Snow!

It snowed today in London! Finally some bad not boring weather! Check out our poor lawn that Mike and I crafted last year! Fantastic Stuff!

Inflight Entertainment

I wrote this about 1 hour into my flight from Japan to Brisbane.
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In all the traveling I've done, the flight I'm on at the moment has to be one of the most comical flights ever. The aircraft itself is without a doubt, 20 plus years old and consequently technologically stuck in that era. "Surely there are video screens in the seats Will?" I hear you plead. Try marvelously mega-faded projector at the front of each section complete with Japanese only programming and left ear only headphones. There is actually no in-flight entertainment to speak of aside from when they played the Japanese national news shortly after takeoff which included apt coverage of not one but two planes which had imminently crash landed into their respective oceans claiming the lives of all those onboard.

Which brings me to my next source of entertainment. There are two charming deaf people seated directly next to me whom on the projected appearance of the aforementioned crash landed aircraft, promptly located the emergency instruction card and commenced fervent perusal. Humorous. However not as humorous as when I decided to have a look myself and found that it was illustrated entirely in Japanese manga cartoons. Better than any airline provided magazine I will assure you.
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I seriously considered acquiring that particular piece of historical manga value before I left the aircraft but decided against it after getting upgraded to business due to the fact that I had less than 25 mins to transfer to my Wellington bound flight and HAD to get of the aircraft first.

Japan

This is a retrospective post to bring you up to date on my recent trip away.
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I spent a week in Japan which has to be said was absolutely nothing short of fantastic. I didn't really know what to expect when I arrived and the only real preconception that I had was that it would possibly not be the easiest place to travel in due to the language barrier.

I soon discovered that Japan is one not only one of the easiest places to get around in but also one of the friendliest. All travel information is displayed in both English and Japanese and the buses even announce relevant stops before you arrive! The people though are so SO courteous and friendly. The perfect antidote to a few months of London winter!

I was there for 7 days, 2 in Tokyo and 5 in Kyoto. Tokyo is vast, completely vast and sprawling. The underground / overground transport map is one of the most complicated I've ever witnessed. I did manage to navigate myself through the city and onto one of their bullet trains though. Man.....Bullet trains.....words don't really even do justice to how fast (and smooth!) those things can travel! Check out a movie HERE

Kyoto was the real wonder of this place for me. Between the incredible amount of temples, markets & zen gardens there is so much to do here. I spent the 5 days I had solidly completing the tourist trails to try and take in as much as possible only briefly leaving Kyoto to visit the worlds biggest wooden building, the Todai Jai Temple in Nara, which incidentally is indomitably gigantic.

If only it wasn't so cold during the time I was there! Unfortunately when I packed my bag I had the sunny shores of Australia and NZ in mind and failed miserably to equip myself with anything even remotely warm enough for the sudden cold snap that gripped the east coast of Japan, simultaneously closing airports and freezing poor New Zealand backpackers in their ill insulated sleeping bags.....far too stubborn to buy warmer clothes too.

You can check my photos from Japan HERE

The Axis of Cool

One of my most listened to mixes at the moment is "AOC at the Telegraph" by The Axis of Cool. These guys have an incredible knack of being able to fuse together almost any genre of music and make it sound wicked.



You can download their mix totally free at The Axis of Cool.

Welcome!

I thought I would start a blog so Y'all can keep track of what I've been up to and where I've been. Emailing (or not) has become fairly insane over the last little while so hopefully this can ease the pain of multiple multiple personals, group emailing isn't what it used to be.

For those that have hit this by chance, I'm a Kiwi living in London relishing in the standard love / hate relationship with the place. Have been here for 4 years, live in the mighty Junction, and work far too many hours as an Electrical Estimator.

Although in saying that I've just come back from a absolutely fantastic month and a half long trip which landed me in Japan, New Zealand, Melbourne, Western Australia, Hong Kong & The Philippines. Worked out the other day that in that time I spent a total of 57 hours in the air.....wouldn't trade that for the world either.



I've posted most of my photos from these travels up onto my gallery at www.willjennings.net. I'll be transferring that site over to this new domain in the next few days but will need to figure out the technical aspects of it first.

I'll try and keep the updates coming and may possibly do some retrospective posts also.

Yeah!!