1
Uhh I haven't written Day 1 or 2 yet but for a quick explanation currently my family is looking after a Japanese girl called Misa. The reason why I want to write about this today is because she's related to a former H!P idol but that'll be later in this entry.
So today we took Misa around to various tourust locations in my city. I live in South Tasmania, not to say it isn't a tourist destination but we certainly lack entertaining things. Firstly we went to the market we have here on Saturday mornings, Salamanca Market. There were lots of things including a man playing a Japanese guitar called a Shamisen. Whenever Misa sees something relatable to Japan such as Astro boy or in this case a Shamisen she says, "Famous Japanese guitar/character/etc"which is quite cute. While we were there I had to play in a performance for the local scout group's gang show. Being a musician I was in the band on French Horn. The Orchestra in this group wasn't much and we were missing a lot of people as well as the performance being all round mediocre, not much reason to dwell on the matter.
Afterwards we went to a nearby cafe where I was helping her with the menu at my parents request. I feel like I'd be going in to the private bubble by talking too much about this but she and my dad had a chicken burger, my mum had fish and I had Nachos.
We initially had planned for the afternoon to go on a cruise but unfortunately we had typical Tasmanian weather. Despite living in Australia it rains a lot here and is very cold so we ended up deciding not to go on a cruise and to put it of until tomorrow. Instead, we drove around on an impromptu sightseeing tour. First we stopped by the beaches. Unfortunately Misa didn't know what a beach was but it was all good when I said to her "Umi" ... I can't remember if that was the name for beach or sea.
So we stopped at a beach here called Kingston Beach *It's namesake was after the town we were in* We picked up some seashells, when throwing the smaller ones towards the water the seagulls would all fly and waddle over towards it expecting food.
After leaving the beach with our seashells in hand we stopped at the tallest shot tower in Australia. It's not really a sightseeing destination and the DVD they played was like a cheesily made homevideo, it was a DVD but it seemed like it was from the 90's or 80's. The DVD explained that a French man had wanted to make one so he did. If you don't know what a shot tower is, it's a place where they made the bullets for rifles and shot guns. They'd take a small bit of molten led and drop it from the top of the tower and when they reached the bottom they would be in a sphere shape, completely dry. We were allowed to climb the stairs to the top of the shot tower. the stairs themselves were old and wooden, they creaked and sloped to the side making it hard to climb up, all together there were 318 stairs making it rather hard for us to climb but the view from the top was very nice. Incidentally the area we were in was full of rich people and I could see a large house nearby, made with modern architecture, with a tennis court. There was another one next to it which seemed to have an indoor swimming pool. Those sights are very rare here haha, at the end when we had climbed down the stairs we were given a kudos for making it and a sticker.
We then quickly made our way to the Margate Train. I haven't mentioned this before but Tasmania has no public train system, so the train itself is completely stationary. Each part of the train has a shop in it, the one we went to was the lolly shop since we didn't have much time, Misa got herself a bagged assortment of lollies, my parents got sour lemon and Cherry boiled lollies and I, being a sweet tooth, got myself a small container of sherbert, everlasting gobstoppers and an oreo brownie.
The final stop of the day for me was to the Stanley Burbary Theatre at the University of Tasmania. Here it was where my band was going to have it's annual gala concert. I had to go there early for a soundcheck but it all went well. There were four bands, I was in the Brass band, Youth Wind ensemble (Junior concert band), and the Wind Symphony (Senior concert band), as well as there being a swing band which I was not in. It all went well. I was impressed to notice Misa stayed awake during it since she was falling asleep in the car earlier *I can hardly blame her though, speaking a foreign language all day as well as so much walking and travelling is bound to make you tired* But that all went well and Misa said it was very nice.
This is the part about the idol.
On our way home after the concert we started showing each other pictures of our family, my parents had dug out some old pictures so there was my dad from 40 years ago, my parents from 30 years ago, then from 25 years ago, me from 10 years ago, etc. And so Misa showed us one of her own family, she had a younger brother who played baseball a lot and a mother and father (of course). A few minutes later she showed us another picture, this time of a very pretty girl I recognised somewhat. Misa said, "This is my mother's cousin. She is an idol." and then she pointed out the fact that I liked Yaguchi Mari *she knew I liked Morning Musume* so she said "She is friends with Yaguchi Mari." I think my jaw much have dropped a bit because it came out of no where. The girl herself I didn't know very well but she did look familiar, so I asked for her name and Misa said, "Ishii Rika". For those who don't know, Ishii Rika was a soloist under the Hello! Project 10 years ago, she went by the name Peachy for a while but then started using her real name. That's was kinda suprising but I suppose it's not totally uncommon to be related to an idol, I mean lots of H!P members are related to each members of other idol groups so I hear.
