travel – dangermouse.net

Australia Day lunch

Today was Australia Day, the annual day when half of the country celebrates and other half wish that we were celebrating the occasion on a less controversial anniversary.

We hosted a lunch for my wife’s immediate family. We made some salads and roasted some chicken breasts to go on bread rolls. My wife also made a batch of brownies.

Over lunch we discussed our upcoming trip to Japan, and organised some planning details. I booked our tickets to Shibuya Sky, the observation deck to get a view over Tokyo. We wanted to get tickets for a bit before sunset, the best time to be up there. But even though the tickets only went on sale today for the day we want to go, when I logged in to buy them every entry time from 14:40 to after sunset was already sold out. So we settled for a 14:40 entry. Since there’s no time limit to your visit, we can choose to either stay for sunset, or leave a bit early after we’ve had enough.

Lunch took most of the afternoon and I went into ethics classes after that, so didn’t get much else done. Oh, in the morning I did a 5k run and had a shower afterwards, which consumed a big chunk of that time. So that was pretty much my day.

New content today:

Moving neighbours, booking Japan, games night

Yesterday I had my usual ethics classes during the day. I was also franticly updating the JR East website to see if I could buy tickets from Tokyo to Kawazu for our upcoming trip to Japan.

We’re planning to go to the Kawazu Cherry Blossom Festival, and the only day we can go is Monday 24 February. Which happens to be a public holiday in Japan. And over a million people go to this festival every year. And I’d previously checked about buying train tickets to get there from Tokyo, and seen that the JR East website only makes tickets available one month in advance. So on the 24th of January it was the first opportunity to buy tickets. I wanted to get them as quickly as possible to avoid missing out if the trains sold out.

But when I checked in the morning, I could still only buy tickets up to the 23rd of February. So I was intermittently refreshing the page, thinking it would probably tick over at some time during the day. 9am Japan time came and went, and still no change. I had to teach a couple of ethics classes, but sneaked in some updates. No change. But then after midday Japan time he site updated and I could book tickets!

I chose a train departing Tokyo just after 8am, arriving in Kawazu about 10:30, and a train returning at 15:44, getting back a bit after 18:00. I managed to book the tickets. But I noticed that the next two trains returning to Tokyo (about every half hour) had no seats available already by the time I’d finished! I suspect that given it’s a long weekend, a lot of people want to return to Tokyo that evening.

On Friday evening it was board games night at one of my friends’ place. I arrived while some of the others were playing a game of Landmarks, a new game for us. Since one person was giving clues and the rest of us were trying to solve them together, I could join in. In this game one player is trying to lead all the others across a hexagon map, by giving word clues. It starts with three hexes having words on them, and then the clue-giver attempts to direct the guessers where to place new hexes by writing related words on them. You should put them near hexes with related meanings and far from hexes with opposing meanings. It was tricky and we messed up several times, but ultimately managed to win by the skin of our teeth.

Our host made home made pork, fennel, and apple sausage rolls, which were delicious snacks.

Then we split into two groups since we had seven people. I played Root with two others, while the other four played Ticket to Ride: Europe. In the Root game, I played the Vagabond, with the others playing the Cats and Birds.

It was a very close game, with all of our points tracking one another closely throughout. But in the end the Cats prevailed. After this we rejoined groups for a big seven-player game of Apples to Apples to round out the night.

Today I went for a 5k run in the morning. I took it easy since I felt a bit tired, but was still pleased with my time. Then I cleaned the bathroom and shower while cooling off afterwards.

I’m making sourdough today and we didn’t have any bread left, so we walked up to the pie shop for lunch. Then later we went out again to do some shopping for lunch tomorrow, when my wife’s family are coming over. We’re just going to roast some chicken and make potato salad and a green salad.

On the way back we passed this brand new public art installation near the shops – it wasn’t there just a couple of days ago:

The bird in the statue’s hand looks like a tiny pelican. I’ll have to take a closer look another day to see if I can positively identify it.

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New content today:

Planning for cherry blossoms

I slept in a bit this morning, but then got up, had breakfast, and embarked on a 5k run. The weather was far too warm and humid, and it was a real struggle today, with a slow time. But at least I have the virtue of doing some exercise regardless.

Last night while I was watching a movie on Netflix (The Dead Don’t Die), I discovered when I tried to turn the TV off that the batteries in the remote had died, apparently mid-movie. I couldn’t turn the TV off! And AFAIK there are no physical controls on the TV. I could have just pulled the plug out, but I was reluctant since it’s plugged into a power board with a bunch of other stuff and it would have been non-trivial to work out which was the correct cord. So I scavenged batteries from another device, and managed to turn the TV off.

