Back in JapanTyphoon

I've completed the Australian leg of my travels, have returned to Japan, and am back in the Tokyo apartment. I had a wondrous time 'down-under,' and it was great to experience so many places. In the days to come, I'll tell you more about my activities and my innermost impressions of the Australian cities I visited.

Now, I'm back in Tokyo, and my soul feels contented, although the weather is a bit damp. In fact, today is the 35th consecutive day of rain in central Tokyo, a new record, and tomorrow is very likely to be the 36th. In the last 24 hours, there has been 36mm of rain.  Typhoon / Tropical Storm Surigae is off the coast and may bring more wind and rain tomorrow if it doesn't weaken and change course, which is quite likely. 

I arrived back on 25th September on a lovely Japan Airlines flight from Sydney in Business Class, thanks to a successful low upgrade bid. I was flying on a Boeing 777-300, which was very comfortable, with a lie-flat seat, massive entertainment screen, and lots of space. As it was a day flight, almost 10 hours' worth, I didn't turn it into a bed and only had a post-meal nap, as I didn't want to create that jet lag phenomenon. I'm glad I did, as I slept through the night, waking up around five in the morning on Saturday.

I've wandered around the local area, up and down the river and to the local parks, to reacquaint myself with things and see what has changed in the nearly three months I've been away. In short, not a lot has changed; the major noticeable difference is that the two trees out the front of the apartment block have been well and truly pruned. Everything else looks and feels the same, including shopping in the local supermarket.

On Sunday I took the long walk to Tokyo Station, which is always a great place to visit, almost always very busy and packed with all kinds of life going about their business. I often find it strange that if you ever want to feel completely alone whilst being in a big crowd, go to the station. Yet, if you feel lonely, you can also head to the underground shopping streets and feel the warmth of humanity, which chases the birds of loneliness away. 

I didn't buy anything down there, but I headed down the street to the massive flagship GU, Uniqlo, and Daiso stores at Marronnier Gate, Ginza, which, despite the number of people, is always a nice place to shop. I got some domestic supplies, such as fluffy towels, vases, flowers, containers, and a super large mug. Now I can have a cuppa, British style, whilst looking over the river from my balcony.

I was awoken at 4:47am yesterday morning by a 4.9 magnitude earthquake, and as the epicentre was only in the next-door prefecture, the warnings only arrived as the quake had already roused me from my slumber. Now, it may sound scary, up here on the 8th floor, the wobbling wasn't aggressive or excessive. Indeed, dare I say, I actually find it almost comforting. No point getting scared, as such tremors from the ground up are a fact of life here in Tokyo. Thus, after a brief look outside, a drink, wee, and then back to sleep, I went for an hour. 

In the last few days, I've gone by the lovely statue of Matsuo Basho, which is a five-minute walk away from the apartment, at various times of the afternoon to see if I can spot it moving. Yes, legend has it that the statue faces Mount Fuji during the day and shifts position to gaze down the river to Tokyo Bay of a night. As of now, I've yet to see the big bronze sitting poet move, but I'll keep you informed. 

That's all for today..... Copyright © 2026 Seafront Media

What is fun anyway?

Can you believe it is September already?  It seems to have come around so fast this year, although I would wager that isn’t too surprising, as I’m travelling and they do say that time flies when you’re having fun. Yet, who exactly ‘they’ are is now and always has been a mystery to me, and I’m not sure ‘fun’ is the right word to describe my enjoyment of my explorations. The word ‘fun’ to me dances with thoughts of fairground rides, waltzers, dodgems, rickety roller-coasters through my mind.  I can hear a ringmaster like Stephen Fry bellow out lines like ‘All the fun of the fair,  roll up roll up roll up’ and so on. If not that, then I’m transported back to a time when I was a child building sandcastles with a bucket and a spade with my name burnt into the staff when fun was free and true bliss cost the price of a stick of candyfloss!

Do we have fun when we reach our fifties?  Sure, we have pleasure; we enjoy doing things, perhaps more sedately than years gone by, but is it ‘fun’ or is it contentment? Having a croissant sitting on a bench by a wall in South Brisbane, watching people pass by and CityKats chug up and down the river, with reptilian company, was delightful. But perhaps not what you'd call 'fun'!

I arrived in Cairns on Thursday evening after three whole weeks of lovely contentment in Brisbane, which I’ll add is a delightful city.  I very much enjoyed my time there; it was joyous and relaxing, although on average I walked 5.9 miles a day!  There is something easygoing about the city, which is surprisingly walkable, that appeals. It is easy to get around; travel costs 50c a trip on public transport, so it's foolish not to take advantage of it.

