Don’t Play With Your Food: Rob and Kevin’s Culinary Conquest

The distinguished Robert Monaco did me the great favor of visiting for two weeks at the end of August. This adventure could be described in any number of ways, but I think the most appropriate would be as a journey of those culinary delights, and a few horrors, we enjoyed over his stay. There was, as they say, never a dull moment.

Rob arrived exhausted and disheveled around 5pm at Kansai International Airport. I met him at the arrival gate and then we got some beers for the ride home. Yebisu, premium malt. Drinking is okay anywhere in Japan and I enjoy abusing this privilege whenever possible.

We arrived back a little bit late and still more tired, but determined to sleep on a solid night's meal we made our way to the Japanese equivalent of a diner. An izakaya provides all the staples with healthy doses of beer. The joint we were in was of the lower-class sort, so we just ate our fill and left, but a proper izakaya experience is a true treat.

Breakfast the next morning, and most mornings, involved a stop at Circle K, the local konbini (convenient store). Onigiri are rice balls wrapped in seaweed and stuffed with some mystery ingredient. Well, it was always a mystery for Rob because he can't read Japanese. There are basically two types of onigiri that I never stray from: smoked salmon and raw salmon with scallions. Other, more macabre, types exist and Rob the Masochist inadvertently tried them. Chicken-and-Mayo is less offensive, but others include umeboshi (pickled plum), natto (fermented gooey beans), nori (seaweed), and several others. Like I said, I never stray from my fish. Round out two or three of these with C.C. Lemon, a carbonated lemony drink, and you have a konbini breakfast.

That night we went to one of my favorite places, the local yakitori, literally burned chicken, restaurant. I like grill, I like chicken, and I like beer. Yakitori joints have these three things in admirable quantities. You could probably order just about any part of the chicken you wanted, though mostly we didn't want. I think the weirdest thing we order was on the chef's recommendation: we believe it was part or all of the lung. It was soft and mushy, anyway. The best thing we ate, or rather Kevin's favorite, was the curried chicken. I do love me some curry.

The next night we were out on the town in Nagoya and met some friends for good eats. We went to a yakiniku restaurant this time, which specialize in grilled meats, mostly beef. As we were out with some Japanese folk we let them order and hoped for the best. Great Success! Hi-lights included giant mugs of beer, cow tongue, cow stomach and intestines, raw piece of cow, and scallops grilled in their own shells.

From here exact dates become murky, but I'll still give you a delectable rundown of key events. There was a kaiten-sushi binge at the local dollar sushi place, Kappa Brother Sushi. Before you all wretch your stomachs at the thought of sushi that only costs a dollar, just remember this is the homeland of sushi and a dollar of raw fish in Japan goes significantly farther and at significantly better quality than it does back home. Also, it comes on a frickin conveyor belt! How could anyone disagree with food that brings itself to you? On top of that, at any point you can order anything from your table via computer and a few minutes later it trolleys out to on a shinkansen (bullet train). Those wily Kappa brothers thought of everything. I stuck to my usual fishy fare, though I managed to convince Rob that trying the crab brains was a good idea. I know he had some other weird stuff too, of his own volition, that I'm sure he'd be happy to fill you in on. In retribution, he got me to try some raw mackerel. Fishy indeed.

We went to a fireworks festival and so got a chance to try all sorts of weird carnival foods. Squid-on-a-stick, its all in the name. Takoyaki are little balls of fried octopus in dough with some herbs. Yakisoba is fried noodles with beef and pickled ginger. All this mention of pickled this-and-thats, by the way, are so prevalent because they supposedly aid in the digestion of all that raw food the Japanese fancy. I'm not how true this actually is, but I haven't suffered any food poisoning yet.

My favorite discovery of the trip was this little izakaya named Sandals that we ran into randomly while biking around. We entered on a whim one night and it turned out to be the best decision ever. Sandals is a hole-in-the-wall place run by a nice 40-something couple. I stuck my head in to make sure they were actually open, and the kind woman ushered us in excitedly. I think its safe to say we were their first foreigner customers. As a small place, the regular menu was pretty sparse but the today's specials were all unique and exquisite. We ordered a pork bowl with scallions and ponzu sauce and also a grilled aji, or horse mackerel. I mean she really took the whole fish, grilled it up, slapped it on a plate and dinner was served. Yum. We had already ordered to capacity, but as I asked the chef about his menu I noticed that one of the items was kujira sashimi, or raw whale. Not just whale, but raw whale. I can tell many of you are cringing again, but I'd already unwittingly had whale once before, albeit deep fried, and it was delicious. Rob and I were considerably fascinated, but as the daily budget was spent we decided to come back another day.

Mos Burger offers the best, and perhaps only worthwhile, burger in Japan. As their motto suggests, it's a Mos Burger Life. All Mos Burgers come in open pouches rather than wraps like their golden arch brothers. This is because Mos Burgers are sloppy affairs with the burger contents often seeking liberty of their own accord, usually to the detriment of the handler's fingers. We both enjoyed the Classic Mos with Cheese, and especially sloppy burger which most likely spurred the pouch format to begin with. Its mostly a standard cheese burger, only with patties of something real-tasting and the Mos Sauce, something akin to sloppy joes. In addition, Rob had a Teriyaki Burger which he held in great esteem, and I had a limited-time-only Chicken Curry burger. Boy is crazy for his curry.

In our travels to Kyoto we discovered a number of classy and not-so-classy joints in which to eat our fill. The first night we stopped at one place mostly because they had an English menu on the door. It all worked out for the best because their yakiudon (like yakisoba, but with different noodles) and okonomiyaki were to die for. I believe we ordered octopus in the yakiudon and squid in the okonomiyaki. Okonomiyaki is described variably as the Japanese pancake or the Japanese pizza. Pizza is the more honest of the two, though in reality it bears little resemblance beyond being a round dinner food. Okonomiyaki is basically a batter bottom with veggies, noodles, designated meat product, and an egg all fried up together, flattened, covered in sauce and divided for ease of consumption. Probably the most charming part of this meal is that when I say it is covered in sauce, that is actually the best description I can give you; the bottles this sauce comes in are vexingly labeled "sauce". It could be worse, I suppose, if it wasn't good. Thankfully it is.

Also in Kyoto was a tabehodai, or all-you-can-eat, restaurant of self-prepared fried foods. We found this place after a 12-hour bike journey around hilly Kyoto. We ate like only gluttonous tired Americans can. There was a 2-hour limit that seemed like more of a kind suggestion than an actual rule. Well really, how much fried food can the body really endure? We decided to push the envelop and find out. A surprised waitress came over to warn us fifteen minutes before time ran out. Our response was to shuffle over to the soft-serve ice dispenser, load up on strawberry sauce, and stubbornly force feed ourselves for another 900 seconds. 901 seconds later we proudly slapped our money down, belched loudly, and went home with chests puffed and noses high.

We had some traditional kakekori, or shaved ice, at Kiyomizu Temple. The bowl of shaved ice is covered in syrup, in this case maccha flavor, the traditional green tea, and with ample helpings of anko, sweet bean sauce.

Back in Nagoya we took a day-trip to the Asahi Brewery, home of Asahi beers. We arrived without a reservation and the lovely ladies that operate reception were scrambling to deal with us. We were on a tight schedule because I had to get back in time for work, so when they said we could either do the tour or do a 30-minute quality-assurance taste test, we opted to drink. They had two brews on tap, pilsner and stout, and a basket full of beer finger foods. I had one pilsner, one stout, and one black-and-white combo. Rob enjoyed an equal number of beers plus one he tapped himself when those lovely ladies foolishly left us alone in the dining hall. Asahi is doing a promo in conjunction with Lowenbrau in September, so I imagine I'll be back again rather soon.

When we weren't eating out, we were eating in. We hit my new supermarket, Max Value, for regular servings of self-made sushi bowls which have since become a regular fixture in my diet. Max Value puts out sashimi-grade fish at 9am and 5pm, so usually after work we'd roll over and pick up some of the afternoon's catch. There was maguro, hamachi, katsuo, and aji in abundance. We also enjoyed some self-made unagi bowls, or barbecued eel over rice. Unagi is one of the priciest items in Japan, which is sad because it's also one of my favorites. Unagi supposedly contains of summertime rejuvenation. I don't know about that, but its always delicious and that makes me feel better.

On the beverage front, there was always the aforementioned C.C. Lemon and Asahi beer. Other favorites included Tantakatan, a brand of sho-chu (Japanese rice liquor), and chu-hais, the Japanese cousin of the wine cooler (good for a headache and little else). There was plenty of mugi-cha, wheat tea, and let us not forget good old-fashioned and ever-present o-cha, green tea. We sampled, perhaps at my unwise insistence, a variety of sake and a bottle of yuzu liquor, yuzu being some unpleasantly bitter relative of the citrus family.

There were two regrettable, if necessary, adventures as well. One involved a mandatory trip to Yoshinoya. Yoshinoya is the Japanese answer to McDonald's, and all the love-hate-but-mostly-hate that such a comparison entails. Yoshinoya is infamous home of the beef bowl, ample at 5am after the club when all your senses are dull and useless anyway. Any other time is a stern lesson is the dangers of poor dietary choices. We went of our own volition, and received our due recompense. We had to go home and eat something else just to settle our stomachs. Well, Yoshinoya is about the experience, not the food.

The second regrettable adventure was our return to Sandals. We had hyped ourselves up for kujira sashimi all week and when we finally arrived… it was no longer on the menu! Whales of the world you have escaped, for now. Your day will come. Not to be completely foiled in our quest for strange, we ordered wafu beef (raw) and snails. The snails, um, well let's say I'm not sure if they were cooked at all and even if they had been I'm not sure that would have helped them agree with my palate anyway. The wafu beef, on the other hand, was extraordinary. The meat was as fresh as could be, bright red and marbled beautifully with veins of fat. It basically dissolved in your mouth. Whales escaped that evening, but that night we got the better of a different large lumbering mammal. Top it all off with a bowl of the most amazing fried rice and we were content despite our initial loss.

