Although it was a bit while ago, I made a private trip to the United Kingdom. It was not the British Hills, not an English village, not a British-style cottage in Tochigi Prefecture, not any other “fake Britain” in Japan. It was the real England, where I had wanted to visit before I died. I visited London and Haworth, West Yorkshire. Both of those places were introduced in the Japanese manga Emma by Kaoru Mori, which was one of my favorite comics I’d ever read.
(more…)I visited Oizumi, Gumma Prefecture. Large factories and plants were invited to set up in this town, and mainly Japanese Brazilians were attracted there as factory workers. According to statistics, almost 6,000 people out of this town’s population of about 41,000 are from abroad.
Visiting England is one of the things I want to do in the future. I planned a trip there in the middle of September. I purchased air tickets to and from London and booked hotels there. To my sorrow, however, I was forced to cancel all of the reservations because of the hectic work I had been doing for almost two years. The British Hills is one of its alternatives, but I get tired of it as I have visited there many times. One day, I heard about such a place in South Korea that mocked English streets. That’s why I visited South Korea this month, though I didn’t understand Korean at all.
(more…)One day, a postcard arrived at my flat inviting me to a party hosted by an old boys’ and girls’ association of the high school, to be held on 27 April this year in Takarazuka. I had never seen such a party with my high school classmates before, since the commencement ceremony 21 years before. I wanted to see how the people had changed their faces and figures from what they had been in high school, so I replied to the sender that I was going to attend and booked airline tickets.
As the plane from Narita Airport to Osaka was scheduled to depart at 6.25 in the morning, and there were no trains to Narita from where I live that would have let me catch the plane, I drove to the airport at midnight. I parked it in the car park to sleep until the terminal building opened.
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I visited the British Hills for the first time this year because the snow melted and it became accessible by car.
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I’m going to Hong Kong tonight. I last visited there six years ago. I’ll be back in Japan on Sunday, 6th.
Action items in Hong Kong: to get a SIM-lock-free iPad 2 and, if possible, an iPhone 4S in Mong Kok; to register a new address and passport number for my HSBC account; and to do some sightseeing in Stanley, Aberdeen, and Lamma Island.
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