May 2013
1 post
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Tokyo_Daily random facts
I know, I’m pretty late on the blog, I’m so sorry about that guys, so here’s a list of funny things I found in Japan:
- Masks: It’s not a myth, I saw people wearing them everyday riding the metro. Friends told me it’s either because they’re sick, they don’t want to get near other people’s germs or they sometimes just wanna hide themselves in order...
April 2013
11 posts
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Tokyo_ Todai and Love Hina
Tokyo Daigaku, aka Todai, is the most famous japanese university as it is considered the most prestigious one. The manga that made it popular for us otakus was Love Hina.
Todai is really huge, with a lot of different buildings everywhere. You’d think that you have the main building right beside the gate but actually you ahve to walk through an alley. It looked a lot like the british...
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From Parisian Catwalks To Fraser Island's Sand... →
Annabelle Payet was one of thousands of young hopefuls who entered Tourism Australia’s Working Holiday Visa competition on Facebook earlier this year,…
Remember when I said I had an interview when I was working in Fraser Island? I forgot to share the article with you when it was out so there it is, it’s quite cute and funny.
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Tokyo_ Azabu Juban - Sailor Moon day
For those who are not familiar with Sailor Moon (and may I just had: Shame on you people!), it’s one of the most popular Magical girl manga of all time. It was created around 1992 by Naoko Takeuchi, was adapted into a 200 episodes anime and made the Magical girl stories popular again, inspiring many other stories and of course countless parodies and sometimes…disturbing...
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Tokyo_Harajuku and Meiji Shrine
As I cut my hair few months ago I wanted to buy cute hairpins and headbands. And i remembered seeing some cheap ones in Harajuku! Takeshita Street is full of cute shops at afordable prices so that was the main attraction for me today.
Then I saw that the Meiji Shrine was open so I first stopped to visit there. Meiji Shrine is the most popular temple whereas Sensoji (the one I visited in Asakusa)...
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Tokyo_Shinjuku - City Hunter day
The first thought I had when going to Shinjuku was for City Hunter, one of the numerous animes we were watching when we were kids and in which you have several scenes of Tokyo. I found a good article in french that shows the real places along with Tsukasa Hojo’s drawn versions right here. Those were the places I was aiming for!
Anyway, I spent the whole afternoon in Shinjuku and...
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Tokyo_Kagurazaka-Takebashi-Tokyo Dome
Today I wanted to visit the Ueno Zoo but realized it was closed on Mondays. So instead I went to Takebashi to visit the East Garden of the Emperial Palace….and found out it was also closed on Mondays and Tuesdays….Turned out almost everything is closed on Mondays…But well I had a nice walk through the Kitonamaru Park, where you can find the Nippon Budokan, the Craft Museum, the...
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Tokyo - Dragon Ball Day
Last Saturday, after spending the previous night partying with friends eating homemade yakisoba, we went to Nihombashi, fancy district with a commercial center with luxury shops. On the top level was the Dragon Ball exhibition, with original boards from Akira Toriyama, some of the original covers, and what I found funny was a corner with a video of the same scene in every different languages!
...
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Tokyo - Shibuya, Asakusa and Ueno
On my first day in Tokyo, I went to Shibuya to do some shopping. We got off at Omote-sando, and walked through the district up to Harajuku. I bought quite a bunch of stuff, specially in 109’s Garula and d.i.a, but as we have some Para Para nights out coming every wednesday, I needed shoes (instead of my walking boots) and something nice to wear in the civilization!
It wasn’t...
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I'm going to Japan
I’ve been dreaming to go to Japan for more or less 20 years, since the moment I understood that the cartoons I was watching with my big brother were called “anime” and were adapted from comic books called “mangas”. When people asked “why do you like mangas?” it’s like asking “why do you like Super Heroes?” Everybody loves Super Heroes, and let’s face it: what kind of heroes do we have in France?...
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Easter in Menzies Creek
I left Melbourne to get to Belgrave for my new (and maybe last) Helpex where I’ll be staying for almost 10 days. I met my new host at the Belgrave train station, Miss Kooka, and we drove about 10 minutes to get to her house, located in Menzies Creek, in the Dandenong region. The house is surrounded by the rainforest’s gum trees; it almost looks like a modern version of Hobbiton: houses hidden in...
