Wednesday, 28 May 2008

Cheap Hotel Bookings and Reservations

You know when you give family and friends really good advice that could save them hundreds of dollars and they thank you for telling them but in the end never really listen to you? Maybe it's telling your mum that she won't be able to take money out of Japanese ATMs with her Australian bank card only to be frustrated when she arrives at Narita with no money in her wallet and bitches for the next week about not having enough money on her.

Or maybe it's telling your friends that they should make a hotel reservation when they arrive at Shanghai airport as they could be staying in a 4/5 star hotel for what they're budgeting only to be shocked when they decide to stay in a dingy backpackers while you're in a 4.5 star double room overlooking the central park for the same price.

Despite the fact that I'm actually living in Japan, my mum (despite her best intentions) refused to change her mindset that Japan was as international as the travel shows lead her to believe and while I had been to China before and researched travelling in the country immensely, my friends were fixated on staying in a backpackers because logically that should be cheaper.

I'm sure everyone's (especially if you've ever had friends or family visit you in in a foreign country) had a similar experience.

A recurring cause of frustration for me is when I tell almost everyone that when travelling in most countries (with the exception of China. Seriously make a booking when you arrive at the hotel desks. You may get a 70% discount!) it's almost always cheaper to make your hotel reservations through an online system such as HotelCombined.com, Expedia or Hotel Club.

The sites (and numerous others) are a fast (especially HotelCombined.com) convenient way to make a booking. Most offer customer reviews of each hotel or service and provide photos of the hotel rooms. Also as mentioned before, making a booking online can end up saving you hundreds of dollars as these services don't charge extra like a travel agency would (or at least not as much).

If you're intimidated by using the internet for making purchases, try doing a Google search for information on the site you want use to see if any users have had a negative experience with it before you use it.

Everyone likes to do things their own way, but when someone with experience gives you advice, it's always good to consider it.

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Labels: Australia, Cambodia, China, japan

Wednesday, 30 January 2008

Australia / Japan Apologies

Something really amazing has been announced this past week that really surprised me. I truly thought that it was something that just wasn't going to happen: Australia will apologise for the Stolen Generation!

This is something I think the majority of Australians had been wanting to happen for a while with a lot of us wondering why it hadn't been done already. One major theory was that if the government admitted fault for the Stolen Generation they would be liable to lawsuits and expectations of funds for compensation.

Now, finally I can have conversations about apologies concerning Japan without feeling like a hypocrite, though to be fair, while Australia just refused to apologise, Japan has a history of simply refusing that events took place and even editing school text books content.

Such massive yet little known incidents include;

The Kanto Massacre which happened in the aftermath of the Great Kanto Quake in 1923 in which the Japanese military spread rumours concerning poisoning of water, rape and murder being committed by non-Japanese (mostly Koreans) and then assisted in the rounding up and murdering of 6000 (of the 30,000 Koreans in Japan at the time) Koreans, 700 Chinese as well as numerous Okinawans and Japanese people from other regions who spoke other dialects who were thought to be Koreans pretending to be Japanese.

Note: Interestingly enough the Kanto Massacre is the reason a lot of Japanese businesses including my current place of occupation include small radios in their earthquake evacuation emergency kits to prevent spreading of rumours and rely on fact reported by the media.

WWII Mass Suicides in Okinawa where the Japanese military stole food and supplies, executed those who hid theirs, used Okinawan civilians as body shields and finally spreading anti-American propaganda that compelled 10,000 Okinawans to kill themselves and their families so as to avoid capture from the Americans who they were told would rape, beat, murder and mutilate them.

The Rape of Nanking. Horrific events committed by the Japanese military and government during WWI in which they raped, mutilated, and committed unthinkable things to the citizens of the Chinese city, Nanking / Nanjing. Roughly 350,000 Chinese soldiers and civilians were killed in the eight week period.

Thoughts?

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Labels: Australia, japan, Japanese Social Issues, Rape of Nanking

Saturday, 26 January 2008

Happy Australia Day!

Just wanted to wish all the Australians here in Japan and everywhere else in the world a very Happy Australia Day!

