A special day

I know that some of you are interested in charity, so I'll tell you about a special day for some of my friends and me. Once a year, in June, we take part in a sponsored walk for charity along the Kamo River in Kyoto city. As some of you may know, a sponsored walk involves finding sponsors (people who agree to donate money if you do what you say you will do), and then taking part in the event (a 10km walk, in our case). My best friend, Kevin Ramsden, who lives in Kyoto, organizes the event. (The photo is of some of us taking a break at the halfway point).

We walk 5km from San-jo bridge up to Kitayama bridge, then turn around and walk back down the other side of the river. A mixture of Japanese and foreigners take part every year, and we all have lunch and drinks together in an Irish pub afterwards. As you can imagine, I gain more calories than I lose during the day. The purpose is to raise money for disadvantaged children (orphans in Zimbabwe and Nepal). Kevin has contacts in those countries. Last year we raised a little over 1,000,000 yen, and had fun at the same time. If any of you are interested in joining us next year, let me know sometime.

Communication in a high tech world

As we all know, people (particularly in developed countries) have access to amazingly sophisticated technology nowadays. It is certainly true that this gives us the ability to communicate faster and in more ways than ever before. But what use are people making of this technology? Are people communicating more, and leading happier lives as a result?

Of course there is no one simple answer to this question. My friend Dale (we were on our way to a concert at Zepp Osaka in the photo) loves to go out and has many friends, but he also makes notes about his experiences and writes about them on his blog. He uses technology to enrich his (already enjoyable) life. Can we always say the same thing about other people? My friends and I sometimes comment about seeing a few (usually Japanese) people sitting together somewhere for a long time, all of them using their keitais, and never talking. It looks like a strange situation, in our opinions. Is technology making people less interested in talking? In the past families used to sit together and watch TV, so even if they didn't talk very much, at least they were sharing an experience. Now kids go to their rooms and use their various high tech devices alone. Could technology become more of a problem than a help to communication? What do you think?

Globalization's impact on me

Naturally globalization has affected my life in various ways, but the most obvious one is that it played a part in me choosing to live in Japan. I first came to Japan in 1989. At that time I was feeling adventurous and just wanted to explore the world as much as I could. I had been in India for 4 months before I arrived in Tokyo, and was curious to see what life in Japan was like (maybe I was also kind of chasing an American girl, but that's another story).

I knew very little about Japan then. I was even surprised and relieved to discover that there were some trees in Tokyo!! It was hard to adjust to the crowds at first. Being inside Shinjuku station at night made me feel like I was some kind of fighting spaceship in a video game, dodging missiles. After a few happy years here I realized I could enjoy having a career in Japan, even without speaking good Japanese (because of globalization). I went back to Brisbane to do my M.A., but always planned to return.