tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11449409142590339372024-03-14T02:20:37.489-07:00and yet, and yetSaving lives since April.Kevinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06701213357980904048noreply@blogger.comBlogger33125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1144940914259033937.post-37036657260906361182009-04-07T20:24:00.000-07:002009-04-12T20:25:41.892-07:00Diving in Koh TaoApril 12th 2009<br /><br />I spent most of the first week of April on Koh Tao island doing my Open Water Diving (OWD) certification followed by the Advanced certification. Koh Tao is the smallest and northernmost of the three main islands in Thailand's Andaman Sea. I arrived there on March 31st after a brief stint of rock-climbing in Koh Railay across the Thai peninsula. Dave, my climbing partner, had just come from Koh Tao and recommended Big Blue Diving. That was good enough for me.<br /><br />Koh Tao is a major diving mecca so the process is very much streamlined. Prices are also standard across the island so the only real differentiation are the equipment and instructors provided by the different schools. Having done no homework on the situation I was lucky to fall into the Big Blue family as they had some of the better boats and experienced instructors around. Shame about their regulators, though (I'll get there). Big Blue is a combination hotel/dive school/restaurant/bar right on idyllic Sairee Beach, so once I arrived and settled I was in a very comfortable situation. Sairee Beach itself faces due west so every evening is a classic sunset, not a bad way to end a long day of diving.<br /><br />The open water course lasts four days: Day 1 is an afternoon of introductory academics, Day 2 is morning academics and an afternoon confined water training dive, Day 3 is morning academics and certification test and two afternoon dives, and on Day 4 are the final two morning dives. Big Blue is, as described, a fairly big school so they can start new OWD courses every day. They even offer courses in several languages – English, Japanese and German being the big three. My OWD group was fairly large at 11 students so we were split into two groups, boys and girls. Enter the fun cast of characters who encompassed my new social circle: from the girl's group were the charmingly British Helen and Clare. Helen ended up being our group photographer, so you can thank her for the forthcoming photo links. Not in either group but still in the mix were Katie and Jess, two 18-year-olds from Scotland. Don't let their age fool you: these girls were way ahead of the curve. They'd already been through Eastern Africa (that's the dangerous bit) and India, at an age when I was just figuring out the whole travel thing was cool. In the boys group there was Joe, the 19-year-old Brit, Tom, the surfer-cum-sensei Aussie, and Frosty and Luke, a pair of proper English chaps. Also in the boys group, oddly, was Meghan the Canuck, who was placed in the boy group to her great confusion and somewhat chagrin. No one ever explained why she was an exception. The separation along the sexual divide seemed archaic at first but was quickly made apparent as a product of our instructors' idiosyncrasies. The girl's group got Rich the affable beach bum – he easily charmed the girls with his lazy grin and relaxed style. The boy's group, however, received the aptly named Germanator: our instructor Yvonne was discipline incarnate. While the girl's group laughed their way through academics, us boys dotted every “I” and crossed every “T”. We were, in short, put in our place. We also had Tina, another German, performing the part of Yvonne's assistant/protege, nick-named the Assistanator. Tina brought up our rear and caught anything Yvonne missed (which wasn't much), but who, when Yvonne wasn't looking, had a tendency to cut us some slack. But not too much.<br /><br />Yvonne might have been intense, but I can't say it bothered me much. When a single mistake can cause serious harm, Yvonne is exactly the kind of instructor you want watching your every move. She understood that her particular style was often misinterpreted as aggressive. Well, it was aggressive: she wasn't an Alpha Female or an Alpha Male – she was just Alpha. Aggressiveness was merely a by-product of doing her job well. She was self-aware enough to understand that her style went down better with guys than girls and so she took over our boy's group. <br /><br />When we finally got in the water on Day 2 I realized how addictive scuba diving could be. Breathing underwater is itself a crazy first-time experience. It's one thing to understand objectively that the regulator will give you the air you need – it's quite another to jump the mental hurdle that blocks you from inhaling underwater. When you do you're rewarded with that giddy sense of discovery you haven't felt since you were a child. The world is new again. I think this feeling alone made the whole course worthwhile. And then you get to do the really cool stuff.<br /><br />The first dive is all about training. It's called a confined dive for a reason: standing in a circle in waist deep water we practiced basic skills necessary for diving. My least favorite was and still is mask-clearing; that is, what you need to do if you ever get water in your mask or if you lose it completely. I've always had a fear of opening my eyes underwater, let alone in salt-water, and the first time I had to do the full mask clear I just about panicked and started to breathe through my noise... this, of course, made things significantly worse. The Germanator, bless her heart, held me down until I got things under control and cleared the damn mask, eyes and sinuses stinging like hell. <br /><br />We trained for about 2 hours in the water before we finished the first day. The second day we did our first real dives at two different dive sites: Japanese Garden and White Rock. We were around some real coral and aquatic life for the first time but since it was our first real dive we might as well have been drunk children in a zoo – we were keen to look around and see everything but we all had a distorted sense of depth and balance. We attempted to follow Yvonne's lead while working out our buoyancy and air-usage with varying degrees of success. Despite the difficulties, I think it's safe to say were all blown away.<br /><br />Poor Luke and Frosty received the brunt of Yvonne's frustration. Basically you can't communicate underwater except through gesture and if you made a mistake Yvonne would gesture you with life-threatening intensity. I'm surprised her mask didn't have two pin holes in it because when she trained her pupils on you they burned with hellfire. I was their unlucky recipient two or three times myself and each time I staggered like a deer confronted by the wolf. Luke and Frosty might as well have invested stock in brimstone; bumping into people, changing depths, ascending too quickly (this causes decompression sickness, aka the bends), and a host of other diving no-nos. After Luke repeatedly failed to properly execute a Controlled Emergency Swimming Ascent (in case you need to go up without a buddy) she saved her frustration for a proper lecture on the surface. <br /><br />In short the OWD course was awesome. There are so many firsts and etc that to put them all down would be an exercise in futility. The experience is unforgettable but hard to convey on the written page. We saw some cool stuff, and I'd say my favorite was a massive school of barracuda several meters high and several hundred fish deep that felt like I'd stepped into the Discovery Channel. There also, of course, is the modest short story of how America saved Australia, again.<br /><br />I had enough fun during the OWD course that when Yvonne made the pitch for the Advanced course I was pretty much sold. Other takers included Tom, Luke, and Frosty. This was nice because we had the advantage of continuity from the original group. Yvonne relaxed a bit now that we had proved our mettle in the OWD and we saw some of the softer side. By now her countenance was something of a fond joke amongst us so it was all good. Anyway, we had five dives for the advanced course:<br /><br />1)Deep-water Dive: the limit on the OWD was 18m, and here we got to do 30m. Hello nitrogen narcosis.<br />2)Nitrox: increased oxygen for increased dive time. Too bad I suffered a small panic attack and sucked down air at an accelerated rate. Oh well.<br />3)Computer skills, Navigation skills, Nunchuck skills, Bowstaff skills: girls only want boys who have great skills.<br />4)Navigation and Point Perfect Buoyancy: learning how to navigate underwater and learning how to balance yourself.<br />5)Night dive: because, really, we're all here to live out our James Bond fantasies. <br /><br />So we had just started out the night dive, very much keen to check out all the nocturnal wildlife, when after six minutes under and 12m down there was a boom like a gunshot. I had been swimming in the rear and spun around to see where it had come from. Sound travels four times faster underwater, I recalled from the textbook, and loud noises often disoriented divers. This thought occurred to me briefly as, not seeing anything unusual behind or above me, I turned back around to see my buddy Tom in a state of emergency. <br /><br />Recreational divers always use the buddy system in case of emergencies. Every diver has a primary regulator in their mouths and an alternate strapped to their chest, just in case your buddy runs into trouble. A tube on Tom's regulator had burst and he got about two quick breaths before his air went dead. That, my dear readers, is an absolutely horrifying feeling. I swam over to him as quickly as my little fins would take me and he clawed the alternate off my chest while I turned his tank off. After an all-clear check we did an emergency ascent and took a moment to rest on the surface and assess his near-brush with mortality. Talk about an adrenaline rush.<br /><br />One burst regulator is an unfortunate accident, but two would have to be fateful coincidence. As it happens, the previous day my own regulator had burst, but thankfully it was during the buddy check while we were still on the boat deck. The same loud crack blew right in my right ear, deafening Tom and I briefly while I proceeded to hop around the deck yelling “Get it off! Get it off!”. Had we not had that experience, however, the sense of panic and confusion might have been significantly worse when it actually happened underwater... and that would have been extremely dangerous. At any rate, we reacted with calm and composure to the emergency and everyone surfaced safely. And that, I believe, is the final word on good diving instruction: I wouldn't trade the Germanator's discipline for anything. <br /><br />And what better way to celebrate a life saved than to get rip-roaring drunk and dance the night away. A short walk down the beach from Big Blue is the loud and proud Lotus Bar, playing all your remixed favorites for the dance-crazy divers of Koh Tao. The party extended from the bar down the beach and into the sandbar. We had good cause to celebrate and I made sure to tell anyone who hesitated long enough the harrowing tale of my humble life-saving ordeal. I would accept no praise – I merely performed my sworn duties, sacrosanct since the ancient times of buddy system – but if they would buy me a drink, I would be obliged to indulge. Needless to say, the night was an epic one for the living.<br /><br />You can find Helen's photos posted on my Facebook profile which is unfortunately inaccessible unless you're my official Facebook friend... but then, why wouldn't you be my official Facebook friend? Hop to it.Kevinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06701213357980904048noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1144940914259033937.post-4977332571471371662009-02-17T06:41:00.000-08:002009-02-24T06:45:07.732-08:00A Monkey of a DayFebruary 17th, 2009<br /><br /><br />I had a great time in Hoi An but it seems most of the adventure in my trip occurs while moving from A to B, and the journey from Hoi An, Vietnam, to Vientiane, Laos, was one of epic proportions.<br /><br /><br />I got picked up by a van in Hoi An and was put in the back seat with what looked like two locals. They made no friendly advances so I just sat in silence for a while and was about to pull out my ipod when they started chatting in fluent English. North American accents to boot. Turns out the guy next to me was Seth, a Vietnamese-American, and the next guy over was Bryan, a Vietnamese-Singaporean. Score one point for not making assumptions about people. I ended up having quite a long chat with these guys over the next four hours back to Hue, but first something even more startling happened.<br /><br /><br />I'd been making the foundational traveler small talk with Seth for about ten minutes when I realized he was cradling a cardboard box with a monkey in it. I thought my eyes were fooling me the first few times I saw bobbing movement, but when monkey made a quick peep outside, I could not suppress my curiosity any longer.<br /><br /><br />"...and so that's when we were going to leave Saigon --"<br /><br />"Excuse me, Seth, but do you have a monkey in that box?"<br /><br />"Yes."<br /><br />"I thought so."<br /><br />"So we were leaving Saigon..."<br /><br /><br />Total deadpan. Monkey-in-the-box was, apparently, the most natural thing in the world. I got the whole story later on: turns out Seth and Bryan met "a man" in Saigon who told the sad story of monkey's mother's death. Baby monkey was alone in the world with no one to care for him. If Seth and Bryan didn't step up, who would? On top of this they had bought motorbikes off two Spaniards in Saigon and had driven halfway to Hanoi with monkey. In Hoi An, however, they had to ship the bikes up and take the bus. Why? Because monkey was tired and scared of motorbikes (he apparently loved the first two days, at least). This might sound crazy to you, and it did to me, but whatever you think of monkeys on motorbikes these guys ultimately did change course entirely to make monkey comfortable.<br /><br /><br />To further put all of this in context, these two guys were not your average travelers. Seth had been on the road and settling down sporadically for nine years, Bryan for five. They had met somewhere along the way and become good mates. They were on their way up to Sapa to start a sustainable mini-community. Bryan had been the owner of a monkey previously, but had to leave that monkey with friends when he left Thailand, so he had some monkey-care experience. And the longer I observed the odd trio, the more I became comfortable with the whole thing. Monkey seemed especially comfortable with them, at least, if not with the rest of us. When he finally got out of his box he fell peacefully asleep on their laps. Truly happy to be off the motorbikes. Monkey might have a new fear, though, that of small blonde girls, because the 5-year-old Swedish girl who got to play with monkey for a bit had the eyes nearly bugging out of her head with excitement and happiness. Monkey was less amused. No joke, though, this girl's elder brother turns around from front of the van and asks, "Excuse me, can my sister play with your monkey?"<br /><br /><br />...<br /><br /><br />I wanted to shout, scream, ululate from the mountain tops to the rice paddies: "That's what she said!"<br /><br /><br />But I didn't. I was handed monkey and then handed monkey onward. It was the only time I handled monkey, despite my growing affinity. Monkey hadn't had his shots and I have strict reservations about unnecessary trips to the hospital. By all allowances monkey wasn't a biter, but who is to say monkey wouldn't become violently jealous of my rugged good looks? I took no chances.<br /><br /><br />Also on this van ride, I'll make quick mention, was one of two psychedelic Vietnam moments: when we got out of Hoi An proper and onto the road, the driver turned on the music and cranked up Creedance Clearwater Revival. I don't think anything says Vietnam War to the average American quite like CCR's "Fortunate Son", and to actually hear it full blast on the road not 20 km from the DMZ was quite the mind-bender.<br /><br /><br />The other psychedelic moment was a similar situation at a cafe in Hanoi where the staff was blasting the best of CCR for a couple hours on loop. Maybe I just have a thing for CCR. But then, who doesn't?<br /><br /><br />That van ride to Hue was the first of three legs to Vientiane. The second leg was a relatively painless bus ride from Hue to Vinh. Most people on the bus were headed all the way to Hanoi, so I was put in the very front seat so I could get off without hassle. Unfortunately this meant I was very much aware of imminent death every time the driver made an ill-timed attempt at overtaking the vehicle in front of us. After Ghana, I have a tendency to wet my pants when drivers get too aggressive.<br /><br /><br />At Vinh I was dropped at a rest stop to meet the bus to Vientiane. I had a premonition that I was probably going to get screwed on this bus, as tends to happen when you don't get on from the point of departure. I just didn't realize how very screwed I was going to be.<br /><br /><br />Now I told you about my hostel in HK. Worst ever. Hands down. But this bus ride gives HK a run for its money, and might have even been worse than my ride from Accra to middle-of-nowheresville (you know the one, Lee). The bus was already overrun when I got on, even the aisle was packed full. Sacks of rice and wheat, boxes of this and that, and limbs of all assortments graced every nook and cranny. I shoved my way about halfway into the back and sat down on a box. This was 10:30 pm. I would be stuck like this until about 6 am without reprieve. In the interim babies cried, people climbed over me, Vietnamese pop songs blasted full volume, police were bribed, people used my aisle/seat as their garbage can, the kid next to me stretched out for his comfort and my gross discomfort... he even took over my backpack/pillow when I momentarily lifted my head... and then, yes, ten minutes later he screamed over me down the bus, plastic bags were sent his way, and as soon as he got he began to vomit violently, mere inches from my face. Vomit fumes filled the air and he went back to sleep... vomit bag held precariously between sleeping, slipping fingers. It was around this time, about 3 am, the driver stopped off at his house for a shag and a nap. Taking the keys with him, we were deprived of the air-con, the only narrow sliver of respite afforded to the luckless passengers. The bus, already assaulting my olfactory senses with the aroma of stinky feet and sweaty flesh, now baked this powerful perfume to such an enhanced degree as to induce a comatose state... had I only been so lucky. Sleep was not my friend that night.