Then it was time to go home. We had a final hoorah at the yakitori joint again. This email simply wouldn't be complete without the image of Rob chowing down on some raw chicken breast. No, I could not be convinced partake. Japan is nuts. There were also chicken joints, chicken gullet, chicken liver, and chicken feet… I made one of those four up, but I bet you're hard pressed to determine which one. On that note, its now six o'clock and I've got to go make some dinner. Curry, of course.

Space of Sound 2007

August 11^th to August 19^th this year was the Japanese Obon holiday. I believe this is week long celebration for one's dead ancestors or something like that. More importantly, however, is that Kevin gets the entire week off. Sadly, so does the rest of the country, so the typical avenues of rest and relaxation are thoroughly clogged with urbanites escaping the city heat or visiting ancestral homes to pay respects. This left me in a bit of a conundrum as to where best to take myself: cities would be empty and beaches would be clogged.

Enter Sakura, my pal from training. The email on the training experience has yet to be written, but I've decided to fast forward this one because it ended up being so bad ass. Sakura called me up and told me about some concert/festival she was going to with some friends up in Nagano. This piqued my interest because a) I've never been to Nagano, b) Nagano = mountains = cool, and c) a three-day music festival sounded a whole lot better than sweating it out playing video games in my apartment (only marginally better, you know I do love me some video games).

Traveling from Mie to Nagano is prohibitively expensive on my current budget, but fortunately I remembered a little thing called the juu-hachi kippu, or 18-year-old's ticket. You buy 5 trips for a set price and then you can travel anywhere Japan Rails go. Nominally this is to encourage Japanese youth to visit and experience more of their own country, but in practice I think foreign residents make the most use of it. The catch of course is that you can only travel on local (read: slow) trains, so while you can go anywhere, you better have plenty of time. Example: Nagoya to Hiroshima by shinkansen (bullet train) is 2.5 hours, but by juu-hachi kippu it takes around 9. From Suzuka, my city in Mie, to Hakuba, the city in Nagano, took around 8 hours. Thankfully I had nothing better to do, and the series of tubes known as the Internets procured me the magnificent audio book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. By the time I reached Nagano I was happily acquainted with this literary adventure and ready to ascend the Japanese Alps and descend into three days of musically-enhanced debauchery.

Space of Sound (affectionately abbreviated as SOS) was a Sunday-night to Wednesday-morning concert marathon. Concert isn't quite the right word, however, as it was all DJs spinning techno-electronica-house-trance whatever-you-want-to-call-it, it all sounds the same to me anyway. It bears mentioning here that I don't particularly care much for this kind of music, let alone to pay to go hear it for three days straight, but I do love musical events and the crazy they entail, and moreover Japanese festivals are the best festivals I've come across and thus I was very curious to see how the two would combine. At any rate, it was a three day affair with DJs spinning basically non-stop. The scheduled breaks were supposedly from 12pm to 6pm (gotta sleep sometime) but really the noise only stopped for an hour or two a day between 3 and 5.

For anyone who's been to a festival back home, it was a generally similar affair, only with perks only Japan seems to offer. There were various tent cities, but they remained impeccably clean and stench free. The same could be said for the toilets and cleaning facilities. Indeed, I had a short conversation with a fellow party-goer sometime around 3am on the very subject. I have translated it below, approximately, to sate your curiosity.

Kevin makes for a particular port-a-potty, but is head off mere strides from his quarry. The interloper is clearly inebriated. Kevin is, shall we say, sober as a bird.

Me: My good sir, I ascertain nature has sung her sully song to us both. Your shuffling gate proved the quicker, first strike is belongs to you. But pray, let thy aim be true that I may too enjoy its present purity.

Sir: Let there be no question, my dear White Devil: the Japanese never let fly askance. Be still thy quivering heart, the dragon shall be naught but slain.

Me: With God's speed, then, friend. Be quick, mine own doth seek freedom, and I fear with or without my blessing.

Sir: Ai-ai, I advance.

As you can see, the Japanese take their cleanliness quite seriously and I cannot but laud them for it.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. I arrived Sunday around 8pm, which is to say completely in the dark. Sakura was with a large group of mostly Japanese and a few foreigner friends. I knew one of the Japanese guys, Kenta, back from my training period in Nagoya. He had my ticket so he and Sakura met me at the entrance. We followed the crowd through the dark towards the main event area and even in the darkness you could tell it was simply teeming with crazy little techno-heads. The mob in front of the stage was this amorphous noodling mass of neon lights and erratic limb spasms. We made our away clear around this to get to the tents and drop my stuff off. Having traveled all day I was anxious to drop the excess baggage and jump right in. We arrived to find people cooking up a pot of curry and I decided that it would be better to enjoy the night on a full stomach. After the meal we gathered essentials and made ready for carnage. I tapped the 2-liter sho-chu (Japanese liquor) I had lugged all day and topped off my water bottle for portability and away we went.

Once again, this sort of music was not my scene at all, but it was hard not to enjoy myself with the crazy all around. All sorts of oddities could be found at this place, and all with a Japano-fusion twist. There were the Harajuko-type girls dressed up as fairy-tale and cartoon characters (my favorite was Little Bo Peep), candy-raver types with way too much pastels and accessories, hippies with their dreads and flowery clothing, girls dressed up as belly dancers and leathered-up motorcycle gang members and everything in between. Even the regular-looking people were fashioned-out like only the Japanese can do it. My favorites, of course, were the quintessential Osaka girls: big hair and not-so-big club gear. I'm always amazed by how well the Japanese people do themselves up on a regular basis, but doing it at home is one thing; accomplishing the same feat from a tent on the mountainside in the Japanese Alps is quite another. Osaka girls, I take my hat off to you. There were plenty more sights: twirlers, jugglers, break dancers, pierced body parts and colorful hairdos (and several hair-don'ts! nyuck nyuck), tattoos and all the rest. I even saw a monkey. Word.

The first night went extremely well. I adopted a do as the Romans do attitude and wiggled around with the best of them. Kind of gets old really quick, but the sho-chu helps. I stumbled back around 4am because I didn't want to see the sun come up. I woke up a few hours later to suffocating heat and the stench too many bodies in a tent. I lunged out of the tent into the surprised presence of Japanese faces I vaguely remembered from the night before. They seemed bemused by the voracity of my waking force. I, for one, was not quite ready to be awake.

Still tired and perhaps still a little drunk, it was readily apparent that all shady spots were already covered in bodies. Frustrated in my desire to sleep, I decided to take stock of my situation. Having arrived in the dark, I didn't realize how mind-blowing my new environment actually was. The Japanese Alps are justly named – I felt like I was smack dab in a little slice of Switzerland. The festival site was about halfway up a mountain, with great vistas both up and down. I kind of just stared around dumbly for a little bit until I remembered I was hungry.

I was doing this little trip on the cheap, so all I had brought with me was a stock of cup ramens, a big bottle of sho-chu and a big bottle of water. Essentials, baby, essentials. I borrowed the communal stove to boil some water and enjoyed (?) my cup ramen breakfast squished up against a tree salvaging any scrap of shade I could. It was going to be a brutal day. The mountains were incredibly cool, for which I was thankful, but the sun was incredibly strong as well, and sadly I'm still the whitest of white boys. Comes with the name, I suppose. A million thanks go out to Suzanne who insisted on stocking me with sun screen. As I finished my breakfast, the Japanese guys beckoned me to come with, and we made our way back to the main stage. I didn't really want to go, but I also didn't have a better suggestion. I grabbed the water this time and was horrified when they busted out a handle of Cuervo. Tequila sunrise indeed. I shook my head with a polite smile and watched in morbid fascination as they swigged yellow horror at this ungodly hour.

Much to my surprise, the party was still bumping. Like, full tilt. This remained true every morning – the craziest parts of the day seemed to be the 6am to 12pm block. I still can't account for why. The sun is hot and people are tired but no one seemed to care. I'm used to that 11pm to 3am peak zone, but apparently I had it all backwards. Maybe it's because you couldn't sleep past 7 or 8am anyway, so you might as well be awake and shaking it anyway. At any rate, I was impressed enough by their staying power to join back in the fun with abandon. Definitely the earliest party I've ever been to. We stuck around here for several hours until we were about ready to drop. I took a break for lunch and returned to the tent to find Sakura and others. She had the brilliant idea of going to take a bath.

My favorite part of the day was indeed that mid-to-late afternoon period where the party chills out but everyone is really just preparing do to it all over again in a couple hours. In their brilliance, the Zen minds of the Hakuba ski resort city planners had decided to locate an onsen at the base of the mountain. That basically means that after 24 hours of dusty, sweaty, grimy, rhythmic dirtiness all you have to do is jump on a descending gondola and step off into the waiting sanctuary of the-best-bath-you've-ever-taken. Like I said, people here think of everything. I was only too happy to oblige.

Finally clean and able to stay so in the cooling afternoon, we trooped back up the mountain and away from the quizzical gazes of unassuming townsfolk. After some food we made our way over to a quieter side of the mountain and lay down in the grass to enjoy a peaceful sunset. In the distance the music could be heard thumping to life and with happy thoughts of the party to come we snoozed a late siesta into the dark.

Waking up in the dark on a now chilly mountain side can be a disconcerting experience. Especially if you manage to nap upon a particularly ill-placed weed nudging into your ribcage. Remembering where and why I was, I took account of my surroundings and found bodies gone and a note in their place: Gone back to tent. Drinking. Come soon. Sakura. Bless her heart. I gathered my things and made my way back towards the thumping, which was now thundering, and as I crested the hill saw that it had been joined by a mob of neon lights. I didn't know what time it was, but I knew it was time to start.

I already mentioned that the morning was the peak of the party, and at the time it seemed the event organizers had envisioned this is all but one crucial point. Premier DJs were in early AM attendance, throngs of party-goers joined, and vendors were on hand with plenty of beer and water. And yet for all this fore-thought, it seemed to me that none had been given to the ultimate killer of the day: the sun. The sun came up right behind the DJ stage and quickly set to blinding and burning the assembled crowd. Every morning, despite my great respect for the party, I was also cursing such a ridiculous and avoidable circumstance.

