Robot Claw

I’m back in Australia again. The trip was as awful as always. I spent at least half the 15 hour pacific flight just sitting doing nothing. Aside from this I didn’t eat, or watch any movies or even listen to music. Just played a bit of Gameboy (yes Gameboy) and did a little bit of reading.

That’s four photos stitched together. One in an airport, and three in my seat on the three flights. It all looks the same, and it all felt the same.

Happily I’m here now, which means I can focus on having a fun time. But after… 47 hours of being awake my first priority is a good sleep 🙂

Tomorrow I will fly to Australia to spend a few weeks visiting mum and my friends.

This will be my 16th trip to Australia, my 16th solo international trip, and tomorrow’s journey will include my 52nd pan-Pacific flight. In total it will take about 28 hours from take off here to touch down in Sydney, and 23 of those will be in the air.

My schedule is mostly wide open for Australia, but I hope to see a few new things (including 2023 Vivid in Sydney). Mostly though it’s about being with mum and hanging out with friends. Oh and eating the delicious cuisine 😉

Then, In about 3 weeks, I’ll fly from Australia to Japan…

This will be my 10th trip to Japan, and I’m excited since I haven’t been there in four months during the summer in six years. Furthermore I’ll be staying right in the middle of Akihabara for the first time! I’ve got a lot planned for my time in Japan, so I hope I don’t wear myself out in Australia!

Of course I’ll be blogging during the trip, although I don’t know with what frequency. Regardless, watch this space to follow along with my adventures 🙂

We went to the St Patrick’s Day parade yesterday. From an early hour the city was full of people in festive green clothes, and if you didn’t have any street vendors had popped up to happily sell you some.

The parade travels over 30 city blocks and lasts for about 5 hours. According to the forecast, there were 150,000 marchers and over two million spectators. We inadvertently ended up at a good viewing position about two blocks past the starting point.

The parade alternated bands (many with bagpipes), military groups, school groups and Irish community groups. There was a seemingly never-end to them, and we saw all sorts of banners and flags and uniforms walking by.

The crowds lining the street were deep, and it was all a bit surreal to stand in such a crowd watching another large crowd walk past! But it was fun, and we stayed much longer than we had expected to.

I was particularly impressed by the school bands. I don’t recall any school I attended ever having a band, and certainly not like some of those I saw yesterday: dozens or even hundreds of students in some cases all wearing flashy uniforms and playing every imaginable instrument (including xylophones and triangles!) as they walked through the city.

The above is a shot taken in one of the side-streets, which were used as a staging area. These were stuffed with people waiting to join the parade, and the streets were closed for 12 blocks to hold them all!

Notably this was the first parade since before Covid to have no restrictions, and it was great to participate in an event that confirmed the pandemic part of Covid is behind us (yes I know the disease isn’t, but life has moved on).

However security was very tight, and we were both particularly impressed by the unmarked cars and bodyguards that were part of the retinue of the NY Governor as she walked past.

Afterwards: more shopping and eating. Another full day in NYC, and as usual we’ll need a day or two to recover from all the activity 🙂

We’re in NYC. Let’s call this a belated birthday trip, but as usual that’s just an excuse to shop and eat and do something fun over spring break.

The city is super busy. I’ve said on previous trips that it seemed ‘back to normal’ but even a year back was nothing compared to today.

There’s people everywhere and shops and fooderies are all packed. Our hotel room wasn’t even ready when we arrived – which is very unusual – and the concierge mentioned that they were at capacity last night.

Perhaps this is due to the fact that tomorrow is St Patrick’s Day and there’s a massive parade scheduled which may apparently draw two million spectators?

We had a fun day of visiting our usual shops and eateries and buying absolutely essential items (like blind box toys and model kits) and eating wonderfully bland (for me) or delicious (for KLS) foods 🙂

Tomorrow we’re going to try and see this fabled parade. Will we succeed? Or will we be defeated by the biggest crowds we (probably) have ever seen? Stay tuned…

Yesterday was supposed to be our last day here, and we split up with me returning to Akihabara and KLS shopping in the massive Tokyo Station complex. We both shopped until we nearly dropped, and met back at the hotel. I made some extraordinary purchases, which I’m sure I’ll blog about in time.

Neither of us took many photos, so the ones on this entry are ‘out-takes’ from previous days.

Late last night we received a text from the airline: our flight home was significantly delayed, and the delay was long enough that we’d miss our connecting flight home and have to spend the night at Atlanta airport. Apparently this was due to a ‘computer glitch’, which we later learned was the FAA glitch in the USA that affected nearly 10,000 flights.

This is not the sort of news anyone wants to hear on the night before their departure home, but we decided on a plan quickly. We extended our hotel another day, booked an Atlanta hotel, and made the most of it! We now had nearly an entire extra day in Tokyo (and in addition are booked for tonight in two separate hotels in two countries)!

So we had an unplanned full day today. We visited some giant Game Centers, had a nice lunch and did a leisurely walk back to our hotel from Ueno, stopping in many shops along the way. It was far more relaxing than most days of this trip, and we ended up turning an unexpected delay into a nice day in the city.

It’s now late at night and we’re at the airport waiting to depart. We’re tired and have a long trip ahead of us, and are both hoping we can get some sleep on the flight.

As always Japan was welcoming and modern and convenient and surprising and efficient and a wonderful place to take a vacation. It’s interesting to see how the country has evolved in the over 20 years I’ve been visiting, and even in the pandemic years since my last trip it seems to have taken significant steps into the future (compared to the USA) while keeping in touch with its rich history and traditions.

I already look forward to what I will see when next I visit 🙂