<br /><br /><br />At 6 am the border opened and we could get off the purgatory-on-wheels. The disorganized border turned into a shoving match and things were beginning to wear on my frayed nerves. Anyone who knows me well enough can tell you that without an appropriate eight hours sleep I can be a bit crabby, to say the least. This border crossing was truly trial by fire... I emerged without my proverbial eye brows but sane enough to see. At 8 am we were back on the road, me on my box, for another long haul drive until we reached Vientiane at around 3:30 pm. It was tough, my backside still feels it, but I'm alive and in Laos, one of the hi-light destinations of my trip. More to come as the story progresses.<br /><br /><br />For the curious and conscientious, my number here is (0)20-730-3959, country code +856. I think. The first zero probably gets dropped. If it doesn't work and you must have your Kevin, the Google should provide. Talk to ya'll soon.Kevinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06701213357980904048noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1144940914259033937.post-9869385477640032472009-02-17T06:39:00.000-08:002009-02-24T06:41:27.573-08:00No ScrubsFebruary 17th 2009<br /><br /><br />So I think I'm getting an inkling of what it feels like to be a lone woman in the bar/club. The motorbike and rickshaw drivers of any city in Vietnam naturally assume a walking person is actually a person naturally dying for their company and services, not unlike the hapless males who believe with stubborn persistence that the aforementioned woman is just waiting for their companionship. Likewise, they all seem absolutely astonished when told their services aren't required, or desired.<br /><br /><br />I was in Hue. I didn't want to be in Hue, but that's where my bus took me and dropped me off for several hours while waiting for the next bus to get me to my true destination, Hoi An. Conveniently, the bus company knew "just the place" for me to spend my time. After escaping, I moseyed over to the part of town with a big fortress that I'd seen from the bus on the way in.<br /><br /><br />It was here that I met Tri, the most persistent coolie I've met thus far. Tri trailed me for no less than 45 minutes, using all variety of wiles within his play book to get me in his rickshaw. When the normal overtures failed, Tri would approximate my journey and ride ahead. After I caught up he'd act surprised, like two old friends meeting again after too long a separation. When this failed, he pulled out a photo and letter from "a happy American" who he had become the greatest of friends with over an afternoon of jokes and site-seeing. Truly, the Caucasian in the photo looked ecstatic. I was even permitted to read his ebullient letter (written, no less, in flawless handwriting:<br /><br /><br />Dear Tri<br /><br /><br />Yesturay I had the gratest time...<br /><br /><br />Well, you see where I'm going with this. Undoubtedly, at some point in history an American or foreigner had become friends with a coolie and shared a letter and photo or two. Further, this coolie undoubtedly let his friends know how much easier this made getting other foreign customers. Sadly for Tri, however, the tactic is well and overly played out. I'm not sure what the next evolution of this gimmick might be but I can assure you that Tri and I will not be starting a website or social-networking apparatus.<br /><br /><br />So I didn't even get to see the fortress in Hue because it was closed for two hours while the staff went to lunch. I did meet the tragic caricature called "Tri", however, and I got to write this email, so I guess all's well that ends well.Kevinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06701213357980904048noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1144940914259033937.post-80979336172173978192009-02-10T06:35:00.000-08:002009-02-24T06:38:55.219-08:00Hanoi - Meandering First ImpressionsFebruary 10th 2009<br /><br /><br />My first impressions of Hanoi have been pretty positive. Arriving off the train at 5am with no money, I was helped into town by some fellow passengers. They did me a favor trading me some extra CNY for Vietnamese Dong until I could find an ATM.<br /><br /><br />Rocking into central Hanoi just before dawn didn't exactly give me a good sense of the city, which is to say that it was quiet – too quiet. I got dropped off by Hoan Kiem Lake, a north-to-south stretch that centers around the Old Quarter and the French Quarter, the busiest places in Hanoi. I wandered the streets looking for my hostel and when I found it just before 6am I got into my room and crashed out until about noon.<br /><br /><br />Keeping odd hours and sleeping in random places tends to take a weird toll on you. I don't find that I sleep any more than I usually do, its just spaced out at more irregular intervals. I'm not finding it uncommon to sleep 10pm to 4am on a train/bus, finding my next bed and sleeping again for a few hours... or not, and then taking a good nap in the afternoon. It's quite refreshing, actually, not being tied to any given schedule, but I do have to plan ahead occasionally for certain sites or show times. For example, I almost slept through my 8pm water puppet show... I'm sure you can all relate :-P<br /><br /><br />One of the premier attractions of Hanoi is the famous water puppets. Basically the team of puppeteers stands behind a veil in a pool of water about three feet deep. From behind the veil various puppets poke out on poles and illustrate various classical scenes, such as the Dance of the Phoenixes or Early Morning Fishermen. The premise here is that back in the day when the rice paddies were flooded over this custom developed as a way to entertain during festivals and etc. Today it's mainly reproduced on a stage with an audience of foreigners but we also benefit from modern puppeteering technologies, like dry ice and fireworks. To be honest I thought the puppets on water would get old after a bit, but every scene produced brand new puppets with novel tricks so it was quite entertaining the whole way through. Two thumbs up for water puppets.<br /><br /><br />Hanoi the city is very nice, except for the exhaust. When I rolled out of bed the first day and stepped out of the hostel, I was overwhelmed with the change a few hours can make. Motorbikes are everywhere. Where there isn't a motorbike, there are bicycle rickshaws and cars. Faded crosswalks are merely remnants of a droll/bored bureaucrat. If you want to get anywhere, step out into the street and feel the motorbikes flow around you like a pebble had been dropped into their stream. Not for too long, however, because the taxis have no qualms about running you down.<br /><br /><br />Hanoi is not a very tall city from what I can see. I've stuck mostly to the Old and French Quarters, of course, and the buildings here are two- or three-storied affairs. The European influence is still here, but it feels like it's fading quickly as people renovate sporadically around the city. The Hanoi people are a lot of fun as well, at least compared to China. The first day or two when I steeled myself for a barter or to order a meal, the unexpectedly relaxed composure of my adversaries very much threw me off. This was followed by a day in which I couldn't tell if people were joking or being pricks, and finally now I am able to appreciate the Northern Vietnamese sense of humor.<br /><br /><br />Which isn't to say everyone here is a saint. The way I like to say it is thus: In China, they will angrily scam you until you're too scared to ask. In Vietnam, they'll still scam you but at least have the courtesy to do it with a smile.<br /><br /><br />Met some nice people in and out of my hostel. My first two days I had periodic chats with a Scottish girl who'd been on the road with her boyfriend for quite some time. They were heading up into China for a week or two before finishing their months-long trip and then to return to Scotland. I believe her name was Chavonne and I never got her boyfriend's name because he never acknowledged my existence. I suppose opposites really do attract. Then there was Lisa Lin from San Fran, the pleasant American girl who was yet another student in China. We had a few meals and drank a few beers together and traded things to do in Hanoi. We were walking through the Old Quarter on one evening and came across the strangest scene.<br /><br /><br />There is plenty of street food to be had in all the cities of the world, but on this night we walked in to a full-on street bar. At one quiet intersection (comparatively quiet, that is), the four corners had spilled out into the street a bit with stools full of foreigners sipping draft beer. I found out that this was called Beer Hoi, a special bootlegged beer that tastes like swill but gets the job done at 3000 Dong (17 cents) a cup. Shiver me timbers.<br /><br /><br />While drinking our Beer Hois I chatted up this entertaining Australian family trio; father daughter and son were traveling together for a month through Vietnam on what I suppose was their summer break. The high school-aged son was trying to convince dad to buy him a tailored purple silk suit for his prom, a proposition I fully endorsed, but I don't think it was meant to be. Some people just don't know opportunity when they see it. If I come home in a tailored purple silk suit, you'll know who to thank.<br /><br /><br />My last observation about Hanoi so far is that there are lots of old people. Old tourists, I mean. Granted most of them are European and thus more accustomed to travel, perhaps, but I'm still surprised to see such a large constituency of older tourists on the regular. And, moreover, staying in the same sorts of places that I'm staying. I haven't seen any in the dorm bunks, yet, but I've seen what the regular rooms look like and they're not exactly luxurious. Anyway, I hope I'm still that spry when I reach my golden years. For now, its more Beer Hoi for me.Kevinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06701213357980904048noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1144940914259033937.post-25363329069885849542009-02-10T06:33:00.000-08:002009-02-24T06:35:19.462-08:00Night Trains and Custom LanesFebruary 10th 2009<br /><br /><br />I've fallen a bit behind on my updates, or maybe too much has been going on in the past few days. Anyways I'm about to potentially flood your in-boxes while I take a day and a half out to chill before I leave Hanoi tomorrow night. Peruse at your leisure. Onwards.<br /><br /><br />I went from Hong Kong to Hanoi in three parts: the first was a high speed train from Hong Kong to Guangzhou, the second was an overnight train from Guangzhou to Nanning, and the final leg was the overnight train from Nanning to Hanoi. The first leg out of HK was uneventful enough, probably because the HK train station has the technical standards of any other developed country and everything ran smoothly. I was happy enough to leave my sad little Room 27 in Tsim Sha Tsui's Mirador Mansion and see what the proper mainland had in store for me.<br /><br /><br />Entering and leaving Hong Kong required several progressions of security and customs checks on both sides. Maybe I'm just sick of being trundled off and on my chosen mode of transportation for redundant security checks, but I'll be happy to see the end of check points once I get to Vietnam.<br /><br /><br />I suppose I got my first taste of the real China (as opposed to supremely urban Shanghai or hardly-China Hong Kong) when I arrived at Guangzhou Main Station. Guangzhou actually has two main train hubs and, having arrived at Guangzhou East, I needed to metro over to Guangzhou Main. Although HK and Guangzhou are only two hours apart by train, the differences are very pronounced. The spectrum of ethnicities immediately dropped back to near homogeneity. Hand-in-hand with that comes the undue attention to outsiders (yours truly). That's nothing new to me, but compared to the topical acceptance in Japan or the bemused curiosity in Ghana, this southern part of China was a mix of guarded interest or disdainful indifference (explanation to come).<br /><br /><br />As for the physical reality of the place: there are a lot of Chinese people. It's one thing to observe the 1.2 billion statistic and quite another to move from place to place and never see the glut of people let up. Also, what I've seen of China is both intensely dirty and surprisingly clean. There is no cultural stigma against littering, arguably quite the opposite, and having all the aforementioned multitudes constantly using any open spot of ground (or not so open) as a trash receptacle generates immense quantities of visible garbage. So much so that, walking around, I was always surprised that I wasn't already wading around waist-deep in the stuff.<br /><br /><br />The solution lies in the problem: with so many people they can afford to employ street cleaners constantly. Once it's been pointed out to you once (thanks Cornell) you realize that you can't walk down the street without seeing a few people with brooms and bags sweeping back and forth all day every day. Kudos to China for taking care of garbage, but I'd still enjoy seeing a civic campaign against littering in the future. Why? Because sweepers can't get everywhere, and they couldn't get into Guangzhou Main. Once I passed through security, I made my way to the "Waiting Lounge". This vast hall was last clean when they built the place. Searching for a clean seat I had to dance past apple cores, soda cans, cigarette butts, orange peels and sunflower seeds, to name a few. I believe that orange peels and sunflower seeds make up about 80% of this vice, especially dismal since the seeds have been in and out of people's mouths and spat into great heaps on the floor. I think (hope?) there is a future market in some sort of portable disposal unit for this sort of refuse.<br /><br /><br />I got to the station relatively early so I watched the lounge slowly fill up until, just prior to departure, the place was seriously overflowing with people. When they finally let us on the deluge predictably tried to shove it's way through the inadequate entry gate, so I just hung back and let things thin out before I made my way. There was an element of risk in this because I wasn't sure what exactly the etiquette regarding inter-city domestic travel in China was: perhaps the seat number on my ticket was a mere formality and the initial rush to board had been the true competition, unknown to my naive eyes. I had a bottom bunk hard-sleeper, more convenient than the middle or upper bunks but, alas, infamous for being used by everyone as spare seats before lights-out. I wasn't looking forward to politely asking any Chinese people to kindly remove themselves from my bed and the guy who was thusly enjoying himself when I arrived departed immediately and I never saw him again.<br /><br /><br />Although I had prepared for boredom, I was happy to find three Australians in the same set of sleepers as me. Moreover, they too were headed all the way to Hanoi where they were doing long-term volunteer stints in a variety of job placements. Tim the geologist/topographer, Claire the teacher and Linda the something-or-other were very pleasant people and shared with me lots of valuable information on how to get around Vietnam and Hanoi in particular. I owe them a great debt of thanks for saving my wallet many a Dong.<br /><br /><br />On this train I experienced some of the aforementioned disdainful indifference. This is putting it kindly, I believe, but I'll let you be the judge. I was having dinner and then a beer with Linda in the dining carriage. Linda is Vietnamese-Australian and thus often got the fifth degree in both Chinese and Vietnamese before anyone truly believed she was foreign and even then she received mostly usually disapproving annoyance. So when we had to communicate via gesture for beers the guard in charge only reluctantly took our money for the service. The dining carriage "bar" was a money-covered table with two chain-smoking guys in uniform – you give them the money, the reach under the table and pull out something you hope you like. On the first beer the main guy didn't want to give me change, and when I could produce exact change he stared daggers at me for having been foiled. The second time we wanted a beer, he simply refused flat out. When we started to play cards, he told us to leave.<br /><br /><br />Who knows what had caused this ruckus. Maybe the guy was having a bad day... more likely he was enjoying his sad little power trip a little too much. What can't be overlooked, however, is at this point Claire, prototypical white female, enters the scene and suddenly we are treated to more warm beers and we can play all the card games we please. I don't know what was more sad, that his methods were so transparent or that he thought his efforts might count for something. Anyway, score one for white girls.<br /><br /><br />When we reached Nanning the next morning, we made for the Lotusland Hostel. Although I had a reservation, I didn't have a map; although they didn't have a reservation, they did have a map. We rocked up around 6am and got installed. Well, I thought they had got in, but I crashed immediately after getting my room key and when I woke up the next morning they were not to be found. Good people, best of luck to them.