Travelling around Japan with Japan Rail

Buy your Japan Rail Pass in your home country. This is crucial. Decide on 7, 14 or 21 days. One 7 day pass is about the cost of return Tokyo - Kyoto, so it's great value. Green Car is First Class (a LOT more) and not worth the money. Shinkansen ('bullet trains') are very comfortable, lots of leg room, reclining seats, pull down tray tables. Don't travel in busy periods like Summer/Festival times and you won't need reserved seats. Most of the carriages have unreserved seating. Ample luggage storage in carriages. Because it is Japan, everyone is beautifully mannered. The ticket inspectors and attendants bow to the whole carriage before exiting.  Some carriages even have "quiet cars" no cell phones. Yay!

If you land in Osaka (Kanzai Airport), you can use your Japan Rail Pass as soon as you have activated it (Japan Rail Office in the terminal). We had a night at the airport hotel (an easy walk across the walkway). Train Stations are under the terminal. Be sure use JR lines and stations not Private owned lines. High speed trains are ALWAYS on time. They leave on time, TO THE SECOND.

If you land in Tokyo (Narita Airport) you can use your JR Pass to board the fast Narita Express to Tokyo. The JR pass lets you use some subway lines (the huge JR circle lines which surround both Tokyo and Osaka metropolises get you anywhere) and even some ferries on the Inland Sea. 

Download Hyperdia. Indispensable journey planner and timetable. Put in the time you want to depart and the method of transportation and it shows you times, platform numbers, length of journey. Print out for the days ahead or save offline pages.

Buy delicious, freshly made Obento (segmented boxes of Japanese goodies) in the vast underground shopping arcades under major train stations, or buy boxes (still made fresh) on the platform in kiosks or food and drink (including reasonable priced beer) is sold on board by efficient roaming trolley dollies (I'm sure there is a more polite Japanese term). 

Using a base city/cities

Tokyo is an excellent base to explore Nikko, Kamakura, Hakone, Fuji area.

Kyoto or Nagoya are excellent base cities for day trips. Osaka great for day trips to Nara, Kobe, Kyoto.

Stay in ryokan (traditional inns) in smaller towns (Takamatsu has some excellent one).

Booking is through Japan Tourist Bureau website or many have own websites.

Because of the high speed trains you can travel hundreds of kilometres easily in a day. Average speeds of 300  km/hr. Every town on the main line between Hiroshima and Shin Osaka seems to have its own stunning castle, Himeji (featured in 007's You Only Live Twice) and Okayama are notable.

We travelled from Nagoya and Nagasaki, over 900 km and arrived fresh and ready to explore a new city.

We took a day trip from Osaka to Miyajima Island, all trains, ferries covered on your JR Pass. The red tori gate is even better than in the photo.

Kyoto needs at least 4 days to explore, without leaving the city. If basing yourself in Osaka, Nara is the   must-do day trip. Osaka itself is a very cool city, smaller than Tokyo but with a definite personality. Osaka Castle was a big surprise.

Nagasaki is worth the visit, despite the distance. The most European of all Japanese cities. Japan is a great destination. Bone up on a bit of history before you go. It will enhance the experience.

This was our fourth trip and we are raring to go again.

Golden Pavilion, Kyoto

Being grumpy is useless

Grumbling about the state of things (anything from bitching about people dropping litter to global warming) achieves nothing. Am I changing anything for the better?
Vitriol achieves only a short term "buzz" but long term it's fruitless. Negativity only breeds more negativity.
Here endeth the lesson. As Charlie Brooker would say, "....now go away!"

:-)

Banshee Season 1, episode 8, review

Most fun l've had since Dexter Season 7 finished. You look up "Guilty pleasure" in the dictionary, you get Banshee. Starting with the obligatory sex scene, but this was edited into a marathon, when does this guy find the time to be a sheriff? The pastoral Amish scenes were straight out of Witness. Loved the scene when Proctor goes bat shit with his dad. We had the longest fight scene in television history, definitely when 'woman-on-Russian mafia-henchman' is entered into the equation. Excuse the typing, I'm on my crappy tablet.
The Amish nymphet in the shower was pushing it a bit, but this is Cinemax.
There was more plot and revelations in this episode than you get in 3 eps. Tune in just for the epic fight scene. Full marks to the sound editor.
A great episode, but I miss the gay Asian hacker accomplice.
Update, just watched episode 9. It just gets better! Last ep of season approaches.