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Labels: Australia

Monday, 14 January 2008

10 Things: Australia and Japan

Well I just had the best last few weeks! Caught a flight from Narita to Sydney a few days after Christmas where Pam and Greg picked me up and rove me all the way to Orange to stay with my sister, Heather who was getting married on New Years Eve!

The wedding went really well and I found myself realising just how much I had not only missed Australia, but Orange as well!

A few days after New Years, Heather and her new husband, Jamie drove me to Wentworth Falls where my grandparents live to be passed over to Pam and Greg once more who drove me to Mosman, Sydney to stay for several days so I could catch up with all my friends from Sydney and also a friend of mine I had met while working in Tokyo, Christie who had just moved to Sydney with her Japanese fiance several months before.

It was a breath of fresh air to be able to actually talk about life in Japan with someone without coming across as an arrogant tosser. For some reason it's fairly hard to talk about living in another country with people back home. The slightest "In Tokyo..." sentence can seem like bragging depending on who you're talking to. While several people were generally interested I did find myself stopping myself from talking about the last four years of my life.

Ironically enough it was also great to talk to Christie and Kosuke (fiance) about how much Sydney and Australia as a whole had changed.

After a few days in Sydney I caught a flight to Melbourne which I had never been to before, to attend the wedding of Chris (who I used to work with but still hang out with in Tokyo) and Takayo.

Melbourne was great (though Sydney's still better!) and the wedding was really nice with both sides of the family being some of the friendliest people I've ever met.

After a few days in Melbourne I got on a flight from Melbourne to Cairns and then another to Narita.

Now that I've been back in Tokyo for a few days, I thought it'd be interesting to list 10 things that surprised me, shocked me or just stood out during my stay in Australia after being in Japan for 2 years and 10 things that surprised me, shocked me or just stood out about Japan after being in Australia again for a few weeks.

Australia

Everything was so expensive! Clothes, food, everything!

Genuine friendly service.

The air quality was so good no matter where I went!

Seeing a movie could once again be a relaxing experience! Half the price of seeing one in Japan, better and cleaner cinemas.

I felt healthier being in Australia.

Cleaner people. People wash their hands, no spitting as far as the eye could see.

Women who weren't annoying! Women who had a brain! Women who were in almost every way equal to their male counterparts.

I felt like I was in a country which was improving itself and it's place in the world. Very environmentally concious, and progression / awareness of human rights such as gay marriage, etc.

Friendly people. I had more conversations with complete strangers in the span of a few weeks in Australia than I had has in four years in Japan.

Australian tv is now also full of crap though Sunrise on 7 is well worth waking up for.

Japan

Rude people. Period.

Tokyo is ugly! I'd gotten so used to it but after being in Sydney and Melbourne it REALLY stood out.

Shopping is once again stressful do to being screamed at the second you walk into a store.

Everything's so CHEAP! Bought three bunches of broccoli for 80cents each. In Australia it would be about $3-4 each.

Trains are convenient!

Train system still makes no sense though. How come I can buy one ticket to go from Numabukuro to Roppongi but from Roppongi to Numabukuro I have to buy two. No common sense.

Old technology. Old ticket machines. Dirty machines. Still no EFTPOS.

Dirty people. Coughing everywhere. No covering of mouths. Sick people riding trains.

Japanese women seem VERY week both physically and emotionally. I don't want to sound racist or sexist but this is definitely the case. Japanese women in Tokyo anyway.

A lot of history and culture.

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Labels: Australia, japan

Tuesday, 21 August 2007

"We wish England was Australia... or Jupiter?"

Just saw a new Australian commercial for Bundagerg Rum (Click here to view it) that has a lot of British people singing a song called "We wish England was Australia" which sounded REALLY familiar! It wasn't long until it ocurred to me that the song is actually to the tune of a Japanese hit that was released around the time I first came to Japan 3-4 years ago called Jupiter by Ayaka Hirahara.

Funnily enough I saw this song being used on a tv commercial when I was in Shanghai too.

It's a beautiful song which is why it's probably used so much. I just find it interesting that if I'd never come to Japan I would be completely ignorant of this bit of trivia.

Here's the song. Feeders and Email Readers Click here.

