Rainbow Coloured Love Beam

It's about time I started up this blog again so I thought I'd start by sharing my new favourite J-Electro Pop song. It's Laser Beam by Perfume and features such great lyrics at "it pierces my heart fizzingly, the rainbow coloured laser beam". It's annoyingly catchy and stuck in my head, enjoy.

AC Japan

Watching t.v. recently I’ve noticed that there were some adverts that kept appearing that didn’t actually appear to be advertising anything in particular. The number of times these adverts have been on has increased dramatically since the earthquake and tsunami so I thought maybe it was a charity collecting for money, but after a bit of googling it turns out that AC Japan is the advertising council of Japan which is responsible for broadcasting public service announcements on the behalf of various non-profit organisations or government agencies.

After the tsunami various companies withdrew their adverts from television, obviously not wanting to be associated with the events being shown on the news or wanting to be seen as inconsiderate to the thousands killed and the hundreds of thousands who are now homeless. To fill up the extra broadcasting time AC Japan has been showing adverts which feature various celebrities or public figures giving messages about Japan’s strength as a country and how to encourage harmony (a very important concept in Japan) by helping out those around you.

There are various others which you can probably find by clicking on the related videos.

This one, aimed at children, encourages you to use the correct greetings when meeting people each day, what to say before eating, when coming home etc.

This link is a page about how this particular video has become an Internet meme and explains it a bit more.

The reason I noticed these was firstly because they have been shown almost non-stop since the earthquake, the cartoon so much so that it became has become an Internet meme, but also because I don’t recall ever having seen similar adverts on UK television across all channels simply encouraging people to help each other and reinforcing the nations identity.

More snowboarding

Well it’s been a while since I posted because the internet at the dormitory has completely died, which has made looking for accommodation rather difficult as it means a trek to the nearest internet cafe. Anyway here are some more snowboarding videos. I’ll try and get someone to film me for the next ones.

This first is going down hidden valley on a sunny day, it has some really nice steep sides to do when you aren’t holding a camera.

Hidden Valley (Kamoshika San)

This second video is Go-sen riding on the powder at the side of the course.

GoSen powder run.

Commuting

(For some reason I think blogger.com is cutting off the sides of youtube videos, however if you either click the video title, double click the video or right click and select watch in youtube you should be able to watch the video without the edges cut off.)

This is probably one of the coolest daily commutes in the world.

Again for these videos since the sound would just be wind rushing past a tiny microphone I just muted it and put some music with them.

First is up the gondola to the top of the mountain. I took the video during the day on one of my days off as I’m usually too unprepared and have to tie up my boots on the way up the gondola most days, where it gets really foggy is actually passing over a course we’ve named “hidden valley” and yes it’s because it’s almost always in a cloud.

Second is snowboarding down to my hut where I work, I took it pretty slow that day since I’d only been snowboarding for about two weeks.

Third is the ski lift from my hut back up to the top of the mountain and although it can get pretty cold when its snowing and windy, when it’s a clear day the view is really nice, hence my lift being called View 2.

Finally is the run all the way from the top of the mountain to the bottom. Again I took this video on my day off as it was a really nice day and you can see the scenery, but it’s definitely a pretty good feeling when at the end of the day you set off home with about twenty colleagues all on snowboards and skis and just zoom down the mountain, passing the slow customers who are still making their way down, I’ll try to get a video of that at some point too and hopefully it won’t be as bumpy as it was when I took this video.

It’s not that hard really.

Well I made it out of Doha and have been working here for a month now. The work itself is pretty simple, clearing snow so that the ski lifts move, making sure customers don’t get smashed in the face by said ski lifts when they either fall over or completely fail to judge just how fast a ski lift is moving and end up skiing into it, falling over and then panicking as the next one comes along. The complete failure of some people to realise that ski lifts don’t wait until they are ready is quite baffling sometimes. They will queue up behind others, watch them successfully get onto the lift, all they have to do is slide forward a few metres, look behind them for the lift and then sit down when it comes up behind them. But somehow in that short space of time between queuing and sliding into position they will completely forget what they are there for and either look around at the scenery and other skiers, start asking me where I’m from, or whether they can come down the slope that is clearly marked “Danger – Avalanche are imminent” (sic) or even just chatting with the pers.. BAM! the ski lift hits them in the back of the legs completely taking them by surprise and on humourous occasions knocking them over. I do wonder what they thought was going to happen when they stood in the path of the ski lift, it really isn’t that difficult to use.

Anyway, I’ve been working on a video to show you my daily commute but a combination of my snowboarding ability, remembering to take a camera with a fully charged battery to work, Windows movie maker randomly crashing and poor weather have delayed this slightly. However here is a short video to show how bad the weather can get. This day wasn’t the worst but is typical of the weather going home in the evening. Snowboarding when you can’t see the snow is hard and as you can probably see I was using the edge of the mountain to gauge where I was and how fast I was going. I’ve also take out the sound and added some music, because blowing wind wasn’t very pleasant to listen to. Music is Gorillaz – White Light.

