Jap Blog 6th August 1996

Watched the Hiroshima Memorial this morning on the TV. Brekkie and then Midori (Yukinari’s mum) and Yukinari dropped us off at the train station. I mentioned to Yukinari that a girl I had seen was “interesting” and he laughed [author’s note – Can’t remember how to say that in Japanese]. Wayne and I proceeded to find out just how “interesting” Miss Rie Karakawa was. “Very”. At one train station we caught the attention of two 30-somethings. Pity they were travelling the other way. On our final train we had a seat across from a Japanese customer. I introduced Wayne as “R. Sole” and he in turn introduced me as “Dick Wad”. We spoke in English and really confused this couple. Wayne wanted to play a joke on them by pretending not to speak any Japanese. After I said that I was from Australia, Masai, the guy, used the word “hogen” and I thought that he meant Paul Hogan from Crocodile Dundee. It means “dialect”. Just as they left and thanked me for the koalas that I gave them and Masai wondered what present he should give me in return. I mentioned that his sunglasses looked nice and he was about to give them to me until Wayne told them in Japanese that they were boring presents and not worth worrying about. The look of amazement on their faces was brilliant and well worth the trouble. I wasn’t about to take the poor man’s sunglasses anyway.

Fukuoka train station was full of beautiful women [author’s note – this must be the best place I have ever visited for watching gorgeous women walk by constantly. It was full of them]. Wayne’s friend, Yuko Sannomiya, collected us from the train station. She called her Taiwanese friend Rie up and we went out for tea. A funny night. The girls’ English was quite ok. Yuko had a newspaper at her flat in English with all of the Olympic medallists [author’s note – it was difficult to keep up with the medal tallies but fun trying to read it in a Japanese newspaper].

- posted by Hammy @ 8:16 am