MQ 44
Government Settlement
Republic Of Nauru
Central Pacific
1 July 1973
Dear Mum & Dad,
It is over a week since I
arrived home & everything is quite back to normal. It seems a long time ago
that I last wrote. Did you get my letter from Tokyo? The only other interesting
points to come from Tokyo seem to revolve around food. The Consul finally
turned up from Nagasaki on Friday night so that we had to start work on
Saturday morning. We worked through until about 3.30 pm & he then took me
to a very Japanese restaurant & we started with raw fish, seaweed & soy bean curd with sliced ginger & a little white spaghetti. I’m not
kidding, that’s what the meal consisted of. From that point on I decided I
disliked Japanese food & nothing I had afterwards really changed my mind.
This particular place was very small & we sat at a counter of untreated
timber. Eating is an art in Japan & although this place in Australia would
probably be a cafe. It was spotlessly clean & the service was first class.
They use about four different types of china utensils plus, even a small china
block for resting the chopsticks on during the meal. The raw fish was of
various types ranging in colour from red to white. It was guaranteed fresh as
the chef sliced the fillets off the fish in front of us (the fish still intact
with head, fins & tail). I had always imagined raw fish to be eaten in very
thin strips, but its not, each piece was thicker than you would cut a fillet
for frying. The taste of the stuff is just about as I imagined it would taste,
very sort of, well raw.
The Consul has arranged for the Japanese
fellow from the Nauruan Trade Office to take me to his club on the Saturday
night. Theodore had to deliver his daughters to a party across town. Seta (the
Japanese & by the way a nice gentleman) called at my hotel about 6.30 &
we walked to a restaurant not far from the hotel. The hotel is in a well known
entertainment district of Tokyo & the narrow streets within a radius of
probably a mile are full of restaurants, clubs, bathhouses & other places
of intrigue. When I first saw this restaurant I couldn't believe that Seta was
serious about eating in there, but he was. It looked horrible from the outside
& wasn't much better inside.
He thought I might like a barbeque type meal
& this was one of the few places that served that type of food. The dish
consisted of small squares of meat on a skewer about 4” long & cooked over
a naked flame. The cooking was done over the counter & the whole place,
including the kitchen was minute (small), no tables & we all sat around
the counter. Every now & then the meat would catch on fire & the fat
dripping from the skewers kept the place full of smoke. The meat was tough
& half of it was lumps of fat anyway. I had my first taste of sake there.
It is served hot from an earthenware bottle & drunk from a small earthenware
mug not much bigger than a thimble. The smoke & the food were terrible
& I was glad to get out into the clear Tokyo air. We took a taxis from
there to the Ginza, which is what is described as the main “downtown” area of
Tokyo. It is a fantastic sight at night & is supposed to be more
spectacular than London’s Piccadilly & New York’s Time Square. The lights
& neon’s are impossible to describe. The club was very well set up, though
not very big. The place was staffed with young girls in mini-mini skirts, one
per customer whose job is to keep your glass topped up. The place was very
expensive, though I didn't spend a cent.
Monday & Tuesday were
pretty busy & I had to organise some printing work with one of the local
printers. I have set up a new system that I hope will cut out all the
duplication work that they have been doing under the old system. I worked out a
set of four different forms on sensitized paper so that all the details of
payments only have to be typed once. The four forms are a covering letter to
the supplier, a Tokyo office copy of the payment voucher, Treasury copy & a
posting media voucher for the computer. The whole thing still has to be proven
in practise so I have my fingers crossed.
Tuesday night was another
night out on the town, this time as the guest of a director of the Japan-Nauru
Association named Mori. He is Japanese who has never been to Nauru & quite
a funny little bloke. He is the Managing Director of an advertising agency.
There was Theodore, Seta, Mori & myself. Apparently he had heard I was
there from Nauru & had insisted that he take me to dinner. The night was on
him & the first stop was a restaurant where most of the customers were
sitting on the floor at low tables. The restaurant was on the 8th
floor of this quite modern building of which Mori was a large shareholder.
