the Aboriginal population, I found myself thinking back to my own thoughts. So much of what you feel/think is colored by others’ perceptions and I was glad to see that Pip was able to see through the stereotypes and make her own opinions on who the people were.  Looking back at my own post, I see I’d mentioned Bruce Chatwin’s The Songlines then too. I just found a copy the other day at Strand and am looking forward to reading it. Might be a good follow up to this book, though I have a few others pending as well.

The short chapters of this book fit their purpose well: short looks into Pip’s life. This wasn’t meant to be a blow by blow account of her life in Halls Creek/Mataranka, and I think it worked well. We got to see brief looks, to get an idea of what life in rural Australia was in 1990. In a way this reminded be of Cold Beer and Crocodiles. An Australia I saw, but in a far different way. That’s why I don’t think I’ll ever agree with people who say “But you’ve read about [X] before…” there are just so many different ways to see a place.

I also agree with her thoughts that in order to fully tell the story, you have to go back. I don’t have as many ‘unanswered questions’ about Australia, but the return to Japan filled some holes for me. Some things came flooding back, but I think some old unanswereds were replaced by new memories. It’s an odd feeling, but one I wouldn’t trade for anything. I’d say it cured me of the ‘need’ to return, but I didn’t have one until I’d made the decision to go. When I left in 2002 I said I would go back to visit but not to work. But then suddenly in Australia, in Perth to be specific when I completed the re-application, I felt the pull. Will I feel it again? Who knows? I already am for Australia, even though I know it will be an abbreviated trip.

This book is also another reason that I love BookCrossing. If not for catsalive’s post on BCAUS, I’d likely never have even known about it!Dark Heart of Outback (The Australian)  is an interesting review. I found the author’s MySpae but it’s apparently friends only (? I don’t quite get MySpace) I like reading authors’ blogs.

Now I learnt back when I used to play the Relays that I had some weird tastes in books, so I’m not expecting this to be anything different…

1. Take Me With You – Brad Newsham – I love the idea of his trip. Being able to invite someone to come back with you – return the favour of hospitality.
2. Summer Sisters by Judy Blume – One of my favourite books of all time,
3. The Bells of Nagasaki – Takashi Nagai [review here] – there’s very little more poignant than a Doctor’s account of trying to save people following the bombing of Nagasaki
4. Bury Me Standing – Isabel Fonseca [review here]
5. Japan’s Longest Day – Pacific War Research Society [review here] – history buff in me and definitely one of my longest reviews ever
6. Cold Beer and Crocodiles – Roff Smith (link is to my review) it prompted my decision to ‘see it all’ or darned close and launched my trip around Australia
7. The Roads to Sata – Alan Booth (link is to my review) - another long one and a great look at the Japan most city folk, whether Japanese or gaijin never see
8. Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret – Judy Blume – a childhood classic that I reread at 25
9. The Five People You Meet in Heaven – Mitch Albom – it just touched me, it really did.
10. The Dead – Ingrid Black – it wasn’t that it was so good-I don’t even remember what it was about but I googled it to mention it to someone and that’s how I found BookCrossing. Can’t imagine life without BookCrossing.

It’s definitely an eclectic list, but like my reading habits: heavily non-fiction and a lot about travel and/or other cultures. I keep trying to get fiction recommendations because I read very little fiction.

I really yearn for time like I had in 2005 when all I did was read!

Seven Reasons to Travel with One Bag: I totally agree with this article and couldn’t have said it better myself. I just wish I could have done it. One bag, yep. One small bag, no way. There were definitely times that my backpack got a little unmanageable, but I couldn’t have done it with any less.

For me, it wasn’t the clothes or the creature comforts. It was BOOKS! Let’s not even talk about my smaller pack with the laptop, camera, external HD, iPod and other books. It was a cord-squid too with cables for the camera, iPod, laptop, cell phone, external HD…

I can pack lighter than some, but I’m jealous of minimalists…

• Behind the Yellow Filter and its sequel Blind Spot by Stuart Held
• Beyond Peleiu by Peter D. Baird
• The Voice in my Heart by Gilbert Tuhabonye

The last one, which coincidentally was the first title I reviewed for FSR, was by far the most interesting. I can’t put my finger on the concrete reason, but I think it was because I don’t have too much awareness of Africa. I remember learning about the Rwandan genocide while in school but until I read this book I didn’t know anything of what had gone on in Burundi around the same time.

Africa for me is an odd paradox. I had a wonderful time meeting the Tanzanian delegation. Their presentation, together with the information I picked up at the Travel Show, really piqued my interest in the country but I can’t say whether I’d go. I’m interested on a variety of levels: historical because I find the story of the Olduvai Gorge and NgoroNgoro Crater to be crucial to understanding how we as a civilization came about; ecological/physical because I want to know more about Kilimanjaro and I’d love one day to climb it; and of course sheer desire to visit Zanzibar. No good reason, just because I want to.

I’d love to visit Egypt for some of the same historical reasons, Morocco for its culture and South Africa for a variety of reasons, but I don’t know whether I ever will. I remember getting a copy of On Foot Through Africa and thinking how many wonderful things she saw, but also knowing there is no way I could do what she’d done.

I have a read a few other good titles that look place, at least in part, in Africa: Take me With You by Brad Newsham, Swahili for the Broken Hearted by Peter Moore and Dark Star Safari by Paul Theroux are a few off the top of my head.

It is funny how reading about a place sparks an interest in learning more. Guess that’s the sign of a well-written book. Getting back to where I started, that was what I loved about Flight of the Goose. It was a vehicle, although fictional, for me to learn more about the Inupiaq culture, which I know very little about.

I just wish I had more time to read!