Friday, April 13, 2007

Branded by the bush


I'm averaging about a post a month on this blog. It would be great to be able to post more often than that, but as I'm juggling multiple commitments here in Tokyo at the moment, I just don't seem to find the time to put in. To my surprise, I got a comment from a reader yesterday that I'm not writing regularly enough! There's good reasons for that, but I'm happy to know that I have readers out there anyway.

With that in mind, I thought it was time to throw up another posting - a bit of a news item this time. I was going to write about the recent visit by the Chinese Premier to Tokyo and may still do. However, that requires a little more time than is on hand write now so I'll mention the publishing of a short story instead.

Since early this year, I've been writing a monthly column on Tokyo-based bands with MySpace pages for a publication called Asia Player. It's a bit of a lads mag covering more of the 'seedier' side of Japan (which is not the kind of thing I might once have envisaged myself writing for), but sometimes one takes publication where one can get it. After all, having appearing in The Sun with my old band a few years back, I've already fed from the Murdoch hand!

Their April edition contains an article from me on the experience of getting stranded in the bush in Tanzania during my last visit back in 2005. It was during my first ever safari and led to me coming about as close to truly wild nature as I've ever come when the car we were driving sank into a dry river bed.

It was a worrying situation to find myself in to say the least, but exciting in an adventurous sort of way too as it gave me my first 'safari survival story'. We stayed at the Saadani Safari Lodge, possibly the most relaxed place I have ever visited on Earth, and slept in a hut that opened out onto the Indian Ocean. A few trips out into the bush to observe the wildlife, a boat trip down a nearby river, and we were almost on the way home when we got stuck.

If you want to know what happened, you'll have to read the story - click here...

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