That is, I thought so until I did a double take and realized that once again organizers had indeed thought of everything. Imagine that best DJs are playing when the sunrises and, knowing in advance the exact minute that the sun will peak over the mountains, have perfectly timed their sets to climax exactly with the sun, and now further imagine the effect this must have on all those hardcore party-committed drug induced poppers and that it just about blows their freaking minds. Now imagine at last Kevin rolling over on a bale of hay with this first light in his eyes, groaning intermittently and, finally unable to take it any longer, swinging an idle arm at passers-by and demanding in a pathetic threatening tone for someone to turn the lights back off. No, I never saw the sun actually rise at SOS, though I cursed it as least once if not all three days and was ever aware of our mutual enmity. Royally hung over on this final morning, it appeared that leaving the party to sleep had gone out of vogue so I had just plunked down on the first free patch of earth I'd come across. Don't know where the bale of hay came from, but nor was I much for asking questions at that point. Miraculously, remnants of the crew were also on hand and passing around water (not tequila, thankfully) and I was thus relieved for having to do or think much for myself. Always a plus.

And then it was time to go. I gathered up my stuff and cleaned myself up a bit. I was training it back again and everyone else was driving so I had to leave a bit early. I found them one last time for a final group photo, took a final swig, and then made my way down the mountain and back to reality. For the return trip my music was sadly long since dead, so I had to content myself with studying kanji and mentally preparing to-do lists for when I arrived home. After all, the indispensable Robert J. Monaco would be my distinguished house guest starting the very next day and there was no time to dawdle. It was, of course, time for the real party to start.

Back Home

Home-stay, that is. After my various hijinks in Wakayama, I had plans to stay with my old home-stay family in Aichi for a few days. The Yamamoto family has always shown me the utmost kindness in every regard, even when I call them up short-notice and beg for a place to stay. I think they remain in awe of my ability to survive despite being clearly incapable of anything they consider responsible care or self-reliance. I don't really blame them.

When the time came to leave Yasuhide's he was going to drive me to the train station. My luggage was still quite overwhelming, even after giving away plenty of omiyage, so I off-loaded even more stuff to Yasuhide to lighten the load a bit more. It's always hard to say goodbye to beef jerky, but we are often given so few choices in these matters.

Saying good-bye to Yasuhide's parents, I was confronted by some unexpected waterworks. I mean, I know I'm a nice enough guy, perhaps even walking that fine line towards likable, but Mrs. Ueda was just about bawling at my leave. What can I say? Cultural and linguistic barriers crumble before the devastating embrace of my endlessly blue gaze (not quite the shock and awe of the Napalm, but really, what is?). Casualties strewn here and there, I made my exit.

Keiko Yamamoto, my okaa-san, picked me up at the station in Okazaki, Aichi, and brought me back to the Yamamoto residence. You've all probably heard me talk about this house before, but it always bears repeating. This place is off-the-wall awesome Japanese goodness. Tatsuo, the father, is a carpenter and basically built the place himself in traditional style. Right when you walk in is the genkan (where you take your shoes off) of polished stone, and dead ahead is an interior garden scene complete with stone fountain. Not quite like coming home to a puppy but still an exquisitely calming experience. On the right side of the main entry is Tatsuo's office and the master bedroom next to that. Bedrooms are understated affairs in Japanese homes, so it's really just an empty tatami room, but then again that's part of the beauty. Needless to say, for being "just" a tatami room it exhibits quiet perfection with brand new mats and walls structured out of natural woods and perfectly integrated futon closets and such. From the left side of the genkan is first the parlour (for lack of better name) where Tatsuo entertains house guests and clients. This room is decked out with all sorts of traditional art and, for a special few days, was the lucky recipient of Kevin's luggage due to its fortunate proximity to the front door. Next to that room is the living room with TV, massage chair, and wall unit which I'm proud to say displays a nearly empty bottle of Glenfiddich I gave to Tatsuo a while back. In the center of the room is a low table with a hidden indent for western-style sitting. Word. Back in the hallway is my favorite two parts of the house: the downstairs toilet and shower room, and the staircase.

The staircase is awesome because the banister is a gnarled piece of natural wood that Tatsuo worked right into the frame of the house. I've tried to take a million pictures of this, much to the bemused curiosity of my hosts, but I can never quite capture it the way it should be. Come to Japan and I'll do my best to introduce you to the coolest staircase banister anywhere, ever.

The toilet and shower room are technical wonders that also manage to remain aesthetically pleasing. The toilet is also composed of natural pieces of wood and all the equipment have motion sensors which gives the room a nice minimalist feel. Despite its minimalism, its clearly so lavish that you finish your business and half expect a man-servant to be ready and waiting with a warm towel for you on the way out.

The shower room is just that: an entire room devoted to the art of showering. After a primary cleansing you hop in the perfectly heated (read: 42*C; that's hot) bath and soak for a while. Finish up, dry off, get dressed and as soon as you open the sliding door Keiko is on hand kindly insisting on your evening's ice cream. I love Japan.

Upstairs are some more rooms, mostly for their children. Two of the sons I never really met except on a single occasion three years ago, but the youngest son, Masao, and the daughter, Sachae (Sa-chan), were both living there when I stayed there originally so I know them. Their rooms are both similarly traditional Japanese in style, complete with tatami mats and sliding doors. Masao's looks like any 20-year-old guy's room would: a mess, and Sa-chan's takes after Keiko's style of near-perfection in all things.

The room where Kevin stays, which they all refer to as "Kebin's room" (probably just for my amusement) is ironically (or not) the only room in the house with a western door (opens and closes with a knob). It's got a desk in one corner (when I was supposedly studying) and a mini-fridge in the corner, always stocked with water and orange Qoo (a child's drink). There are futons and pillows in the closet and, with the bathroom and sink right outside, it's a perfectly self-contained little section of the house.

Something about the Yamamoto home always makes me sleepy. Perhaps it's the subtly permeating sense of harmony, but I sleep like a baby in that house and after several days of insomnia I was more than happy to return to a normal sleep routine. Conversely, however, I believe the powers of torpor than the Yamamoto household grants me adversely affects their already skewed view of my laziness. The first night I think I slept a good 14 hours straight.

My three days with the Yamamoto's was great fun. On one day I went with Tatsuo and Keiko to a nearby hydrangea garden. I'm not much of a green-thumb but it's those flowers that my mother loves so very much and never forgets to mention when we see them blossoming on good ole Vineyard Lane. I thought my mother would have appreciated this little excursion much more than I did because the garden was simply overrun with these flowers in full bloom. Every conceivable color was represented, from oranges and pinks and red to the blue-purples that we have back home.

The place was milling with old Japanese folk who were quite surprised to see a young person in their midst, let alone a foreign one. I think Tatsuo and Keiko experience some awkward mixture of pride and embarrassment whenever I go out in public with them. The experience is jarring to their homogenous instincts yet they can't help but in relish in the attention and aura of worldliness. The occasional old folk would make brief conversation venerating my Japanese abilities and appreciation for Japanese culture, and I would acknowledge the compliments with silent smiling nods and not mention that earlier that morning I had conquered no less than 4 Orcish hordes and looked forward to subjugating many more as soon as we got home. Yes, I'm a real cultural sophisticate.

The best outing I had with the Yamamoto's was going on a bus tour with Tatsuo to Shizuoka. Bus tours are famously boring affairs because you are carted from tourist trap to tourist trap and kindly expected to buy outrageously priced omiyage for your friends and family. Furthermore, the theme of this particular bus trip appeared to be "Death and Tuna" because all of our stops were to temples and cemeteries. Well, I suppose the tour operators know their audience. What better way to spend your Saturday than scouting potential permanent resting places and enjoying local delicacies?

Two points in my journey were noteworthy. The first happened before we even left Okazaki. The tour group met in an event hall lobby and at the appointed hour we were all gathered at the front door and given our honorary member badges. I figured we were getting on the bus I could see waiting outside so I headed for the door (cool kids always sit in the back, after all) but was stopped but a guide who was politely directing me to the elevator. Of course, we were taking the chopper. Confused, I shuffled into the elevator with my aged companions and I was, for once, far and away the tallest person in the room. We stopped off at the top floor and were further herded into a room with tiered landings. How very odd. I followed my new friends into this room, curiosity piqued, and saw yet another guide at the front adjusting lighting and directing tourists here and there. Yes, we were taking a group photo. I realized immediately with true sincerity that I would in fact want to remember this day and support it with photographic evidence for the rest of my life.

We took about four shots, and I managed my most overwhelming shit-eating grin in about three of them, but the photographer was more wily still and ultimately developed the one photo in which I look mostly normal. As normal as I could be smack dab in the middle of this photo with forty stoically unsmiling grandparents.

So anyway we got going and it turned out that for a group of about 40 tourists we needed almost 10 tour guides. I won't conjecture about whether this is for reasons of personability or for, um, care for the aged, but there certainly were plenty of them to make sure we had no strays. Quick note on the bus for a second: in the aisle there were fold-in fifth seats which I had previously seen only in Ghanaian public transportation and which momentarily clenched my heart in paralyzing fear until I remember what country I was in. Still, I rode with a slightly heightened sense of awareness.

En route the guides took turns doing what must pass for stand up. Three hours of Japanese-style Vegas showmanship to a chorus of charmed obaa-san chuckles and the wheezing laugh of ojii-sans. I think the lead man might have taken a knock at foreigners at one point because everyone looked at me and I gave them the I-have-no-idea smile-and-nod and everyone had a good laugh. He went on with his bit and I quietly plotted an unfortunate accident.

