www.nickhodge.com

Hav­ing vis­ited Christ­ch­urch, South Island New Zea­l­and many times; and Japan at least 4 times — I can clearly state they are some of the greatest places in the world to visit. The people are friendly; the sights and exper­i­ences are extraordin­ary. The places are rel­at­ively safe.

One would think.

In both instances, they live on the edge of the “Pacific Rim of Fire”, the edge of the Pacific tec­tonic plate that rings West­ern Amer­ica around to New Zea­l­and: the ‘shaky isles’

It is with much inner tur­moil and sad­ness to see both places crumble and sucumb to devestation.

This only makes me want to revisit when the time is right, to show sup­port. That their choice to live in a shaky place is not a ghetto nor a place to be shunned.

Dear Japan

I think I really like you as a friend, but I am no longer in love.

It’s not you, it’s me. The love of the new, the unknown, the for­bid­den is gone.

It is not the great pub­lic trans­port, the very friendly and cour­teous people. The wall-to-wall shopping.

I am sure we can still be friends.

My third trip to Japan, even with the earth­quake and typhoon, was pleas­ant enough. I think how­ever that to know you bet­ter, I would have to move in with you and learn your lan­guage. At this stage in my life, it’s a com­mit­ment I can­not make. I am just too tired and grumpy for that.

My genes are call­ing me to fol­low my DNA back in time. Ger­many and Scot­land call.

This begs the ques­tion of why I trav­elled to Japan in the first place. Good ques­tion. I think I should have had a hol­i­day while I was not working.

You have shown me the future: it’s ver­tical and it’s mobile. Even the geek (otaku) side of Japan was inter­est­ing — but not enga­ging enough unless you like manga, gun­dam uni­verse and other slices of cul­ture I can­not explain.

Yours

Nick

Pic­ture: Dis­tant view of Typhoon clouds from Hotel Room

Typhoon num­ber 4 (offi­cial name) hit Okinawa, and skimmed the east­ern shores of Japan. Com­pletely miss­ing Tokyo, but stop­ping many ser­vices for a few minutes on Sunday. We were out in the worst of it in Harajuku on Sat­urday. Wind+Rain = Shop­ping in Japan. Every­one was out and about.

Then on Monday morn­ing at around 10:19am, a mag­nitude 6.8 earth­quake hit to the north of Tokyo. We were in the hotel room at the time, and Avril thought I was being funny rock­ing the bed. I thought she was mud­dling around pack­ing bags. Nope, it was an earth­quake. My greatest fear was that I was only in my jocks. Avril and Liam were con­cerned about our greater wel­fare. Within a minute or two, it was over, and we watched the after­math on TV.

Note: my mum reminded me that this was my second earth­quake. When I was 5, Nowra NSW had an earth­quake. I must admit I don’t remem­ber the earth­quake, but I do remem­ber our cat.

It seemed that Tokyo went onto its main busi­ness: shop­ping. So we joined in the crowds at Akihabara

Ahh, Japan. How I look for­ward to thee.

After the suc­cess of our hol­i­day to Japan in 2005, and after the accu­mu­la­tion of lots of Qantas Fre­quent Flyer points, its time to return to Japan. Work hol­i­day, flights, hotels, Shinkansen, JR, Cat sit­ters, Pass­ports. It’s all hap­pen­ing in July.

This time around, we are adding Kyoto, Hiroshima and Osaka into our Japan experience.

I hope to film at least 2 “The Geek Stor­ies” and be a little more online this trip to get the exper­i­ence “out there”. First step: Local Live Map

It’s offi­cial. What do you do when you have a spare 100,000 Qantas Freaky Flier points, a hol­i­day win­dow in May and a love for Lost in Trans­la­tion? That’s right. This year the Hodge fam­ily is off to Tokyo for a week. Look out, Aki­habara and Yodo­bashi Camera!