Needless to say the service we received was first class. After the meal (raw
fish etc. including this time, raw jelly fish) he took us to his club. It was
very small, but very expensively finished. Staff consisted of a barman, four
girls including the Madame (no it wasn’t one of those places, but that is what
the boss is called if female) & a guy on the piano. The total number of
customers was six. Entertainment consisted of passing a mic around the
customers who each sang a song or songs. I got the impression that the Japanese
have a lot of folk songs & they all know them well. Theodore sang two
Japanese songs though he doesn't speak Japanese & was an instant hit. They
had a couple of goes at me but I was ashamed to say I didn’t know one song well
enough to be able to sing it right through. After some coaxing I sang Waltzing
Matilda & everyone joined in including the Japanese. It was a very enjoyable
experience.
After I had finished on
Tuesday afternoon I slipped out to do some shopping. I had heard of this
Kiddyland department store so took a taxis there. I had promised Andy to keep
an eye out for a pedal car for Darren, but to be honest, I didn't think I would
get the time & I also wasn't keen on organising the thing back to Nauru. I
spotted a beauty in this store, bright red, plastic body so it won’t rust,
horn, bonnet that opens with a small storage compartment, rear vision mirror,
all for about $14. I couldn't resist it. They had some still in their boxes, an
enormous package as you can imagine. The whole transaction was completed with
finger pointing, nods & waves etc. The little bloke put some more cord
around the box & made a sort of handle for me, because I told him it had a
long way to go. He escorted me to the lift & waited for it to open. We had
to put the box on its end, with me at attention beside it. He pressed the
button & bowed & off I went. I was hoping that the lift wouldn't stop on
any of the other floors because there was absolutely no room for anybody else.
Some of the lifts in Tokyo are as this one was, only for about 2 people at a
time. I struggled out of the store to the pavement & hailed a taxis. I didn't know what the reaction would be to such a large load, but I got one without any
trouble. I had also bought two rice paper lanterns & with the pedal car
cross ways in the back seat there was very little room for me. I took
everything back to the Consulate & packed the lanterns in some heavy
cardboard so that I could send them through the airline as luggage.
I was booked on an All Nippon
Airways flight from Tokyo to Kagoshima to leave at 10.25 on Wednesday morning.
Theodore had hired a car & driver to take us out to the airport leaving the
hotel at 9.00. The trip on the freeway can sometimes take over an hour
apparently but we made very good time in just over 30 minutes. He has already
been to the Consulate to pick up my two parcels. The fellow at the luggage check
in scratched his head a bit when he saw the pedal car box but finished up
accepting it as luggage, without any excess charge, so through another
anti-hijack search & eventually into the aircraft. I was again the only
European on the plane. Daylight didn't make any difference to the view out of
the window, although I did get a good view of Tokyo just after takeoff.
Nothing much happened on the
flight to Kagoshima, except the hostess dug around to find an English magazine
for me to read. To see your luggage disappear down the chute in a place like
Tokyo airport, one has grave doubts of ever seeing it again, let alone it
finding its way to the right aircraft. I was very glad to see it come through
the door again at Kagoshima. Funny things happened at the Kagoshima airport. I
must have looked like a travelling circus getting my brief case, camera,
suitcase, pedal car & lanterns out to the front of the terminal. I grabbed
a taxis & loaded the gear in & then the problems started. Airport
Hotel, nobody could understand. They came from everywhere, taxis drivers,
airport officials etc., no one could speak English. I eventually wrote it on a
piece of paper & someone took it into the terminal & in a few minutes
he came out grinning & nodding his head & he told the taxis driver where I
wanted to go. It was less than a mile to the hotel & I had to start again
with my luggage. I had a similar problem of communicating at the reception desk of
the hotel as Theodore’s secretary had overlooked making a reservation for
me. This was not a problem because it is an enormous hotel & apart from the
Air Nauru crew, I was the only other guest. Me & luggage squeezed into
another tiny lift to the 7th floor. I put all of the luggage in the
room, changed out of my suit & took a quiet walk back to the airport.
Kagoshima Airport from road to Hotel
The airport & hotel are
right out in the country & actually over 25 miles from Kagoshima City. It
is a very mountainous area & is probably the closest practical spot for it.