And Now watch the Rum ad! Haha.

And because I love it so much here's a stunning tv live performance that's well worth a watch. Email and Feeders

Labels: Australia, China, English, Japanese, Music

Friday, 10 August 2007

Perth Hotels

On my next trip back to Australia this New Years I'm thinking about doing some travel around my home country. Frankly it's a bit sad how I've seen more of Japan than Australia but I guess most people see more of other countries than their own.

Anyway, I was thinking about Melbourne and possible Brisbane or Perth and while surfing around came across some nice Perth Hotels on RatesToGo.com.

It's a HUGE site and has a massive listing of cheap hotels sorted by location, star rating and price. I'm seriously going to be using this site this January. They've even got listings for Cambodia, where I'll be going after Oz!

While surfing the site I found it incredibly fast loading with zero ads popping up and blinding me. The whole page has a very professional look unlike other questionable hotel booking sites I've come across.

Having heard horror stories from friends about booking hotels online and then arriving in a foreign country to find the hotel full has left me so paranoid that I normally only book from established sites. Thankfully RatesToGo has been online since 2002 and offers real time booking (Very important! Trust me!).

Very nice! Have bookmarked this for use next month when I lock in my end of year plans!

Labels: Australia, Cambodia

Sunday, 29 July 2007

Australia, Cambodia and Okinawa, oh my!

While the Obon holidays will be pretty boring with me having next to no money (thank YOU city tax and health insurance!) my end of year holidays will be packed!

As of now I'll be staying in Tokyo for another "should be white but won't be" Christmas then off to Australia for my sister's wedding in Orange on New Years Eve, then after New Years up to Cambodia to help Koky with his orphanage/ school project and then working once more in Tokyo until about June 2008 when I will hopefully move down south the the beautiful Okinawa!

That's the plan anyway.

Tokyo's grown on me but I just don't want to spend a 5th year here. It's not a terrible city but well, recently in the news there was a woman who had defected from North Korea and after a few years in Tokyo decided to return to North Korea.

Kind of says it all really.

And now enjoy this great Jpop song: Feed and Email Readers Click Here

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Labels: Australia, Cambodia, christmas, japan, new year, Okinawa

Wednesday, 30 May 2007

Aussie Aussie Aussie.... and masterbating

I know I haven't posted much. Hope this makes up for it! Found this on Desi Baba. Great to see Kangaroos keeping the Aussie spirit alive! (Email and Feeders click HERE)

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Labels: Australia

Saturday, 3 February 2007

"We are as Australian as them,"

Just read this great article over at the BBC website about a group of Australians who have become volunteer lifesavers in Sydney.

After the f%$king ridiculous and retarded race riots in Cronulla last year I became partially ashamed of Australia. I always knew there was racism there but had no idea it was this bad or that Sydney had that many tools.

It's great to see that the riots have had a positive effect and that the Muslim community have been inspired to prove that they're as Australian as we all are.

Going off on a bit of a tangent now, I've always loved how, for the most part, in Australia we call everyone "Australian". Not "Chinese Australian" or "Korean Australian". Everyone who has citizenship is inclusively called "Australian" as it should be.

I've never really got why in America everyone sees the need to specify their cultural background such as "Irish American", etc. I truly think a lot of the racism in American could be turned around if everyone was called simply "American". By calling someone "African American" it's saying they're not a real American. Noone is 100% American or 100% Australian. Everyone comes from somewhere. Hell, I've got Irish heritage but you don't see me introducing myself as "Irish Australian". I was born in Australia therefore I should be treated as an Australian.

Unless someone has dual nationality I see no reason to over complicate things. I've been told by some Americans from African heritage that they like to be called "African American" as it lets them show pride for their ancestors but I really think by doing so they're preventing others from seeing them on the same level as "regular Americans" or "real Americans".

No obviously there is racism in Australia, I'm not denying that but we do seem to be more inclusive of people from other cultures being "one of us".

When I walk around China Town in Sydney I never think "Look at all these Chinese Australian people". I'm thinking "Look at all these Australians". It's a subtle difference and an important one.

What do you think?

Labels: Australia, News, North America, Racism