Very glad to have grown up in a society that still seems to ostensibibly respect democracy and the rule of law, I was delighted to visit the Australian Embassy in Tokyo and partake of democracy manifest in the form of a snag. The bleak, wet day (eerily reminscent of my native Melbourne) was the backdrop to consular officials serving democracy sausages as Aussies flocked to the embassy to vote ahead of the May 3 federal election. I’m very grateful to the Embassy staff for putting on the sausage sizzle, and got to spend a lot of time chatting with some…
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Aussie voters in Tokyo will be able to snag a democracy sausage if they go to the Australian Embassy in Tokyo from 12 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. on Friday, May 2, according to the Embassy website. This be an opportunity to exercise a hard-fought right to vote (or avoid being fined for not doing so because votng is compulsory). And it also presents an extremely rare instance of being able to see consular officials helping Australians and earning some of the cost of the world’s most expensive passports, ensuring the documents are not a complete rort. Australia is one of…
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Even with a 4:30 a.m. start aimed at avoiding meddlesome obstructionists, I still didn’t get up early enough to escape the scrutiny of the local jobsworth. Riding my bike into Yakushiike Park just as the dawn broke, and entering down a ramp well past the park office, I thought I had escaped any possible officiousness. This park is a delightful oasis alongside a heavily trafficked road, and is surrounded by densely packed suburban housing. Yet, regardless of the time I get there, I have customarily found it to be staffed by jobsworths, who prove time and again that sometimes the…
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Much to the chagrin or Mrs. Kangaeroo, our garden is filled with all sorts of weird and wonderful Australian creatures, and they’re designed to look nice nocturnally. We have all sorts of kangaroos. Their sizes range from life-sized to tiny. A similar story goes for koalas. We have a koala couple. And another pair climbing one of our wattles. And there is even a learned fellow who reads a book. Considering we are supposed to be a kangaroo-themed garden, you could possibly say we are a bit over koala-fied. Aside from the marsupials, we’ve also got a wombat, and a…
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Unsure of where to put the punctuation in the title, I decided to go without any at all, and I used this phrase because I wanted to talk about the garden, have something catchy, and draw from the Velominati’s Rule Number Five. Our garden, Kangaeroo Corner* is absolutely thriving. But not quite in the way that I may have originally envisaged, hence the latter part of the title, and the uncertainty over where to place the punctuation.** Banksia I should originally have planted in sunny spots are doing well, but none of our four trees have never really flowered, which…
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I’m not quite out of action, but not far from it, thanks to popping a tiny blister on my finger over a week ago now. The bloody thing got infected and the infection started to spread up my arm. Pain has been excruciating, which has come as a total surprise considering how small the original blister was, and I have barely slept in a week filled with visits to the dermatologist and being pumped with increasingly large and frequent doses of painkillers and antibiotics. It finally appears as though the drugs are working and the swelling has subsided and the…
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Australia is exhibiting at the recently opened Expo Osaka 2025, and it got me thinking about the difference between now and the last time Japan’s second city held the world’s fair in 1970. Back 55 years ago, Japan was keen on showing to the world its miraculous recovery from the devastation wrought on it in World War II and Australia was keen on pushing itself as an advanced economy basking in glorious sunshine while surrounded by sunny beaches. Taro Okamoto‘s sculpture, The Tower of the Sun, was a symbol of the Expo and the Australian pavilion was widely praised for…
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Spring has really kicked into motion, one of the upshots being that our garden presents us with a new gift nearly every day. Our garden is providing us with a series of new flowers one after another. Hardenbergias have been giving me great delight for a few weeks now, particularly because I grew all of our four thriving plants from seeds I brought back from Australia. But our biggest surprise this year has come from the white paperbark teatree, which we picked up in a bargain basement bin at our local home center and have now been rewarded with a…
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Our dearest–in terms of both emotion and bloody expense–little mate gave us a bit of a shock the past few days as Dino, our rosy faced lovebird, appeared to be petering (ptering?) toward the brink only to slowly move toward recovery. I’m guilty as I’ve been sharing meals (and snacks) with Dino for years now, and she also shares my love for carbs and cheese, making her as fat and unhealthy as I am. You’d never know it, though, as she is vigorous and active, spending nearly all day out of her cage and flying freely throughout our home. But…
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Much as I would love to have been tiptoeing, I’m way too fat to do that, so when Mrs. Kangaeroo and I headed off to the Hamura Tulip Festival, it was stomping heavily through the gorgeous flowers. Mrs. Kangaeroo and I had done some cycling tours together in the past, but not since before the COVID-19 pandemic. I’d been pushing all week to go as the return trip is largely flat and a distance I thought Mrs. Kangaeroo would be able to handle despite not having cycled for many years. But the visit seemed unlikely yesterday as our dinosaur fell…