<br /><br /><br />My friend Eveline from HK had recommended Lotusland to me, claiming it was the best hostel ever. I'm not particularly fond of hyperbole but this place seriously is one of the best hostels ever. The place must have been designed by a backpacker for backpackers because it had all the amenities and homeliness that backpackers look for. The fact that it's not even in a primary destination makes the find all the more delightful. Most people to come Nanning in transit to or from Vietnam, but clearly many have stayed in the unexpected comfort of Lotusland for a few extra days. Friendly multilingual staff, sturdy clean rooms, modern hotel locks, an abundance of deep couches, plenty of clean and working amenities and some at-cost imported foodstuffs for comfort, this place truly had it all. It was even by a park by the riverside. Sadly, I didn't get to spend a single night here.<br /><br /><br />After waking up around 11, cleaning myself up and settling in, I trekked back to the train station to buy a ticket to Hanoi for the following evening. Indeed, I had wanted to take a bus (only five hours) but the bus station was still closed from New Years celebrations. To ease things along, I wrote out my itinerary in Chinese characters. I stood in line, paper ready. When I got to the ticket window, the conversation went like this:<br /><br /><br />"Hi, I'd like to take the train to Hanoi tomorrow night, 2/1." I pressed paper against the glass.<br /><br />Pause. Pensive look. Papers shuffled. "Okay," in decent English, "506 yuan."<br /><br />My turn to pause. Gesturing at the chart on the wall, "290 yuan? 290 yuan for Hanoi?" I only had 400 yuan on me.<br /><br />"Tomorrow 506. Today 290. Go today?"<br /><br />Well now, there's a quandary. I had about ten seconds to determine if she was trying to extort me or if for some reason tomorrow the prices really would jump up before the long line behind me got agitated. At seven second, I played for time.<br /><br />"What about 2/2? 290 yuan?"<br /><br />"506 yuan."<br /><br />"Everyday 506 yuan?"<br /><br />"Yes."<br /><br />"But today 290 yuan?"<br /><br />Nod.<br /><br />"Dammit." So I bought the ticket for 290 yuan. It was already 2pm and the train left at 6:15pm so I had to hoof it back to the hostel and pack my stuff back up. Prematurely shaken out of my sublime mental and physical state of relaxation, I awkwardly explained to the hostel staff I wouldn't be staying with them. The guy at reception began to apologetically explain that he couldn't refund my money, but I waved it off and told him I'd already slept in the bed anyway.<br /><br /><br />Back at the train station, I found the "Lounge Reserved for Soft Sleepers" to be immeasurably better than the lounge in general lounge back in Guangzhou Main, though it turned out that the train was composed entirely of soft sleepers, eliminating any sense I had of class superiority. Moreover, I found that the only real difference between soft and hard sleepers were the amount of bunks (four versus six) and the existence of a door.<br /><br /><br />As opposed to the hundreds or thousands of bodies on the Guangzhou-Nanning lines, on Nanning-Hanoi there were little more than fifty passengers. My three bunkmates were Eric from Beijing and some Vietnamese couple. Eric, the 23-year-old Chinese student was an amusing enough guy: Eric being his English name because his Chinese name was nearly the same as a Mandarin word for "fuck" and us tone-deaf foreigners kept swearing at him. He had been a volunteer at the Olympic village last summer and the German team he was assigned to greeted him every morning with a hearty "Good morning, Fuck!", much to the glee of his co-volunteers.<br /><br /><br />Eric, moreover, had never been out of China in his life. I saw his brand spanking new passport with a single Vietnamese visa in it and he asked furtively if I'd ever been out of America much...<br /><br />"Just a bit."<br /><br />"Really? I heard to be careful Vietnam of the cheats."<br /><br />"Mmmm, never happens in China, does it."<br /><br />"No, never."<br /><br />We split ways in Hanoi, though I got his email and thought we could meet up for a beer. I heard back from him the next day: "Really be careful if you want to take a motocycle or buy anything. Everyone seems to grab money from you." He was going to try his luck down south. I hope he makes it back to China alive.<br /><br /><br />I started left HK with some customs lines and I arrived in Hanoi the same way. At 11pm we were marched off the train for Chinese immigration and at 2am again for Vietnamese immigration. Suffice to say, in the interim three hours no one had smuggled any drugs or bombs on the train, but Kevin was measurably crabbier. The Vietnamese authorities also took the liberty of sticking a thingamajig in my ear and, having determined that I was a sufficiently healthy individual, charged me 2 yuan for the privilege.<br /><br /><br />At 5am we arrived in Hanoi, got kicked off the train, and it was at this point I found myself in Vietnam with no money. I felt like I had made this mistake once before...Kevinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06701213357980904048noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1144940914259033937.post-16333289907327791202009-01-31T22:40:00.000-08:002009-02-10T22:42:23.465-08:00Absolute Mediocrity in Hong KongJanuary 31st 2009<br /><br />The rest of my time in Shanghai was pretty relaxed. I was hanging out with Yannick, Cornell's roommate, a lot because he is self-employed and so can work from home. Very nice guy. His current existence seems to revolve around a few hours work and then many more hours of leisure: books, dvds, occasional massage or walk around the city, completed with an evening of relaxed dinner and drinks with the good expats of Shanghai. He says its only a temporary thing, but it's one heck of way to spend your time, if only temporarily.<br /><br />Cornell and I went old Nihon school for a couple evenings and went to play darts at a local Japanese bar. Of course I didn't want to show up my host, so I let him win most of the time. I did win a game now and again for the sake of appearances, just enough to sooth my ego... With a mug of a Asahi draft in hand, it really was a little slice of good old Wakayama.<br /><br />Saturday morning (1/24) saw me up at crack of five bloody thirty to catch the metro to the maglev to the airport for my 7:45 flight to Hong Kong. The maglev was a pretty cool ride: a German-engineered 300km/hr speed machine that brings you 30km in about 7 minutes. Unfortunately the platform exits were not engineered by the same German; at the terminus there was one single escalator and no stairs for all one thousand passengers trying to rush to their planes. <br /><br />The only hiccup at the airport was the suspicious interrogation I got for my deodorant. I had two sticks of Old Spice in my bag and the security guard took them out and shook them above his head: “What is this?! What is this?!” I took the cap off, took a big dramatic sniff and made the appropriate gestures under my arm. He seemed unconvinced but another guard cut him off and let me go. I'm sure there's a lesson there...<br /><br />As you may have guessed from the title, when I finally got to Hong Kong my week was pretty mediocre. Which isn't to say that Hong Kong itself is mediocre, or that the people are mediocre, but rather that what I accomplished in 6 days seemed rather mediocre compared to what might have been. <br /><br />My new home in Hong Kong's Tsim Sha Tsui, Traveler's Friendly Hostel, could not have been further from its namesake or the luxury I'd experience in Shanghai. I've stayed in many a shabby place on several different continents, but this place takes the cake as the hands down worst hostel of all time. It would be difficult and tiresome to explain in all it's painful glory just how dilapidated this place was, but I'll give you some more of the so-pitiful-its-humorous hi-lights. <br /><br />My room, Room 27 with the yellow door, was a six-bunk dorm room. The beds literally shook so from my top bunk I swayed violently when I or anyone else moved. In stead of lockers, a large portion of our room was stacked high with cardboard boxes filled with toilet paper. The quarrelsome, warlike staff would enter without knocking to retrieve some required TP at all hours, usually not acknowledging our presence or locking the door again behind them. I suppose they were upset at having all these foreigners in their utility closet. A few unlucky visitors who had booked a bed ahead of time but arrived late in the afternoon found themselves relegated to the new “7th bunk” of our room, namely the tile floor, for which they received no discount or apology. I suppose it was better than the twelve-bunk room, which was actually just a hallway with beds in it.<br /><br />I beg of you not to have me relive the horrors of contained in that cesspool they called a washroom/shower.<br /><br />The list goes on. Alone I may not have stood a chance, but united through our common adversity, my bunkmates and I overcame these hardships and had a good time. In the mix was Chris, the relaxed and intelligent med student from Florida; Dani, Iowa party girl extraordinaire teaching in northern China; Eveline, a.k.a. Dutch, the sweet-as-only-the-Dutch-can-be student from Beijing; and Jessica, the internet-addicted Canadian teenager with a Danish boyfriend (I seriously heard enough about this guy to name him as a good acquaintance; he must be a patient man). The five of us partied pretty hard the first 3 or 4 nights, hence my utter failure to accomplish anything culturally stimulating in Hong Kong. As the days passed Chris, Dani, and Eveline were replaced by Dave the pregnant Brit (inexplicably sick every morning, yet never drank a drop of alcohol), and Mike the comedic Scotsman (I'm pretty sure humor a prerequisite for citizenship, anyway). <br /><br />There were some other one-day friends who I only encountered briefly, such as Asser the German. Poor guy came into this room of six where the five of us were already well and good into the game. We rolled back in at 5am one morning with all the delicacy of a prison riot. Asser took it in stride, though we invited him to hang out the next day he either declined or disappeared. One day he said he was off to the Macau casinos and that's the last I saw of him. The last replacement friend of note was Joseph from New York, though he insisted he was there to represent China. I hate to be the one to propagate stereotypes, but this guy fit the bill for craziest foreigner on the mainland, within and without. Joseph rocked waist-length dreads and a beard to match, brown teeth (top left center missing), several layers of brown pants and sweaters (may or may not have been original color) and, well, his hands being the only piece of actual person visible, nothing pretty to look at. Now you can chide me for judging someone on appearances, but I made an honest effort to accept people as they come, as is necessary in the backpacker life. Joseph, however, oscillated between scary and batshit crazy. Here are some of Joseph's pearls of wisdom:<br /><br />“Lung cancer is good for you.” (after our repeated denials to his requests to smoke in the room)<br />“So you support Al Qaeda?” (in response to some poor Japanese girl admitting she was an Islamic Studies student)<br />“I only watched the inauguration to see Obama get shot, like the NSA did to Kennedy.” (no instigation, just crazy talk)<br /><br />Weird guy. Added tension. Didn't like it. Needless to say, I kept my stuff a little closer and slept a little lighter that last night in good old Room 27.<br /><br />Party as we did, Hong Kong wasn't an entire bust. We saw the parade and the fireworks on the first two days of new year. There was a light show at the pier the first night. I got to the first half of the Hong Kong Historical Museum and a random Kung Fu show in Kowloon Park. The best bit though was at the end of the week I went to Lantau Island with Jess and Mike to see the largest outdoor Buddha in the world on top of the mountain. It was big. Sadly it was a bit foggy so the photos weren't so hot, but it was nice to get away from the hustle and bustle of Hong Kong. Also on Lantau was the monastery connected to the Buddha and a short walk away was the Path of Wisdom, tall tree planks arranged in an infinite sign and inscribed with the Heart Sutra. And yes, I do feel wiser having walked it. <br /><br />Random side note: yes, I have about a bajillion pictures of all this stuff I've been writing about, but no I don't have a good way of uploading it. I was able to download Picasa, which is what I usually use, but after the initial install it isn't recognizing any new files I put on the computer. Yes, I've done the regular troubleshooting but it's still bugged. I am beginning to regret having gotten Linux with this thing. If anyone can suggest any Linux compatible alternatives, I'm all ears.<br /><br />Til next time...Kevinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06701213357980904048noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1144940914259033937.post-36104169528034728902009-01-23T22:38:00.000-08:002009-02-10T22:39:53.267-08:00Shanghai -- MoreJanuary 23rd 2009<br /><br />My second day in Shanghai started early. I woke up with Cornell and crew as they went out to work and got an early start at the train station looking for tickets. I was cut down pretty quickly, however, by the stone-faced ticket clerk who told me trains to and from Hong Kong were sold-out through January 30th. Mild panic. I zipped back to Cornell's apartment to hit the internet for flights. Just when I was wondering whether I could really trust any of the numerous Chinese online travel agents with my credit card info, Yanick came to my rescue with C-trip, a service he'd used many times before. They have a website but he suggested just calling up and making arrangements. To my pleasant surprise they spoke perfectly fluent English. Cooler still was that Yanick's phone was registered with them so they already had all the delivery details. Call me a dork but I love these little moments of technological synergy. Anyway, they hand-delivered the tickets later that afternoon (free of charge, woot) and with I breathed a huge sigh of relief. One problem down, one visa to go.<br /><br />It was now 10:30 and the Vietnamese Consulate closed at 11:30 for lunch so I had an hour to get there and get straightened out. It takes exactly 4 business days to process the visa and, it being Monday morning, that gave me just the right amount of time to get it done before the weekend -- if I could only get there in time. I did, thankfully, just under the wire at 11:20. It was as exciting as most consulates tend to be, but I picked up my completed visa yesterday afternoon and so I'm officially set for the next couple weeks (at least until Laos). <br /><br />Feeling accomplished, I spent Monday afternoon strolling around finally able to take in Shanghai with a carefree attitude. I was wandering down the street when I spotted a temple doorway. I meandered through into red, red, and more red. Inconspicuously watching some people pray from the doorway, ultimately some stony-faced guy (lots of stony faces in this place) waved me out. Well I thought he was waving me out but when I turned to leave he shook his head and held up five fingers. I gave him 5 CNY and he gave me two bundles of incense. After studying the basic prayer patterns of other visitors I gave it a shot myself and asked the temple guardian to grant me a safe journey. Sadly I had lit the incense from the wrong end and the bundles began to fall apart. Nobody else saw, anyway, and I haven't been hit by any cars/scooters/buses yet.<br /><br />Which brings me to the nature of traffic in Shanghai. I could go on for ages about the various nuances required to survive the streets here, but suffice to say it's pretty wild. Not Accra-caliber wild, mind you, or even Bangkok-dangerous (nyuck), but definitely a cut above, say, New York. The city's infrastructure is as good or better than most other cities I've visited but drivers tend to take street lines and traffic lights as mere suggestions. Right of way belongs to those with the greatest inertia, so pedestrians are at the bottom of the food chain. You can't really trust the lights so whenever you need to cross a street it really is a frantic scamper, trying to look all ways at once. The scooters zip every which way – on streets, on sidewalks, with traffic, against traffic – and most have silent electric motors so you don't know how close you were to death until the blur has just passed out of your peripheral vision again. I haven't seen anyone get hit yet, but Cornell has assured me it happens often enough. Stay on your toes.<br /><br />After the temple I headed to the east side of the Bund. This is the side with all the new skyscrapers and upperclass commercialism and etc. I think Shanghai must rival New York for skyscraper density, no joke. Anyway, one of these towers is called the Pearl and its a TV tower for some Chinese network. You can go up the tower for various views (its right on the riverside), but I contented myself with the “Notes for Entering the Tower” posted just outside the entryway. I'll post the photo as soon as I can, but the very first rule on the list is as follows:<br /><br />“The ragamuffin,drunken [sic] people and psychotics are forbidden to enter the Tower.”<br /><br />Oh my, the questions bubbled, boiled, and swirled in my mind. What exactly is a ragamuffin? Must one be both ragamuffin and drunken to be refused entry? Is there such a thing as a sober ragamuffin? And what exactly is the difference between a ragamuffin drunkard and psychotic? Who could possibly be in charge of answering these questions?<br /><br />I mulled these and other tangential inquiries over a hot pot lunch (“Cooking Master” restaurant, where all the staff wear jackets proclaiming “I'm Cooking Master!”). It wasn't until later that evening that I was able to settle the ragamuffin question with the help of Cornell and Caroline. Cornell was of the opinion that it must be some synonym for 'hoodlum' or 'vagrant' and I was inclined to agree with him. Caroline, however, surprised us with a vehement declaration that 'ragamuffin' is in fact a reggae-hip hop fusion style. She grew up on a small island in the Indian Ocean, after all, and Marley and disciples rule the islands. It turned out that everyone was right. Wikipedia favored us with the following definitions:<br /><br />1.Raggamuffin music, usually abbreviated as ragga, is a sub-genre of dancehall music or reggae, in which the instrumentation primarily consists of electronic music. Sampling often serves a prominent role in raggamuffin music as well.