Today I went out to the supermarket specifically to buy new batteries. When I got home I opened the remote to install brand new ones, and discovered that one of the emergency batteries Id installed last night had leaked! Urk! So I removed those batteries and stuck them in my battery recycling pile, and cleaned out the leaked chemicals carefully with cotton tips and isopropyl alcohol. before installing the new batteries.

I also spent time sewing up Scully favourite plush toy. Again. She’s ripped holes and extracted stuffing from it about 20 or 30 times, and I keep repairing it because it’s her oldest and most favourite dog toy.

In travel planning, my wife’s sister sent us this article about cherry blossoms in Japan, saying that we’ll be there around the right time to view the early February-blooming flowers in Kawazu, a day trip from Tokyo. I’m keen to go there and see them, because in all the times I’ve visited Japan I’ve never seen more than the odd single tree with blossoms on it—one time in Yokohama in February I was surprised to spot one blooming that early. But it appears the Kawazu variety always blooms so early. So now I want to try to plan our time to fit in a journey there to see them.

New content today:

Booking Tokyo

Today was very warm, 31°C in the city, 39°C in some suburbs. I did a 5k run in the morning, reluctantly, as it was already almost 25°C at 9am.

Back home, I had two main tasks for the day. First I photographed a new batch of Irregular Webcomic! strips, based on the scripts I’ve been writing the past few days. This is really getting near the end. I wound up a few of the story themes and there’s not much left to do with the remaining ones. I expect I might be able to finish completely with one more batch of comics, probably made late January or early February.

The second task was to book several of the things we’d planned out for Tokyo at my sister-in-law’s place yesterday. We booked a tea ceremony, in Ginza. And a day trip tour to Hakone to see Mount Fuji. These things will be done by the others while I am working in ISO Photography standards meetings. I also want to book tickets to the Shibuya Sky observation deck, but they only open for booking four weeks in advance, so that has to wait until the end of January.

While booking those, I also booked a car rental for Auckland for our short trip to New Zealand in March. This is only a 3-day trip over the weekend to visit my wife’s nephew and his partner there for their combined 30th birthdays. My wife’s sister and mother are going too, but they are arriving several days earlier and spending a week there. We’re going to collect the car from the airport on Friday and go pick them up at their hotel to drive up to the Bay of Islands for the weekend, before coming back to Auckland for departure on Monday.

I assembled some of the IWC comics. And then spent a bit of time in the afternoon pondering story details for Episode IX in Darths & Droids, discussing with co-authors, and making notes. It’s quite a shift in mode from normal strip writing in the middle of a movie. I have to switch mental gears and get refamiliarised with the new movie. I’ve spent the past two years viewing scenes from Episode VIII over and over again, and now I have to discard all of that and start on the new movie. I’ve rewatched it twice in the past few weeks, including one time through in slow motion, rewinding and pausing every minute or so to catch details and make notes.

For dinner I made pizza, topped simply with potato and rosemary. I used a couple of tips I saw on a cooking show last week. Because I’m using a domestic oven rather than a pizza oven, the temperature is lower and the pizza cooks more slowly (though still pretty quickly as I use the maximum temperature). So one tip is to add more water to the dough, since it has longer to dry out in the oven. I increased the water from a strict 1:2 ratio with the flour, adding an extra 5 mL to make 130 mL of water to 250 g of flour. And I hand-stretched the dough by first using my fingers to delineate a fatter crust around the rim before flattening and stretching the central area. Overall both changes worked well!

New content today:

A nice Italian dinner, planning for Japan

Friday was online games night with my friends, so no blog post. Earlier in the evening, I went with my wife to a new Italian restaurant I’d discovered recently, named Enoteca 128. It’s a short drive from our home and has outdoor tables so we can take Scully. It’s in a relatively quiet alley off the main road, so it was a bit quieter than some of the usual places we go, and Scully could relax rather than bark at everyone walking their dogs past.

The food was delicious. We began with some zucchini flowers stuffed with sweet potato and taleggio cheese, served with a spicy dressing of softened red capsicum and almonds. We both had tagliatelle pasta, with a simple tomato and basil sauce for my wife, while I had the lamb ragu. Then for dessert I had a honey pannacotta with fresh berries and honeycomb. It was all very god and we’ll definitely keep this place in mind for future visits.

Earlier in the day we did a big walk and I worked on some comics stuff. And then after getting home from dinner I played games with friends: Ticket to Ride, Jump Drive, Just One, Azul, Can’t Stop. I won the last game, so finished on a high note, despite not doing so well in the others.

