Japan journal #1

After 4 nights I some rainy mountain in the north of the Honshu island, I am now back in Tokyo and to the heat. It was just incredible to get out of the Shinkansen train this morning and feel the difference. Vilounterely ive stayed out in the rain for 3 days, well more or less. If it wasn't raining then it was just damp and wet and all the clothes were damp and cold, but the music and the spirit kept it up. It wax a great experience and I would probably go again, if there is s convincing music lineup.

Naeba with the Fuji Festival in Niigata prefecture on Sunday late afternoon when the sun nearly broke through the thick clouds.

Tokyo this Monday at lunchtime, sunny and over 30 degrees,

Fuji Fables 2017 #1

Finally, I have made it to Fuji Rock Festival in Japan.

Previous this event was hold at the mighty Mount Fuji, however the weather never really played ball for the organisers there so the Festival got moved to a ski resort in the mountains just south of the city Niigata.

Normally a very quiet and empty place during the summer months, but now music lovers from many countries gathers here to enjoy 3 days of rock'n roll music.

The town itself is a bit worn down, or at least so it seems, and to some extent it do reminds me of ski resorts I have seen in the Chech republic and Slovakia with reminicences from the post soviet east European era,like on this photo where the contrast between old and new is obvious.

Denmark Docs # 5

Take the train. Close to finishing the Denmark leg of the 2017 summer vacation. Sure it is a bit sad, but we have had a great stay in Denmark and here by I would like to say thank you to all of my family who have put up with the two of us.

Last train to Copenhagen for the Morten send in 2017.

Denmark Docs #4

After about 2 weeks in Denmark, finally it has become a bit like summer. Not sure this is all over the country but it is at least here where we are in Løkken, a small'ish beach and bathing town in the far north west of the country.

Denmark docs #3

My wife with the "big boy" sculpture at ARoS Artmuseum in Århus. An artwork by the Australian artist Ron Mueck. So scary and realistic.

Denmark docs #2

Tai tai like a Hammerhøi painting in Fåborg Færgehotel Restaurant.

The Denmark docs. #1

Prolog:

This is to be the start to the Denmark Documents.

A summer adventure through my homeland, which I have not visited during summer for 7 years.

Before we get to start, there will probably be a short Stockholm story and a London letter. Anyway, that'll just be an interlude before I begin the Denmark documents.

I wrote this prolog as I'd anticipated it to become, however, it was all just in my imagination. Everything went entirely different and I could or maybe should actually change the heading of the whole post to “Airport Poetry” or “rear mirror reflex ions from a tired traveller”.

So, because of this “going different entirely” there is not going to be any Stockholm Stories just now, and the London Letters will probably just be a fart of a note about a rush hour between terminal 3 and 5 and if we make it or not. Make what? Yeah, make what?

Make it to our connecting flight to Copenhagen off corse!

Scandinavia is famous for many things being in art, design and thinking and being one of them from birth I have a certain pride in being Scandinavian and also a certain respect for Scandinavian enterprises and companies as being good and have a certain standard. So weeks ago when I finally decided to take action and get going booking flights and some accommodation for this years summer vacation, so when the airline came up with a quotation for the trip we wanted to undertake - and a good one - I didn't hesitate to chose the Scandinavian Airways System as the carrier to bring us from our home in Hong Kong to Europa and my country of origin, Denmark.

Boldly spoken, that airline -SAS in short- was the first airline I'd ever heard of as a silly wee boy from a hamlet in the deep dark of Jutland - and this mainly because Denmark was the biggest kind of togetherness or enterprise I could fathom and therefore was the centre of everything I was taught by my parents, in the media and at school and about my roots and entire cultural heritage.

So, back then as the itinerary was planned and thought through with all our sidetracks and diversion -which in fact turned out to have an immense impact on the quite challenging 24 - 26 hours or journeys we have just ended- I did not have any worries booking a long haul flight with that airline as they -in my mind- would deliver a good product.

My tai tai on the other hand, as she is from the British Isles, are a firm believer in the services of British Airways and asked why I didn't choose them?

"They have the much better price!" was my answer. And they did. There were much money to save choosing the Scandinavians.

 

To be continued.

A year in 6 minutes and 13 seconds.

A new experience and an old one.

No, I do not think I have writers block, I just don't feel like writing anything for my blog!

But.

One more word and yet another gesture and my left hand raising up to touch my beard and give it a good scratch. Because it is a new beard - some weeks old now- and man it is itchy.

But it also feels nice to touch it and it is a new experience to me. I have had beards before but never a full one like the one I am growing now, so it is quite new. I've had moustaches and a silly little string beard and also one of them kind of moustache that goes all the way up to both ears. But never for real. It has always been for the fun of it for a month or so. And mainly in Movember. For the joke of it.