The real hi-light of the day, however, was lunch. After the first few sites we finally stopped at an all-tuna outlet/supermarket. If it can be made from tuna they sell it here. When we first got off the bus there was a guy sharpening a knife in front of a massive table covered in ice and a huge piece of tuna. So good. We all gathered around and he proceeded to slice and dice it to pieces with amazing speed. Slice slice, off comes the head. Slish slash, out comes the spine. Apparently there are at least four or five distinct parts of fish meat that represent varying degrees of quality (and, of course, cost). The butcher separated all these pieces and quoted some possible prices. The expensive part of the fish could probably have bought a decent new car. The part we were offered (yes, the fish he had just cut up) was the chuu-toro, the second best cut. Having received a taste, we were led to the cafeteria upstairs where the tables were laid with platters heaped with more maguro sashimi (raw tuna). In addition there were individual sets with tuna prepared in every conceivable way and other Japanese cuisine mainstays like rice and miso. My eyes were glued to the sashimi platters. Each platter was centered in front of four individual sets, and so presumably was capable of feeding four people. Tatsuo and I, however, were among the last to sit down at the end of a table so we had only one other companion to share the platter with. Not only did we only have to split it three ways, but our new friend was probably the oldest guy on the tour and happily pat his stomach after a just few minutes. Holy crap did I eat a lot of maguro that day. And it was glorious. The staff was so amazed by my appetite that after I inconceivably finished the platter they brought me out yet another plate and quietly mentioned that it was a few slices of the best cut of the fish. All hail the power of the gaijin license. I ate like a king that day, and just remembering it puts a smile on my face.

In addition to that awesome meal, the Yamamotos treated me to some other great food during my stay. Keiko had innocently asked me about my favorite Japanese foods the first day (as if she ever forgot anything) and mysteriously each of the foods materialized at our meals the next few days. We had yakiniku (literally: burned meat) one night and another we went out to have my favorite Japanese cuisine: unagi (barbequed eel). I've always said, and I still stand by this, that there are three levels of cuisine here in Japan: there are bad restaurants, there are good restaurants, and there is Keiko Yamamoto. She never hesitates to pull out the stops, and I never hesitate to display my gratitude with a healthy appetite. What can I say? These twin blue stimuli capture the imagination and demand culinary excellence. I try to use my powers for good, but fortunate accidents are bound to happen.

Follicle Fortunes and Follies

So it's taken me a while to shoot off this first email. I've been alternately busy and lazy, and the unfortunate consequence is that a few charming anecdotes will have likely fallen through the cracks. However, there have been plenty of good times since I arrived here in Japan, more than enough to adequately realize the beginning of the hi-light reel I present to you today. Let us begin.

I arrived back in the old stomping grounds of Iwade, Wakayama, on the evening of June 6^th. My home-boy Yasuhide Ueda did me the great favor of taking me in for an extended weekend when I first arrived. This deed is twice as admirable considering that he suffered all the pains of Kevin-the-house-guest with none of the compensatory advantages of living with Kevin-the-cheerful-charming-American. Alas, jet-lag had rendered me a surly barely-cognizant shell of my effervescent self. It took me a couple days to start sleeping normally again and most of those days were spent staring at cracks of sunlight torturing me through the window blinds in a corner room of the house.

Despite my sad state of half-being, this did not stop us at all from accomplishing all those shenanigans I'd been eagerly awaiting since deciding to return to Japan. I ran around Iwade a bit, visiting my old neighbors Mercedes and Rich, old bosses Dan and Masaya, and returning to the old dojo to see Suzuma-san and practicing a bit of Aikido with the kids. I can still whoop all their asses. Saturday night was the glorious return to Osaka night-life, but not before a special gift from Yasuhide and the focus of this email.

Yasuhide is an incredibly accomplished man of diverse passions and remarkable skills. He is, barring some of the more intricately nuanced slang, perfectly fluent in conversational English (fan-f*cking-tastic, you might say). He is diligent student of both Spanish and French. He is a master of the Japanese tea ceremony and learned in the art of ikebana (Japanese flower arrangement). But most of all, and of great importance to me, he is an extraordinarily talented and award-winning barber.

Yasuhide's gift to me was an exquisite haircut ("the better to meet girls with, Kevin"; how could I refuse?). Before you all guffaw, hold your breath a moment and embark on a journey of follicle enlightenment. As with most things that enter Japanese culture and industry, the seemingly mundane is broken down, analyzed, improved, synthesized and re-engineered into an impressive new product. Sure, Japanese barbers are marked by those familiar twirling red-and-whites outside dilapidated buildings sentried by measured old men with envious coifs, but that's as far as the commonality goes.

Yasuhide's joint is in the bottom road-side corner of his house. It's a family-run operation where he and his father cut hair and his mother specializes in shaves. The salon is an older place with an 80s vogue style. The service chairs are these unremarkable faded red leather dentist-chair look-alikes… that is until Yasuhide flips the switch, powers up, and its game on.

A Yasuhide haircut is no simple hack and slash affair. Even an unremarkable hair-style like my own is given its due consideration. Back home, when I used to go to the barber, it was a simple zip zip zip of the electric razor with some scissor work to even out the rough patches. When I figured out the real ease of the process (well, to give credit where credit is due, my brother Mike is the first one to have invested), I went out and bought my own razor and started cutting my own hair, occasionally calling upon some familial assistance for trustworthy straightening at the back of my noggen. I informed Yasuhide of this sort of simplicity and he swallowed a knowing chuckled, avoiding condescension out of friendship. Razors, apparently, are for amateurs, and even beneath any serious amateur. Professionals (samurais? ninjas? Leon, anyone?) use the blade.

I lay back and Yasu puts on a utility belt that would make Batman jealous. The belt contains an arsenal of shears and combs, powders and puffs. Lastly he unwraps his prized master's shears from their felt cloth resting place and inserts them into their dedicated belt compartment. To give a little perspective, these shears are worth at least 300,000 yen and are, I think, registered with the government. Lock and load.

The process begins slowly, a muted crescendo of hygiene products. First comes the hair tonic. Then the face cream. A hot towel, to be sure. Face massage. Face wash. Hair wash. Now the cutting begins… a preliminary cut to take out the rougher patches, and then the main event. The master's shears come out and its hairmageddon on my cranium. The zip zip of razor-sharp blades buzzing in my ear is hypnotic and that tingly feeling on the back of my neck lulls me into a daze.

Yasuhide was slowing down and I was coming to, and I just about got out of the chair prematurely. Imagine, if you will, that old PBS bad-ass Bob Ross. Bob would come to the twenty-fifth minute of his hypnotic session with a perfectly pleasant painting. You were just about ready to close up shop and hang up yet another mountain landscape when Bob flippantly decided to plant a friendly little tree right down the middle of your masterpiece. No, Bob, don't do it. Too late. And yet, deep down you really knew to trust in Bob… and trust in Bob you did. When it was all said and done, you couldn't imagine your painting without that friendly little tree. Moral of the story: Bob knows. Likewise, Yasuhide knows. I thought the masterpiece was satisfactorily finished, but Yasu knew better. Once, twice, three times he perfected my neckline. Combing upon combing until strays were vanquished from sight. Sideburns even enough to level a table.

In my dreamy haze, Yasu eased in another hair wash, and finally an agonizingly satisfying head massage. The final death-grip did the trick when the sudden pop at the top of my spine released all the stress of traveling halfway around the world and not being able to sleep properly for several days and I just sat there dazed, looking in the mirror and admired my own beauty.

As if this treatment weren't enough, Yasu's mom insisted on a gift of her own: the perfect shave. My facial tissue has never received such careful indulgence. She operated with an old-school switchblade razor, the somewhat shaky hand putting my nerves on end. But this was another pampered journey of mind-numbing massages and revitalizing creams, exfoliations and relaxations, and I ate up every moment.

At some point during my shave Yasuhide's father walked over with a stack of manga, presumably for me to read. These types of manga are found everywhere in Japan: convenient stores, coffee shops, internet cafes, coin laundries, toilets in even the most far-flung locations. Anywhere a guy might be sitting around for 10 minutes or more you will find these iconic manga stacks. These biblical volumes always seem to be printed on faded yellow, pink, or blue tissue paper and bound together with a glossy cover featuring a scantily clad barely-18. I don't really understand the cohesion of this particular sub-culture much beyond that, except that it is clearly well regarded enough to completely permeate Japanese society. Narrative continuity in general is baffling – are these paper weights at all related or does each present some self-contained account of borderline adult manga archetype? If I had to make an educated guess I'd say the stories invariably involve some outrageously pumped ex-Yakuza-turned-good-guy whose girlfriend probably gets kidnapped for said Yakuza's betrayal and thus our questionable protagonist is forced to go renegade once again, inevitably tearing shit up and saving helpless girlfriend, ultimately enjoying all the, ah, fruits, that success entails. But that's just a guess, what do I know. What I do know is that given that men from the age of ten upwards seem to appreciate this particular genre it speaks volumes about Japanese gender relationships. And I digress.

Mr. Ueda brought me over a stack of these manga and I really had no interest in reading them, happy enough to bask in the service I was receiving, but when I picked one up to be polite he gave me the most quizzical look. Caught off guard, and I was mumbling a "no no no, I'm not actually into this stuff, I just… well, you just… but I thought…" and while that was falling out of my mouth and I realized he spoke no English anyway, he took the book back from me, stacked 3 high on each side of me and finally laid a plank around my lap. Confused and embarrassed relief flooded over me. He next brought out a steam machine, placed it on the plank and aimed at my face. A steam bath, of course, and why not.

Things had been great up until this point, to say the least. Now I was in heaven. The steam softens up the stiff facial hair and, combined with some magically warm shaving cream and a blade sharp enough to make Hattori Hanzo cry a single tear, gives a remarkably close shave with none of the searing burns that typically accompany such precision.

When it was all said and done I was finally able to stand up in a state of grace and examined the job in the mirror. It grieves me to write this, it grieves me to remember, that this incredible experience turned out to be an unfortunately uneven and jagged shave. Like seriously not even close. Shocked and perplexed, I could only and still do account for this circumstance in that the irregular contours of my foreign devil's jaw line were simply too overwhelming to properly accommodate.