March 2013
9 posts
4 tags
Artistic Melbourne
On Sunday, I decided to stick to with my tiny list of free stuffs to do. I started by waiting next to Melbourne Central for the free city shuttle, that goes around Melbourne CBD and stops in front of every main building in town. They say you can also hear some historical facts in the train. Yeah, “they say”…..I waited 30 minutes before realizing that the city was not running today, as it was...
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Melbourne's State Library
For the past few days, I’ve been spending a lot of time in the State Library. I fell in love with this building. The architecture from the outside is almost as impressive as the one you can find inside. It’s very modern with the polished glossy stairs, the glass doors, the cold metallic elevators, the art gallery and the equipment you can borrow in the Art department, the videos on the big screen...
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City Tour of Melbourne
On the list of the free things to do in Melbourne, I decided to start with the “I’m Free” tour. It’s a 3 hours walk around town guided by a local volunteer. So the tour is free and you can reward them with a tip (you choose the amount, of course). The concept already exists in Sydney and is quite new to Melbourne.
The meeting place is at 10.30AM in front of the statue of Sir Edmond Bary, at the...
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"Well, Sh*t happens" - The story
As I told you in the previous article, when arrived in The Grampians, I decided to part with my friend. I won’t go into details as some of you expect (you can still send me a PM for that), but at this point I had: no transportation and no place to sleep. I checked the next bus and decided to go back to Melbourne. Why Melbourne? Well, because it was closer than Adelaide and my next Helpex in 10...
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Great Ocean Road via Melbourne
I left Tasmania after almost three months and joined a friend in Melbourne. He came on vacation especially from France and we decided to do the Great Ocean Road for the next 2 weeks and the first start was Melbourne. The afternoon I arrived, we just had a good walk around the town, had diner outside, catch up and went to bed early after planning the next day.
We started with a shop called Minautor...
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Getting inked in Tassie
Four months ago I decided that I wanted a new tattoo.(I have one on my left ankle which is almost 10 years old). The first idea came with a couple of friends, but as I don’t really like having the same design as someone else, no matter who they are, I decided to draw the design myself.
Then, after a month, one tattoo became two. Three months later, after sketching and finally getting what...
5 tags
Burnie, Penguin and Latrobe.
Burnie is known for being a Paper Town. Not that it is made of paper but there’s a huge mill where they used to produce paper and sell it all around the world. The factory got closed in 2010 but you can still see it even though most of it has been destroyed. All around the city you can see the words “Paper” with a little history, the information center is decorated with statues made of paper, and...
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A day in Cradle Mountain
When you look for pictures of Tasmania in tourist magazines, on Google, or Lonely planet books the picture you get every time is this: the boatshed in Cradle Mountain.
Cradle Mountain is THE must see in Tasmania. I was lucky enough to be with generous hosts who offered to get Nami (who’s doing Helpx at the neighbors’), drove us there for the day and even prepared sandwiches and fruits for us!...
February 2013
6 posts
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Burnie's penguins and Emu Valley Garden
On our first night, my hosts offered to get Nami and took us to Burnie. The city is a 10min-ish drive from Stowport, with red cellophane on our flashlights…to see the locals Blue Penguins! We had a little presentation first, made by volunteers then could see the penguins coming back to their burrow like 1m away from us.
We can only use red light to see them, otherwise it hurts their eyes....
Getting to Stowport
Two days ago, after having diner at the roadhouse while wearing wigs to match our naruto mood and taking a lot of funny pictures, we headed to Burnie in North West Tasmania with Dani and Nami. It took us 4 hours to get there, we stopped by the Gunns Plains Caves for a visit…which never happened because I got too scared of being stucked underground in the dark. Yeah, I don’t really like...
Sunild'Oz gets a new look!
Today, after days of hard work (yesterday in particular) I decided to do something about the blog. I’ve been thinking for a while that I wanted to develop it a bit more, make more categories, and extend it to other things, not only my journey.
So you can see the layout changed a bit as well (the French touch on the top was not exactly intended but it’s funny after all), I added some...
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Sheep shearing and news from Brockley!
Well, I’m pretty late on the update so here what happened lately:
Nami left Brockley for Hobart to do another Helpx and a new guy came instead. Things didn’t go well as he was pretty arrogant and rude, I didn’t like him at all but thanks God he was doing at least a good job when asked.
