My last evening in Phuket was spent at Nikita's Bar in lovely, laid back Rawai, with the teaching team from the course: Pete, Greg, Clare, Simon, Mark and their respective partners. A lovely way to go out. Didn't plan to drink for 7 hours straight but hey, when in Rome ;) .... Anyway, this was the view at sunset.... The other photo's below were all taken the next day as I left Phuket: I hired a TukTuk to take me around to the more Northern beaches I hadn't visited yet, on my way to the airport. A great way to farewell that beautiful island.

And now, after 6 weeks away, I'm back in Tokyo.

Technorati Tags: japan, photography, teachingenglish, thailand, tokyo, travel, travelphotography

As I rode the bus from the airport to Kichijoji, and gazed mindfully at the passing cityscape, I had one of those beautiful, life-changing epiphanic moments: I love Tokyo. I have an amazing life here and I'm not going to be leaving anytime just yet. I loved Phuket and Thailand, but I would go stir crazy after a pretty short time. The expat's there live fairly booze-drenched lives (although that is the universal expat lifestyle and I know I'm often pretty guilty of that myself here in Tokyo), and you would never make the kind of money you need to travel enough to break the monotony of gorgeous beaches, great food, hot weather and 5 - 10 beers a night with the same people over and over and over again. Tokyo, despite it's difficulties, has a lot to offer, and what it lacks in lifestyle, it makes up for in pure excitement, culture and opportunity. I was offered a pretty cool job in Phuket and thought I would have a torturous time deciding whether or not to take it up. But hey. Bam. That's that. I'm stayin' put. But I'll sure as hell go back to Phuket again. Often.

It's been remarkably easy to get back into the frenetic Tokyo groove - but then I had consciously made attempts to prepare my headspace before I left Phuket: I finally watched Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai and was so utterly gobsmacked I sat through the whole 3.5 hour thing in one easy sitting and then lay awake for hours thinking about it. Then the next day I started reading Murakami's Kafka on the Shore, and finished it literally standing two people away from the passport control desk in Narita. Easily one of the best books I've read in years. Ethereal, surreal, mind-bending and very cool. I loved that I personally knew so many places in the story - I live not far from Nakano where the two protagonists live, I work in Musashino-shi where Kafka's father had his studio (and it is indeed quite an artists town), and I used to live in the mountains in (Japan's beautiful, best kept secret) Yamanashi Prefecture where the mysterious events occurred at the beginning of Nakata's story - hell, I even used to visit a cleared flat area in a lush forest up on a mountainside just like Nakata and his classmates did. It was so easy to imagine the events happening in these places I know so well... Now I just have to go to Shikoku and I'll have been everywhere in the story. If you haven't read it yet, do yourself a favour...

Started teaching again already and it felt great to get back into it. I've missed my students. I love teaching. It's good to be back. Ha! Who'da thunk it.