On the Road

I've just finished a (for me) rather whirlwind series of hops, skips and jumps through various places. I wound up on Cat Ba island, just south of the famous Halong Bay, where internet is 3 times as expensive and works like crap, which precluded me from posting then. So I arrived in Hanoi yesterday afternoon, and I've steadily been trying to find all the crap that I wanted to buy for people before I go back. But as to how I got here...

Hue is a nice city, around 60 km north of Danang, which itself is about 30 km north of Hoi An. I wish I'd stayed in Hue longer, but it couldn't be helped. I stayed one night in a little hotel. Across the street was a place called "Cafe on The Wheels," unbeknownst to me a very popular hangout with the backpacker crowd and a good place to arrange a motorbike tour. My guide was quite friendly and drove me around to all the major sites, so I got to see the big things, but I didn't have the chance to enjoy Hue's main claim to fame, its cuisine. Ah well, there's always next year.

I'd tried to book an overnight train after my one night in Hue, but I wasn't able to get a sleeper car. Which meant I had to take an upright seat in a normal car overnight. This was my worst nightmare. I don't think I've ever spent a worse night, not since I got locked out of a hostel in Madrid and had to wander the streets until it opened in the morning. The guy sitting next to me was young Vietnamese soldier who spoke no english, but thought it'd be fun to try and jabber at me periodically and managed to buy the absolute loudest snack possible and eat it once the lights had gone out. I couldn't sleep squashed up against him and because the old lady behind me kicked my seat every time I tried to lean back, I spent about 3 hours trying to sleep sideways with that loud crunching sound in my ear.

Eventually I wandered back a couple cars and came across a couple of university students, neither of whom could speak English. We pantomimed at each other for a bit, then one lent me his foldout chair to set up in the corridor so I could get a couple hours of sleep. I was pretty exhausted by the time I got out at Ninh Binh, only to be assaulted by touts for hotels at the station exit. They wouldn't leave me alone, even following me when I sat down at a cafe to have some coffee and think. Eventually I gave up and rented a motorbike from one to head out to Tam Coc.

Tam Coc is similar to Halong Bay, except that instead of the dramatic rocks jutting up out of the water, they are surrounded by rice paddies and lakes. The drive out there was breathtaking, since the morning mist still hung around and obscured the tops of the karsks. At the park, you can take a boat ride past, between, and even under, via caves, the limestone. It was really amazing, breathtaking, until we got about 3km, at which point you turn around and come back. But before that, another boat will paddle up and then begins the hassling, in the midst of all this natural beauty, for you to buy something. Can of coke? How about some bananas or dragon fruit? It goes on and they're relentless. After little to no sleep and an aggravating morning, this didn't go down well with me. I ended up shelling out for a drink and told the guide to take me back. On the way back he tried to get me to buy embroidered crap, and when I flat out refused, he tried to drop me off 1km from the start and make me walk. All in all, not pleasant. Fortunately, there was a pretty Buddhist temple built in one of the mountains to take my mind off it.

Going through the caves behind the temple, or rather, the caves that house part of the temple, I came across this really strange guy. He refused to speak at all, just showing me particular formations that resembled an old man, and another that looked like an elephant. Then he led me up a small path I would've never found myself to a smaller shrine with a great view of the paddies and karsks from up high. He kept pointing at my Lonely Planet guide to show me that it was there that one of the photos was taken. Suddenly, he put his fingers to his lips and ran quietly and quickly into the brush, disappearing completely. Behind me some guy started yelling at me in Vietnamese. A cop or Party official was up there angrily gesturing for me to get down from there. I quickly followed his directions and went down, while he remained up there slowly looking around. I don't know who my mute guide was or what it was all about, but it was just another bizarre thing to happen to me that day.

Back at the hotel, I returned the motorbike and grabbed my stuff. The guy had told me he'd take me to Haiphong, but I guess what he really meant was that he'd take me to a street corner where I'd stand and hope a bus would come by and take me. A crazy local bus screeched to a halt and a guy jumped out, threw all my bags onboard and dragged me up. When I was halfway on, the bus took off and I had to pull myself up to avoid being trapped in the doors. He charged me about $2 to go the 90 km to Haiphong, and I sat down to enjoy the trip. The only memorable thing was watching a full-sized white horse eating garbage in a gutter in the middle of Haiphone city. Not soon afterwards, they stopped, threw my bags out and told me I was here and left. I had absolutely no idea where I was, if I was even in Haiphong, nor what to do now that I was here. I wanted to head to Cat Ba island, so I got some guy on a motorbike who'd been hassling me since I was crapped out the side of the bus, and he took me to the ferry station where I learned all the ferries had left for the day. A woman there told me she knew of a ferry leaving, but it was 3 km away. She charged me a quarter of a million dong (roughly $16) and told me that if I didn't like it I was welcome to pay $25 to stay a night in a hotel and then pay more for a ferry the next morning. Can't argue with that. So after handing over the money and not even getting a receipt, this kid (really, he couldnt've been more than 16) pulls up on a motorbike and she tells me to load all my bags up and get on. Now, vietnamese people tend to have trouble with numbers, especially, it seems, saying the difference between 3, 13 and 30. What she meant to say was that I would have to go 30km at high velocity precariously balanced on the back of a motorbike holding all of my bags (I picked up all my souvenirs in Hoi An). What she said was, "It very close, only 3 km. Thank y' for money. Bye-bye!" Next up, I'll write about Cat Ba.