I flew on a National Jet Systems, which operates as QantasLink, new(ish) Airbus A220, which entered service in April 2025; my first time on that type of winged wonder, and it was a lovely, comfortable two-hour flight. My bid for an upgrade was successful, so I flew in business class, as advised to me a couple of hours before the flight, which was a nice bonus. No veggie meal was loaded on the flight, but the crew got me a cake from business and a quiche from economy, so I was delighted. I hadn’t expected any nosh on the flight, so even a drink was a welcome extra. It was so much better than my previous flight with Qantas from Melbourne to Brisbane, where the crew seemed to treat passengers as an inconvenience. So, jolly well done to the purser of flight QF1566 for your friendly, professional service and ingenuity.

I arrived at my next apartment hotel not long after 18:30 and picked up the keys, before heading off to the supermarket for essential supplies. Well, one must have teabags, milk, bread and chocolate to survive the night through.  The next day I wandered through the city, then onto the esplanade and promenade and enjoyed the super scenery and lovely weather. A breeze gently tickled the fronds of the palm trees as the sun kissed everything with 28-degree warmth, and you know, the world seemed alright. I’m not sure you’d call this ‘fun’ per se, but I was certainly enjoying my day! 

That's all for today..... Copyright © 2026 Seafront Media

Oh for the love of clouds........

Clouds across the moon, empire of clouds, far above the clouds, clouds in my coffee, beyond the clouds, dark clouds, black clouds, white clouds, mushroom clouds, clouds of loneliness, and more than thirty just clouds. Puzzled?  I am talking about songs; all the aforementioned and dozens and dozens more have cloud or clouds in the title and are, to a greater or lesser degree, about those dewy bundles of ice crystals and water droplets. Or perhaps more accurately, of what they may mean to us, or others of this race we call human.  Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not a nephologist, nor a meteorologist, nor an ologist of any kind; I just....well, I'll admit it, I like clouds. I might, if you push me a bit, even go as far as saying, I love clouds!  (Quit your sniggering!)

I've been thinking about clouds a lot over the last few days: their shapes, sizes, colours, names, composition, and so on. I'm not exactly sure what initially brought them into the conscious mind, probably the abundance of them at points various during my days here in Brisbane. Considering it is winter down this sphere of the globe, the appearance of clouds on a daily basis should not be a wholly unexpected feature. And it hasn't; most days have been a mix of sun and clouds, with a little bit of rain thrown in for good measure. Should you probe my grey matter with your searching rods, you might find a few stands in my belief cortex that would say it was going to be colder, wetter, and more like Sydney. Yet, I've been pleasantly surprised by how mild and nice it has been here. So much so that I've even got a touch of sunburn on my nose and ears; sunblock hasn't exactly been in my weary traveller's knapsack!

I was up at one of my favourite river stopping points the other day, when a whole bank of cloud floated on by, high in the sky, dissecting the wide blue like a giant friendship bracelet round the globe. On another day, I was walking across the Story Bridge, as the wind tore at my clothes and stung my face and hands like a hundred tiny needles being thrown at my extremities. At the same time, these huge billowing clouds slowly danced overhead in their magnificent menace, creating a foreboding desire to pick up the pace and avoid a potential drenching downpour. The clouds looked, ok you'll think me foolish, but they looked angry. Honestly, they looked angry and if not angry, then more cross than if your dunked biscuit drops the soggy half into your tea or you start accidentally cleaning your teeth with shaving gel.

Today is another fine example. I'd taken a ferry to the furthest point on the F1 route, Northshore Hamilton, which has one of the smallest beaches you've ever seen. There's quite a bit of development going on in the area, but I was there just to have a peek around, see how far it would be to walk to the Story Bridge, with the preposterous idea of walking over it. So, peek I had, and as it was going to be more than a mile to walk to the bridge, I decided against it and sat on a concrete bench by this little beach and had essential supplies of a mini croissant, OJ and a Snickers and contemplated life for a bit. There was a tiny bit of sun, but it was mostly a sky constructed of clouds up high and down low. Clouds floated by at different speeds and in slightly different directions depending on their altitude, I supposed. The cloudscape was just as pretty and as magnificent as the rippling river, bobbing boats and wind-ruffled trees. The more I looked, the more I saw. Some had shapes, some looked like animals, whilst others looked like....errr....clouds!

It occurred to me that I do rather like looking at clouds and indeed, I do spend a reasonable amount of time casting my eyes skywards. At least I do these days when time is both abundant and precious. I doubt I would have had much time for cloud watching when I was working in Hastings, nor when I was a much younger person working at the radio station, when the only time I would look to the heavens was to make sure the aerial was still up!  Yet, now, when I'm over half a century old, I've time a plenty to gaze to the 'up above' and contemplate the life and times of clouds. Ok, that might be exaggerating a wee bit; I don't look up and plot a whole biography of each individual dew conglomeration. But I do wonder how and when it was formed, what places it has blown over and which towns or cities have yet to see its natural amazingness. 