I’ve been doing a lot of painting in the cottage, gardening, still helping with guests...
January 2013
6 posts
4 tags
Bicheno and Natureworld
Last Tuesday Nami and I planned our day off with two friends and decided to spend the day on the East Coast. Four girls, one car, and the best of the nineties on CD!
We first headed to the Blowhole first, found a pingouin under the rock (yes, a pingouin), spotted some big black crabs on the red-colored rocks and found lots of dry sea salt!
Then we drove to Natureworld, stopped the car...
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A day in Hobart
Sunday and Monday we had two days off so our generous hosts offered to give us a lift to Hobart as they would spend the weekend with their family. They helped us book a night at the Prickled Frog backpackers hostel and thanks to a generous american couple who tipped us 50$ we were able to enjoy a full day of shopping in the city!
On the way to Hobart, we stopped in Richmond, lovely little city...
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Freycinet National Park
Last Friday we spent the day in Freycinet for Ted’s last day at the farm. We drove for a while, stopped to take pictures on the way next to Oyster Bay and were greated by the impressive Hazard Moutains. The scenery was so astonishing it almost looked fake!
I was almost expecting a green screen to scroll up leaving the view empty! We took a bunch of pictures on the marina then went to...
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Bushfire news and driving around on day off
After 4 days, the fire seems to get under control as we can barely see smoke from the farm right now. We got just a little rain yesterday, we’ve been hoping for a big storm with heavy rain but only got heavy wind instead….Not helping Mother Nature, clearly NOT helping!
I told you about the hills getting red at night in my previous post so here’s a pic of what we could see from...
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Bushfires in Tasmania
The news finally hit the world: bushfires are burning all over Australia and Tasmania (yes, Tassie is part of Aussie but oh well, never hurts to mention!).
The view we had from our bedroom when it started.
Truth is it started two days ago, the heatwave hit Australia, and the night before we had one of the warmest night in Tasmania. Temperature rose to 45°C in Adelaide, 40°C here in Buckland.
One...
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Oh Tassie, you're so pretty!
Time really flies, man I’ve been in Tasmania for a week already!
So how are things in Brockley? Quite busy: doing breakfast for guests, cleaning the house, helping with painting the new cottage and scratching paint from the windows (my recently discovered specialty! Kekeke), helping for dinner and we even had a wedding on New Year’s Eve!
I love this place, it’s good to be busy, have some...
December 2012
7 posts
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Christmas in Tasmania
So after spending few days in Brisbane with Norpan, and having stuffed my stomach with good food (japanese restaurant, Max Brener chocolates and more japanese food in the market) I travelled to Hobart, via Melbourne on December 22nd. I arrived at the YHA pretty late, around 10PM and hardly slept because of two heavy snorers in my room.
On the next morning, I caught the Redline bus to Sorell where...
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3 days left!
Maaan it’s been a while since I updated my blog…Couple of things to tell:
- Work is going pretty well, I’m in charge of Junior Rangers with Kittycat and since last week we have 2 sessions everyday with a split shift. You can imagine that I’m pretty tired. Specially because I was really sick last week. I kinda caught a cold, my throat hurt, I had a fever and difficulties to...
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Fraser Island's Champagne Pools
Last Monday, with a couple of staff friends (Norpan, Waldo, Burger, and Dongsaeng) we had the opportunity to borrow a 4W car so we went to the Champagne pools!
They are located up North so we had to go on the other side of the island, to the Eastern Beach,
then drive all the way up to Indians Head,
then climb up a cliff and finally got there, after 3 hours.
We had so much fun in the car...
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Junior Rangers
Things have been quite wild here. A lot of people leaving, doing stupid things, and of course everybody complains under cover. Not like they gonna say it to your face or anything. I think people are just too young to work far away from home. Or maybe I’m just getting old. Naaah, it can’t be me xD
Anyway, one of my regular jobs is taking care of the Junior Rangers activities. It’s all depends on...
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My new life as a Ranger!
Hey there !
It’s been a while but here I can’t really get a good connexion to update the Wi-Fi, so basically I just write the article first so I won’t spend too much time on other people’s computer. So, how have I been for the past week?