<br />2.A ragamuffin is a shabbily clothed child.<br /><br />However, I prefer the definition offered by Urban Dictionary:<br /><br /> A grimy dirty little urchin or waif with ratted greasy hair. Usually female.<br /><br />Brilliant. You've got to love that appended “Usually female.” I wonder who must have taken a survey of ragamuffins and discovered its disproportionately large female constitution.<br /><br />Later that evening I met up with Cornell after he got off work. We tried a restaurant recommended by his boss for being both authentically Chinese and foreigner friendly. Even on a Monday, however, this place was already booked solid. The hostess gave us the “are you serious?” look when we said we didn't have reservations. Must be more popular than we imagined. It looked pretty posh, I suppose, but I'll never be able to attest to the menu. <br /><br />Instead we went to the opposite side of the spectrum but no less appetizing. Nearby Cornell's apartment complex is a noodle shop that you'd walk by every time unless you had the go-ahead from someone in the know. It was just a small, tiled, unheated room with four tables and couple scattered stools and picture menus on the walls. Everything is in Chinese but the noodle dishes have pictures up so for me at least I could point and choose. The noodle master then rips off a hunk of dough and stretches out fresh noodles for you right then and there. After they finish cooking the noodles are taken in the back, topped off with whatever you had chosen and then served as a heap so massive my brother would appreciate it. All this for 10 CNY. And don't forget your soup.<br /><br />The restaurant was one of many similar throughout the city. They are all run by domestic immigrants from the Muslim region of China. The menu and style is uniform at every location though I'm not sure if all the restaurants are connected or independently run. There must be a connection at some level, anyway. If soup doesn't cut it for you, you're free to bring your own beverage, just no alcohol. Also, no pork. If you can get past that, this place is an epic find.<br /><br />Of course, with Cornell there that was not nearly where the cultural trivia ended. When I asked what the main noodle chef's name was, I was informed it's best to just call him shifu, or master. Any Kung Fu Panda fans out there might remember the redundantly named Master Shifu; same idea. So basically in Chinese culture anyone outside your circle of intimacy is called by their title rather than their name. So we call cabbies and chefs 'shifu' and the cleaning lady 'ayi'. There's probably a bunch more but that's all I've come in contact with so far. This idea is interesting in and of itself but is also telling about greater Chinese culture as well: how everyone treats strangers utterly callously until some connection is made or found, at which point (having entered the circle) people can treat each other as family. Anyway, the noodle shifu was a nice guy from the get go. Its hard to describe without sounding strange but he and the other workers there had a certain kindness about their eyes that was conspicuously missing from the vacant stares most people tend to give strangers, whether in China or elsewhere. Although we couldn't communicate at all, it was clear to me that these were good people or were genetically blessed with kind facial features, or both. <br /><br />Tuesday was blur of walking around Shanghai sites. I saw Yuyuan Gardens, which must be the prototypical Chinese style garden. I gave up on taking decent pictures because its winter but I'll be back in the spring and I'm sure it'll be pretty outstanding. The garden is set in the greater Yuyuan “cultural area”, which is essentially stylized street mall. Still fun to walk around and people, however, and that's exactly what I did. The decorations for Chinese New Year are pretty impressive.<br /><br />From here I walked through Old Shanghai, basically quasi-slums. I find it strange that nearly every source I looked at suggested seeing this place when in reality you're just walking through narrow alleys thinking “these people are all pretty poor”. Shanghai might be moving fast but these people aren't so much. And when they do it'll probably be literally: relocated to have their old neighborhoods renovated and redeveloped. I suppose it's a “see it while it lasts” sort of thing, but it still doesn't sit well. The redeeming end to this misadventure was that I found some street markets that don't make it on to any tourist maps. I could tell immediately because the hawkers weren't cat-calling me in broken English; I just got curious looks and then people went back about their business. These markets were cool because, in stead of selling the usual knock-off watches and apparel, they were overflowing with old Maoist paraphernalia. I had to stop myself from getting anything, mostly because I can't carry anything new but also because I'm sure Beijing will also be a treasure trove. <br /><br />No wrap up for this email, just going to stop here because it appears I'm breaking my promise to stay succinct. Thanks for reading. Loving your response emails. Talk to you again soon.Kevinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06701213357980904048noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1144940914259033937.post-74555291635636909742009-01-21T22:35:00.000-08:002009-02-10T22:38:14.001-08:00Shanghai, A Long BeginningJanuary 21st 2009<br /><br />It's Wednesday afternoon in Shanghai, raining, so I'm taking the opportunity to take a break from the hustle and bustle to recount the goings-on of the past couple days. Plenty to talk about.<br /><br />I walked off the ship Sunday morning and filed through a surprisingly casual Chinese immigration checkpoint. I didn't have any checked luggage to pick up so I ambled up the garage exit onto the street and – voila – Kevin was in China. Success! This victory was short-lived, however, because I realized I hadn't properly prepared for arriving in China. I needed to contact Cornell, but to do this I needed a phone. If I could find a phone, I needed money to pay for it. I was carrying plenty of money – USD and JPY – but no CNY. At most airports there are moneychangers in every corner, but having arrived by boat I was let off in a still-developing much-deserted corner of town. I started walking in concentric circles looking for a bank, contemplating the whole time that I was looking for an open bank on a Sunday morning. Just before panic and despair set in I did finally find an open bank and managed to change some of my JPY to local currency, though not without the requisite questioning by foreign authorities over my last name as printed in my passport (White III). This has happened to me in just about every country in the world and after a few futile attempts at explaining the peculiar naming traditions of my native culture I've decided to let the world's bureaucracies come to know me simply as “Whitey”. At any rate I'll need a new passport in 2010 so I'll take care of it then.<br /><br />Now that I had plenty of cash, I had to find a phone. Unhelpfully, all the phone booths I found had the phones ripped out. Made me feel right at home, actually, because the same usually happens back in the states. I wandered in to a convenient store and attempted to express my predicament in sign language. When the women behind the counter figured me out but could not help I was saved by my first friendly stranger. The guy in line in front of me had stuck around to observe my act and, after his own gestured performance, led me around the corner to an inconspicuous kiosk. I wouldn't have guessed the two people chilling on lawn chairs were actually selling anything, but they had big white boards with long strings of numbers and two phones on a desk. The numbers were apparently SIMM cards and the phones were replacement public services. Sure. I made contact with Cornell and everything was good again. My new mime friend went back about his day and I hopped in a taxi.<br /><br />Although Cornell was having lunch with his grandmother, I was let in to the pad by one of his roommates. Cornell lives in Shanghai with two lovely French expats, Yannick and Caroline. As for how I know Cornell, when I originally lived in Japan in 2005 we lived across the street from one another in Iwade. Yannick let me in to the apartment to drop off my stuff and then I headed to People's Square one metro stop away on Cornell's advice. People's Square is the very center of Shanghai and on Sunday afternoon was covered with the milling crowds one would expect from one of China's three largest cities. Walking down the pedestrian streets absorbing the vibe was a good first-contact with the city. I turned one corner and came face to face with a Howard Johnson's set into a an 1920s style building. A HoJos in downtown Shanghai? Call me crazy but I thought I remembered this hotel string going out of business when I was a kid. Well HoJo is alive and well in contemporary China and even constitutes an upper-middle class experience. Weird.<br /><br />I probably don't give myself enough credit with my Japanese because when you come to a place where you really can't communicate it becomes very apparent very quickly. Ordering food or buying anything anywhere has degenerated to pointing at products and punching numbers into a calculator. So when I had lunch as a busy noodle shop on the pedestrian strip at People's Square it was quite a scene for everyone around. Even in metropolitan Shanghai the fascination with foreigners is more robust than it was in Japan and kids especially seem curious with a white man that can use his chopsticks skillfully. The aged woman next to me unobtrusively appraised my dexterous fingering and, I think (hope?), nodded approvingly. <br /><br />When I related my lunchtime adventures to Cornell he quipped that my restaurant, Ajisen, was actually a localized Japanese noodle franchise. Oh well, so much for branching out. We met back at his place around 2:30 and reminisced about Wakayama for a while. I hadn't seen the guy in three years but rest assured he's still the same good old Cornell. He's an intelligent, professional, thoughtful sort of guy that you'd be lucky enough to meet two or three of these sorts people in your lifetime. Aside from granting me the gracious hospitality of his home and showing me the better parts of the city, his combined knowledge and experience of the place offers an insight into Shanghai that you couldn't get from a guide book and would be supremely lucky to get from even a good professional tour guide. I'd be fortunate if a fraction of what he's told me will be transmitted to you, and I'm sure it will end up significantly less eloquent. At any rate, I'm lucky to have met him this early in my trip as his advice will be useful throughout all of China and elsewhere. On with the good times.<br /><br />We made our way to a local fake-market to test my bargaining skills. I got a Billabong t-shirt and Lacoste polo shit for a combined 100 CNY (I should note here I'm not sure exactly the best way to refer to Chinese money. I've heard it called “RNB”, “kwai”, “Chinese dollars”, “yuan” and the official international market abbreviation is “CNY”. For simplicity I'll stick with CNY). The current exchange is about 6.8 CNY to the USD, so I usually just divide by 7. Not a bad price, I thought, but now that I've been back a few times and having seen others haggle, I'm sure I could have gotten down to 50 CNY. Note, as well, that my opponent started somewhere around an absurd 480 CNY. As Cornell has explained its just a game to them and they're always going to be better at it than you. I'm sure they receive these shirts for less than a dollar apiece anyway so anything over 10 CNY is probably pure profit. Anyway, if you don't take it too seriously its great fun. <br /><br />For dinner we went to restaurant that specializes in a Shanghai original, cold boiled chicken. The chicken is sliced with a butchers knife and so comes served bones and all. You gnaw the flesh away from the bones and then spit out on to the table. Yup, on to the table. Soon I had a morbid hill of delicious death growing beside my rice bowl. Considering the long history of bone-spitters before me, you can imagine that the 3-second-rule certainly doesn't apply here. We also had a boiled spinach dish and a mushroom beef dish. Cornell noted that 1) in Shanghai its traditional to eat rice last (as opposed to everywhere else in Asia where rice is ubiquitous with your meal) because its a sign of wealth not to have to serve such a cheap commodity as filler with your meal, and 2) the Western tradition of serving cold drinks with meals flies in the face of Chinese traditions of yin-yang, and so in China you'll find that the “drink” with you meal is typically the hot soup which accompanies it. Foreign infidels that we are, we ordered to Wong Lo Kats (totally not sure of the accuracy of this name), sweetened tea served by the can. All in all a good meal and a great introduction to proper Chinese cuisine.<br /><br />After dinner we went to an area called Xin Tian Di which is being developed by Cornell's firm, Shui On. The firm was granted master planning rights to a huge swath of land south of People's Square and in stead of knocking everything down and starting from scratch there was a modest effort made to preserve the traditional Shikumen structures, a Euro-Asian fusion style developed when foreign powers exacted concessions from a weak Chinese governement back in the 1800s. Except for the unfortunately prominent placement of a Starbucks the place has a very good vibe. The developement's theme is “Where the past meets tomorrow, today.” and while this may sound cheesy it is actually a pretty apt description. Xin Tian Di has a museum on Shikumen architecture which I later visited, but coolest of all is that on one out-of-the-way street corner is the site of the First National Congress of the Communist Party of China, back when it was just thirteen guys in a room doing their best not be discovered by the KMT. The museum has short biographies with back-then photos of each of the thirteen delegates, including a 20-something Mao. Curiously, based on the biographies about half the original thirteen ended up being arrested, if not executed, at some point in the future by the very party they founded.<br /><br />The last thing we did that night was to visit the west side of the Bund, the strip along the water that is home to Shanghai's famous skyline. I've seen many a skyline throughout the world, but Shanghai is blessed with one of the best. The west side is lined with roaring-20s style regal buildings that used to house European banks and now house Chinese banks. If any of you appreciate the old WB Batman cartoons, these buildings come straight out of that old-school Gotham City. On the east bank are more modern skyscrapers, all of which are impressively tall but have less personality. The exception to this rule is one building which fuses the two styles and is now my favorite. Not sure what it's called but it's a modern skyscraper, with the sleek glass and steel look, done in the 1920s tiered style that makes it look like something a cyborg King Kong might climb. <br /><br />At the end of that day it was hard to imagine that I had woken up on a boat, but the next day was shaping up to be just as action-packed. And not in the good way. I had arrived the week before Chinese New Year's, arguably one of the most heavily and densely celebrated holidays in the world. My plan to travel the following weekend to Hong Kong started to seem laughably naive. On top of that, I had to get my visa for Vietnam and the consulates were sure to be closed in China over the holidays. As happy as I was to be in China at last, these problems were both large and pressing. No rest for the weary.Kevinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06701213357980904048noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1144940914259033937.post-53758107991971232712009-01-18T22:32:00.000-08:002009-02-10T22:35:43.819-08:00The FerryJanuary 18th 2009<br /><br />Two days ago I took a ferry out of Osaka port bound for Shanghai. This morning (it's around 9:00am) we're currently pulling in to Shanghai. I woke up to find a red disk sun rising over sparse forest off the port side... and warships lining the canal off the starboard. What an apt representation of this country's many curious dichotomies. I like China already.<br /><br />My last night in Osaka I took a bath with three yakuza. The top floor of my Osaka business hotel had a sentou on it and so I went for my last ever Japanese bath. At first the businessmen were giving me dirty/curious/stony looks for my tattoo. When the yakuza walked in the businessmen's all eyes strayed toward fixed spots on the ceiling. All three of them had the tell-tale body-covering Japanese tattoos which identified them immediately. If surface area-covered is any indication of mafia hierarchy then the guy with both arms, back, neck, pectorals and cheeks (not face, ladies) was probably their leader. Of course, by nature of the fact that they were themselves staying in a cheap business hotel meant they couldn't be very far up the line. Anyway, when they started to read my back out loud I turned around and we made sparse conversation. They feigned interest in my up-coming trip; I forced laughter at their racist jokes. Most of the businessmen had taken this opportunity to excuse themselves so when the yakuza had sated their curiosity with me I was finally free to relax with my hot bath and ume-shu. Japan is all about the small pleasures.