Crafted Kangaroos and Tiger Shoes

I was delighted to discover an arty ceramic kangaroo being sold at a store near the office, but the asking price put it out of my range despite my desire to possess anything marsupial.

I also got to witness the upshot of a drunk driver who rammed into a Shinjuku restaurant, incurring the wrath of another bystander when I took a photo of the carnage (with no human casualties).

And a workmate and I crafted a pair of tiger striped shoes! (She did most of the work, and ALL of it that required any dexterity).

Cop A Gander At These Rippers Too...

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    RIP to a Ripper Bloke, Bob Hawke

    Australia’s last man of the people to become prime minister is no longer. Robert James Lee “Bob” Hawke died earlier this week, just two days before his beloved Australian Labor Party is expected to re-take office in the May 18 federal election following six years of misrule by an incompetent Liberal–National Party coalition government. Hawke was 89. He was a popular prime minister whose time in office went from 1983 to 1991. He remains the longest-serving Labor prime minister in Australian history. Hawkey didn’t really have much to do with Japan during his time in office. Perhaps the closest project involving Japan was the disastrous Multifunction Polis proposal that sparked…

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    Oops! Austrian textbook error sparks online calls for Japanese to boycott Aussie Beef

    Japan’s feisty online community briefly urged a boycott of Aussie Beef — arguably Australia’s best-known export to Japan — after an Austrian school textbook referred to the Sea of Japan as the “East Sea,” a Korean label aimed at helping it forget its past as a Japanese colony, according to a June 28 report from online Japanese news site J-Cast. Australia, which uses Sea of Japan in its school materials and official documents, had nothing to do with the textbook. Among the comments posted online were “That Australian mob are simple and will fall for anything,” “Why’s Australia calling it the East Sea if it’s not to their east?” and…

  • Sayonara Stories

    Mobile phones were starting to become a reality when Kangaeroo left Australia around this time of the year back in 1988, a year when the bicentennial of British colonization was marked. It was supposed to be a six-week holiday in Japan. Some 32 years later, that trip effectively hasn’t ended. Japan was in the news in Australia at the time of departure. Then Emperor Hirohito was in a critical condition (he would die shortly into the new year). The Japanese economy was booming and Japan seemed poised to take over leadership of the global business world. But, the more things change, the more they seem to stay the same. Like…

  • 巨大カモノハシ「ゴジラ・プラッタプス」が豪で発見

    　現代の倍以の大きさだった「ゴジラ・プラッタプス」５百万から１億１５００万年の間前に巨大な歯付カモノハシが豪などに生存した、と豪古生物学者が11月発表した。 　オーストラリアの数多く独特な動物の中では、カモノハシが最も変わっているかもしれない。 　ビーバーの尻尾にモグラの胴体と鴨の鼻・口だけでなく、哺乳類のように母乳を与えながら子供が爬虫類や鳥類など同様に赤ちゃんを卵で産む「単孔目（たんこうもく）」動物である。 　この目は、カモノハシとオーストラリアのハリネズミであるechidnaしかないです。 　今のカモノハシは歯がなく餌等を圧力で殺して食べるが、「ゴジラ・カモノハシ」は、歯があって、小さな動物や虫類などを噛んで食べた、と同学者がいう。 　新しく発見した「ゴジラ・カモノハシ」の本当の名前がObdurodon tharalkooschildだ。身長が約1メートルまで伸ばされ、現代カモノハシの約倍。この大きさの差によって学者たちが「ゴジラ」という名前を冗談で付けた。 Giant toothed platypus roamed Australia

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    Olden And Golden

    Cleaning up my PC over the weekend, I got a great reminder of misspent hours more than a decade ago, when I found loads of vintage posters touting the wonders of Australia. Some of them also came from a campaign taking the piss of the retro trend. See if you can find which ones. This gallery is a reminder of when Kangaeroo aspired to be a blog about a lesser-known side of Australia.