hi guys, the first installment of of the music list as heard by the Happy Idiot on his travels through Russia and Eastern Europe. This idea developed as I traveled so the list got more accurate and therefore longer as time went on. I'm going to try and add Mp3 links but that will be at a later date, hopefully it will turn into a podcast.

The first part will cover Vladivostok to Komsamolsk-na-Amur. These lists are going to cover not only what I heard as I wandered around but also what I was listening to on the various Mp3 players that I had on me and what was playing on the radio in my head.I'm going to list the songs title first then artist then where applicable album.

Vladivostok

sitting in a cafe

School - Supertramp - Crime of the Century
Bloody Well Right - Supertramp - Crime of the Century
Hide in Your Shell - Supertramp - Crime of the Century
Asylum - Supertramp - Crime of the Century
Dreamer - Supertramp - Crime of the Century
Ruby - Supertramp - Crime of the Century
If Everyone was Listening- Supertramp - Crime of the Century
Crime of the Century - Supertramp - Crime of the Century

hi yall, the LAZY Idoit here. for those interested this blog will be moving when i get back to Oz. It will go to one of the travel blogs, either travel pod or get jelous. I'm going to try and link mp3's of the music i heard in each city i went to on a map so that you can relive the experience. This process probably will be slow (what else is new!) but patience is a vertue.

the future of this blog is uncertin but i'll most likely use it as somewhere to rant at the howling winds.

Hello to anyone who is still checking this blog.
Yes I am still alive . I'm in Saint Petersburg and I haven't yet needed to sell Chris's internal organs on the black market to pay off the mafia after a senseless week of drunken debauchery.
I know I have been slack in updating and I can't promise that I'll do any betterbefore I finnish my Journey, but I will post all my notes oncem I'm back in Australia. on the down side any photo's that get published will not be my own as my camera is living a new life with an unknown Russian some where in Irkutsk. Any way thats all for now.

We're on a train rushing through Japan's rugged landscape, steaming out of the dark into pasture filled ravines, then plunging back into the darkness of another tunnel. Every time the effects of the last night start to drag us down, Haze looks over at my leather jacket, then at me, he chuckles to himself and drifts happily back to sleep.

In one of the few moments of inspiration of the day Haze had suggested that we take refuge on the train and head straight for Toyama and leave Tokyo , a city of more grand beauty and heat than we alcohol sweating mortals can handle.

After getting off at Toyama we discovered that our hotel was at the next station. So we stood on the platform blinking at two trains as they sped off toward our destination. Realizing that we now had around an hours wait before the next train we looked around for something to eat.

Japanese train station have the coolest Kiosks in the world. Unlike the usual dirt and grime encrusted hovels with displays of crisps and chocolates that haven't been produced for the last 18 years, last centuries newspapers, and baine-maries full of stale, shriveled, luke warm chips and frankfurters floating in urine coloured water; kiosks in the train stations in Japan are sparkleing clean, ordered and serve some of the tastiest noodles you'll ever get. It's such a simple system, you buy a voucher from the vending machine give it to the personat the counter and in minutes you'll receive a real ceramic bowl full of fresh noodles. awesome!!

The first Lemon Warped Around a Gold Brick experience starts like this:

We wander around Shinbashi for a while trying to find Ceigen's (Haze's friend) office. "It's this way." " If we turn left here..." "Gimme a look, is that right?" " Hey haven't we been past here before?" "Twice!" We eventually found the Building and started opening random doors until we found Seigen.

Ceigen is a great guy, all smiles. He greets us warmly, offers us juice and takes us off to the hotel he has kindly organized for us. We dump our stuff and head to the bar for a beer, the first of many! We meet Ceigens wife at a Yakitori resteraunt. We are greeted with gusto by the Worrior Chefs that run the place, an intimidating bunch. The resteraunt is run like a military operation, orders yelled out like comandments and delivered with precice methodical movements to the super heated hotplate. Bourdain and Ezard would have been proud. Here the Sake flows like the Amazon. Chris, Haze and I each have two bottles of Sake in front of us, one cold one warm. Every time we take a sip Ceigen and his wife generously fill up our glasses, every time a bottle is emptied a full one magicly appears. The Sake and skewers being demolished at a rapid pace. Halfay through the meal Hana, Ceigen's daughter, arrives having just managed to get out of work. Aftershe arrives we are offered some mushrooms "Matsutake" we're told. Hazs tells me that it's $100 a plate! I would have been floored by the generousity if the sake wasn't already doing that for me.

After dinner we bid fond aduie's and head off to meet another of Haze's friends, Gaigin Girl, at a small Irish pub.We convince Hana to come with us. 'For one drink!" she protests. After a beer there Gaigin girl informs us that she has booked us into the Absolut Ice Bar and that she booked for five people, "so, Hana you can come too."

The Ice Bar is, funnily enough, made completely of ice. I mean completely of ice, everything, the walls, the bar, the glasses, all ice. We dress up like Eskimos from Xanadu in these big, warm, silver coats and head into the ice cave. It was amasing, they had Esher prints carved into the wall. Vodka was being comsumed at an alarming rate. "I'll buy this round." "Here drink this." "Hurry up and finnish it's my shout!" "I'm already at the bar, you'll have to skull!" After 45 minutes and uncounted vodka's later they kick everybody out so that with the numbing of the cold and the vodka we don't freeze to death, way too easy to do.