Today, Saturday, I did a 5k run first thing in the morning. The cool weather is heating up again and it was already 25°C when I did my run at 9 am. So I went a bit slowly.

After lunch we went over to my wife’s sister’s place to meet her and their mother and do some itinerary planning for our upcoming trip to Tokyo at the end of February. They want to plan and book some activities, such as a tea ceremony, and a day trip to Mount Fuji. We went through a bunch of options and found some online activities to book. So that’s more organised now. We also discussed our other trip, to Auckland in New Zealand, which is just a few weeks later. For that one we need to book a hire car, as we’ll be doing some driving, up to the Bay of Islands.

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Seeking tea ceremonies

We had a rude awakening this morning, when Scully threw up on the bed, around 6:30. Normally my wife gets up about then but I sleep in a bit – but today I had to leap out of bed and deal with Scully being sick, and strip off the bed linen and get it in the washing machine. Scully seems okay though, she recovered quickly and ate her breakfast with gusto.

I had two ethics classes in the morning, then went for a walk to pick up Scully from my wife’s work (as she’d taken her with her after breakfast). I worked on some more Darths & Droids stuff again, trying to get ahead and start thinking about the start of Episode IX, which is coming up very soon.

I also spent some time searching for a traditional tea ceremony experience that we can book for Tokyo. My wife’s mother and sister are travelling with us at the end of February, and neither have been to Japan before. They are keen to try some cultural experiences, and thought a tea ceremony would be good. So I searched and found a few places in Tokyo that offer this. The range is quite broad, with some offering kimono dressing as part of it, others not, some traditional tatami mat seating on the floor, others table seating. I need to confirm with everyone what they would prefer before narrowing it down.

Last night I started watching Dune Part 2 on Netflix. Since Part 1 is no longer on Netflix, I read the plot summary on Wikipedia to remind myself. I’m very glad I did, because I would have been so confused without the refresher. But with it, I think I’ve followed all the important points of the story. I’ll watch more tonight, but at close to three hours running time I think I’ll have to split it over three nights of watching.

New content today:

Planning for a New Zealand trip

Today I did my 5k run in the morning before it got too hot. I briefly thought about trying another 7.5k, but yesterday was exhausting enough! Even though it was early in the morning, the sun felt like it had a sting in it and I used sunscreen.

I spent the morning doing a new Darths & Droids comic. In the afternoon I planned out a couple more weeks of ethics lesson topics, coming up with preliminary lists of questions for a week on “Hate” and a week on “Driving”. I also made a sourdough loaf for the new work week starting tomorrow, so my wife can take sandwiches from home for lunch.

We’ve also been planning a short trip to New Zealand, in March next year. My wife’s nephew has moved to Auckland. From Oslo! – where he spent a few years after leaving Sydney. So since he’s now relatively close to here, his mother (my wife’s sister) is planning a trip to visit for his birthday next year, and my wife asked if we could go along too. Her sister is going for a week, but we’re just going to take a long weekend, leaving on Friday and flying home on Monday. So today my wife chose some hotels in Auckland and we booked one. We also did flights a few days ago.

So we now have three trips booked for next year: Tokyo in February, for my ISO Photography Standards meeting. Auckland in March. And Berlin in June, which will be for the next ISO Photography meeting, which will be a plenary meeting of the whole technical committee (which happens every two years – the last one was in Okayama, Japan, in 2023).

This is after this year, when we’re not traveling anywhere. We knew we weren’t doing any overseas trips, but we’d considered a driving trip to Adelaide around September/October. However when my wife changed jobs we had to reconsider, as she wouldn’t have enough leave saved up, so we abandoned that idea.

In other news, our new neighbours next door gave us a jar of home made Seville orange marmalade! We’ve been eating it on bread and it’s deliciously tart.

New content today:

Sudden cranes

I had four classes this morning, which ate up half the day. At lunch time I took Scully for a walk to get some fish & chips. We walked past the construction site of the new apartment complex that is being built and I was surprised to see that three giant cranes have sprung up over the weekend.

I also popped into the post office to get a box to pack an old unopened Lego set that I’d sold on eBay. It was a 1999 Star Wars X-wing set that I’d bought back then because it was on sale. I bought two of them and never bothered opening one of them. I checked recently, and unopened copies of this set sell for several hundred dollars! So I auctioned it off, and got $310 for it. So I had to get a packing box to mail it – to Switzerland! Back home I packed the set up with lots of bubble wrap. And then had to trek out to the post office again to send it.