But now it is in the midst of the beginning summer -if you can say so - and this time I think I'm serious about it. All the way to the day I get sick and tired of it and shave it all off.

It is interesting to see how a real serious full grown beard will influence the way people perceive me.

One thing I haven't really thought about before now is my new ID card.

So what has happened. I am now a permanent Hong Kong resident with the right to stay and work here on a permanent basis without a two year work visa. So, one day I went to the immigration for the final short interview where I got my new rights and also ordered a new ID card as a permanent resident of the Hong Kong SAR of the People's Republic of China.

I said before I might shave my beard of again one day when I get sick and tired of it, right. But now listen to this. The day I was at the immigration to order a new ID card they also took a picture of me for that card, and that day I had the beginning of a beard. Not just some small thin whiskers, but a real full grown growth of beard hair on my face. Imagine I shave it all of and then decide I want to go to on the train to China, the real China. In my passport I do not have a beard but on my Hong Kong ID I do.

As a permanent Hong Konger I think I can get a 5 year multiple entry visa to the real China. But, at the border to real China they are also somehow more fierce with inspections and things has to be clear and because us gweilo's to them all look the same, I might have some trouble explaining or seeming to be the same.

However, leave those worries to the time when they get real. In the next couple of months I am not going to go on the train to China, perhaps in about a year, for Easter.

In one months time I am going back home to Denmark for the first time since Christmas 2013 - 14, and for the first time in the summer since 2010. 7 years ago.

2011 was Japan. 2012 the USA. 2013 Spain. 2014 Mongolia and Japan. 2015 Scotland. 2016 Italy. First think I'm going to do is to go to the supermarket to buy herring and cheese. Then go to a hotdog stand for a hotdog, followed by a visit to a bakery for some "Danish pastry" which ironically is called "bread from Vienna" in Denmark. And this, I think, I'll repeat every single day for 3 weeks. I am really looking forward to it. What I might not like is the extra kilos I'll be wearing after the 3 weeks back there with a diet like that, and the trouble of getting all the ketchup and mustard and remulade and curry sauces out of the full grown beard.

But maybe that is going to be the time to shave it off again when it gets too unhygienic and greasy.

I'll still wear it in the picture on my new ID card though. And on this one.

 

The RatRace Cafe

Or just simply RatRace cafe.

Probably it would be every business man's or cafe owners dream. A cafe with a steady stream of customers coming in, standing in line and picking their coffee, breakfast bun, yoghurt cup or sandwich and then disappear out of the door as fast as they entered.

Plenty of seating but not overcrowded busy because the most costumes is the takeaway type. Mainstream men and women conducting an early morning, on the way to the office RatRace type breakfast. Something fast and small on the go. The line never gets shorter. When one costumer is out the door, the next steps in through the other to line up.

I felt a bit like an intruder. Sitting there at the table enjoying some waiting time and a nice coffee. No rush, just sitting with time on my behind.

The RatRace had started on the bus from one of the suburbs to the central districts in Hong Kong. Normally when I'm on that particular bus, it is later in the afternoon and I am on my way to some leisure time or hairdresser appointment or just some deliberate slam shopping in the fancy part of town. This morning, I was on it to go to get my new permanent residence. The line for the bus was excessive. Never have I seen it like this.

Yes, normally there can be quite a big queue, but never like this RatRace queue. Folks from the suburbs going to work on Hong Kong Island. The heavy trek goes to the island from the suburbs in the new territory early the morning. At peak times between 8:30 and 9:30, the commute can be unbearable because of traffic. This morning we got the bus just before the roads and causeways clogged.

At the first stop in Wan Chai we got of. There is a walk way where pedestrians can cross the main traffic ores from the train station and the residential areas to the big office and commercial buildings along Victoria harbour. From the distance, the walkway was a dark silhouette against the morning sky. And the RatRace was on. Hundreds of humans on the move towards the space or cubicle or office or shop or wherever they spent the most of their time awake during the week.

The walkways were busy too, as the cafe where we were going spend out time waiting for an appointment. Two timeless people in a sea of people in the RatRace. Do not misunderstand this, we do have our own RatRace, it just isn't as RatRacy as this one.

And the cafe is evidence and every business man or woman or bar or cafe owner would love it like this, if they could keep up with the demand. This one can. Normally this brand of coffee shop is occupied by students on laptops with paperwork piled up in front and on chairs next to them and you can never get a seat.

This one of the brand is not. Maybe it is just too early for them. Students do not participate in the common mans RatRace.  They have their own.

Toothache!

If you had to choose between toothache and any other pain you could have, which one would you choose?