Once outside in the humid Tokyo night, with an idiot grin on my face, my eyes blinking at a food van called the Happy Orange, I was piled into a taxi and we headed off to Rapongiand into an ex-pat bar.

Haze looked around the bar at the polariods of previous punters stuck to the walls and the ceiling and decided that more than anything in the world he wanted to be immortalised along with them. How to do it? Simple, buy the entire bar a round! On discovering that he didn't quite have enough cash to do this Haze turned to Chris and I, who wanting to help a brother out opened our wallets. Fortunately Hana, who's one drink had long since fallen by the way side, sugested that it may not be the smartest idea and that we should possibly find another bar, so off into the hot and steamy night we went.

It might be a good time to mention that when I left Australia I was expecting the weather to be similar to Melbournes' i.e. mid teens or cooler. I could not have been morer wrong. Japan had been experiencing a heat wave, it would have been at least 30 during the day and not much cooler that night. Wandering the streets of Tokyo was akin to being in a sauna.

As we wandered (staggered) the laneways of Rapongi we came across a couple of locals sitting out the front of a Rock'n'Roll and motorcycle memorabilia shop, out back was a bar. Awesome. We got some beer from Ted, the owner, introduced our selves to Ko, this cool Japanese, esoteric biker dude who lives in Berlin. I perused the leather jackets, top quality second hand. Ted offers us some refreshing flavoured ice thing. American Biker jackets. I do the conversion, Yen to Aussie dollar. More beer, now scotch. The nights' starting to get a bit sketchy. Ted pulls out this wikid WWII German Military jacket. Ted takes Gaigin Girl for a ride on his bike, woo-hoo.

Eventually around 2:30am we pour ourselves out into the dark and head our variousways. Hana, quite sensibly, left several hours earlier. We leave Gaigin Girl heading off into the night...

Ring. Ring ring. Ring ring. ignore it and it will go away. Ring ring. Ring ring. Ring ring. "Haze, you'd better anwser that. "( Where am I?)
"They want to know if we're comming down for breakfast."(Who's 'They'? Who am I??)
"OK. What time dose it finish?"(My mouth feels like a pub carpet.)
"9"(ughh!)
"What time is it now ?"(Which way is up?)
"9:15"(ugghhh!!!!)

We crawl down to breakfast like shatter glass all angular, fragile, pointy.

We're sitting alone in the giant dinning room.
"Hey guys, I bought a cool leather jacket last night." I say. Brightly the first smile for the day strolls across my face. "It was a bargin, only $50 Australian!" I'm starting to feel much better.
"Are you sure?" Chris asks. "I think you might have miscalculated. I think you need to add another zero."

Haze smirks, then sniggers... then laughs...And laughs, laughs loudly, laughs long. Chris joins in with glee. I'm now wishing I felt as good as I did when I woke up.

I'm sitting slumped at a table in a hotel, one day into a 2 month journey. It's 27 outside. Haze is laughing in the background.
I'm now the proud owner of a very expensive, warm leather jacket. Wikid

The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy describes consuming the drink the Pan Galactic Gargleblaster not unlike having your brain smashed out by a slice of lemon wrapped around a rather large gold brick. I've been traveling for just over a week and I've already had 2 drinking experiences on a Pan Galactic scale, these were before I even got to Russia...

After an uneventful flight from Melbourne to Narita Airport I spent a pleasant evening at the Holiday Inn Narita, enjoying Soba noodles and beer for dinner followed by my first cold Sake in Japan. The next morning Haze Chris and I caught the train, past bamboo forests and green fields to Tokyo Station.

Tokyo was thankfully, though oddly disappointingly, nowhere near as insane as I thought it would be. Through my vicarious experiences I imagined Tokyo to be a mad throng of people darting around at a mad pace, mopeds weaving in and out of laneways and crowded motorways, skyscrapers flashing with lights and noise enough to give you an epileptic fit, and Mothra playing baseball. I was prepared to be overwhelmed with terror to the point of needing fresh undies... Tokyo is one of the most amazing cities I've been to!

After Haze left to see his grandparents (poor guy only had 4hrs to see in and that included 3hrs traveling) Chris and I wandered north out of Tokyo station (I'll call it north, I had no idea really it just seemed like up. (actually, as I found out later it was south)). After strolling for a few blocks over freeways and canals we ducked down tree lined side streets (I never imagined tree lined streets in Tokyo!) we found ourselves in a small neighborhoods park. Locals enjoyed a shaded lunch while Chris and I sat and stared like wide-eyed yokels.

Chris wanted to head to the Emperor's Palace, the location of which he'd found on a "You Are Here" map on a street corner. So we continued weaving through Tokyo, with a small side trip that involved jumping turnstiles at a train station to get to a toilet. By the time we got to the Palace it was past lunch and I was hungry. We found a cafe and did something that I'm proud of, I ordered a meal in a foreign city without help. OK, I bought a ticket from a vending machine and gave it to a waitress, but I still had to match the symbols on the menu with the symbols on the machine (tricky ha).

After lunch we checked out some of the sights around the Palace i.e. the fortress wall and an entry gate through which Icould look back onto the city. It's amazing to see the new with the old, a sight that continuously impressed me through out Japan. How the new and the old intermingled, it's beautiful.

Heading back through parks and streets, getting lost, getting found again we met up with Haze and went off ot Shinbiashi to meet his friend Seigen, that's where the next adventure starts. The first Lemon and Gold Brick experience.