RKO Movies you must see

Copyright RKO Pictures LLC/image www.lib.berkeley.edu

One of 'the big 5 studios' declined rapidly once Howard Hughes took over in the late 1940's.  

What Price Hollywood? (early version of A Star is Born); The Most Dangerous Game 1932 (filmed on the same set as King Kong, seriously weird)
King Kong; Flying Down To Rio 1933
The Lost Patrol 1934 (early John Ford effort, Boris Karloff featured)
The Informer 1935 (John Ford again); Top Hat (Astaire and Rogers at their peak, Irving Berlin music, great supporting cast, over the top sets, even if dancing isn't your thing, this movie is still a delight)
Winterset 1936 (ground breaking curiosity piece, Burgess Meredith starred)
Stage Door; Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs 1937 (released by RKO)
Bringing up Baby  1938 (screwball comedy, much copied (see What's Up, Doc?,1972)
Gunga Din; Five Came Back; The Saint in London; The Hunchback of Notre Dame 1939 was a great year for movies - see my  post on 1939 classic films
Pinocchio (released only); My Favourite Wife 1940 (remade as Move Over Darling)
Citizen Kane 1941 (Orson Welles peaked early)
The Magnificent Ambersons (a magnificent failure, Robert Wise edited 40 minutes from it) 1942
Cat People; I Walked with a Zombie (two Val Lewton films = creepy classy production on a shoestring budget) 1943
The Woman in the Window (Fritz Lang, kicking butt) 1944
A Game of Death (Robert Wise remake of The Most Dangerous Game) 1945
The Spiral Staircase (this is a seriously scary film, as good as Hitchcock); Notorious; The Best Years of our Lives; It's a Wonderful Life (what a Wonderful Year!!) 1946
Crossfire; Out of the Past (Robert Mitchum doubleheader, we are firmly in film noir territory here) 1947
Mr Blandings Builds His Dream House (Cary Grant made every picture watchable) 1948
The Setup (boxing theme mini gem, 80 minutes) 1949
The Man on the Eiffel Tower 1950
The Thing (James Arness in a carrot costume) 1951
Rancho Notorious (Marlene goes camp out West, quelle surprise!); The Narrow Margin (another gem, better than Gene Hackman remake, great twist) 1952
Second Chance (Mitchum again, in 3D!) 1953

a sad ending to a great studio....

The Conqueror 1956 One the greatest turkeys of all time, see John Wayne as a Mongol ravish Susan Hayward. Urban legend? Wayne, cast and crew including director, Dick Powell, later died of cancer due to A-Bomb testing in the Nevada desert after 13 weeks of filming, plus the same sand was brought back to Hollywood for more scenes! Hughes bought up all the movie prints.

1939 - the year of the classic movies

Check out the incredible films released in 1939, in no particular order:

Stagecoach, Goodbye, Mr Chips, The Wizard of Oz, Ninotchka, The Roaring Twenties, Of Mice and Men, Wuthering Heights, It's a Wonderful Life, Beau Geste, Destry Rides Again, Gunga Din, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, The Women, Dark Victory, The Cat and the Canary, The Rules of the Game (Jean Renoir, my only foreign pick), Only Angels Have Wings, Mr Smith Goes to Washington,
oh, and a little movie called  Gone with the Wind.

Things that make me smile .....

• our family dog (Langly) lying on his back like a split chicken, waiting for a tummy scratch
• those Google home page animations/designs, they're informative, too
• getting an unexpected birthday greeting when you open up Google (see above)
• those Ikea commercials
• hearing a kookaburra some mornings
• Graham Norton's "Red Chair" segment
• watching Margaret and David disagree over films in The Movie Show
• hearing the local school bell sound at 9 o'clock when I am still reading in bed (I am a retired primary school teacher)
• using 'in-house' phrases and words that only my wife and daughter understand the context of
• turning left (pointy end) rather than right (cattle class), boarding a plane (unfortunately not often enough)
• hearing the pop of a sparkling wine/champagne bottle being opened
• being woken up by a sloppy lick/kiss from the dog in the morning
• reading advertising signs like: "Sweeney Todd Medical Waste Removal"; a retired doctor's B&B called "Bedside Manor" ....or (for HR Model Holden car parts) "HR Parts and Stuff"           
• going to the fridge and discovering a chilled bottle of wine hiding at the back

70's TV Guilty Pleasures (10 of the best)

Not The Brady Bunch, thought it was naff. Liked the two sendup movies, though.
I did watch The Partridge Family (for Susan Dey). You must bear in mind I was between the ages of 14 and 23 in the seventies.  Here we go, in order of what I would most desperately like to see again ....