Blame for this tragedy was entirely my own and, given the importance of the coming festivities (a night out in Osaka is no laughing matter), it behooved me to rectify on my own the situation with all expedience. Unwilling to hazard insult to my gracious hosts I crept down to the shower with pocket razor and shaving cream hidden in the folds of my towel. Treachery concluded, at long last I was on my way to Osaka for a night that was, unquestionably due to my new digs, entirely successful. Thanks again, Yasuhide. I'm back, woot.

Working in Ghana

A little over a year ago I wrote an epic account of my purpose in traveling to Africa. That masterpiece was sadly lost to the evils of the internet and a laptop touch-pad. It’s loss has always haunted/annoyed me, and so to exorcise these frustrations I’m finally going to try again to set down the oddity that was working in Ghana. It will be sadly lacking in the detail, accuracy and reflection of the first attempt, but I hope that it will offer some closure for me and some revelation for those of you still wondering what I was up to last spring.

The best place to start would be with what I had expected to get from Africa, as that is really the best measure against which to judge and reflect upon the actuality. At the time I was thinking about what to do with my life and gravitating towards an education in public health, or the administrative side of the health industry. That inkling, combined with my penchant for travel, produced a desire to get my feet wet and see how things go on the ground in a medical hot spot. Therefore I found a program that would supposedly place me in position to observe and participate in such activities.

Judged by this measure of expectation, Ghana turned out to be a monumental failure.

After some confusion within the homestay family, my planned transfer to Volta was canceled and I stayed in the capital of Accra. Apparently too many people had already complained that the program in Volta was pathetically lackluster, ill-organized and, to say the least, uninspiring. At the time I was happy to stay in Accra, having become friends with Mack and Kendra.

So on my first day of work I was brought to the West African AIDS Foundation (WAAF). It seemed abuzz with people so I figured I had come to the right place. Everybody seemed rather busy, too busy, in fact, to spare me any time. I was left for a long while sweating on a couch in the back waiting for Eddy, WAAF’s leader, to arrive and give me some direction. When he did finally make it, he explained that WAAF currently had three programs in the works.

The first was in-patient out-patient consultations and advisory. The clinic only had one doctor, Eddy’s wife, and I couldn’t imagine how I’d be able to properly manage real patients without training. I was armed with patchy memories from health classes years past, which was surely better than nothing but not enough to be taken seriously. But surely WAAF would have a training program to remedy this shortfall. Surely…

The second program was community outreach to children via school based clubs and activities. This program was under the management of Nicole, an American who turned out to be married to a Ghanaian, and another woman who was a recent graduate of the University of Ghana. When I first arrived they seemed to be deeply involved organizing an “awareness carnival” at a local school, so I thought I would be able to use my experience with kids in that program. They talked pretty enthusiastically about what they were doing and laid out myriad plans for what needed to be accomplished. I decided pretty quickly that I wanted to be absorbed into their program.

The third program was a cooperative business development and skills training initiative. Volunteers from Canadian Crossroads (CC), Emily and Joanne were leading this program and it stood in stark contrast to the other WAAF programs: the volunteers had actual training and education in their fields and real funding to support themselves. The beneficiaries of this program were a small group of local AIDS affected adults who had lost their incomes and/or jobs as a result of having AIDS or losing family to AIDS. They were fifteen people in total, divided into three groups of five, each focused on a particular business. The bakery group was making bread, the bead group was designing jewelry, and the batik group was designing batik-patterned clothes and accessories.

But I had already decided upon the community outreach program and was pretty happy to get started. Imagine my surprise when the two leaders didn’t show up again the next day, or the day after that, or the day after that. Turns out the community outreach program suffered from a combination of Ghana-time syndrome and unmotivated leadership. Nicole seemed to be, in the end, involved in WAAF merely as a distraction until she could go back home. They didn’t have any real funding to speak of and therefore couldn’t act upon their grandiose plans. Being of the Ghanaian mindset as they were, they assumed I wouldn’t be interested in those tedious details. Of my eight weeks in Ghana, two had already passed and I was no closer to starting anything meaningful than I had been on my couch in Connecticut. Frustration loomed.

It was around this time that Lee and I started taking extended lunches to avoid the demoralizing inertia of WAAF. We were both motivated and bucking for a chance to work if only someone would present us with an opportunity. I was slowly coming to the understanding that, true to the saying amongst expats, Ghana would only take you as far as you took yourself, and that my initial desire to work in Ghana (as opposed to travel) would have to be compromised if the investment of time and money was not going to be a complete loss. Hence the first and arguably best tragically comic misadventure (all travel in Ghana must be regarded as such or you’ll lose your mind) in our trip to Wli Falls.

While travel had entered the itinerary, I still needed a raison-de-etre Monday to Friday and thus gradually inveigled myself into the business development team. There was going to be a changing of the Canadian Crossroads guard in April with a one week gap in management. I was prepared to uphold those prestigious reins and had convinced Lee to be my executive assistant in charge of coffee-getting and command-obeying. With such a exceptional corporate model to lead by I didn’t see how we could possibly fail.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Allow me to explain a bit more about the state of the business development groups. Having been organized by educated and sensible MBAs, the program suffered from two critical faults: structure and common sense. I had gathered already in my two-going-on-three weeks in Ghana that structure was utterly lacking in most parts of Ghanaian culture. For example, the groups had originally been divided into three well-defined groups with a specific mandate and an action plan for executing that mandate. As time progressed, however, it became apparent that not everyone on each team was particularly in love with their particular industry. Two members from the bakery team left for the bead team, and members of both the bead team and batik team decided they didn’t like any of the available industries and wanted to strike out of their own. To be fair, many participants already had long backgrounds in other occupations that they were more comfortable with. However, in the interest of succeeding it might have behooved them to risk learning new skills.

Although the original project had been divided into three industries, all three operated under a single brand, The Almond Tree. This, I think, was probably the best contribution of the CC team and the one most likely to do good. Although it was still very much a theory at that point, the idea of a brand was the only thing the disparate members of the project could agree on and the only thing keeping them together.

This was the approximate state of things when Lee and I joined their ranks. Over the next few weeks we accomplish what felt like very little but in retrospect I’d like to think we helped give The Almond Tree members a cup-half-full start.

Among our small but varied accomplishments was the completion of a small boutique on WAAF’s grounds. A small unused shed was cleaned up and turned into a showroom for the bead and batik wares. It was also the first thing to get the official The Almond Tree branding, black letters on white with a red ribbon. Innocuous enough to us mass consumers, but imagine the sense of pride in ownership felt by those involved. The closest they’d ever been to that sort of consumer professionalism were scratchy MTV Ghana signals. When, a few weeks later, we had finally managed to acquire the first roll of labels for the batik group’s handiwork, the excitement was palpable. The same for the bead group when they got card tags. During that time we had one or two open house events on WAAF grounds. Although it’s hard to generate much noise in a lonely corner of Accra’s administrative sector, it was a start. Meanwhile, the remaining members of the bakery group were less showy but more organized and serious about their endeavor. Learning how to operate a bakery is difficult and time-consuming, as is finding and managing the capital to start one, but they were progressing one step at a time and, more importantly, supporting each other through out. They were three of the more inspirational people I met in Ghana. Unlike most of the Ghanaians I met, they didn’t appear to hold so many delusions about their prospects as a bakery or for life in general. They seemed to understand, if only unconsciously, that the learning a new trade or the arrival of a micro-loan would not miraculously solve their worldly problems. It was thus that I found myself sharing with them what few of the real skills I have: teaching English. Although I was at first loathe to be relegated to the occupation I was pointedly trying to avoid, I quickly reversed course after realizing that (duh) it wasn’t about me.

During the absence of a CC lead member, Lee and I were also charged with one of the more problematic aspects of The Almond Tree project: money. Money is a problem for any new business, but much more so for people who have only ever known informal business. That is to say, even the most discerning members of the group had trouble making the conscious distinction between “their” money and the “business’s” money. To that end, they had been paid “wages” for a few months leading up to the distribution of micro-loans. The hope was that over time this sort of business vs. personal think would become a natural part of their lives. In practice, however, this plan was a half-success at best. Group members had grown accustomed to their weekly stipends without upholding the consummate responsibilities it would typically take to earn them (i.e. keeping regular business hours with oversight). Thus we were fostering a culture of free money more than everything else. The CC members could not simultaneously be mentors as well as business managers, and the unfortunate result was that they had to act like nagging parents on bad days and were generally ineffectual on good days. On this point, I really think that what the whole project needed was a dedicated long-term coordinator. Someone to hold the business money, force people to make good on their commitments, pay wages, and etc. Janet, the replacement from CC, was acting as this sort of counsel, but in the end the money was left to each participant. I can only imagine how well this system worked in the end.

Which isn’t to say they didn’t try. Realistically, at some point every volunteer goes home and thus CC was trying to teach the group to manage their own businesses. Bookkeeping was priority number one to this end. It would also put into concrete terms the differences between personal and business money. We quickly ran into roadblocks, however, because very few people in the group had adequate writing skills of remedial math skills. Furthermore, as the groups splintered people without skills didn’t trust those with them to keep fair records and those with skills didn’t want to be held back by their slower comrades. In the end it boiled down to a “give me my money” mentality that distressed me for its inevitable failure. I always used to read statistics about education and such in developing nations and wonder “how much does an education really matter”, and here I found all the proof I needed. I had taken for granted that merely by having grown up in a culture deeply associated with enterprise and banking I had at least a basic sense of business acumen. That fatal assumption of common sense I alluded to earlier came back to bite us in the proverbial bottom.

I cannot tell you how many times group members waved their hands dismissively at our pleas to focus harder on this or that business task followed by the tired mantra to just “let the money come.” Let the money come and all the ills of the world would dissipate. MTV Ghana had left its mark after all.

For better or worse, the distribution of micro-loans was delayed past the point that Lee or I were around, so I never did get to see what happened. Loans were for a few hundred dollars each, or the equivalent of several months income for each person in the group. I can imagine relatively easily how each person might have used or misused their loans and realistically I think only about half of the members are likely to be able to repay in the future. The bakery had wisely pooled their money to invest together. In the end, bead group members had opted to split in everything but name, keeping only The Almond Tree brand in common. The fate of the batik group was still a gray area. As far as a pilot project goes, however, plenty was learned and if half the members can repay their loans then that might actually be considered a success.