<br /><br />The last week in Japan was full of sayonara parties: good food with great people and copious amounts of drinks. Thanks to everyone who helped me celebrate my many send-offs. Its hard to believe my Japanese adventures are over, at least for now, but I haven't had too much time to fret about it because all of mainland Asia awaits. <br /><br />The ferry from Osaka to Shanghai hasn't been bad, exactly, but I can't really call it good, either. There isn't much going on on the ship. There's only about fifty passengers, including about six other foreigners, though everyone has mostly kept to themselves. My book was supposed to last me the entire trip (3 days and 2 nights) but I was so bored out of my mind that I finished it the first day. For anyone interested, The Kite Runner was good but incredibly depressing. Also, the ending was embarrassingly predictable which, considering the premise of the story, felt somehow cheap. Don't let this stop you from reading it, however, because despite my diatribes I still read it cover to cover in a single sitting which is more than I can say about most books.<br /><br />The rest of my time on the ship has been spent on rotation between sleeping (twelve hours a day to kill time), eating, listening to lectures and podcasts, and also (children, earmuffs) a good amount of time on the john. Something from Friday definitely hit me hard on Saturday, and that's all I'm going to say about that. <br /><br />Nothing else of note really happened during two days at sea. We hugged the Japanese islands for the majority of the time, only going into open water for the short stretch between Kyushu and maindland China. My room, advertised as “authentic Japanese style” was actually just a big open room with about twenty or thirty sleeping pads and a variety of passengers milling about. Besides the fact that I couldn't really roll over, on the whole it wasn't as bad as first appeared. Everyone was pretty mellowed out and except for the occasional talkative old man people generally kept to themselves.<br /><br />Time to get off the boat.Kevinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06701213357980904048noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1144940914259033937.post-16492108883763121322009-01-13T17:17:00.000-08:002009-01-13T17:19:27.285-08:00Kick Off <meta equiv="CONTENT-TYPE" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><title></title><meta name="GENERATOR" content="OpenOffice.org 2.3 (Linux)"> <style type="text/css"> <!-- @page { size: 8.5in 11in; margin: 0.79in } P { margin-bottom: 0.08in } --> </style> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family:Linux Libertine;"><span style="font-size:130%;">January 9<sup>th</sup> 2009</span></span></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family:Linux Libertine;"><span style="font-size:130%;">It's been a while but Kevin's Travel Journal is about to make its much-talked-about-but-little-seen return to prominence. Or at least regularity. The occasion, of course, is the start of my long awaited Asian Tour. This Tour has been my brainchild for the past five years, from the coffee shops of Montreal and lecture halls of McGill to month-to-month pay savings of Japan and the good people at UFJ Mitsubishi Ginko. I've finally managed to pull together a sufficient amount of funds to make this the trip I wanted it to be and with favorable weather patterns and planetary alignment it is time at last to set off. Departure date is set for January 16<sup>th</sup> from Osaka Port, headed straight for the Asian mainland via Shanghai. And so it goes.</span></span></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family:Linux Libertine;"><span style="font-size:130%;">The tentative plan is to travel south for warmth, through China to Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and Thailand. By Spring I hope to travel north into India and then back east again through China and to make Mongolia by summer. That's the short of it; the long of it will be doled out over the next several months as it happens. The who/what/when/where/why/how will hopefully entertain, inspire, motivate and captivate you – do not hesitate to show your enthusiasm with response emails or Western Union wires. </span></span> </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family:Linux Libertine;"><span style="font-size:130%;">In response to past commentary I will be pro-actively curbing the worst excesses of my infamous prolific tendencies. That's not to say there will be absolutely no exercises in reader-patience, but I promise that the majority of entries will come in more manageable bites.</span></span></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family:Linux Libertine;"><span style="font-size:130%;">In keeping with that spirit I will end this first email here with one last double-invitation: if you'd rather save your in-box some space don't hesitate to let me know and I'll remove you from my send-list with minimal offense; on the contrary, if you or someone you know needs more Kevin in their life, send their email address my way and I'd be happy to add them to said send-list. Finally, for those of you who want all your Kevin in one convenient location, <a href="http://kwhitejr.blogspot.com/">simply bookmark this page</a>, the official repository of all things Kevin: past, present, and future.</span></span></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family:Linux Libertine;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Take care for now, ya'll</span></span></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family:Linux Libertine;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Kevin</span></span></p> Kevinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06701213357980904048noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1144940914259033937.post-89578471828433978842008-12-11T17:52:00.001-08:002008-12-11T17:52:59.836-08:00What?You don't get what you expect -- you get what you inspect.Kevinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06701213357980904048noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1144940914259033937.post-64035136676812589112008-10-27T17:11:00.001-07:002008-10-27T17:13:01.718-07:00I fought the law, and the law wonGood news out of Alaska, for once. As it turns out, nobody is <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/10/27/stevens.jurors/index.html">above the law</a>. Now if they could only make it stick on Cheney.Kevinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06701213357980904048noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1144940914259033937.post-3209772307568763652008-10-22T06:23:00.000-07:002008-10-22T06:29:51.516-07:00I'll tell you where you can put your plasticSo I should have definitely started bragging about this weeks ago but I've been busy with life. At any rate, my hometown of Westport CT has decided to spearhead the attack on the evil that is plastic bags, typically found in those loathsome earth-hating cesspits called check-out counters, and has become the first city on the eastern seaboard to ban their use within city limits. Next up... paper, watch your back. See the <a href="http://www.westportnow.com/index.php?/v2/comments/rtm_approved_ban_on_plastic_bags/">link</a>.Kevinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06701213357980904048noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1144940914259033937.post-10068227406877450892008-09-02T08:11:00.001-07:002008-09-07T02:02:55.509-07:00Early September updatesSo for my trip round-the-world and also to soothe my idle vanity I've decided to get some Kevin business cards produced for my soon-to-be adoring fans. I've posted four mock-ups below, two front and two back, and I'd be happy to hear your opinions. Real men put pink on their business cards.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-kB1f0QdjRKnsatem7ddw9FdftOBHU25XaaxH3AmxuX61EdDUIFuQK41hXdjdrzb4EJIErlCWzNX3C3bJc0pjkmy0lEsF1ao3hnpzk9QVoRdTJW6hDbZVamyOMMmi7JfLEkEukWo73K9M/s1600-h/Kevin+Business+Card+front.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-kB1f0QdjRKnsatem7ddw9FdftOBHU25XaaxH3AmxuX61EdDUIFuQK41hXdjdrzb4EJIErlCWzNX3C3bJc0pjkmy0lEsF1ao3hnpzk9QVoRdTJW6hDbZVamyOMMmi7JfLEkEukWo73K9M/s320/Kevin+Business+Card+front.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5241442346563997746" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgl-lTfGbeckZmkiV9g_HeyAY4bEcJfvv5gJ0hxD4zPO6qr5G7KY7z6dkw_1O-jkBsfgbhMo55Hxgp-tu_B3nDBLPMjEiZfQQpl1C1V0xoufVSA10-q0OzXrDPgbjtHuzKIixmoqmCo1S8B/s1600-h/Kevin+Business+Card+2+copy.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgl-lTfGbeckZmkiV9g_HeyAY4bEcJfvv5gJ0hxD4zPO6qr5G7KY7z6dkw_1O-jkBsfgbhMo55Hxgp-tu_B3nDBLPMjEiZfQQpl1C1V0xoufVSA10-q0OzXrDPgbjtHuzKIixmoqmCo1S8B/s320/Kevin+Business+Card+2+copy.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5241443538163635042" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgN2sdDp2euMMf1ItRlAo7_BKCwFlzp_x8mcs3IiSC-teVL3oltytIvCxpDHbvVPOgb-XnRkkz5eFmZv89-ITjYKtYCM6M6EWksT0urf7bw9J-S_lDYwi8hGuhs_NbY9vPFz8dDbE12kZlV/s1600-h/Kevin+Business+Card+Back+copy.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgN2sdDp2euMMf1ItRlAo7_BKCwFlzp_x8mcs3IiSC-teVL3oltytIvCxpDHbvVPOgb-XnRkkz5eFmZv89-ITjYKtYCM6M6EWksT0urf7bw9J-S_lDYwi8hGuhs_NbY9vPFz8dDbE12kZlV/s320/Kevin+Business+Card+Back+copy.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5241443954050116354" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhE3P_hZp1cBXp46w0hWm1VZynOZkBorC7Z1QHtRXtwN74pVeqWqojfqB-t3W-fVcZFjaDEJhr6YEPubHH-cqWGF3uIhZsLIOndi8FH1Ra2uKGpw4G6DJWlmPJtF0FHYowBCyKhYgk69_mG/s1600-h/Kevin+Business+Card+Back+2+copy.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhE3P_hZp1cBXp46w0hWm1VZynOZkBorC7Z1QHtRXtwN74pVeqWqojfqB-t3W-fVcZFjaDEJhr6YEPubHH-cqWGF3uIhZsLIOndi8FH1Ra2uKGpw4G6DJWlmPJtF0FHYowBCyKhYgk69_mG/s320/Kevin+Business+Card+Back+2+copy.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5241444255473667106" border="0" /></a><br /><br />In other random news, my friend Gia is in China and has reported that parts of my fledgling blog are censored in that country. You heard it here first: Kevin is officially subverting the Establishment and sticking it to the ChinaMan. Whoa, not the preferred nomenclature.<br /><br />So I'll be home in a few short weeks, so mark your calendars if you want some face-to-face Kevin time. Maybe planning some occasion in NYC for 10/10; nothing official yet but I'll hammer something out soon.<br /><br />I've added some back-dated entries from the archives of emails I've been reviewing. <br /><br />New additions:<br />1) Working in Ghana 4/28/07<br />2) Unexpected Medical Expense 3/5/08<br />3) Gifu Ski Trip 3/7/08<br /><br />Working in Ghana was never actually an email... well it was going to be but then I haplessly deleted it one terrible day in Ghana. I finally got around to re-writing it, but it is sadly sub-par compared with what was the original. Anyway, give it a try if you've got a soft spot for cynicism and an hour to kill.Kevinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06701213357980904048noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1144940914259033937.post-66855271274850604882008-08-06T08:03:00.001-07:002008-08-06T08:09:29.290-07:00Tattoo<meta equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><meta name="ProgId" content="Word.Document"><meta name="Generator" content="Microsoft Word 10"><meta name="Originator" content="Microsoft Word 10"><link rel="File-List" href="file:///C:%5CDOCUME%7E1%5CKevin%5CLOCALS%7E1%5CTemp%5Cmsohtml1%5C01%5Cclip_filelist.xml"><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:worddocument> <w:view>Normal</w:View> <w:zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:compatibility> <w:breakwrappedtables/> <w:snaptogridincell/> <w:wraptextwithpunct/> <w:useasianbreakrules/> <w:usefelayout/> </w:Compatibility> <w:browserlevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4</w:BrowserLevel> </w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><style> <!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:"MS Mincho"; panose-1:2 2 6 9 4 2 5 8 3 4; mso-font-alt:"MS 明朝"; mso-font-charset:128; mso-generic-font-family:modern; mso-font-pitch:fixed; mso-font-signature:-1610612033 1757936891 16 0 131231 0;} @font-face {font-family:Century; panose-1:2 4 6 4 5 5 5 2 3 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:647 0 0 0 159 0;} @font-face {font-family:"\@MS Mincho"; panose-1:2 2 6 9 4 2 5 8 3 4; mso-font-charset:128; mso-generic-font-family:modern; mso-font-pitch:fixed; mso-font-signature:-1610612033 1757936891 16 0 131231 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; text-align:justify; text-justify:inter-ideograph; mso-pagination:none; font-size:10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt; font-family:Century; mso-fareast-font-family:"MS Mincho"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-font-kerning:1.0pt;} @page Section1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} --> </style><!--[if gte mso 10]> <style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman";} </style> <![endif]--> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">So I thought that I’d kick off this blog with a tribute to/explanation of the title, “and yet and yet…”</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">“and yet and yet” is itself a reference to my favorite (only) tattoo, pictured below. The translation of the poem is
<br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">
<br /></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span><span style="font-size:100%;">The world of dew</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span><span style="font-size:100%;">Is the world of dew (indeed),</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span><span style="font-size:100%;">And yet, and yet…</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">
<br /></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">The haiku poem was written by Kobayashi Issa (1763 ~ 1828), one of the four master Japanese haiku poets. Kobayashi was born a peasant but later became Buddhist monk, husband, father, and of course poet. His life was marked by sharp vicissitudes, starting with the sudden loss of his mother when he was 3 years old, followed by his grandmother at age 14, and in later life his first three children and first wife. It was after all these hardships that he composed the above poem.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">
<br /></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">“The world of dew” is an allegory for Kobayashi’s Buddhist worldview. Water is a very apt metaphor for change as it constantly shifts shape, composure, and responsibility. In the Buddhist view, life is impermanent and so “the world of dew” is Kobayashi’s way summating this in as succinct a way as possible. Five syllables, to be exact. To make a long story short, from this worldview Buddhism derives its key tenets, most importantly that attachment to the impermanence of the world causes suffering and therefore detac</span><span style="font-size:100%;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5XQxSJdss0VNh9lYQJyMvwVPmYcejJCMMNRvV-tnpSrKG4imb7m9TX_X8KJQJP4j-HcKMdSOevL4qqBvbXakEFAuxgXEHI127OT4K5MZ0LaXKVWEpka6npI4XxH3pEOGT4trUSCyeeqep/s1600-h/IMG_1112.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5XQxSJdss0VNh9lYQJyMvwVPmYcejJCMMNRvV-tnpSrKG4imb7m9TX_X8KJQJP4j-HcKMdSOevL4qqBvbXakEFAuxgXEHI127OT4K5MZ0LaXKVWEpka6npI4XxH3pEOGT4trUSCyeeqep/s320/IMG_1112.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5231420669178946962" border="0" /></a></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">hment from all things worldly is necessary for enlightenment. As a monk, Kobayashi strived to achieve this his entire life.
<br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">
<br /></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">The second line is a confirmation of the first line, with a twist. If you can imagine the “is” as an “equals” sign, Kobayashi has basically written that “Change equals change”. However, this carries an inherit paradox as two things in constant flux or impermanence cannot be said to be equivalent. The combination of these first two lines is in fact the true expression of Kobayashi’s faith because it is at once a confirmation of his belief’s and an admittance that maintaining such a view is in fact an attachment and thus contradictory. There are of course many more layers and explanations to these first two lines, but I would only butcher them and so I refer the curious reader to better religious scholars than myself. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">
<br /></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">The poem really comes alive in the last line, “and yet and yet”. After enduring misfortune after misfortune throughout his life, Kobayashi wonders what all his dedication to faith has really gotten him. As a scholar and academic, he understands intellectually that the lives of all those he lost were impermanent anyway and as a good monk he ought to remained detached from his emotions for them. And yet, as a son, husband, father and friend, how can he possibly deny his very real and visceral emotions for his loved ones? It would be tantamount to denying his </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">humanity.
<br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">
<br /></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">The summation of his poem, therefore, is in effect Kobayashi’s tortured struggle, not to achieve Buddhist enlightenment, his purported life’s calling, but rather between his faith and his humanity, his intellect and his emotion, the corporeal and the ephemeral, etc.
<br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">
<br /></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">So why is this painted on my back? Well I’m certainly no Buddhist, but then I don’t put much stock in any religion. I do, however, think </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">that Kobayashi’s struggle can be extrapolated and applied quite </span><span style="font-size:100%;">universally, whether or not it’s in a religious context. His is a beautiful concise way of describing those ineffable thoughts which come closest to constituting what might be called Kevin’s personal philosophy.
