I love technology that can let me do this. By the time this message is posted, I’ll be on the bus to Narita airport. My room is more or less cleaned, feeling a little nervous, feeling excited, feeling a little sad. But I’m ready to leave. Leave on a high.

Thank you to everyone who made my stay in Japan awesome. My co-workers and friends in Japan. My time here will be missed sorely. I’ll be back in about six months or so though. Hopefully I can catch up with you awesome people, and with people I didn’t have the chance to meet this time around.

Everyone back in Aus, I’ll be back around October if all goes according to plan.

Cheers to all.

The weather here has been bloody miserable! Raining, cold, windy, cloudy… I thought it was meant to be spring??

Had my finaly day of work yesterday. I got to teach some pretty nifty people, so it was all good. I still can’t quite believe that I’m all done… It feels like I’m just going on another short trip, and will be back to teach some more, pick up where I left type thing. But that won’t happen.

Today is pretty bonkers. I have some time now to just muck around on the computer, but after the post office comes to pick up my stuff… there’s a lot to do these last two/three days.

Monday, firstly, went to the Ghibli Museum in Mitaka. We went along with a Japanese couple that Paul knows. They were adorable

The robot from Laputa. It's huge!

This is the second time I’ve been to this museum (first time was back in December 2005), and it’s always a pleasure to go here. If you’ve seen a handful of Ghibli films, it’s definitely worth the outing. You need to buy the tickets in advance because it’s a pretty small area and only so many people can fit in (for those of you who are interested, you can pre-purchase the tickets from a Lawsons). And this Monday happened to be a public holiday, so there were quite a lot of people about.

After the Ghibli museum, we went for a walk around the Inokashira park not so far from the museum.

According to Miss M of the couple, there’s an urban legend regarding boat riding in Inokashira park. Legend has it that those couples who ride the rowing boats in Inokashira park lake are ound to break up.

The weather was nice, the wind was a tad chilly, but all in all it was a glorious day. The park had bits of cherry blossoms blooming, and there were people about doing holiday stuff: playing on the swings, picknicking, playing badminton, playind catchball, playing soccer.

And for some reason, there was a demonstration going on around this idyllic place.

It was, seriously, a very organised and low key demonstration, but there were a reasonable number of people walking. The flags are flags for the various unions, I think. The unions are from specific industries, but also from specific regions within Tokyo. Some of their demands; “Reduce spending on the self defence force!”, “Stop increasing the cost of the national health insurance!”, “Stop the defunct pension system!” I guess the demands of people around the world are more or less the same.

And to wrap up the day, had a nice work farewell party at a park near my place. It was a little cold and dark, but fun. A lot of strangeness ensued with running laps around the park and an impromptu soccer match

So it was all pretty mad, but now its really crunch time. My room is looking pretty empty and tidy, boxes are more or less packed. Paper work with the ward is done. Landlady came and had a squidge. Yes, more or less done.

Click on image to go to Dodo-Den!

It’s funny how one slips back into habit with things like this. I’ve just been uber tired and a bit mental these days since, now, I’m onto my last ten days in Japan. It’s weird. I hadn’t been able to do anything particularly constructive the past two weeks or so, but today I decided to revamp the homepage. The old design wasn’t bad, but it looked a little strange on large screens, so hopefully this will have cleared that problem up? I bet it looks disasterous on an iPhone

And I tried to go for the more ‘professional’ thing, being a bit clearer with the site’s content and stuff. And harping on about the themes I’m interested. This is all very new to me, and I felt a bit weird typing that kind of stuff up… but if anything, these past two years in Japan have been really great for me. I’ve been able to think about what it is that I want out of my art, what it is that makes me draw at all. For the time being, I’m happy where my brain is. Now I just have to actually make the art… which will be a bit difficult on the road, but it’ll be done eventually. If I have enough steam in me.

Zushi.