In other news, we’re planning a trip to Tokyo next February, to coincide with one of my ISO Photography meetings. My wife wanted to go to Japan again, so she can do things while I’m in the meetings. And she invited her mother and sister to come too – they’ve never been to Japan before, so they were excited and we all booked tickets on the same flights.

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Day trip to Berrima

With the week off work, we decided to spend the day taking a drive out into the countryside. My wife and I took Scully for a drive to Berrima, a nice little “day-tripper” village a couple of hours south-west, in the Southern Highlands region.

We arrived about 11:00 and spent some time looking at the various handicrafts and foodie shops.

Many of the buildings in Berrima are very old and heritage listed. There’s an old sandstone courthouse and a prison where they kept convicts back in the early 19th century. To go along with this old-timey feel, there are a couple of antiques shops. We went in one and looked around. There were rooms full of stuff older than me. And then in one room I spotted something a little incongruous for an “antique shop” – see if you can spot it:

We stopped in at the Berrima Vault House for lunch. This is a restaurant housed in a heritage building built in 1844 by convict labourers, originally to house convicts. A waiter gave us a guided tour of the place before we had lunch, showing us several basement rooms with barred windows, that were used to house convicts. There was also a tunnel leading from the basement directly to the old courthouse across the road.

Besides the history, the food was good! I had a baked red snapper fillet for lunch:

followed by elderflower pannacotta with poached pears:

After lunch we drove back home via a different route, heading east to the coast through Macquarie Pass, which is a beautiful scenic winding road down a steep mountainside through lush forest. We got home just before dinner time, after a total driving distance of 320 km. A great day out!

New content today:

A day out on the Parramatta River

Friday night was online board games night, so I was too busy to write up a blog entry. But yesterday was very busy!

My wife and I got up early. She went to the gym, while I took Scully out and had breakfast. When she got back we prepped to head out for the day. We drive down to Greenwich Point Wharf and caught a ferry over to Cockatoo Island.

We weren’t here to explore the island, but to change ferries and catch another one up the Parramatta River. In fact, dogs aren’t allowed on Cockatoo Island, but we were only with Scully on the ferry wharf, and didn’t exit to the actual island. The second ferry took us to Meadowbank, where we alighted to meet Luna, Scully’s best buddy who used to live next door to us. They moved about six months ago and we’ve only seen them once since then. The two poodles went bananas when they saw each other and were so excited and jumping all over the place.

Luna’s owner took us for a walk around her new neighbourhood. We walked under the John Whitton Bridge:

This is two bridges side by side, one for pedestrians, and one carrying two train lines. (There’s a road bridge a couple of hundred metres downstream, behind me as I took this photo.) We followed a walking/cycle track along the river shore, between mangroves on the river side and several playing fields on the right. The destination was a dog park, where we let both Luna and Scully off leash to have a run and play in the grass.

The day was very nice, not too hot, and without the rain of the previous few days. After letting the dogs play for a while, and catching up with our former neighbour, we walked back to the wharf and past it to her new apartment, where her husband was busy working. They have a very nice new place.

We left just before lunch and walked up to Meadowbank station to get something to eat at a cafe, but when we got there they said the kitchen had closed and they were only serving coffee! So we walked back down to the ferry wharf, where there was another cafe. We had lunch there – I got a Korean fried chicken burger, and my wife an eggs benedict with halloumi. Then we hopped on a ferry back down the river towards home.

We passed under the Gladesville Bridge:

This was the longest concrete arch bridge in the world when it opened in 1964, until surpassed by the Krk Bridge in 1980. And here’s a view of the city as we got closer to Cockatoo Island again:

We changed ferries again on Cockatoo Island, and I got a shot of Scully, although it was a bit windy!

After returning to Greenwich, we went on a bit of a drive, getting home after 4pm. I went for a 5k run in the evening and then it was straight into board games night. I played games of It’s a Wonderful World, which I lost in the last round by just a few points after taking a big lead into that round, and Viticulture, which I won.

This morning, Saturday, I went for another 5k run! Then just rested at home for much of the day, before the mad two-day scramble for Christmas begins tomorrow. I went for a walk in the early evening to drop off two Dungeons & Dragons books at Professor Plums, for the DM who runs games there on Saturday nights. I’ve decided I want to get rid of a lot of the 5th edition adventure books that I have, since I’m never going to use them. I asked if she’d like them and there were two she didn’t have already, so I took them up and gave them to her. (Storm King’s Thunder, and Princes of the Apocalypse, if you’re curious.)

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