<br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">
<br /></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <span style=";font-family:Century;font-size:100%;" >As for a quick note on the artistry, I gave the poem to Mo-chan, a friend of mine who is also a calligrapher extraordinaire, he drew up several samples and I picked my favorite one. For </span><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfP5DjskBHZTasAH6axLrwsp1W02q8x7muelbsl3qfPGtmltzrnrXz9jt-pB4zFjEFYLNjxYK0VZnFah8Fhdl-Qs8SBnlxLF-f0HkEtp5moEw-pJOkHVIFnygVA5W_L2eA1NkryDWfFrQM/s1600-h/IMG_1336.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfP5DjskBHZTasAH6axLrwsp1W02q8x7muelbsl3qfPGtmltzrnrXz9jt-pB4zFjEFYLNjxYK0VZnFah8Fhdl-Qs8SBnlxLF-f0HkEtp5moEw-pJOkHVIFnygVA5W_L2eA1NkryDWfFrQM/s320/IMG_1336.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5231421278614896226" border="0" /></a></span></p> <span style=";font-family:Century;font-size:100%;" >anyone with some background in Japanese, I thought this rendition was the best visual representation of the spirit of the poem: look first at the </span><span style=";font-family:";font-size:100%;" lang="JA">つゆ</span><span style=";font-family:Century;font-size:100%;" >, first written kanji and then in hiragana, a nice visual representation of change. The same can be said for </span><span style=";font-family:";font-size:100%;" lang="JA">世</span><span style=";font-family:Century;font-size:100%;" >, where the first kanji bends up and the second bends down, a literal visualization of the ups and downs of the world. </span>Kevinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06701213357980904048noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1144940914259033937.post-67534392334543896842008-07-07T01:51:00.000-07:002008-09-07T01:52:40.001-07:00Summer StoriesUsually I like to wrap these updates around a single charming story, but recent times have produced no such grandiose occasions. To tell the truth, life has been running pretty smoothly. This email, therefore, is more a handful of short goings-on and the-other-days than anything else. <br /><br />About a week ago I bought an illustrated textbook full of Japanese onomatopoeia and mimetic words. In my on-going efforts to shore up the weaker aspects of my Japanese knowledge, this part of the language actually represents a significant portion of what don’t know. There are literally hundreds if not thousands of these words that are available, though practical use could probably be limited to a couple hundred. Still, no small task.<br /><br />You might be more aware of Japanese onomatopoeia than you think. Take these two examples: pikapika and chuchu. Pikapika (mimetic, actually) used to describe something bright or glaring, as in a star. In fact, this mimetic is used, among other things, in translating “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” and in a famous children’s book describing the atomic blast in Hiroshima. Chuchu is onomatopoeia for a puckering sound, most often used as a kissy noise. Put these two together and you have Pikachu, the cute lightning based mascot for the ever popular Pokeman franchise.<br /><br />New to me, however, is goron, used specifically to describe a “heavy rolling thud”. Yes, these words get to that level of specificity and that’s why they’re such a headache to study. Fortunately the depths of my dorkdom know no bounds, and in the course of writing this I have realized that goron is none other than the name of the famed mountain tribe creatures in The Legend of Zelda series. They are big and heavy and they roll. It makes perfect sense.<br /><br />Since around April I’ve been working Mondays at a small private English school in Wakayama. It’s a couple extra hundred a month to help me sort out plane tickets and other necessities without hitting up the ATM. It’s run by this great local couple who can only be described as “far out”. Their place is a joint shop/classroom/café/restaurant that, as you can imagine, always has something going on. The guy’s name is Nishida and his wife I only know as “Mama”. Mama is, in fact, a very motherly figure and therefore, after some initial hesitation, I have no trouble addressing her as such. Together they have to be the most chilled out couple I’ve met in Japan. <br /><br />Typically I’ve found that Japanese spouses live very compartmentalized existences, crossing paths only at breakfast and when bills need paying. I won’t digress into the often sad lives of the sarariman (salary man) or hausuwaifu (you get it), but when you spend too much time here you start to forget how cute old couples are supposed to be. I’m always happy to go to Nishida’s school because the congenial nature of the hosts is palpable and infectious.<br /><br />The students here are a fun mix as well. From the frustrating knucklehead toddlers to crazy war veterans, there’s always at least one surprise in store per week. Take one old guy I was teaching recently. Kasamatsu-san is a great old guy. Always happy, always arriving with his obscure grammatical questions that don’t really matter too much but eat up plenty of time, and of course he can talk forever about his special interests like gardening and walking. Ask him the right question and you’d be set for a good long while. One time, however, he surprised when he started talking at great length about Green Peace. Now I do my best not to judge students, especially since I’m taking their money, but I just couldn’t resolve the image of this 71-year-old guy and an extreme environmental organization. Furthermore, he wasn’t making much sense. Whenever I attempted to be polite and ask him questions about his Green Peace involvement or stance on various issues he looked at me like I was a crazy person. I thought I was offending him by not being hip enough to his worldly concerns – of course he was concerned about polar ice caps, what a ridiculous thing to ask. So on and so forth. Well this went on for about 45 minutes when he finally decided he could best explain his involvement with pictures. Pictures! Great, I would like photographic evidence of this. He whipped out his keitai, shuffled through it for a bit and then proudly passed it over to me. I couldn’t make anything out and there was definitely no world-saving in the picture, so I gave it back with shrugged shoulders. “What is it, then?” I offered. “Green Peace, Green Peace, my garden!” he retorted with no small amount of exasperation and, I bet, disbelief at the overwhelming stupidity of your humble narrator.<br /><br />His garden? What the hell does that have to do with Green Peace? Nothing, it turns out, because he’d been talking to me about green peas for 45 minutes and I hadn’t a clue. If that misunderstanding wasn’t bad enough, his green peas weren’t even green peas, they were green beans, or string beans. I tried to explain the difference and then lectured him at great length about the need for correct intonation. All in good fun, of course. He’s a cheerful old guy. I don’t think he’s ever heard of Green Peace and he probably enjoys the occasional whale bacon.<br /><br />Lastly, a belated “Happy Fourth of July” to all the Americans out there. You’ll be proud to know that even way out here in Japan the expats are celebrating in proper form. On Friday my coworker, John the Michiganian, came over and we got drunk on Budweiser, the King of Beers. Then we shot bottle rockets off the roof of my building, that is until one veered wildly off course and exploded next to my neighbor’s window, at which point we high-tailed it back to my apartment to finish the beers. <br /><br />The next night we doubled up and had a large BBQ with some more expats and Japanese friends. More beer and fireworks in American-like abundance and at the pinnacle of the celebrations there was an impromptu amateur karaoke to Don Mclean’s American Pie. We dutifully downed bourbon with each refrain. Then some things happened and I’m shaky on the details but it was fun.<br /><br />Today was a day of recovery – American style, of course. That meant sitting around in my underwear with the curtains drawn, the AC cranked, drinking lots of fluids and playing GTA IV for several hours. USA, all the way.Kevinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06701213357980904048noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1144940914259033937.post-65830217266267892242008-03-07T01:27:00.000-08:002008-09-07T01:42:16.373-07:00Gifu Ski Trip<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPii2FyAttQvFjZ6jiNBpVc2yYI3o0am-tDhQeagXpVDPzisYCEOLGXuLOIg2WZ4KH9idRfB4DjILfeB-szrz1Dq767LZcmKk9ytm-WAV56UND2oLF-78ClDR0RSYew2ynkDsgJYo6M8zR/s1600-h/IMG_3379.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPii2FyAttQvFjZ6jiNBpVc2yYI3o0am-tDhQeagXpVDPzisYCEOLGXuLOIg2WZ4KH9idRfB4DjILfeB-szrz1Dq767LZcmKk9ytm-WAV56UND2oLF-78ClDR0RSYew2ynkDsgJYo6M8zR/s320/IMG_3379.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5243194606507418738" border="0" /></a><br />Ski Trip March 2008<br /><br />I hadn’t been planning to fit a ski trip into my Japanese travels. I was, to say the least, ill-prepared. I am, however, still a son of the family White and cannot pass up a good deal, whatever the obstacles to reason.<br /><br />When I was thus presented with one such deal I was weak in the knees with happiness and anticipation. Sian, a friend of a co-worker who lived in Gifu near the mountains, had arranged an elaborate web of tours and coupons to get whoever could go to a nice little mountain for a few days. Coincidentally, I was already on my way to Nagoya for a business meeting and thus got a large majority of the transportation costs subsidized for me. Nothing like riding the Shink for free.<br /><br />Good fortune was the mark of this trip. I had no gear and had to slap together whatever I could from friends and acquaintances. Everything came together at the last minute, but it did indeed come together. I left Monday morning for the two-day meeting. Tuesday afternoon I met Mark and Tanya at Nagoya station and then we proceeded over to Sian’s house in Gifu.<br /><br />Sian herself was an interesting character. Her parents had moved to Japan when she was a kid and so she’d had seven years of Japanese schooling and the enviable fluency it entailed. Now she’s a graduate student at a Japanese university in linguistics and also an associate professor in English there. That means she’s got discounted tuition and four months of paid vacation a year. Word.<br /><br />So we crashed at her house haphazardly strewn across scavenged futons from her aging Japanese attic. I don’t think those futons had seen the light of day since the Berlin Wall came down but they still served their primary purpose without giving me scabies.<br /><br />We were up and out at 5:30 the next day: we had to get back to Nagoya station to catch our tour bus. Upon arrival at the bus terminal I took stock of the multitudes of Japanese boarder bunnies getting onto my bus. I foun<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoCsFSeIg4_0KY8Ql5oGT1lBs_Bc4TlN8hrPhbSOomN9xR-2k_0L6aB7jBzOXap7Xa93yl6NKdCdwrLMGkFkQ4P6yHU1kCct2rySsYzTNGGhoS5FfBGOvUrWFJhvelS1Iy815Lb72oCw6S/s1600-h/IMG_3361.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoCsFSeIg4_0KY8Ql5oGT1lBs_Bc4TlN8hrPhbSOomN9xR-2k_0L6aB7jBzOXap7Xa93yl6NKdCdwrLMGkFkQ4P6yHU1kCct2rySsYzTNGGhoS5FfBGOvUrWFJhvelS1Iy815Lb72oCw6S/s320/IMG_3361.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5243194810515676290" border="0" /></a>d out that it was ladies’ day at one mountain so all these girls got passes for free. Some guys get all the luck. Not me, though, because it turned out not to be the mountain we were heading toward. No luck on the seating arrangements, either, as my bus buddy was Egami-san, the aged but chipper grandpa from Aichi-ken. It wasn’t a total loss, though, because he hooked me up with some ski rental coupons to ease the burden on my wallet. He also gave Mark a bag of Oreos. Unlock the magic.<br /><br />We finally arrived at the mountain around 11:00, shucked our stuff and got a-skiing. The conditions were good but I was still a tinge disappointed. It was all very similar to New England skiing conditions, which anyone who has skied New England will tell you is not a great compliment. The mountain was well groomed but the snow was katchi katchi: Japanese mimetic for a pebbly feeling. No great leaps into boundless powder, just hard edges and quick legs to dodge ice patches. And not altogether unpleasant: as Mark was fond of saying, we were built for speed, not for comfort. We spent nearly the whole first day streaking down the mountain at break neck speed, just for the sheer exhilaration of it. Having not been on the slopes for near 2 years, I was happier than a bug in a rug.<br /><br />The weather was perfect. Sun shining and Spring temperatures. That was a nice departure from New England. Although we were tired from Day One, we were re-energized by the arrival of the second half of our party the morning of Day Two. Sian arrived by car with some Japanese friends, and the ever-entertaining Dustin (an old comrade from my time in Tokai-West) arrived by bus an hour later… drunk and without sleep from his all-nighter the hours previous. Classic. He was genki as anyone, however, revived by the hair of the dog that bit him. Now in full gaijin force, we resumed our dominance of the slopes.<br /><br />I do believe we were the only foreigners there and enjoyed the minor celebrity that entails. We also stayed for a few days so we were quite known to mountain staff, famously or infamously. For my own part I was quite impressed by the Japanese mountain-goers. You may recall last summer I went to the mountains in Nagano and was awed by the fashion sophistication girls (and guys) could maintain in such a desolate place. The change of the season hadn’t changed a thing. The difficulties of skiing and snow boarding were no excuse not to look good. Indeed, judging by the skill on most of the mountain, the primary purpose of being there wasn’t for snow anyway.<br /><br />I do have this to say though: apparently skiing isn’t cool anymore (or at least doesn’t lend itself to looking cool), not in the young Japanese psyche. 90% of the mountain were boarders, most of them mediocre. The few skiers present were all good, and none under 40 years old except us foreigners and a few children. Ah well, kids these days, ain’t nothing you can do about them.<br /><br />Not that I’m complaining. A done-up Japanese girl is a nice thing to see. Skiing off the lift, one is typically annoyed to see the backs of forty heads of forty boarders clogging up the immediate vicinity… that is, annoyed until you ski around to the front a take better stock of the situation. I suppose if you can’t do something so well you can at least look really good not doing it.<br /><br />How better to end a long day on the slopes than with a long hot bath. We were staying in dorms above the lodge and had free access to the sentou. We could literally walk inside, dump our stuff in our lockers, grab the necessary hygiene products, and roll right over to the bath house area. No more than 10 minutes from slopes to suds. Pure heaven. On Day 2 we were lounging in there when some Japanese guys came and brought with them the best idea ever: beer. Typically drinking is restricted to the locker room (where it is in fact encouraged) but I suppose out in the boondocks of Gifu the status quo doesn’t apply. Mark quickly lost the ensuing round of nose-g<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWBXIqG1v-sgJa6r2gKI282MyZEgs7Q8TUdKhyphenhyphenHiHhHvVZuJjGrpX_iUf3tOG817wj-H3Fy-sMtEcLlXkmlgTnkbuG6V_pLqlWXhMKID0YIJBdnZ30dK110TqfOcEMJuVY2mwHucwTapnR/s1600-h/IMG_3373.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWBXIqG1v-sgJa6r2gKI282MyZEgs7Q8TUdKhyphenhyphenHiHhHvVZuJjGrpX_iUf3tOG817wj-H3Fy-sMtEcLlXkmlgTnkbuG6V_pLqlWXhMKID0YIJBdnZ30dK110TqfOcEMJuVY2mwHucwTapnR/s320/IMG_3373.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5243195371541487522" border="0" /></a>oes and thus volunteered himself to get round one. Round one turned into round two, three, and four rather quickly, and then we had to get out because the heat was making us dizzy and the girls were getting impatient.<br /><br />Food at the mountain was incredible for a ski lodge. For 1000 yen a meal (about $10) you got a mound of rice, miso soup, side salad and the entrée of your choice. And all the tea you could drink. I’m afraid to ask what $10 would get me in Vermont. Breakfast, an all-you-can-eat buffet, was included in the modest price of the bed. Incredible. Needless to say, I didn’t go hungry for living on the cheap.<br /><br />The Day 2 ski conditions had started to slog and slush by the end of it. Day 3 wasn’t looking so hot and there was even talk of chilling out and skipping it. Dustin and I, at least, were more than happy to chill in the bath house for a couple more hours. Any thought of bowing out early, however, was extinguished when I looked out the window the next morning: 15-20 cm of freshly fallen powder, no more than an elevator-ride away. The best presents really don’t come in boxes.<br /><br />More excited than a toddler on Christmas, I woke up everyone else and danced my way to breakfast. I was first in line at the ski rental shop and first on the lift up with Dustin that morning. With gleeful smiles we carved the day’s first strokes into the mountain. Truly magical.<br /><br />Being from New England, once again, I’m not so used to such conditions and it actually took me a while to adjust. Sharp turns had to be replaced by smooth curves, and it took me more than a few white-outs to work out the kinks. By an hour in, though, I was cruising just fine and the real fun began.<br /><br />Dustin and I managed to find any and every patch of untouched snow. Moreover, we restrict ourselves to caution in assuming it’d be below us: at one point I watched Dustin launch over the edge of a precipice without a second thought. I hoped for the best and followed in kind, landing with a happily muffled thud into a deep snow bank. The exhilaration was short lived as the ensuing moguls forced immediate attention to my leg-work, but it was delightful nonetheless.<br /><br />By the end of the day we had tapped about as much of the fresh snow as we could. Then I got cocky. There were three man-made jumps near the bottom of the base slope, and the third was big enough to be fun but small enough not to kill Kevin. Mark was also itching to get some air, we decided to take it on a few runs and, cameras in hand, see how cool we could look.<br /><br />Just a short FYI, man-made jumps typically slope up, flatten out, slope down, and then flatten out again to the trail. The idea is to get past the first plateau and land on the down slope so as to save the shock from you knees. Well the first few runs went fine as I tested the water. Everything seemed to be in order. Not as if I’m some high-flying crazy tricked out fool but I’ve got my one relatively decent daffy that I’m happy with. Then from the lift I had to see some other skier to some snappy little edge grab and so I said to myself: “yea, I can do that.”<br /><br />Famous last words. Tanya had the camera trained on me as I hit the up slope full tilt. It was the last run of my day, and in my mind I imagined I needed to get as high as possible to pull it off successfully, so there I was trying to grab my skies without giving much thought to anything else. Then I hit the ground. I’d managed to go over the first plateau, past the down slope, <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfcGAMEm4onvEesD5LlX2OubFDp8vkYuqxMdq-xWig5UxPbUvA96GB5PYF9iOjynnCqOkcvWGW2546OqL0JedG4yYL7SbCjYgC8EsReDXr0D7hIvBuA4XV0a3xMFu01bprZt9NvgRqXAua/s1600-h/P3060017.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfcGAMEm4onvEesD5LlX2OubFDp8vkYuqxMdq-xWig5UxPbUvA96GB5PYF9iOjynnCqOkcvWGW2546OqL0JedG4yYL7SbCjYgC8EsReDXr0D7hIvBuA4XV0a3xMFu01bprZt9NvgRqXAua/s320/P3060017.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5243195885527858066" border="0" /></a>and land flat again on the trail. I didn’t tank immediately, but the landing slammed my feet into the front of my boots and all my toes screamed in pain, which caused me to wobbled slightly towards the side of the slope and then toppled over.<br /><br />And my day was over. Mark saddled up and happily told how awesome it looked. Great, I said, but I’m out. Just to be sure I stood up to get back to the lodge and sure enough it hurt too much to make left turns, so I hobbled down on one ski to the lodge. Ditched my skies and ripped my right boot off and shoved the offending toe right into the snow. Remember my last hospital visit? Middle right toe finds itself purple after night’s festivities. Now the right big toe was similarly bruised an unhappy lavender. At least they matched.<br /><br />Japanese people around the lodge got a good kick out of my performance. While I was taking a load off on the bench, this Japanese guy in a bright blue and pink jumpsuit rolls up to me and shakes my hand warmly.<br /><br />“Kevin, dude, I just saw you go down. Man, that was awesome!”<br />“Oh, um, thanks. Hey, do I know you?”<br />“Yea, its me, Keitaro, from the onsen last night.”<br />Yea, that’s right, we had made friends with those happy beer drinking guys. I wonder why I didn’t remember him.<br />“Oh yea, that’s right! Keitaro, dude, sorry I didn’t recognize you with all those clothes on. You enjoying today as much as I am?”<br /><br />Turns out he was. I could see now that he was a boarder, but I didn’t hold that against him. His posse came over and we had some beers and talked about how soft and white the snow was. They were some great home boys and typical of the nice people you can meet for no particular reason in this country. I wished them luck with the afternoon and bowed out to get my stuff ready for the bus back.<br /><br />And that, in addition to the video already up on youtube, is a short list of the ski trip hi-lights. For those of you wondering why you didn’t see my epic spill on that video, its because Tanya hit the power button instead of the shoot button. Alas, my injury was all for naught. Perhaps its better that way…Kevinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06701213357980904048noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1144940914259033937.post-34843825812679107412008-03-05T01:42:00.000-08:002008-09-07T01:50:14.801-07:00Unexpected Medical Expense<meta name="Generator" content="Microsoft Word 10"><meta name="Originator" content="Microsoft Word 10"><link rel="File-List" href="file:///C:%5CDOCUME%7E1%5CKevin%5CLOCALS%7E1%5CTemp%5Cmsohtml1%5C01%5Cclip_filelist.xml"><o:smarttagtype namespaceuri="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" name="country-region"></o:smarttagtype><o:smarttagtype namespaceuri="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" name="place"></o:smarttagtype><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:worddocument> <w:view>Normal</w:View> <w:zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:compatibility> <w:breakwrappedtables/> <w:snaptogridincell/> <w:wraptextwithpunct/> <w:useasianbreakrules/> <w:usefelayout/> </w:Compatibility> <w:browserlevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4</w:BrowserLevel> </w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if !mso]><object classid="clsid:38481807-CA0E-42D2-BF39-B33AF135CC4D" id="ieooui"></object> <style> st1\:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) } </style> <![endif]--><style> <!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:"MS Mincho"; panose-1:2 2 6 9 4 2 5 8 3 4; mso-font-alt:"MS 明朝"; mso-font-charset:128; mso-generic-font-family:modern; mso-font-pitch:fixed; mso-font-signature:-1610612033 1757936891 16 0 131231 0;} @font-face {font-family:"\@MS Mincho"; panose-1:2 2 6 9 4 2 5 8 3 4; mso-font-charset:128; mso-generic-font-family:modern; mso-font-pitch:fixed; mso-font-signature:-1610612033 1757936891 16 0 131231 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family:"MS Mincho";} @page Section1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} --> </style> <p class="MsoNormal">Last Sunday I woke up with my toe throbbing. I thought I had slept on it funny until a I finally got out of bed, put my foot down, and yelped in pain.
