After leaving Sydney, I stayed in Canberra for one week with a family whom I had met along the way. In Canberra, I was impressed with the beauty of the ANU campus, as I was a university student at the time. I was also impressed with the war memorial, and I recall that the first display involved the Japanese army. There was a Japanese soldier statue, and a few photos of the Darwin attack andthe submarine incident in Sydney Harbour. Although Japanese textbooks did not mention those things,I knew about them through other history books. However, I was shocked thatthe first display involved Japan, and it reinforced for me the importanceof studying history.

After Canberra, I headed for Melbourne where once again I stayed with a family that I had met. By this time, I was beginning to realize a common feature among Australian houses: the virtual absence of clocks. Or, to look at it another way, Japanese houses were, by comparison, full of clocks.
After I realized this fact, I began to relax. I also started to walk slowly. After leaving Melbourne, I headed for Tasmania. I had heard that people in Tasmania walk even slower than people on the mainland.