The Perth skyline at night
So the start of the 'month of travels' began this morning with a whopping five-hour internal flight across to the other side of Australia. Now if you're American or Russian, flying that long and still being in the same country isn't new - but to me it certainly is. I was trying to think of how many countries I could get to within 5hrs of Edinburgh, but gave up when I was well into double figures. They don't call Perth the 'most isolated capital city on Earth' for nothing. It's closer to Singapore than Sydney. I got a ramshackle bus into the city and found where I was staying fairly easily - Perth is very small. Although maybe I've been in the spectacularly sprawling mass of Sydney for too long to appreciate the smaller cities.
My flight over was reasonable, considering the cold I've picked up - the last one I got was the last time I went travelling - and the hangover I had saddled myself with after the final Japanese lesson. It wasn't much of lesson, more a end-of-term meal and piss-up. We went to a Japanese lesson and had a great meal - which Nobuko-san instructed us to order in Japanese. She also ordered bottles and bottles of steaming sake, which we kept polishing off with increasingly loud cries of 'kampai!!'. I tell you, warm sake does wonders for a blocked nose. So that's it for my return to student-hood, I'll be able to try it for real in a couple of weeks.
The night ended on an amusing note, when the bloke I sat next to for the lessons confused me with another bloke in our class, and gave me a couple of anime DVD's. Hey, I do watch it - but I'm not the fan he thought I was. I managed to duck most of his questions, and took the disc home. I didn't feel bad, as the guy it was intended for didn't show up, and it wasn't bought specially - just downloaded from a laptop onto a blank disc. At that point we were both pretty drunk, and he seemed pleased that I'd taken it. So I've got some anime to watch when I get back - my Japanese education continues...