<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">
<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Vague memories of the previous night led me to believe that my newly discovered injury may have been consequence of impaired judgment. I’m not typically a violent person, but I definitely participated in an impromptu wrestling match wherein I managed to kick the wall with considerable force. The wall was quite obstinate, as walls are known to be. By some miracle of agility I managed to mangle my middle right toe and only the middle right toe. At the moment of impact, overwhelmed by adrenaline and a sense of my own prowess, I managed to avoid a rational assessment of my injury. Only upon waking up some twelve hours later did I consider my treatment options.</p><p class="MsoNormal">
<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">The tried and true ice-on-bruise method was tempting but underwhelming: I was quite sure, given my pain and the color of my toe, something beyond a home-remedy was called for.
<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">
<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">My boss Tsukasa, angel that she is, offered to take me to the emergency room after I insisted she take me to the emergency room. I was not aware, until that moment, most hospitals are not open on Sundays. I repeat: most Japanese hospitals are not open on Sundays. The only option available, I was told, was the extra expensive “special circumstances emergency room.”</p><p class="MsoNormal">
<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Call me a conspiracy theorist, but any time you find yourself in the emergency room is a special circumstance in my book. Moreover, whether I caught my middle toe in a bear trap on Wednesday or Sunday makes no difference to the bear trap or my toe – the pain is excruciating and requires attention whatever the calendar date. Lastly, considering the circumstances of my injury, I could imagine that I was not the only person to suffer injuries on Saturday night that require treatment on Sunday. In fact, I would venture to postulate that the Saturday-night-to-Sunday-morning is prime hospital-going time and this “take Sunday off” nonsense is nothing more than a cheap veil on the drunk tax the Japanese government has imposed on simple freedom-loving beer-drinking ex-patriots like myself. Actually it was whiskey but the point is the same: since when is closing hospitals on Sunday okay?</p><p class="MsoNormal">
<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">So anyway I was informed by Tsukasa that the only alternative was a smaller out of the way hospital that worked Sundays but only 9-5. It was already 3 so I said we ought to get a move on.</p><p class="MsoNormal">
<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">She had a good laugh at my expense when I hobbled out to the car. She had another one when I had to hobble to and from the ATM en route so I could actually pay for this little joy ride. We got to the hospital and evidently the entire staff was eagerly awaiting their gaijin visitor. Probably the most excitement the Sunday afternoon shift had seen in a while. The orderly who’d drawn the short straw had me sign in with barely veiled amusement. Her friends in the back looked on curiously. You’d think that hobbling in-patients are not all that uncommon in a hospital. I wondered exactly how much of the circumstances surrounding my injury Tsukasa had chosen to share with them.</p><p class="MsoNormal">
<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">The hospital itself was very un-hospital in that it seemed slapped together like a carnival maze. The reception had some benches thrown around with no perceivable coordination. There were some stunted staircases to half-floors and even a ramp to nowhere. The elevator lurched – totally cliché until you’re actually an injured person in a lurching elevator. Anyway the whole feng shui of the place was off and I’d just as soon be done with it.</p><p class="MsoNormal">
<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I finally got to the x-ray room and Tsukasa commented on the stench of stale cigarettes. The x-ray technician sauntered out of the back reeking of cigarettes and chuckling in throaty emphysema incomprehensible Japanese and sputtered a laugh at my toe. Like seriously, what the hell was everyone finding so funny about my purple toe. I mean, besides the obvious. At any rate the guy asked Tsukasa to step out of the room and then laid a lead blanket about the size of a paper towel across my groin. Very comforting. He then returned to his den slamming the 6-inch steel door behind him. Extremely comforting. Click click and 10 minutes until the film developed. We chilled out to some Bread’s Greatest Hits back in the waiting room until the nurse beckoned us into the doctor’s office.</p><p class="MsoNormal">
<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Dr. Exasperated was examining my x-rays when we came in. Our conversation went as follows.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Doc: So what exactly happened?</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Me: Not sure, exactly.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Doc: I’m sorry?</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Me: Well… my friends and I were rough-housing, I may have kicked a wall by accident. However, I might also have tanked on my bike riding home. It’s hard to say.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Doc: <i>Looks quizzically from me to Tsukasa, then back to me.</i> Well, young man, <st1:country-region><st1:place>Japan</st1:place></st1:country-region> is full of walls, so I advise that you proceed more cautiously in the future. Your toe is fine, just put some ice on it. Good day.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Smart ass. I was sure we would have been great friends under different circumstances.
<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">
<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Better safe than sorry, right? Tsukasa didn’t seem to think so, because she apologized all the way out of the hospital. Maybe I’m crazy, but I didn’t feel much remorse for people performing the services they are paid for. That is to say, of course I was very thankful for the services rendered, but just because I erred on the side of caution, you’d think that I’d at least get a “Well it’s a good thing you checked with us anyway” or whatever. My bank knows I pay enough for the insurance anyway. I guess I’ll just chalk up penitence for inaccurate amateur diagnoses next to Sunday sabbaticals for the healthcare industry on my list of things that make no sense in <st1:country-region><st1:place>Japan</st1:place></st1:country-region>. </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">So my toe is fine now, still a little swollen, but not enough to keep me from skiing last week. Skiing in <st1:country-region><st1:place>Japan</st1:place></st1:country-region>, of course, was an adventure unto itself and I’ll hopefully get a chance to fill you in greater detail sometime soon. </p> Kevinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06701213357980904048noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1144940914259033937.post-47171140785802022572007-09-10T07:35:00.000-07:002008-08-06T07:45:06.067-07:00Don’t Play With Your Food: Rob and Kevin’s Culinary ConquestThe 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.<div id=":52" class="ArwC7c ckChnd"> <p>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.</p> <p>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 t<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWDWLxSDK70xaESxSF5_Pi-L4FCUWuEqlywS1iqAGb_GGDJey5NgvDLRsnqKKZCtY7m5PFmFYCbUo_8irZncOJ5AHHIFIAy0_6IErbv-KM89JzWMrRw5re4KY8pVmtwfhaa1ZjZwYdapUk/s1600-h/IMG_3128.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWDWLxSDK70xaESxSF5_Pi-L4FCUWuEqlywS1iqAGb_GGDJey5NgvDLRsnqKKZCtY7m5PFmFYCbUo_8irZncOJ5AHHIFIAy0_6IErbv-KM89JzWMrRw5re4KY8pVmtwfhaa1ZjZwYdapUk/s320/IMG_3128.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5231414888959286226" border="0" /></a>he Japanese equivalent of a diner. An <i>izakaya</i> 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 <i>izakaya</i> experience is a true treat.</p> <p>Breakfast the next morning, and most mornings, involved a stop at Circle K, the local <i>konbini</i> (convenient store). <i>Onigiri</i> 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 <i>onigiri</i> 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 <i>umeboshi</i> (pickled plum), <i>natto</i> (fermented gooey beans), <i>nori</i> (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 <i>konbini</i> breakfast.</p> <p>That night we went to one of my favorite places, the local <i>yakitori</i>, literally burned chicken, restaurant. I like grill, I like chicken, and I like beer. <i>Yakitori</i> joints have these three things in admirable quantities. You could probably order just about any part of th<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-ipuZYMmTPv28__ph2jlfNqV6y0EGZe_filDQnhIJ7f3AZk8an-tPrE69iBnat6hy1iIixt338UxlXI9jr4bwSsWRDFsGAhEPr4uCIY5MVdO7k9pAERpWX7xnAZaCSJ6uQUE76XHFxK_C/s1600-h/DSCN0834.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-ipuZYMmTPv28__ph2jlfNqV6y0EGZe_filDQnhIJ7f3AZk8an-tPrE69iBnat6hy1iIixt338UxlXI9jr4bwSsWRDFsGAhEPr4uCIY5MVdO7k9pAERpWX7xnAZaCSJ6uQUE76XHFxK_C/s320/DSCN0834.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5231414331415893314" border="0" /></a>e 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.</p> <p>The next night we were out on the town in Nagoya and met some friends for good eats. We went to a <i>yakiniku</i> 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. </p> <p>From here exact dates become murky, but I'll still give you a delectable rundown of key events. There was a <i>kaiten-sushi</i> 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 <i>shinkansen</i> (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.</p> <p>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. <i>Takoyaki</i> are little balls of fried octopus in dough with some herbs. <i>Yakisoba</i> 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 a<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8kUDW4hb3u9R2ILR5cMnH3pgrBRpkODn9yvhtcKczLBnJSLyWuaEvY5rfdHcBh8HAR7ovuk0dy_7-9642Rk1tegPF0zVBBY79zxppFaTb02aXgRwSeOZ9_Z6kzrx_1HL5NCBYNgk61grz/s1600-h/DSCN0838.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8kUDW4hb3u9R2ILR5cMnH3pgrBRpkODn9yvhtcKczLBnJSLyWuaEvY5rfdHcBh8HAR7ovuk0dy_7-9642Rk1tegPF0zVBBY79zxppFaTb02aXgRwSeOZ9_Z6kzrx_1HL5NCBYNgk61grz/s320/DSCN0838.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5231414533023915794" border="0" /></a>ctually is, but I haven't suffered any food poisoning yet.</p> <p>My favorite discovery of the trip was this little <i>izakaya</i> 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 <i>ponzu</i> sauce and also a grilled <i>aji</i>, 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 <i>kujira sashimi</i>, 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. </p> <p>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. </p> <p>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 <i>yakiudon</i> (like yakisoba, but with different noodles) and <i>okonomiyaki</i> were to die for. I believe we ordered octopus in the <i>yakiudon</i> and squid in the <i>okonomiyaki</i>. <i>Oko</i><i>nomiyaki</i> 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. <i>Okonomiyaki</i> 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. </p> <p>Also in Kyoto was a <i>tabehodai</i>, 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. </p> <p>We had some traditional <i>kakekori</i>, or shaved ice, at Kiyomizu Temple. The bowl of shaved ice is covered in syrup, in this case <i>maccha</i> flavor, the traditional green tea, and with ample helpings of <i>anko</i>, sweet bean sauce. </p> <p>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. </p> <p>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 <i>maguro</i>, <i>hamachi</i>, <i>katsuo</i>, and <i>aji</i> in abundance. We also enjoyed some self-made <i>unagi</i> bowls, or barbecued eel over rice. <i>Unagi</i> is one of the priciest items in Japan, which is sad because it's also one of my favorites. <i>Unagi</i> supposedly contains of summertime rejuve<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjESFV4lkNf8Vl8j6CXLnnAfDS_-4lYjMVfn58yUqe3_QO5HEfTKQawmA2NSN2K_Bj3fwpQatJNqSzhE_r3pofjWXzzkilSu29kouerPcxUr2ldeGqM7yipINPXYBhA6qkM_JpliXNCV8jk/s1600-h/DSCN0437.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjESFV4lkNf8Vl8j6CXLnnAfDS_-4lYjMVfn58yUqe3_QO5HEfTKQawmA2NSN2K_Bj3fwpQatJNqSzhE_r3pofjWXzzkilSu29kouerPcxUr2ldeGqM7yipINPXYBhA6qkM_JpliXNCV8jk/s320/DSCN0437.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5231415196859603618" border="0" /></a>nation. I don't know about that, but its always delicious and that makes me feel better. </p> <p>On the beverage front, there was always the aforementioned C.C. Lemon and Asahi beer. Other favorites included Tantakatan, a brand of <i>sho-chu</i> (Japanese rice liquor), and <i>chu-hai</i>s, the Japanese cousin of the wine cooler (good for a headache and little else). There was plenty of <i>mugi-cha</i>, wheat tea, and let us not forget good old-fashioned and ever-present <i>o-cha</i>, green tea. We sampled, perhaps at my unwise insistence, a variety of sake and a bottle of <i>yuzu</i> liquor, <i>yuzu</i> being some unpleasantly bitter relative of the citrus family. </p> <p>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.</p> <p>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.<span> </span>Your day will come. Not to be completely foiled in our quest for strange, we ordered <i>wafu</i> 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 <i>wafu</i> 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. <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzNGs_TAkSObJPF0vF2gmkUSH26SA5j-tjcfzsUjDR-4wuOS4R7BDIA4Di2gQVQcdRXsjJoV8iNaSvDlnIDM4YYzsY2ba_Z5wmg7kiKB9v217bCEjdpFSF9o1wXGrI5vgiI9fKi2Z9ZngL/s1600-h/DSCN0564.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzNGs_TAkSObJPF0vF2gmkUSH26SA5j-tjcfzsUjDR-4wuOS4R7BDIA4Di2gQVQcdRXsjJoV8iNaSvDlnIDM4YYzsY2ba_Z5wmg7kiKB9v217bCEjdpFSF9o1wXGrI5vgiI9fKi2Z9ZngL/s320/DSCN0564.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5231413945238879826" border="0" /></a></p> <p>Then it was time to go home. We had a final hoorah at the <i>yakitori</i> 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.</p> </div>Kevinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06701213357980904048noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1144940914259033937.post-40649167136798195202007-08-15T07:28:00.000-07:002008-08-06T07:33:54.810-07:00Space of Sound 2007<div id=":7z" class="ArwC7c ckChnd"> <p>August 11<sup>th</sup> to August 19<sup>th</sup> 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. </p> <p>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). </p> <p>Traveling from Mie to Nagano is prohibitively expensive on my current budget, but fortunately I remembered a little thing called the <i>juu-hachi </i><i>kippu</i>, or <i>18-year-old's ticket</i>. 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 <i>sh</i><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEFPtzJmVGcE5Y8pNj8K8FP2bPaJlk3K9ejjpmkRqWLG6t7qy8cv-x_z1-e9HYCAW83_QVThvQuMJzKqmSpIocQj047mLMXVWlJ5XkK1FRa2X7bo9bCLVwj3GR9zUGIsRUfWmhLoPWafka/s1600-h/IMG_2958.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEFPtzJmVGcE5Y8pNj8K8FP2bPaJlk3K9ejjpmkRqWLG6t7qy8cv-x_z1-e9HYCAW83_QVThvQuMJzKqmSpIocQj047mLMXVWlJ5XkK1FRa2X7bo9bCLVwj3GR9zUGIsRUfWmhLoPWafka/s320/IMG_2958.