Snowboarding in the fog.

Doha

Aside from hearing about Doha in recent news with regards to the world cup I know practically nothing about it except that it was where I was getting my connection to Tokyo. But with a whole 24 hours, minus getting to the hotel at 4am, I thought I may as well have a little look around. Really though there isn’t that much reason to go there unless you are super rich and even then it looked like you would be better off going to Dubai as Doha isn’t even very nice to look at. There are some amazing skyscrapers in a little patch of the city but there doesn’t really seem to be anyone actually working there, except for constructions workers building even more skyscrapers. Google informed me that the number one thing to see in Doha was a long 7km waterfront with a view of the skyscrapers across the water, and while it is pretty, a main road on one side and 7km of concrete wall by the water it’s not exactly the greatest of attractions. A small collection of classic American and British cars as part of a temporary display was the only interesting thing along the water front. The national museum was similarly disappointing it being a block on the edge of a roundabout. 

 

 

 

 

 

The skyline from the water front is quite impressive though and then in the evening one of the buildings lights up in the sun.

So after walking along the walkway, a popular place for men to jog and the women to struggle along in burkas which don’t allow much freedom for jogging I thought I’d check out the local souk (market place) which had recently been done up to appear more

“Monsieur”

like a shopping centre rather than a messy market.

“Monsieur”

But there really isn’t that much there anyway except for carpet stores

“Monsieur”

“Oui?”

“Are you French?”

“No”

“Ah but you speak French, would you like me to show you around, I’m here looking for work, but I have lots of free time and I don’t have any friends”

“Uh sure, why not?”

And so I met Mounir, a friendly Tunisian who was apparently looking for work in Doha who kindly showed me around the interesting parts of the souk including the galleries of local artists and the local animal market which included some rather cute baby turtles swimming in a fish bowl, plenty of colourful birds and some rather odd baby rabbits.

After showing me around the souk we stopped for some tea and Mounir proceeded to tell me about his voyages around France and Germany where he apparently slept with a variety of young men and women and I finally realised that perhaps he wanted more than just to show me round the market and that previous suggestive comments weren’t just me misunderstanding his French. So I decided to make my excuses and go back to the hotel, although not before he gave me his telephone number and told me to call him once I got to Japan, even though I told him I wouldn’t have a phone.

So it was quite an interesting day in somewhere I would have struggled to find on the map. At least my hotel was nice.

Air Qatar Hero

Welcome back ladies and gentlemen to another episode of clog, the blog that brings a thick black sludge to your intertubes. So off to Japan again, this time to work in a ski-resort in the mountains of Nagano. Organised via the Internet with an Australian company (called Boobooski) who liaise with the ski resort, with little idea of what the job actually entails and even less of how to ski things were already off to a dubious start. Although I suppose it’s not quite as dubious as if a Tunisian man had tried to groom me in a Qatari souk…

Of course actually getting on the plane in the first place is always a good start to any trip and although most of England was frozen over and Heathrow had practically turned into massive hostel, Gatwick airport was still running at almost full capacity meaning my flight was still scheduled to run on time. No problems there then, unless you should happen to leave your passport in a photocopy machine in central London. No prizes for guessing who it was that managed to do that. As I’m standing in the check-in queue for my bags I go to look for my passport. Which isn’t in my pocket or my bags, or anywhere else about me. And at exactly the same moment that my mind races back through the morning, to the photocopy machine in the news agent, my phone rings. “Hi dad, I’ve left my passport in a news agent haven’t I?” Oops. A quick phone call to my friend Martin who I’d stayed with in London for the night “Hi Martin, so uh…see if you can guess where my passport is?” And so Martin went into mission mode, making it back across London to the newsagent, where he jabbered madly at the lady there about a passport, who had no idea what he was talking about. Luckily her husband (who had served me) heard him and came out and challenged him to answer one simple question. “What is your name?!” Pausing momentarily to consider his options he decided to use his own name. “Martin”. “You have chosen…wisely” said the news agent as he handed over the treasure.

Martin, treasure in hand began the next leg of his epic quest and sped at speed probably approaching 30 mph on the underground and then over ground again on the express to Gatwick. I had been stood at the check-in desk for over an hour staring towards the lifts just waiting, when suddenly Martin burst fourth in a cloud of smoke, or possibly a dirty spot on my glasses, and sprinted towards me. He passed the baton over, mission complete and I ran up to the desk waving at to the man there, I was in time, just. I chatted idly with Martin while they checked my bags in, then suddenly I was off again, queuing through security and then sprinting to the boarding gate, which was naturally at the end of that wing of the airport. But I got there, boarded the plane, then sat in Gatwick airport for another hour as my plane was delayed because of the snow reasons.

Unfortunately this meant I missed my connection in Doha, Qatar and while my baggage apparently made a trip to Melbourne and back in the meantime (I don’t know why either but that’s where it went apparently) I got to spend a day in Doha in a rather nice four star hotel.