Mexico, as it tends to do, had some tricks up it's sleeve. We had one of those days. The days I had almost completely forgotten. They were a big part of the impetus to move. You get up, big list of exciting activities and a few errands. Hit the ground running only to find yourself quickly hitting a road block. It takes the better part of the morning to get round the seemingly minimal hiccups but at some point you just bite the bullet and say, forget it, next! Then that's a bust too. By the end of the day you look back, tired, frustrated and incredibly irate and realize that despite a significant input of time, money, energy and ingenuity, you have accomplished nothing. Nothing at all. The list remains there, un-ticked, nothing completed. You KNOW it's not your fault, hell, you dont even think to blame yourself but that just makes it worse. You were Mexico Cities bitch for the day and there was just nothing you could have done about it. It likes to do that to you every now and then, just to remind you it can, that it's its own beast...then there's the other days...
Two days after that we had the Martinez get together. 30 or 40 Mexicans from every walk of life together to see Diana and I. Singing, dancing, eating, drinking and just enjoying themselves. It was delightful to be a part of. There is so much love and dedication in the families in Mexico. It is a wonder to see it and even more of a wonder to be a part of it. Ah Mexico....
We hit Paris only mildly exhausted. We slept a bit on the plane but not much. The Hotel was more than we expected and I can say, if any of you readers out there ever win a shit load of money I would recommend staying a night or two at airport hotels to unwind between flights...well at least in Paris de Gaul. The village there is beautiful and in mid summer it is full of flowers and cobbled streets and those little brick houses and bread and cheese...and well just French goodness in general. We even talked about coming back...to a village near an airport! Well, suffice to say, whether it was the 12 hours on a flight and another fifteen to come or whether it was just a nice place, a goods night rest in a comfy bed and a chance to do a few laps and loosen your bones was Fantastic! Thanks folks!
Getting into Japan proved to be pretty smooth all in all. We had a tiny hiccup in immigration but nothing that merits a story so we will skip to Kushiro...oh, Haneda airport was pretty close to empty...weird. The first impression of flying into Kushiro airport is of green. Everything is green here in Summer. I was actually reminded of Thailand when we touched down. Giant leafed tropical looking plants coming up everywhere. Empty areas all around. It's not what you would expect from a freezing Island to the far north of Japan. Getting out of the bus though, makes you remember pretty darn quick. We are pretty much in the middle of Summer now and it's jumper weather. I mean it might have got to 20 today. Maybe. And that's it. It isn't going to get much warmer. They had a 28 degree day the other day, pretty darn hot apparently. I'm just looking forward to winter.
On that first day we got in around fourish. We said a quick hello to our boss, dumped our stuff and headed into town for dinner. In Tokyo I am told that pretty much everyone can speak English. You can find a few little tiny places, tucked away in the back streets maybe, where they only have a few words in English...well Kushiro is pretty much the opposite of that. Pretty much everyone can speak a few words of English but you have to really look hard to find anyone who really speaks the language much. Since our Japanese at the moment is about as good as our nepalese (zero), well you can imagine what fun dinner was. Admittedly we chose the smallest least picture laden place we could for our first outing, but it was hilarious to say the least. I think we managed to get enough between us (most of it coming from him I have too say, we certainly haven't been holding up our end of the deal in language exchange situations but what can you do) so that both Diana and I left well filled, smiles on our faces and in general good humor. I think the gentleman even enjoyed having us by the end. Thankfully know one else came in while we were eating either, so that was kind of fortunate. He was kind enough to sit down with us and mime out foods and drinks which was fortunate. Today we got to practice even more and though we weren't much better we managed to find where to buy soil for our pots, bikes, coke, cheap stuff, get Kushiro information, an evergreen garden and a heap of stuff about work. Admittedly not all of it required Japanese but I thought I would dump it all together to make us look better. The best I think had to be dinner, the impetus for this little rant.
Dinner tonight was chosen by Pepix, well the place anyway. We had just bought the new adapters for the computer chargers (add that to the list of language accomplishments) and decided to stop for dinner on the way home. We had been talking about heading to the same place as yesterday but since our Japanese had not exactly improved we decided to share the embarrassment around a little. The place Pepix picked was gorgeous. The last one had been a little more traditional but this one was just wonderful. The guy, though he spoke little to no English, managed to convey to us what we were going to eat (zero pictures) and most of the ingredients. He also had really cool knives but I couldn't work out how to say that so wont be buying them yet. He served a weird Italian/Spanish/Japanese fusion kind of thing and it was really tasty.We chatted to the other customers...or they chatted about us and laughed, but it was cool anyway. Later the Airtraffic controller from Kushiro airport came up and translated for us for a while. There were only three tables full (including ours) in the little restaurant tonight and yet that is the busiest restaurant we have seen yet. This has been a fantastic first two days to our new life in Kushiro and from here on in just gets better!! Today we move into our new apartment, go shopping and have an interview with the local paper!!
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