Pretty good, I really think that I have the coolest job here, especially when I see Norpan wake up at 5:30am because she works at the breakfast buffet....
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Heading to Fraser Island
Last weekend I spent in Brisbane was under a pretty stormy weather. I spent the last days doing the laundry, hanging out with Nipponie and on Saturday night we went for a drink in town, to the Irish Club, after eating Korean and meeting with the Busan boyz, and finished by playing pool. Oh and i met Almost-Jon-Snow too!
yeah, it looks so professional with the flip flops…
It was pretty nice,...
November 2012
8 posts
1 tag
Just a quick notice to tell you that i still can't connect my computer and i have so much to tell it's feeling really annoying...
Couple of things coming up:
- my new lovely awesome banner specially made by my talented friend Rvaya (i'll make a full post about it)
- my new dream job of ranger in Fraser Island
- my last weekend in Brisbane and the sh*ty train
Luckily i have connexion on my phone and found a Tumblr app! (precious phone, Best 100$ EVER spent!)
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Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary
On Tuesday, we took the 10H10 bus in Adelaide Street to Lone Pine. It’s a 35 minutes ride and it costs 6.50$ to get there. Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary is the world’s first and largest sanctuary and there are so many species to see it’s better to spend more than a couple of hours to enjoy it. Plus, they do several presentations and a bird prey show so if you’re in a rush you might not see...
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Brisbane - Story Bridge and Kangaroo Point
I know you’re all waiting for the report of the day we spent to the koala sanctuary but this article is not about it, so if you really can’t wait just skip it.
On Monday afternoon, as we were at the library checking emails updating photos and blogs on the morning with the free wifi, we decided to go to the Story Bridge in order to try the climbing of the bridge, the most popular attraction in...
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First friends
Yesterday was a pretty happy day for me as I met a lot of people. I first went to join the frenchies (met the day before) and spent a part of the day shopping. But something was bothering me: as nice as they were, they were still french. I didn’t came to Australia, at the end of the world to spend my time with only french people. Or else I would have stayed in Paris.
Plus, no offense...
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Out of my shell.
Yesterday, I finally grabbed my courage by the nuts and had a good talk with my roommate, let’s call her Nipponie. Turned out she’s travelling alone and spend most of her days at the library on the internet. And then it hit me: what the hell am I doing in my bed, not talking to anyone? This is just not me!
That’s why I decided to have a walk, discovered the cultural center and took the river city...
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Brisbane Cultural Center and River City Cruise
It’s been two days since I finally decided to go outside again. First because I felt a little down (one job offer got cancel on the morning) and then because I didn’t want to be tempted with spending money.
But this morning I thought “come on, get out of here”. I first offer to my roommate to go to the BBQ that is held every Friday. Never done it, it’s only 5$ and...
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Back to Brisbane - The Melbourne Cup
The Melbourne Cup is Australia’s major thoroughbred horse race. I didn’t know about it before we went to the pub yesterday night, and it’s a major event in the whole country and it seems to even be a public holiday in Melbourne!
I’ve heard that to women, it’s not really about the race but the occasion to wear their fienst gown and a hat or a big flower hair ornement....
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The Jesus Jump
This week we were only two instead of four, because the two other French girls went to the boss’ parents’ house for a little paid job for 3 days. So Dutchie and I were to do the job with only the two of us. Not really difficult but we had some customers on Wednesday and Thursday and time went by smoothly.
The last weekend in Evans Head was not so busy though. It was too windy for karak hiring,...
October 2012
19 posts
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Evans Head Surf Shack
I arrived in Evans Head, in New South Wales, after 5 hours of bus from Brisbane, stopped in Woodburn, a town about 10 Kms away. The surf shack has a little backpackers’ accommodation, with a common room. There’s a trolley with kayaks to hire and a bunch of surf boards, paddle boards, a lot of swimsuit and life jackets. I think it’s the only one in town, and the prices are really cheap compared to...
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Last days in Brisbane
After Chinatown, I went back to the city center in order to visit the Museum of Brisbane. I first spent a little time in front of the City Hall, there was music playing in the street and the weather was really nice. Now, the Museum is composed of two little galleries: one exhibition with all arts related to Brisbane, its history and some explanation given about the pieces and in which context they...