I’ve been to and around Zushi many times before, and every time I go there I get this strange feeling. Not a bad or ominous feeling, but a feeling akin to being left behind by something… Zushi is a quiet area, and there’s nothing glamourous about it. A sleepy beach side town, but by Australian standards, this beach is nothing to get excited about. It’s not sandy, it’s not bright blue, it’s not beautiful in the conventional sense, but that feeling it gives me… something about that is wonderous in itself. Because I’ve been looking at too many advertisements showing the beauty of the Mediterranian, my eyes have become spoilt. But I’ve always had a fascination, say, with rugged coast lines like you’d probably see around the UK. I once took a train around the Japan Sea/North Sea side of Japan, and while it’s not a beach you’d want to party at, it had such an amazing feeling to it! I wonder if that’s what we call in Japanese 幽玄 (Yuugen)?

Zushi is a beach that may exist anywhere in the world. Boring, plain, not particularly attractive. Therein lies its beauty, I think.

This kind of subtle Japanese-ness thrills me. That small Torii standing out in the bay. Who knows what it’s there for. It’s just there. A part of life and the landscape around here.

We were embassy hopping again on Wednesday (joy), and Paul alerted me to this park he had come across earlier this year. Since we had a bit of time to kill before going to the Laotian embassy, had a quick peek. It was a really nice day, so the photos came out kind of cool. We call it the robot park because, surprise surprise, there are these little robot decorations/play things adorning this tiny space. Bright colours and funky. In the photo above you can see the robots on the left, atop that winding yellow slide.

More Duploesque robots. How cool are the vines strangling them.

This is probably the coolest part… a robot totem pole. It’s pretty darn tall this thing!

At a billiards place in Shibuya.

Why is it so cold again! Last night was pure misery in terms of weather: cold, sleet, snow and wet. But I braved the cold and went out for a night of great Taiwanese food and billiards, kudos to my partner’s colleague. I’m a  pretty crap pool player, but I managed to enjoy it by the end of the evening

While I grumble about the cold and sleet, I must say there was something special about walking around Shibuya, the bits of ice/snow whirling in all sorts of impossible directions. It’s really beautiful to look at, if you’re not in it I guess! I’m guessing it will be a long time again until I’ll see weather of this kind, so I should enjoy it while I can, huh.

Very interesting indeed.

I was humm-ing and haa-ing about future study options (always a very bad idea late at night) and was getting thoroughly confused with what entailed ‘new media’ (fancy artsy jargon always hurts my brains). I somehow managed to chance upon this site, Dust On My Shoes. It’s a beautifully made site, albeit a little confusing (I find this to be a major problem with swanky new websites). This main page is nothing spectacular, but when you launch the  core contents, it’s pretty neat.

I don’t know when it came about, but many Australians fancy themselves as travellers. I’m sure this isn’t a claim just made by Australians (Britons, Germans, Canadians also come to mind), but the description of this Peter Pinney struck a chord with me. I feel I cam across this site at a mighty interesting time.

Have a look if you’re procrastinating.

On a side note, I’m really starting to get annoyed with the term ‘interactivity’, especially in relation to art. Is something interactive when a person can touch the piece of work and can influence the outcomes of something? Or is it interactive if it involves the spectator in some way? If that’s the case, couldn’t you argue that ‘Where’s Wally?’ (or ‘Where’s Waldo?‘ for you North Americans) is somewhat interactive entertainment? Or those ‘choose your own adventure’ type books? What the hell is interactive art? Where do we draw the line between art and entertainemnt? Have I come up against that stupid age old question of ‘what is art?’ Obviously, this topic is mor suited as an essay topic for school rather than a casual blog post, so I won’t go in to it. To be honest, I started to type something up, but realised I don’t have the brain power to do it at this time at night, so I give up. It’s a difficult question, especially when you start to bring the matter of Western perceptions and understandings of art into it. Bloody hell. I’m going to bed.

So now a serial killer can figure out where abouts I live