I sit on my balcony and look at a delightful row of clouds spanning the sky in massive fingers from an unseen hand. They float on by like balls of candy floss in the wind. Yet, unlike the sugar confection, this layer reflects a hue of amber and red from the setting sun that has already passed below Mount Coo-tha for my eyes. As I marvel at their beauty, I can't help contemplating life, but not the whole great big 'meaning of' sort of thoughts. No, it is more the immediate sort of life. It is the here and now that I'm thinking of, the enjoyment, the excitement, the contentment or the isolation, loneliness or whatever the sensation is that ripples round my bones. 

It occurred to me, as I watched the clouds from Northshore Hamilton earlier, that we don't give these combinations of particles as much love and credit as we should. No, we're mostly bemoaning their presence, castigating them for just being up where they belong. We look skyward and almost always feel downcast as soon as our eyes rest on them, and I think that is wrong. I think we should look at them with fondness, joy and dare I say love, without you thinking I should be carted off to the nearest funny farm.  (Are we allowed to say funny farm these days? Will some thought police come out of the woodwork and tell me that it's not politically correct or the correct phraseology in 2026? Funny farm, should, like a lot of my childhood learned vocabliry, be consigned to the dustbin of outdated language.)

I give you a challenge today, yes, this very day, to go outside, or at the very least, to the window and look skyward and be pleased, no, delighted to see a cloud. I also want you to say a wee 'thank you' to that cloud. Ok, you don't have to say it out loud; I know you're not as crazy as me, so maybe you just mouth it, or say it silently in your mind. Just feel a sense of gratitude toward it, and as you're doing that, try, if you can, to marvel at its beauty. Needless to say, if the only time you go outside today is when you're driving to town, looking up for extended periods of time is not recommended. 

That's all for today..... Copyright © 2026 Seafront Media

Monday Monday......

Congratulations, Mr Norris, on taking another win in the last, for the foreseeable future, Dutch Grand Prix. Thoroughly good watch, even if I did have to stay up late last night to view it all, whilst down this end of the world. 

Of course little Lando will never actually read that congratulatory salutation, so I wonder why I made it. I’m not alone; we often post such statements on social media offering compliments and commendations to stars of screen, stage, song or sport, and we do so willingly. But, we know, at least, most of us know that those said celebrities’ eyes will never gaze upon our words. We offer those thanks and good wishes to the universe, much like the religious offer up prayers to their chosen deity and divinity. We’re doing the modern social media equivalent of standing on a corner in the town square shouting our head off that so and so did so well. 

But why do we do it?  Why do we want to shout such congratulations or heap such praise in a public way? We’re not doing it to make a direct message to our chosen hero or heroine; we’re signalling our sentiments to our friends, relations, followers, subscribers or other such assembled throng. It is almost like a less hypocritical virtue signalling that our snobbish QI-watching, quiche-eating, soy-latte drinking acquaintances tell us is so wrong. Therefore, if we’re not saying it to them, are we really just saying it to each other, you know, to our ‘tribe’ and by writing them are we just doing so to demonstrate our membership of that tribe, group, gang, collective or whatever other word you choose to use? I think we are, but more than that, I think we actually feel better for doing so and perhaps being part of that sentiment of collective celebration gives us a little boost, a little spark of goodness. I suppose it also has an added benefit of strengthening the bond between us fans of whichever celeb it is. Of course, having said all that, in these modern times, where, for many, the online world is more important than this thing we call reality. Where the views of strangers are held with greater regard than those we physically see, it could all be done to achieve a greater number of thumbs up, likes, hearts or similar.

None of that was what I was thinking about as I walked along the banks of The Brisbane River, crossing The Story Bridge. Nope, I didn’t contemplate commenting on social media at all; mostly my thoughts revolved around the natural beauty of the plants dotted along the route, the strange engineering feat of a cantilever from the 40s that still carries one heck of a lot of traffic. The oddly worrying cracks in the concrete balustrades and the teeth-shaking vibrations on the aforementioned construction. When I paused, under a wooden pergola beside the river when the rain came, I thought of little other than the smell of fresh rain that tingled my nostrils and the pat pat pat of the drops hitting the corrugated tin roof with increasing force.

I like the rain; I liked it today; it felt right for a reflective mood on a Monday; sometimes it is the simple things in life that give the most joy. So, if I were you, I’d just get out and smell the world after the rain.

21332 steps completed today!

That's all for today..... 

 

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Everything revolves around Thursday!

It is a Thursday; I can tell that by two methods: first, the calendar that features on the front screen of my mobile phone, and second, is that realisation that I’ve been here in Brisbane, Queensland, for a week!  Thus far, all my flights have been on Thursdays, and therefore my accommodation is always booked for the same day of the week.