Well I think I’ve managed to outline just about everything that was going wrong without paying due heed to what went right. To be sure, I arrived there and still reflect with a very educated and disciplined sense of what should have happened, without giving much creed to what The Almond Tree members were capable of. This was my on-going frustration with Ghana: the sharp disconnect between what I wanted to accomplish with people and what those people I wanted from me. The most stark example thus far, money, is indicative of all other differences: I wanted to share skills for making money and they just wanted money straight off. This was, to me, as short-sighted as giving a man a fish, but to someone living on a few dollars a day extra money for any reason (or lack thereof) is motivation enough.

Beyond the obvious money-making aspect of the business ventures, merely getting all those people to come out and rally around The Almond Tree banner was a genuine success in and of itself. Having AIDS in Ghana carries real cultural stigma, and I’m not talking about the veiled discomfort one might find in North America. I’m talking about very clear and very unsympathetic social ostracism. Merely showing up at WAAF every day was a social risk for these people, let alone going around town touting their “I have AIDS – buy my product” brand. The Almond Tree was, as I said, a great idea. Just in the wrong country. I thought their products would have a much better time in small grass-roots boutiques of the developed world than competing with a million other souvenir vendors on the streets of Accra.

And especially for the women in The Almond Tree, the situation was especially tragic. I never pointedly asked, for obvious reasons, how any particular person had acquired AIDS, but the general narrative is as follows. One day the husband of a household falls ill, and no treatment seems to work. The family’s savings are spent in a vain attempt to save the man, and in the end the family is left with no money and without its primary earner. The woman is now forced to take the reins as both housekeeper and breadwinner, only to find out shortly after her husband’s death that he died of AIDS and it’s very likely she has it too. Incapacitated by even the most mild illness, this woman is now unable to uphold any of her many responsibilities. With no education, no experience, no money and now no health, how is she possibly expected to cope? And yet a few of them did and still do, and moreover with a happiness and love for life. For someone like myself who is so easily frustrated with even the smallest hitches in life, such an ability to survive and prosper is unfathomable. They have my utmost respect.

So long as I’m on the topic, to this last point I’ve recently read a castigating appraisal of AIDS-related aide throughout the world over the last decade. While proponents of AIDS-related aide have done a remarkable job of raising funds they have been much less effective in dispensing them. Take, for example, the fact that the average North American is scared witless of AIDS and knows very well what measures to take to avoid it (bible belt excluded). All very well and good, but the average North American is less likely to acquire AIDS than any other continental counter part. Meanwhile, a dearth of education in Africa, a much less media-spectacular prize, has led to widespread discrimination, mis-education, social ostracism, and a host of other problems. Discomfort and unwillingness to tackle questionable cultural norms, such as a tendency to have several simultaneous sexual partners, has exacerbated the problem unnecessarily. Imagine that a North American typical has partners in “chains”, one after another, while in Africa its common to have “circles”, or several partners at once. You can imagine for yourself how the disease propagates itself exponentially in circles as opposed to chains. But early reformers lacked the cajonnes to address these sensitive cultural topics, preferring to scare suburban kids who were, statistically, at significantly less risk, and thus causing much worse long term problems that are only now coming to the fore.

Tangential ponderings aside, the last I heard from The Almond Tree was via a letter from my dear friend Ayimbo. He had been one of the dissenters who ditched the original projects in favor of starting a chicken farm. I actually, in spite of my best judgment, had accompanied him to a chicken farm in an effort to learn the general tricks of the trade so he could get started on the right foot (remember that small box on customs forms that asks you if you’ve been to any agricultural centers during your stay abroad…?). Well it turns out that he eventually ditched chickens in favor of cattle. Goats to be precise. Where he got the money for goats I can’t be sure, but with many praises to the many names of God he wished me well and I likewise hoped him the very best in his new enterprise.

In conclusion, I suppose that I did get a pretty good view into the scheme of things, though not the one I expected. I was forced to rein in my expectations on some things but was completely surprised by others. I don’t know much more about public health than I did before going to Ghana, but I sure do have a better understanding of the repercussions of having to live with the disease in a foreign culture. What Ghana needs is better education more than anything else, and a shift in cultural norms. Not the sort of thing that a 24-year-old can accomplish in 8 weeks, but it’s a start. If the government can make a currency change into a sexy advertisement campaign, I don’t see any reason they can’t at least put those powers towards safe sex and monogamy. And littering. But that’s another story.

Tastes Like Victory

Revenge is a dish best served with a healthy dose of chocolate frosting.

Once upon a time Lee thought it would be hilarious to splash Kevin with a puddle on a rainy day. Kevin fancies himself a good-natured chap and always appreciates some old-fashioned tomfoolery, even if he himself is the butt of the joke. What Lee didn't know, however, is that Kevin's mind is twisted haven for methodical, patient and dramatic retribution. No sooner had he accepted this splash than he set to work devising a diabolical and unnecessarily elaborate counter-attack.

Kevin bided his time for almost an entire week: opportunity presented itself in the form of Lee's goodbye-from-work party. Lee had been talking about the cake she wanted for weeks, so it took our protagonist little time to conclude that that very cake would be the most nefarious vehicle for his retaliation. When the appointed hour finally arrived this past Friday, Kevin pulled the old "boy, this cake sure does smell funny" routine and luckless Lee bit (so to speak) hook, line, and sinker.

I'd like to extend a special thanks to Amanda, my co-conspirator, without her admirable commitment none of this would have been possible. Her impromptu seat-change was the graceful opening volley to my subsequent deathblow. I'd also like to thank Koala Mart for providing the cake and extra icing, without which I'm not sure nasal penetration would have been possible. Finally, I'd like to thank Lee for her gracious acceptance of my childish antics and for not responding in kind, though she may very well be contemplating an even more extravagant retort even as I write this. I will sleep uneasily for about two more weeks, I think.

I don't think I've been in a proper cake fight since Dan Shinomiya's 10th birthday party. I can't believe how much fun I've been missing.

Keep It on the Positivity

So people keep telling me they enjoy the updates, but are generally apprehensive as to whether I'm actually having a good time. I should indeed clarify that I am in fact having an awesome time, its just that all the weird and zany and sometimes sad and depressing stuff is what my twisted mind finds most interesting. But in order to relieve the more anxious reader, here is something which contains only the good, the great, and the grand. Without further riggamarole (sp?), in no particular order here is Kevin's So Far Top Ten Things About Ghana:

1) Water girls, who manage to infiltrate any and all premises and locations in a righteous effort to quench my thirst. Ladies, my hat is off to you.

2) Hissing and kissing. If in the coming months find my kissing at you or hissing at you for your attention, be not offended. Here in Ghana its a perfectly acceptable means of salutation and a habit quick and easy to adapt. The great thing too is that its (almost) always done good-naturedly, and Ghanaians take great pleasure in the confusion of newbie obruni's. The daring may even toss in a wink, but I tend to use that only rarely and only in emergencies.

3) Two for one pizzas on Tuesdays at the Pizza Inn. It has become our Tuesday ritual to get two large pizzas and eat ourselves sick, and I love it. It reminds me of 99 cent pizza in Montreal: it's so bad its good. We often top it off with pastries or cookies or something from the local Maxmart, then roll ourselves back to work all while fighting off the impending food coma.

4) Hohoe and Wli Falls. Despite getting sick at the end of it, the whole process of coming and going, and then the majesty of the falls themselves, it was just one of the unforgettable journeys whose memory is bittersweet, if only because you know you could never relive it exactly the same way ever again.

5) Ghanaian dancing. They should have a sign at the airport that says "Shake your booty or get the hell out." 80s power ballads and high life (African hip hop) are the only things the DJs are spinning here, and that's okay by me. It is, just like every else around here, completely incongruous and contradictory... and yet it works. Love it.

6) Public Service Announcements. There are two ads put out on the TV by the government here, and you will see them over and over and over again. One is the "Ghana is 50" ad. It will run all year long, and it is the second catchiest song in the country. What is number one? I'm glad you asked. The Ghanaian currency is getting a major overhaul in June, and that looming fiasco is the subject of the number one hit "There is no change in value, the value is still the same." In this ad you have all the stereotypes of Ghanaian culture, from students to trotro mates to market women to goverment workers, all singing this lovely melody warning the public not to freak out about new money, how to do the mathematical conversions, and when the exchange cycles will begin. It's catchy, it's informative, and it's 100% Ghana. I hope they tackle pollution next. Captain Planet and Planeteers, anyone?

7) Fruit. I swear that, despite the locals' aversion to eating it, Ghana has the best fruit I've ever had in my entire life. They have the most delectable pineapple, mango, and papaya I've ever stuffed myself with. I don't know where it comes from or how they do it, by I'm giving it two thumbs way way up. In addition, its cheap cheap cheap. I think the most you could pay for any of this ambrosia is 5000 cedis, which equates to about 50 cents. We have started to augment our starch-and-sauce dinners with massive fruit platters and I've never been so happy in my life. The Ghanaians seem to think our obsession with their fruit is quite quaint, but I guess when you have something so good everyday you start to take it for granted. For myself, I will continue glut myself on this stuff, even long after I get sick of it, because I know I'll never get it so good again.

8) The trotro system. This will ultimately get a more in-depth email to itself, but I am in love with the trotro system as an awesome case study for free market entrepeneurship. The mates and drivers in the trotros also give it great personality, for better or worse, and I usually get at least one good trotro story a day. Like I said, more to come on this one.

9) Western style supermarkets. For those days when you just need a break from Africa, the solution is a trip to the supermarket. Its nice to roam around in airconditioning and fantasize about all the wonderful foods I will be demanding of my loving mother when I get home. We also buy powdered juices here to augment our water sachet diet. The preferred brand seems to be Foster Clark's ... Australian for juice, guffaw guffaw.