It is also a comparatively new airport & certainly only a new hotel. I had
been told that to catch a taxis from the airport into the city was nearly $10
or ¥35,000 so I took an airport bus for ¥380 or $1.The bus was fantastic &
nearly as comfortable as the aircraft. Beautiful seats, air conditioned &
stereo music. The roads were also very good, not a hole & as smooth as a
billiard table. The countryside here is unbelievable & you would really
have to see it to fully appreciate it. It is a mixture of cultivated land &
forests of firs. Everything is green & more soft light greens, in contrast
to Australia’s dark greens. There were no livestock & I didn't see one dog
on the whole trip. This is one reason I suppose why they don’t have fences
& this adds to the neat appearance of the countryside. Cultivation is done
right up to the bitumen of the roads & it is like driving through someone’s
garden. Everything is planted in neat rows. We traveled through a lot of
terraced rice paddies & it was planting time, with what looked like whole
families in the fields, heads down & they really do wear those big round
pointed hats. There were a couple of small hamlets on the way & getting
closer to Kagoshima, the road follows the coast, or actually, the bay, with the
volcano visible on the other side.
We eventually reached
Kagoshima & I got off the bus at what I thought was the end of the line, it
looked like a railway station. As it turned out, some people stayed on the bus
& off it went again. This worried me a bit, because obviously I didn't know
where the central terminal was. I wandered about the city for a couple of hours
& took some film. Nothing is in English in this place & from the time I
left Tokyo until after I had returned to the hotel on Wednesday I didn't see
one other European. I am sure there wasn't one other “white man” in Kagoshima
that day. I think it is off the normal tourist routes & about the only
international flight on a regular basis is Air Nauru. I was an obvious
curiosity in the city & it is really a rare experience to be looked at as
such a foreigner. The only things I bought there were some batteries for the
camera, an ice-cream & a small toy plane for Darren that looked a bit like
Air Nauru. I wasn't going to take a chance on the local food. It had been
passing through my mind just how to get back to the airport without having to
take a taxis because just no one here looked like they spoke English.
Markets Kagoshima 1973
At about 4 o’clock I decided
to take my chances with a taxis to take me to the city terminal..
He didn't speak any English but after pointing at a few buses & generally
carrying on like an aeroplane he got the message. It was quite a contrast to
the taxis rides I had in Tokyo, this bloke was so slow & cautious. We got
to the terminal & the airport buses were there alright. Now I didn't know
when they left or whether I had to buy a ticket before getting on. I went into
a Japan Airline office close by & found a bloke who spoke a little English
& he organised me with a ticket & told me when the next bus left. I
eventually got back to the airport & took some film from the bus on the way
back.
Kagoshima Airport at Sunset 1973
I got a very pleasant surprise at the airport, as the bus swung around to
pull up, there on the tarmac was Air Nauru. It was like meeting an old friend!
I was pretty tired by this stage, so I got a taxis back to the hotel. I ran into
a couple of the same blokes as before, big grins & they told the taxis
driver where I wanted to go. I went straight into the bar area & met the
Air Nauru crew who had just arrived about an hour before. It was great to see
some Australians & have a talk. There was a bowling alley at the hotel
& before dinner they invited me to join them for a game & dinner later.
The next morning there were
only 3 passengers to Nauru including myself. I was very pleased to settle back
in the plane, next stop Nauru (apart from Guam & Ponape). I felt as though
I hadn't had a decent meal since I left & got stuck into the food on the
plane. It was a pretty long flight & we had a pretty long stopover in Guam.
We were allowed off the plane this time. The airport was very busy & there
were three 707’s being loaded with American servicemen & their families for
Honolulu on Continental Airlines & PanAm flights. Guam has a similar
climate to here & with the noise & jet engines it was very uncomfortable.
All in all it was a good
trip. Apart from the work which I hope was successful, I managed to see quite a
bit in a week & I took 5 reels of movie film. They should be back in the
mail tomorrow.
Today is Darren’s birthday
& he was very excited about the car. We have a Chinese photographer coming
to the house at 2 o’clock to do a study of Darren which we hope will turn out
well. I hope you can follow my adventures because I put them down in a hurry.
We are all fit, hope you are
the same,
Love from us all,
Greg
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