So today we took Misa around to various tourust locations in my city. I live in South Tasmania, not to say it isn't a tourist destination but we certainly lack entertaining things. Firstly we went to the market we have here on Saturday mornings, Salamanca Market. There were lots of things including a man playing a Japanese guitar called a Shamisen. Whenever Misa sees something relatable to Japan such as Astro boy or in this case a Shamisen she says, "Famous Japanese guitar/character/etc"which is quite cute. While we were there I had to play in a performance for the local scout group's gang show. Being a musician I was in the band on French Horn. The Orchestra in this group wasn't much and we were missing a lot of people as well as the performance being all round mediocre, not much reason to dwell on the matter.
Afterwards we went to a nearby cafe where I was helping her with the menu at my parents request. I feel like I'd be going in to the private bubble by talking too much about this but she and my dad had a chicken burger, my mum had fish and I had Nachos.
We initially had planned for the afternoon to go on a cruise but unfortunately we had typical Tasmanian weather. Despite living in Australia it rains a lot here and is very cold so we ended up deciding not to go on a cruise and to put it of until tomorrow. Instead, we drove around on an impromptu sightseeing tour. First we stopped by the beaches. Unfortunately Misa didn't know what a beach was but it was all good when I said to her "Umi" ... I can't remember if that was the name for beach or sea.
So we stopped at a beach here called Kingston Beach *It's namesake was after the town we were in* We picked up some seashells, when throwing the smaller ones towards the water the seagulls would all fly and waddle over towards it expecting food.After leaving the beach with our seashells in hand we stopped at the tallest shot tower in Australia. It's not really a sightseeing destination and the DVD they played was like a cheesily made homevideo, it was a DVD but it seemed like it was from the 90's or 80's. The DVD explained that a French man had wanted to make one so he did. If you don't know what a shot tower is, it's a place where they made the bullets for rifles and shot guns. They'd take a small bit of molten led and drop it from the top of the tower and when they reached the bottom they would be in a sphere shape, completely dry. We were allowed to climb the stairs to the top of the shot tower. the stairs themselves were old and wooden, they creaked and sloped to the side making it hard to climb up, all together there were 318 stairs making it rather hard for us to climb but the view from the top was very nice. Incidentally the area we were in was full of rich people and I could see a large house nearby, made with modern architecture, with a tennis court. There was another one next to it which seemed to have an indoor swimming pool. Those sights are very rare here haha, at the end when we had climbed down the stairs we were given a kudos for making it and a sticker.
We then quickly made our way to the Margate Train. I haven't mentioned this before but Tasmania has no public train system, so the train itself is completely stationary. Each part of the train has a shop in it, the one we went to was the lolly shop since we didn't have much time, Misa got herself a bagged assortment of lollies, my parents got sour lemon and Cherry boiled lollies and I, being a sweet tooth, got myself a small container of sherbert, everlasting gobstoppers and an oreo brownie.
The final stop of the day for me was to the Stanley Burbary Theatre at the University of Tasmania. Here it was where my band was going to have it's annual gala concert. I had to go there early for a soundcheck but it all went well. There were four bands, I was in the Brass band, Youth Wind ensemble (Junior concert band), and the Wind Symphony (Senior concert band), as well as there being a swing band which I was not in. It all went well. I was impressed to notice Misa stayed awake during it since she was falling asleep in the car earlier *I can hardly blame her though, speaking a foreign language all day as well as so much walking and travelling is bound to make you tired* But that all went well and Misa said it was very nice.
This is the part about the idol.
On our way home after the concert we started showing each other pictures of our family, my parents had dug out some old pictures so there was my dad from 40 years ago, my parents from 30 years ago, then from 25 years ago, me from 10 years ago, etc. And so Misa showed us one of her own family, she had a younger brother who played baseball a lot and a mother and father (of course). A few minutes later she showed us another picture, this time of a very pretty girl I recognised somewhat. Misa said, "This is my mother's cousin. She is an idol." and then she pointed out the fact that I liked Yaguchi Mari *she knew I liked Morning Musume* so she said "She is friends with Yaguchi Mari." I think my jaw much have dropped a bit because it came out of no where. The girl herself I didn't know very well but she did look familiar, so I asked for her name and Misa said, "Ishii Rika". For those who don't know, Ishii Rika was a soloist under the Hello! Project 10 years ago, she went by the name Peachy for a while but then started using her real name. That's was kinda suprising but I suppose it's not totally uncommon to be related to an idol, I mean lots of H!P members are related to each members of other idol groups so I hear.