U.S. 70's shows

1. Columbo (Where do I start? I think the first few seasons are my favourite) "Er....just one more thing....." 
2. The Name of the Game (glossy Universal telemovies with rotating stars, I'm also a sucker for great opening titles/theme music)
3. Kolchak: The Night Stalker
4. Night Gallery patchy Universal horror anthology series with great guest stars and soon to be famous directors (Steven Spielberg)
5. Search (Probe was the pilot movie, loved the Dominic Frontiere theme music and the changing stars format)
6. Rich Man, Poor Man mini-series (polished Universal production)
7. Laugh In (1968-1973)
8. MacMillan and Wife (Universal again, John Schuck really annoyed me!)
9. Banacek (Cool Peppard rowing down the Charles River)
10. The Snoop Sisters (shortlived but not forgotten, those old birds were good)

British 70's shows

1. Family at War  must-see wartime melodrama
2. The Sandbaggers  I preferred this to Callan, but my wife will kill me for saying such sacrilege.
3. Bouquet of Barbed Wire  miniseries, pretty raunchy, if I remember.
4. Journey to the Unknown   another horror anthology series, creepy introductory whistling music. I know it finished in 1969 but I didn't see it until 1970, it's my blog, it wouldn't be the first time the truth has been 'bent' on the Internet.
5. Thriller (from the creator of The Avengers, Brian Clemens)
6. The Persuaders big budget Lew Grade series, Tony Curtis was great, so were the cars.
7. Doctor in the House (loved Professor Loftus)
8. Morecambe & Wise (Brit gold)
9. Doctor Who (Jon Pertwee episodes)
10. Doctor Who (Tom Baker episodes)

60's U.S. Television sitcoms - variations on a theme

U.S. Situation comedies in the late 50's tended to be the W.A.S.P.(White, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant) family like Father Knows Best, Ozzie and Harriet, Leave it to Beaver (June says to Ward Cleaver in bed, "Dear, I think you were a bit hard on the Beaver last night" .... ooo, er, Nurse! but I digress, it's still a classic joke though, but not mine).

Then some bright spark in the early 60's came up with the idea of the dysfunctional family or the unconventional home situation - 'fish out of water' premise. And all the networks jumped on the bandwagon. Here are the variations on the same theme, in no particular order:

• My Favourite Martian (I think it was a rip off of Gore Vidal's play A Visit to a Small Planet, also a Jerry Lewis movie)
• My Living Doll (I think my first TV crush was Julie Newmar, this over 10 years before Westworld did the robot gimmick)
• The Munsters (not based on a cartoon like next show, Universal had all those 30's horror movies to reference)
• The Addams Family (it is line ball which of the last two shows came first)
• Bewitched (loved Edora, as soon as Tabitha came into it you knew 'jumping the shark' was nigh)
• The Beverly Hillbillies (typical 'fish out of water' premise like: Tarzan in New York, Crocodile Dundee, Fresh Prince of Bel Air, numerous Brendan Fraser movies: Blast from the Past, Encino Man, George of the Jungle - he specialises in looking cute but bemused). Shit, this blog post should have been entitled "How to get off the subject"
• Green Acres (another 'fish out of water' idea like The Beverly Hillbillies but flipped around - urban to rural)
• I Dream of Jeannie (setting it in Cape Canaveral was topical and a winner)
• My Mother, the Car (this was short-lived for good reason, a variation on Mr Ed, the joke was all in the title) 

Then some bright spark in the 70's came up with the 'let's have social commentary' sitcom. So we had: All in the Family (rip-off of UK 'Til Death Do Us Part), The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Maude, The Jeffersons (both Archie Bunker spinoffs).

But that's another story....