10) New friends. I have the pleasure of meeting interesting wherever my travels take me, but Ghana has been an especially providential venture. From the original tribunal of Mac and Kendra to the new school homeys Lee and Amanda, even with people shuffling around here and there I've always got someone around to create mischief with. Good travels are made exponentially better with good company, and I've got great company. With time here coming to a close the experience is bitter sweet, but these clouds always have a silver lining: my collection of free places to stay around the globe grows a little more. You can believe I have every intention of taking advantage ;-)

Of Questionable Taste

Contained here is an extraordinary account of something entirely ordinary, if not base or simply vulgar. This is one to be appreciated chiefly by the men out there; ladies, bare with me, and I hope you too can enjoy the final coup de graces.

I have shat many a shit in this fine country of Ghana. A real man knows how to enjoy his toilet time, and I am proudly no exception. I've had good ones, bad ones, long ones, and short ones. I've shat in Teshie, in Osu, in Roman Ridge, in Labadi, and the many other boroughs of Accra. I had at least two good ones out in Volta Region, and also in Kokrobite and Bojo. I have great plans for shits in Kumasi, Tamale, Mole, and a myriad of other places. Last Saturday night, however, was far and away the most unique experience ever to occur to your humble narrator on his porcelain journeys.

My old orientation guide, Osei, took great pains my first day to deliver this particular message: never use anyone's toilet paper but your own. You don't touch anyone else's, no one will touch yours. TP is apparently a very personal item in these parts, and not something to joke around about. Fair enough, I can play by these rules.

Unfortunately, twice now my TP has disappeared without explanation. The second occasion was the aforementioned Saturday night. Unlike the first time it happened, this time I was well into my business before I realized my predicament. Not only was my TP gone, but indeed all the TP was gone. Imagine my double take on this scenario, and the horrible considerations it implied.

Scanning the bathroom area I found no suitable substitute. There was an empty paint can, a waste basket, and an old toilet brush. No help. I would have gladly sacrificed a sock, under the circumstances, but I was wearing sandals. My options were narrowed to two: I could 1) soil myself, losing one of my only good pairs of boxers in the process, and then make a mad dash back to my room and hope that my stash of baby wipes could somehow at least cleanse my bottom, if not my pride; or 2) pocket check. Pocket check, you ask? I reached into my pocket and found what could only be termed divine intervention - perhaps, also, inspiration. What I found in my left pocket was a large wad of cedis, the remainder of my daily allowance.

The wonderful irony of the situation was incredible, and for the sake of future story telling I could not possibly let it pass. Needless to say I have now, in every sense of the word, had the (dis)pleasure of shitting all over Ghana. Adieu

ps- Having re-read this email I think it would be pertinent here to note, I am in fact aware of how horribly dirty most money is, having changed hands innumerable times. I would like to assure each and every one of you that, for the sake of hygeine, I used only the crispest and cleanest of my bills and even after such precautions, still did a follow-up job with said baby wipes. I hope this will help some of you sleep at night.

Best Day Ever / Worst Day Ever: Waterfalls and Red Oil

I woke up on Friday morning (3/16) with a severe hangover. We had enjoyed a triumvrate of celebrations the night before: Kevin Day, Mac's birthday, and St. Patty's Day all at once. Kevin Day is always done in top form, and this year was no exception; green beer at Champ's (yes, they even have one in Ghana) and then live reggae music at this club called Bywel's. A scandalous good time was had by all and, as confessed, I ushered in a new day with a throbbing noggen.

It was 10:30 and I was supposed to work at 9. Work had been, up until that point, much less than impressive so I had few qualms sleeping through the alarm as a birthday present to myself. The plan was to laze around the house, eat lunch, and then go to the beach. Mac and I were committed. The best laid plans, however, were no match for thunder storms. Ghana finally decided to rain on my first trip to the beach.

Not even rain can fully undermine my devotion, though, and lazing around the house went exactly according to plan. Mac and I had a leisurely book read for an hour or so, at which point I decided a nap was in good order. I retired to our camp house with every intention of a solid midday doze.

Lee, my aforementioned partner in crime, had been politely encouraging me all week to go with her to some far off boondock called Hohoe, from whence we might go see some waterfall or other. I had been politely declining all week, intent to spend my first real weekend enjoying the beach. That plan thwarted, Lee's persistence, and my self-acknowledged laziness in planning these sorts of trips for myself, combined into a last minute decision to get off my bum and go see some waterfalls. This revelation came at approximately 12 noon. The bus to Hohoe left at 3pm. I had to get a move on, Jon-Loeck-in-London style, and get move on I did.

I got to the station with 20 minutes to spare, after various in-transit misadventures including but not limited to the Episode of the Lost Key and the Most Glorious Taxi in Accra. What I didn't remember but should have realized is that Ghana operates on Ghana time, which is to say things will happen when they happen, and the bus wasn't going to arrive until 4 anyway. I met Lee at the bus station washing herself with water sachets, in perhaps a vain effort at cleanliness for the long ride. I now had time to remember how hungry and thirsty I was, having skipped lunch at Big Mama's, so I went to buy some sachets from the same woman Lee just had. The conversation went as follows:

Me: Two waters, please.

Woman: Pure water?

Me: Yes.

Woman: For washing?

Me: No, I'm thirsty.

Woman: Your friend, the girl.

Me: No, it's for me.

Here the woman turns, gets a water sachet and hands it to me.

Me: Could I actually have two, please?

Woman: Two?

Me: Yes.

Woman: For washing?

Me: No, I want to drink them.

Woman: Okay.

Now she hands me two more water sachets and my change, and I am standing there awkwardly with three sachets, only wanting two, but not wanting to unwittingly buy 2 more. And so Lee got a present, and finished her washing.

We had an hour to wait so we made ourselves comfortable. The bus station was really just an open lot in the market with some benches off to the side. I had brought some powerbars from my stash with me in lieu of lunch, two bars exactly, and as one constitutes a solid meal in itself, Lee and I had a veritable feast. To repay kindness in kind Lee offered me some bananas. She had six, and insisted we have 3 apiece. I hate bananas, except in smoothie form, I find the texture absolutely wretched, which is too bad considering their nutritional value, but as these were a smaller sort of banana, and as I thought the measure of comradery to be found in mutual gratitude to be of greater importance than my aversion to bananas, I decided to, you might say, swallow my pride, and accepted the bananas as a token of our burgeoning friendship. Lee, of course, was privy to none of these trivial concerns, and hasn't been since, and will continue to live a blissfully ignorant existence until she reads this, at which juncture I hope she will find it in her heart to forgive my deception. It really was in the best of intentions.

All that fretting and water sachets, and the prospect of a 4 hour bus ride, brought about nature's call. I went in search of a toilet, and found a grizzly old man in a kiosk with a little sign that read "Toilet 300". I assumed that meant 300 cedis, but having only a 200 coin in my pocket pleaded my case, and fortunately he waved me through with surly indifference. Curious as to what my 200 cedis had bought me, I entered a walled off clearing with a free-standing cement wall in the middle, one side for men and one side for women. Lovely. My side of the wall had a small hole in a corner, presumably to be aimed at, though previous occupants had clearly not been such skilled marksmen. I loathe to think was to be found on the other side of the wall.

Having survived this encounter with paid-for plumbing, I returned to my bag and cleansed myself with baby wipes and willed myself to hold it in for the rest of the afternoon. The bus arrived soon after, and we were happy to finally leave.

You've all heard about the trotros, but we were taking a public bus and I had, perhaps foolishly, high hopes. The bus, which might once have been the pinnacle of transport luxury, had been refitted trotro style, that is there were seats put in every conceivable and available space. By some grace of orbuni luck, however, we managed to snag the only two seats on the bus with any leg room, with the only catch that we had the emergency exit in front of us in the form of a steep drop into a rickety old door. Potential danger aside, we were quite satisfied. We were finally on our way, and Lee even had her ipod to entertain us for a while.

The bus ride out was surprisingly pleasant. There were all the bumps and thumps and fits and starts that were to be expected, but scenery against the setting sun was beautiful and we were jamming out to Lee's pick of Australian bands and we were, I believe, enjoying a feeling accomplishment at having made it out of the hustle and bustle of Accra.

There really are hawkers everywhere in Ghana, and travellers in traffic make for an especially captive audience. Whenever we stopped, or even slowed down enough, the bus was swarmed with all manner of hawkers. It's really difficult to explain without visual reference how overwhelming this can be, especially when they aren't shy about opening the door at my feet to really make sure that no means no and I really don't want that loaf of bread. I think also they take extra pleasure in bewildered obruni. I should have bought the loaf of bread, though, because a few hours later I was feeling the hunger pangs and would have paid handsomely for it. Lee placated my hunger, bless her heart, with another banana.

Another fun aspect of bus rides is that if people are upset about something they have no reservations about letting everyone know. About two hours into the ride a woman started yelling, presumably at the driver, in Twi, and soon she was echoed by several other people. I thought she was yelling at him to slow down because we were careening down the road at high speed and the door in front of me had already opened once of its own accord, revealing the fast moving pavement that belied imminent danger. What she was actually yelling about, though, was the need for a toilet break, and apparently several other people felt the same way. So stop we did on a lovely stretch of road with scenic tropical forest/serengeti/rolling hills to either side. With the sunset right on the horizon, Lee and I stepped off the bus to enjoy the view.

If you or I were going to pee on the side of the road, I assume our first inclination would be to find a little spot to ourselves and do our business as discreetly as possible. But maybe you don't subscribe to this particular brand of modesty, in which case you'd be perfectly at home in Ghana. I stepped off the bus and saw a woman doubled over not 2 or 3 meters away. I thought she was sick and my first instinct was to approach her and see what I could do, but two steps into the rescue I became aware of a whole line of women along the road in similar fashion. The men, too, were relieving themselves freely where there was space to be found. I don't know, in hindsight, why I was surprised at all, but needless to say I u-turned and enjoyed the landscape from the other side of the road.