I've been suffering a terrible terrible toothache these last days. It came from out of nowhere. One night it started to come through in the back of my mouth. I'd just been to the dentist to book a check up appointment and even I'd felt something brewing at that very tooth, I'd not expected it to break out this abruptly. In the middle of the night to Friday last week I woke up with this horrible horrible toothache.

Bummer and such a stopper for the expectations of a nice weekend in Macau with friends and a nostalgic concert. The Village People and Björn Again at the Venetian Theatre.

In the morning to Friday the ache had faded down and I felt somehow fine, fine enough to get to work. Knowing the danger I called the dentist to ask if I could come for a wee look and at least pick up some painkillers to get me through the weekend and Monday, until Tuesday, and my appointment.

She could see me at 6:30 PM. OK, very late start for the weekend trip to Macau and unfortunately a cancelling of a team dinner out with colleagues from year 2.

One thing good though, I could play football before going to the appointment and I played quite a good game if I am allowed to express so my self. All day no sign of - or not much - that toothache.

As I finally came to sit in the chair and my dentist took a look and hammered on all teeth in the area, it turned out it was the tooth I'd expected and it had a crack.

I kind of already decided by then it had to come out. My dentist, she is very good and honest, gave me three options. Pull it. Repair it with some kind of ring to hold it together and lastly the root canal treatment.

The root canal treatment. I seriously hate that. However effective it is, the treatment is so long and painful even under anaesthetic. Don't you agree, even with a shot of drugs, it feels like you can feel every bloody instrument the dentist put inside your tooth and roots for several hours.

"After that we need to observe it" she added. Right away I knew it had to go. "Observe it". Yeah, right. This is short for "from now on this tooth will give me pain and trouble until I break apart anyway. Not only pain, also money.

It must go, I told her. I can live without and have done so in the other side of my mouth where the twin tooth cracked and got pulled more than 15 years ago.

"We can do it now! She offered.

I did think we maybe should do it, however I was on my to Macau for a nice weekend with good food and entertainment, and also felt it was a bit rushed and I would rather procrastinate and push the pain ahead of me until the coming Tuesday.

So I declined using excuses like: "no, not tonight, it is late on a Friday and you should also be going home and I am on my way to Macau and all that. So I pushed it out and took a selection of painkillers from the dentist to keep my up.

Not many things is worse than a toothache.

And I felt this later the same evening after arriving to Macau. The toothache came creeping again as I winded down to go to bed in our lovely hotel.

"Pain always comes during the night to tell you the areas you have trouble with". The wise words from my wife's physio therapists. I tended to the selection of painkillers.

" I give you two different painkillers. Some not so strong and some very strong. Take the not so strong first. If it doesn't help take the strong ones. They'll last 24 hours".

I really thought they not so strong ones would do the job.

They didn't. After an hour with no relief, there was no way out and I got out of bed and swallowed on of the mega painkillers and went back to bed. With such severe toothache I thought I would not get any sleep.

In the morning I woke up and the ache had faded. Still I could sense it and now and then it came through like a little annoying kid who always make sure you won't forget about him.

The breakfast at out hotel is one to enjoy and somehow the tooth left me alone during breakfast. Later we were out and about it suddenly kicked back in. "Hello, it's me again, your toothache".

Man, did I regret not having pulled it out the evening before.

Then like out of nowhere it was like the painkillers decided to start helping me and I got some relief. Enough to enjoy some hours exploring the old town of Macau.

From then I started to take the painkillers in succession of each other, like advised by the dentist and I took booth of them together, which seemed to help and I could make it through the days away.

I too, the last one of my little helpers this morning at 11 and phoned the dentist again to ask if I could come for more to keep my happy until the appointment Tuesday evening. I just couldn't face another night in pain.

In fact the dentist clinic called me to remind me about my appointment tomorrow and I took the opportunity to ask if she could see me today. A quite funny and abrupt conversation followed in which both I and the dentist assistant from time to time didn't understand any of it. And so I turned up at 5 palm as I believe I'd understood she said I could. In my mind just to get some painkillers to keep me safe until the appointment Tuesday afternoon.

There was a patient in the chair as I arrived. As he came out I got invited inside and sat down in the chair.

"Have you slept these last nights", she asked and I admitted I had a bit but also that I'd had been in real pain.

"We can take it out now".

This time I didn't chicken out.

"I need to inform my wife I said".

"Fine, but let me give you the anesthetiser first".

No way out anymore, and here I am now. No more toothache. With a light head but somehow numbness in my left chin and a taste of blood in my mouth. In front of me two more small plastic bags with colourful pills. Some for pain relief and then a full five day course of antibiotic to finish.