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5231411926250885282" border="0" /></a><i>inkansen</i> (bullet train) is 2.5 hours, but by <i>juu-hachi kippu</i> 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, <i>Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows</i>. 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. </p> <p>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-<wbr>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 <i>events</i> 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. </p> <p>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. </p> <p><i>Kevin makes for a particular port-a-potty, but is head off mere str</i><i>ides from his quarry. The interloper is clearly inebriated. Kevin is, shall we say, sober as a bird.</i></p> <p>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.</p> <p>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.</p> <p>Me: With God's speed, then, friend. Be quick, mine own doth seek freedom, and I fear with or without my blessing.</p> <p>Sir: Ai-ai, I advance.</p> <p>As you can see, the Japanese take their cleanliness quite seriously and I cannot but laud them for it. </p> <p>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 <i>sho-chu</i> (Japanese liquor) I had lugged all day and topped off my water bottle for portability and away we went.</p> <p>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 themsel<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitgWw077h2cox1-9AIeuy61YVO3BFG_mPuzFZzEc0C9dy6dsUTphsdNkvCYDU2ApEpt_St_sycBBDdPQ8E6cq5o7E83ebGVYgRZcqjzTpADphkrWrHS8zLww2MftZx4YrZxC0l_PofLV6C/s1600-h/IMG_2969.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitgWw077h2cox1-9AIeuy61YVO3BFG_mPuzFZzEc0C9dy6dsUTphsdNkvCYDU2ApEpt_St_sycBBDdPQ8E6cq5o7E83ebGVYgRZcqjzTpADphkrWrHS8zLww2MftZx4YrZxC0l_PofLV6C/s320/IMG_2969.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5231412335510469634" border="0" /></a>ves 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.</p> <p>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.</p> <p>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.</p> <p>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.</p> <p>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 c<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVuKYreg9MBcG6vtB9S8fKTBYg76ZJDGT2NrBS6mRhbMhDgAk4Cdu4X_DWnPXxrCVpg9_AIKCyi_yYwSFJP22O0nTk417P8hPwd-eV6tAYajWGjlUT0pDHBAOIXuSYK4AkFQUZ-34eYMZA/s1600-h/IMG_3013.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVuKYreg9MBcG6vtB9S8fKTBYg76ZJDGT2NrBS6mRhbMhDgAk4Cdu4X_DWnPXxrCVpg9_AIKCyi_yYwSFJP22O0nTk417P8hPwd-eV6tAYajWGjlUT0pDHBAOIXuSYK4AkFQUZ-34eYMZA/s320/IMG_3013.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5231412667719086690" border="0" /></a>are. 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.</p> <p>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-<wbr>taken. Like I said, people here think of everything. I was only too happy to oblige.</p> <p>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. </p> <p>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: <i>Gone back to tent. Drinking. Come soon. Sakura.</i> 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.</p> <p>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. </p> <p>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.</p> <p>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. </p> </div>Kevinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06701213357980904048noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1144940914259033937.post-16726552920288799342007-07-01T07:21:00.000-07:002008-08-06T07:27:36.383-07:00Back Home<div id=":42" class="ArwC7c ckChnd"> <p>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.</p> <p>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 <i>omiyage</i>, 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. </p> <p>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.</p> <p>Keiko Yamamoto, my <i>okaa-san</i>, 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 <i>genkan</i> (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 Jap<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0v-c3zLlNLKK9cWQ9wQxT1QUM1dCfwsC_QzyGIk5HUt4LNr99bvk0cwoifdUgy7_aFnUb03NvOkfmEvHW59UC89uK-9y6JlkfOodEjez6yo9w1W1DcuHhmbl3SM6qUO4p7NaNLiprCjFK/s1600-h/IMG_2955.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0v-c3zLlNLKK9cWQ9wQxT1QUM1dCfwsC_QzyGIk5HUt4LNr99bvk0cwoifdUgy7_aFnUb03NvOkfmEvHW59UC89uK-9y6JlkfOodEjez6yo9w1W1DcuHhmbl3SM6qUO4p7NaNLiprCjFK/s320/IMG_2955.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5231411189856999234" border="0" /></a>anese 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 <i>genkan</i> 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.</p> <p>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. </p> <p>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. </p> <p>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. </p> <p>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. </p> <p>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. </p> <p>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. </p> <p>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. </p> <p>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.</p> <p>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 <i>omiyage</i> 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? </p> <p>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. </p> <p>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. </p> <p>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. </p> <p>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 <i>obaa-san</i> chuckles and the wheezing laugh of <i>ojii-sans</i>. I think the lead man might have taken a knock a<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikly3Aa02joQY0plht_3pBPvvtMOLnDp7Ce1gqXG-CxcDhSJhskklgdv1isssNczL_YL21UoXusDN22hE4Km8RTesQymRS1iYmov5ZC1aOoINhlPzOPpDXuuFhreSCCU6v0UjcxKqefQ3c/s1600-h/IMG_2910.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikly3Aa02joQY0plht_3pBPvvtMOLnDp7Ce1gqXG-CxcDhSJhskklgdv1isssNczL_YL21UoXusDN22hE4Km8RTesQymRS1iYmov5ZC1aOoINhlPzOPpDXuuFhreSCCU6v0UjcxKqefQ3c/s320/IMG_2910.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5231410394342504898" border="0" /></a>t 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. </p> <p>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 <i>chuu-toro</i>, 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 <i>maguro sashimi</i> (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<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFLgI4E5scGA07jzWPGqRXQ8zuWQIQxyZ40P-JxMGnA4Vb2VBKy_CwLfio3_hJnVL_UnaJZl9c3KBorxux_PeccroA1ECva4s4wKy7Rht8st_KkpSiNh8KI5dTSzr6TEc-eADw_0pQRanm/s1600-h/IMG_2937.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFLgI4E5scGA07jzWPGqRXQ8zuWQIQxyZ40P-JxMGnA4Vb2VBKy_CwLfio3_hJnVL_UnaJZl9c3KBorxux_PeccroA1ECva4s4wKy7Rht8st_KkpSiNh8KI5dTSzr6TEc-eADw_0pQRanm/s320/IMG_2937.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5231410767127668834" border="0" /></a> 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. </p> <p>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 <i>yakiniku</i> (literally: burned meat) one night and another we went out to have my favorite Japanese cuisine: <i>unagi</i> (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. </p> </div>Kevinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06701213357980904048noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1144940914259033937.post-60678971232679414922007-06-08T07:17:00.000-07:002008-08-06T07:21:14.289-07:00Follicle Fortunes and Follies<p>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.</p> <p>I arrived back in the old stomping grounds of Iwade, Wakayama, on the evening of June 6<sup>th</sup>. 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-<wbr>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. </p> <p>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.</p> <p>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 <i>ikebana</i> (Japanese flower arrangement). But most of all, and of great importance to me, he is an extraordinarily talented and award-winning barber.</p> <p>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. </p> <p>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<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixoQSbHm5u8C-fFJMxo5GxchZrMKRAaWjne6nzUejVZr8hesIpCZuJOfDkgSO1tbeG7VdKOlGjL7Xf4eB4Ct-NRmrGt9K5_0wBfjf_tXnOgjHdQesGmylk-tDy7jlNnI27X1pPkl-39oGl/s1600-h/DSCN0688.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixoQSbHm5u8C-fFJMxo5GxchZrMKRAaWjne6nzUejVZr8hesIpCZuJOfDkgSO1tbeG7VdKOlGjL7Xf4eB4Ct-NRmrGt9K5_0wBfjf_tXnOgjHdQesGmylk-tDy7jlNnI27X1pPkl-39oGl/s320/DSCN0688.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5231409177388789058" border="0" /></a> flips the switch, powers up, and its game on. </p> <p>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. </p> <p>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. </p> <p>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.</p> <p>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. </p> <p>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.</p> <p>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. </p> <p>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 <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhc8uCRwxv78AjxD3GLFWLaq5S33J4f3gcwp110a1INWDEKDK-fXcLYzvdmj0PcxR1r03IJk3irVdlSRoAtmnEzwSGIQsuP642sA_wMOwrJ2F1G0YlNiGn11QmYg8ZcyPHWNDdapUeOWKo6/s1600-h/DSCN0689.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhc8uCRwxv78AjxD3GLFWLaq5S33J4f3gcwp110a1INWDEKDK-fXcLYzvdmj0PcxR1r03IJk3irVdlSRoAtmnEzwSGIQsuP642sA_wMOwrJ2F1G0YlNiGn11QmYg8ZcyPHWNDdapUeOWKo6/s320/DSCN0689.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5231409406496853810" border="0" /></a>particular genre it speaks volumes about Japanese gender relationships. And I digress.</p> <p>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. </p> <p>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.<br /></p> <p>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. </p> <span style="font-size:12;">Blame for this tragedy was entirely my own and, given the importance of the coming festivities (a night out in </span><span style="font-size:12;">Osaka</span><span style="font-size:12;"> 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 </span><span style="font-size:12;">Osaka</span><span style="font-size:12;"> for a night that was, unquestionably due to my new digs, entirely successful. Thanks again, Yasuhide. I'm back, woot.</span>Kevinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06701213357980904048noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1144940914259033937.post-62209998982784247422007-04-28T01:54:00.000-07:002008-09-07T01:58:39.813-07:00Working in GhanaA 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.<br /><br />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. <br /><br />Judged by this measure of expectation, Ghana turned out to be a monumental failure.<br /><br />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. <br /><br />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.<br /><br />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…<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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. <br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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. <br /><br />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. <br /><br />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. <br /><br />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.<br /><br />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. <br /><br />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.<br /><br />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. <br /><br />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. <br /><br />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. <br /><br />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.<br /><br />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. <br /><br />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. <br /><br />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.Kevinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06701213357980904048noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1144940914259033937.post-63461746002727437182007-04-16T07:09:00.000-07:002008-08-06T07:11:38.226-07:00Tastes Like VictoryRevenge is a dish best served with a healthy dose of chocolate frosting.<br /><br />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.<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisHmWYRIe7QETMGuNM5ws0GtGZdWiv3pGCQewV7SVnyRslyBMrxJLLgYoFlW31U-ulxcbiJqYqCHBV_8nOAhCzkjFbYRFLoL5nvsrMK9r_wAGAudbEBPrO5Z7iKkESzW-v7y9RFn7Mp3hQ/s1600-h/P4140804.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisHmWYRIe7QETMGuNM5ws0GtGZdWiv3pGCQewV7SVnyRslyBMrxJLLgYoFlW31U-ulxcbiJqYqCHBV_8nOAhCzkjFbYRFLoL5nvsrMK9r_wAGAudbEBPrO5Z7iKkESzW-v7y9RFn7Mp3hQ/s320/P4140804.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5231407008805425522" border="0" /></a><br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.Kevinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06701213357980904048noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1144940914259033937.post-79591698973776017822007-04-08T06:53:00.000-07:002008-08-06T07:05:12.875-07:00Keep It on the Positivity<div id=":9i" class="ArwC7c ckChnd"><div>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:<br /><br /></div> <div> </div> <div>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.<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1RrAH2MuW3vlEtPyAQxaD8tHfW4vvRsHdCdtB12B6OR7NkFJ7IvsRBPT4-ybbDlSbgy3owsIAwIvBKcZShVpt0KLmLE1q4YIIxn4NqKipP_RXYxUl-sE-pJ_jUFOtjIlfT7GzMuqMREdP/s1600-h/DSCN0401.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1RrAH2MuW3vlEtPyAQxaD8tHfW4vvRsHdCdtB12B6OR7NkFJ7IvsRBPT4-ybbDlSbgy3owsIAwIvBKcZShVpt0KLmLE1q4YIIxn4NqKipP_RXYxUl-sE-pJ_jUFOtjIlfT7GzMuqMREdP/s320/DSCN0401.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5231403616828657378" border="0" /></a><br /><br /></div> <div> </div> <div>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.<br /><br /></div> <div> </div> <div>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.<br /><br /></div> <div> </div> <div>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.<br /><br /></div> <div> </div> <div>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.<br /><br /></div> <div> </div> <div>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?<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/fVbFJxWPfy8&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/fVbFJxWPfy8&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /><br /></div> <div> </div> <div>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.<br /><br /></div> <div> </div> <div>8) The trotro system. This will ultimately get a more in-depth email t<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgROMK7v8dVBoQEh3N2tEjFPZbMTy8HUhdYuT2R3lVaOeVnPuzn1rmJf2TfvKrRm90AAuTBkUNEgEneYBoim60czqdRDCZ4n9lqiueimiH-zywkLr1zwXd9_jDjdVDvMztjcRYPYlRASfPD/s1600-h/P4120773.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgROMK7v8dVBoQEh3N2tEjFPZbMTy8HUhdYuT2R3lVaOeVnPuzn1rmJf2TfvKrRm90AAuTBkUNEgEneYBoim60czqdRDCZ4n9lqiueimiH-zywkLr1zwXd9_jDjdVDvMztjcRYPYlRASfPD/s320/P4120773.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5231404450167542818" border="0" /></a>o 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.<br /><br /></div> <div> </div> <div>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 <em>... Australian for juice</em>, guffaw guffaw.<br /><br /></div> <div> </div> <div>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 ;-) </div> </div>Kevinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06701213357980904048noreply@blogger.com0