Why did I choose a Thursday for the day of my travel? You may well ask. Indeed, there are numerous reasons why Thursdays are a good day for a jaunt of the air journeying kind, not least that it avoids the weekend surcharge, which traditionally, at least in the airline world, includes Fridays. This is, so I’m told, because these days are, or were, the most popular with the leisure/family traveller. Things have changed somewhat in recent times, and it varies depending on geographical areas as well. I could also offer safety as a factor: the day of the week when most plane crashes take place is Tuesday, followed by Wednesday, and whilst Sunday is said to be the day when crashes have least occurred, that is a weekend day when the flights are fullest, and upgrades are least likely to be granted. Fridays are the days with the most delays, and therefore Thursdays are thusly the best day of the week to fly. I could tell you all that, but while there is a grain of truth in it, it's mostly bunkum, and I picked Thursday because it was one of six other options, and I had to pick one of them, and it was the day of the week one day before my temporary stay visa for Japan ran out!

Today I arose at half eight of the morning, as is my usual leisurely awakening time in the days passing. All normal ablutions and breakfasting were completed customarily, which saw me exit the front door of the hotel before a non-existent Grandfather clock would have finished chiming ten times. I looked up and down river for a ferry; with none on this stretch of the river, I ambled down to the bicentennial bikeway and gently strolled my way towards the city centre. There was little in my mind of an agenda or destination; indeed, my grey matter was untroubled by thoughts of any nature as the morning's beauty greeted my eyes with each passing step. I like days like this, where plans are few and far between; I like Thursdays like this, where the freedom to just wander is luxuriously inviolable.

I did a circuit of the main shopping thoroughfares of George, Albert, Edward, Adelaide, Elizabeth, and Queens Streets. I also passed through some delightfully old-fashioned arcades, Tattersalls being one such example, that made me hanker for being an Edwardian Gentleman of independent means. Alas, as my means, which while they are independent, are less like means and more like beans, I repaired to the nearby botanic gardens and quaffed my lunch of pastries and iced coffee. Of course, on the way, I caught sight, if you can catch sight of the monstrously tall 222 Margaret Street, which is perhaps more popularly known as Brisbane Skytower! Which, at 900 feet and 90 stories, is both Brisbane’s and Queensland’s tallest building, plus it has an underground eight-level car park! Normally, such a tall building would loom over you and look out of place; however, Brisbane is slightly different: most of the really tall skyscrapers are in the CBD – the Central Business District, in a sort of loose rectangle. They belong together, and it is the few historic buildings dotted around the central city that, beautiful though they are, seem more out of place and like something created for a theme park!

After fortifying myself, I ambled across the river on the lovely Kangaroo Point Bridge to enjoy a stroll along the Riverwalk to South Bank and wherever this wind, will, and my feet would carry me. The sun was breaking through the clouds, and despite it being winter, its warmth and potency managed to tingle the nose, prompting a judicious application of sunscreen! I did the slop of the Slip, Slop, Slap, Seek and Slide, beloved of all sun-conscious Aussies.

I was in my own little world, just marvelling at the beauty of nature and the man-made world blending in near-perfect harmony of this little corner of Brisbane. Apart from the slightly odd aroma of the factor 50 that was now shielding my snozz from the harmful UV rays, everything was delightfully pleasant. I smiled at people and people, well, some of them, smiled back. I paused for some more iced coffee (without the ice) and walked onward at a pace that would seem positively glacial in the busy streets of London.

I’d passed the closed Streets Beach and wandered through most of South Bank Parklands when I happened upon a big wheel. Well, ok, I’d seen it before; you can’t really not see it, considering it's about 197 feet high and has over 40 capsules, or pods or gondolas or whatever the flippin ‘eck those cars are called. I checked out the price; it seemed rather expensive, $25, and it rotated quite fast. However, I’m only in Brisbane for another two weeks, and if not now, then when? The staff were friendly, much more so than Sydneysiders, which is a subject I’m sure I’ll come back to at another time, anyway, soon as I was climbing my way in a gondola, which was, thank goodness, air-conditioned. Up, up and away I went, and I rushed about getting a few photos, and soon it was down, down, and down we went. However, what I didn’t realise was that for my $25, I didn’t get just one go round the Wheel of Brisbane, nope, nor was it two, or three or even four, but five whole rotations! Yes, round I went five times on that lovely big wheel, which even stopped a few times, including with me on the very top. It was quite a lovely way to spend twenty minutes, and the views were delightful.  On the way out, I was so elated with my experience, I even purchased the commemorative photo, which is actually a green-screen jobby rather than using the real wheel as a backdrop, but hey, I was on a post-revolutionary high, so what did I care about wasting another $35?

There aren’t many days when going round and round can be as pleasurable as this one!

That's all for today..... Copyright © 2026 Seafront Media