The rest of the road trip occurred almost without incident. Almost. The sun had gone down and we were traveling in the night on some bush roads. We were both starting to nod off when suddenly the bus swerved violently and the hit the brakes. Instinctively Lee and I grabbed, in vain, for the non-existing chairs in front of us to brace our inertia; fie, oh moment of dawning comprehension, you are a terrible mistress. I tumbled on to the top step of the emergency exit but luckily Lee somehow managed to cling for dear life to the crevice in the window. Having narrowly avoided certain injury, we decided to reassess our seating arrangement.

The bus had been gradually emptying as people got off along the way, and there were finally enough free seats for Lee and I to space out and relax. She insisted I move first and, feeling sleepy, I concurred and moved to a new seat. My inner gentleman was subdued by echo of St.Patrick, who was quickly catching up with me. Sometime after a short catnap, however, I looked up to find Lee, with her eyes closed in the pretense of sleep, but clearly and consciously bracing herself against the window in fear of another accident. Refreshed, I was finally able to offer a belated rescue.

We met two Danish girls on the bus going to the same hostel as we were, so we shared a taxi there and ate dinner together. At the hostel there was a choice between air-conditioned and non-air-conditioned rooms, and as the price difference was a whopping $3, I decided a little splurge was in order. This seemingly innocuous decision, however, may have proved to be my ultimate downfall. Explanation to follow shortly; more importantly, it did not at the moment take away at all from the best day ever living up to its namesake.

The room was a happy occasion. We were treated to the luxuries of a private bathroom with a private shower and running water. The bed was large and soft (no stray beams to sink into or poking against my back) and covered with psychedelic tie-dye sheets and bedspread, which, by that point, fit my mood perfectly. I was enamored. I got to go to sleep clean and actually stay clean while sleeping for the first time in a few weeks.

The problem was that, in my enthusiasm, I cranked the AC as high as it could go, and also gave Lee the pleasure of the bed sheet. My unshakable gentility demanded it of me. I had been sleeping without a sheet for weeks anyway so I didn't think much of it. I woke up the next morning shivering and with that infamously familiar tickle in the back of my throat that is the typical harbinger of an ensuing illness. For further reference to end of that sad story, please relate yourself to my previous work, Tropical Disease is a Surly Wench. But this saga is one of triumph, so I'll make no further reference to it here.

Breakfast was as delectable as dinner had been: real toast with real butter and real scrambled eggs. Real tea with fake cream to wash it down. We started out early, clearly at Lee's behest for anyone that knows me even a little, and we were actually done and done and on the road by 7am. From Hohoe we had to make our way to Wli, and this is one of the few journeys I've come across in Ghana where trotro was not an option. At the station in Hohoe we found a shared taxi to take us there, though we quickly found out that the definition of standard maximum occupancy miraculously doubles and triples once you're outside the capital. In a four-door car we fit four across the back and two plus the driver in the front. Among our distinguished co-occupants we had the dubious pleasure of a man who claimed to be Yassar Arafat. He could not, for the life of him, take a decent photo for us. The driver, Albert, was a nice enough guy, though completely unsympathetic to our obruni discomfort at the over-stuffed state of the car. The other passengers were relatively forgettable, that is until they started arguing.

They were arguing in Aweh, another language spoken mostly in the eastern Volta Region. I couldn't make out anything they were saying, but considering the vehemence with which they were arguing, I can only assume it was nothing less than an attempt to tackle one of the most pressing scientific/philosophical/religious debates of our time. One the one side there was Yassar, who I assumed was making a grand case for the inevitable discovery of the Unified Theory of Physics, ala string theory or some derivative thereabouts. His opponent, whose name I didn't catch but for descriptive purposes I'll name Blue Shirt, was apparently of the school of thought that the theories of gravity and quantum mechanics were simply too irreconcilable to ever be compromised. Yassar, evidently a deeply religious man, claimed that if there was indeed a God, which every good Ghanaian believes no matter the church of faith, that so omniscient and omnipotent a being could never, would never, allow for such an imperfection in logic to govern the universe. Yassar made a striking case, and Blue Shirt was duly impressed, though reluctant to admit any fault, so I did him the great favor of changing the subject by squealing like school girl because a rather large and offensive looking bug had invaded the car. The woman to my side flicked it away with a sigh, and the car was largely silent after that. Lee, in her obstinate common sense, seems to think they had actually been arguing about some obscure Volta politicians. I like the story better my way, however, so I'm going to let it stand.

We finally made it to the base camp of the falls, a cement building at the end of a cul-de-sac. We were already running low on funds (all the more frustrating after the indignant abuse I received from my air-conditioning splurge) so we passed ourselves off as student visitors. I've run this scam many times in my life, but usually it involves flashing my driver's license with authority to Asians with poor English. The wildlife officer at Wli was no such patsy, but fortune smiled upon me and he didn't call my bluff, so we got off with our reduced fees and were on our way.

The walk to the falls was a pleasant forty minutes through luscious African jungle. It was very early and we were pretty much the only visitors around. A few local women were washing clothes in the stream that snaked along besides the foot path, and while they were a bit rude about picture-taking their children had no such reservations. At some point during the photo shoot Lee yelped suddenly from behind me, causing me in turn to yelp and do a bit of an unhappy dance. Apparently I had stepped on a critter of the slimy slithering sort, which fortunately reacted defensively rather than offensively to my intrusion.

Moving on, we observed many wonderful flora and fauna, including beautiful dancing butterflies of every color and also lovely flowers of many shapes and sizes. Needless to say, it was a far cry from the drab of Accra and we soaked in all of it. Before long we made it to the start of a clearing, and we ran like school children on christmas towards the sound of rushing water.

The Wli waterfall, reportedly the largest in West Africa, was by far worth all the hassle getting there and will easily maintain for a long time its place as one of the top 5 spots ever visited in my humble journeys. The place was simply majestic, and any further written description would fail to do it justice, so I beg the readership to be patient with me a bit longer until I can supply you with some photographic evidence.

The best part of it all was that we had it all to ourselves for a good hour. Lee and I kind of moseyed off in our own directions to enjoy the serenity in our own way. I found a little spot on a small footbridge to sit and write and sunbathe for good while. I finally worked up the resolve to venture into the waterfall itself, and after a few encouraging words from Lee about freshwater parasites, I donned my bathing gear and hit the water.

I was soaked to the bone long before I ever got close to the waterfall. The blast radius from the spray was a few meters out, and getting closer it felt like walking upwind in a hurricane. In short, it was totally sweet. "Heaps awesome," as my aussie friend is fond of saying. After posing for some manly shots dutifully recorded by Lee and taking all the pummeling I could from the waterfall, I eventually made it back to solid ground and let the sun do its good work. By now some other visitors had started to trickle in the form of two white girls who were able to gallavant into the falls with significantly less trepadition than msyelf, somewhat damaging my masculine sensibilities.

The hour was now 11 and my belly was demanding its recompense. With some regret we began our journey back out. On the way we passed many a tour group, and so again I owe Lee a large degree of thanks for her fore thought in making the travel arrangements. It simply would not have been the same experience with 40 or 50 other people milling around. We also passed our Danish friends coming in, so we had a short hello-how-are-you-good-glad-to-hear-it-have-a-nice-life conversation and parted ways.

We walked through Wli town wondering how we'd ever get back to Hohoe; it was Sunday and smaller villages become veritable ghost towns on the Sabbath. Fortune smiled upon us yet again, however, because just as we were asking for directions our same old cabbie rolled up with two empty seats going back to town. The ride back was as comfortable as it had been the first time around, though slightly less entertaining, and we made it back to town relatively expediently (the engine did overheat once and we pulled over for a bit).

Back in town we returned to the Taste Lodge for lunch. We were now extrememly low on funds, but a solid meal was a priority, and we were able to work it out that we could afford two meals, two sodas, and two tickets back to Accra almost exactly, and that's what we did.

Around 2 or 3pm we set off for a trotro home, and at the station we were greeted by cries to join our "friend" on one particular trotro. We were a bit confused as to who else would know of us in Hohoe, but soon realized that our "friend" was in fact none other than the only other white guy at the station. Clearly, all obruni look the same, and they all must be friends. Upon meeting Oliver the Welschman (I could not restrain myself from a tactless Dicken's reference) we were happy to spend the ride back trading Ghanaian anecdotes with a fresh face. It was a conference of English-speaking nations with an American, an Australian, and a Briton coming together to laugh and cry about our month(s) in Africa. It was a touching ceremony and I learned many things, such as the fact that Australia has never formaly declared independence from Great Britain and is still, on some technical level, a colony, a fact which greatly amused me and which I will never let Lee live down. Oliver was a pretty witty guy himself, and bemoaned to me the horrible practicality of American English (we say, among other things, flashlight instead of torch, and elevator instead of lift). I returned that superpowers can speak however they please, and good-natured patriotism was enjoyed by all.

And that, in short, was my best day ever (well, a 24-hour period) in Ghana. Now, in horrible prolifity, is a recount of my worst.

The power was off when we got back from quiz night at champs, so I slept, if you can call it that, in pools of sweat. I woke up, had breakfast, and determined that it was a new day and it would be a good one. It was Friday besides, and Friday always makes me happy.

The trotros were against me though, and I waited over an hour before taking the wrong trotro. En route, I realized my lunch was spilling all over me from a hole in the bottom of the bag; red oil all over my white shirt and favorite green shorts. Now seething, I finally got to work after a two hour commute. As the trotro drove away I did my pocket check, only to discover my cell phone was missing. Utterly defeated, I arrived at work to find most people had taken the day off anyway, and my assistance was largely unrequired.

I decided to comfort myself the only way a well-trained Western consumer knows how: I went a bought myself things. I got a new phone (it had to be replaced anyway as it didn't belong to me) and a sweet Ghana t-shirt, a smoothie and a pizza. Misery loves company, and I happened to run into Amanda, my housemate, down in Osu and found had suffered a similar fate at the hands of red oil and malfunctioning bags. I felt slightly better by the end of the day, having been helped by a trip to Happy Yourself Spot, but that morning alone was enough to put that day down as the worst ever in Ghana.

My glass is half full, though, and things have only gone up since then. More trials, tribulations, diatribes and day-trips to come.