The Frustration Sets In

I've been here for going on 6 days or so now, and I'll be leaving for Hue tomorrow. I really like Hoi An. It has a tiny Old Quarter filled with tailor shops and artist-owned art galleries. I've managed to meet people here, too. The receptionist at my hotel in Dalat is from here and she was coming home to visit her family, so we made plans for her to show me around her hometown and hopefully see things the average tourist doesn't see. I got to visit her grandmother's house, a brand-new construction in a quiet neighborhood. It gave me a nice opportunity to learn more about the people here and for her to practice her English.

The town is lovely. But my biggest complaint is about all the people who want to sell you something and are annoyingly persistent in it. I can rationalize their reasons, economy and all that, and I realize that it's a touristy town, but you think I could walk out of my hotel in the morning without 3 people up and down the street calling out for a motorbike. Then, wherever I go, each street corner has either two or three guys laying on their scooters pestering me to take a ride or a small vendor's cart with old ladies constantly saying, "you buy something!" I don't think even in Saigon there's such a high concentration of touts and solicitors.

So enough whingeing(sp?). I've had almost an entirely new work wardrobe made, definitely a good thing since I've been alternating between two pairs of pants for over a year now and Japanese business shirts never quite seem to reach my wrists. I also got a couple traditional Chinese shirts made, which I was hoping would be cooler, but the one I'm wearing now is soaked through with sweat sitting as I am in a sweltering cafe, but I hope it looks decent.

I moved out of my hotel today and into a beautiful one that for one night costs almost as much as I paid for five in the previous one. But it's gorgeous and I can take some time to hang out and see it properly, and feel like I actually have a lot of money to sit around and sip coffee and eat delicious fruit. The previous hotel is a room with a passable bed and a bathroom that's not too dirty. That's usually enough for me. But every now and then it's nice to splurge a little. My problem is that I've been splurging a little too much, actually I've been splurging all over the city. I don't know if that last phrase came out as intended, but I'm late for lunch so it'll have to stay. Last night walking down the street, I ran into one Ricardo and Laura, the Spanish couple I'd met in Dalat. So I'm showing them a fantastic restaurant here and then heading off for the beach.

Important Things for Travel Update

I guess it behooves me to actually check the comments sections. I had no idea people actually wrote anything there. So for those of you still in total suspense as to whether I'd get things together to continue on, I did get my passport back the next morning, the hotel in Saigon sent it on the next tour bus. Guess that's my insurance bit from the $20 open bus ticket I paid for and will only use once. And Tracey, bless her, transferred my paycheck to my other account. For those of you not in on my absurd drama, I had to get a new bank account along with my new job. The problem is that I have an international ATM card only with my old account, and all attempts to get one for my new account (the one that had my paycheck deposited on the 1st) failed miserably. So my very kind flatmate (she's Scottish and roommate sounds weird to her) had to go and transfer money. What a headache!

But everything's all good now, and I'm set to blow this month's pay on cheap tailored clothes.

PS - thanks for the encouragement, Nancy! I wish I'd kept a better diary in Europe and Japan to compile stories better. Oh, well, guess I'll have to go back and do it again, darn!

Out of Touch, Into Hoi An

The one problem with a weblog is that if you're out in the middle of nowhere and want to post something, it can be rather difficult. So I end up with about 5 days of backlog to write about. But that'd be too long, so I'll have to summarize, I guess.
I took off from Dalat in the Central Highlands with my Easyrider guide, Trung Pagoda (I swear he told me that's his name, though I think these guys pick an alias for one part). Trung's a very knowledgeable guy, he learned English from his father, who was a South Vietnamese pilot shot down and captured during the war. He'd hoped to be a commercial pilot after the war, but due to his political feelings he can't hold any job beyond farmer. Trung spent 3 years as a lay person studying in a Buddhist monastery, one he took us to on a day trip around Dalat.
I did a 3 day tour from Dalat north to Buon Me Thout, then east to Nha Trang on the coast where we parted ways. Along the way, he took me to spend the night in a traditional Manong hilltribe longhouse, where I was awakened at 4:30 am when the sun came up and all the animals and people started making noise. The animals all sleep under the house, so my wake-up call was the pig 2 feet beneath me grunting for breakfast. The Manong tribe don't rely much on tourism, and what money comes in from tourists spending the night in local houses goes to the headman, who distributes it for the education of the children. For me, it seems a noble purpose; and a heck of a lot better than having kids pursue you up the road trying to sell you gum or photocopied books.
My guide's main interest is in showing people the Vietnam you don't see when you take a package tour, and he delights in showing off the local industries, such as the silk, bamboo, and rice wine-makers I saw on my day trips. I got to see a tea factory, coffee bean processing factory - both family-owned - and a pair of septagenarian (sp?) widowed sisters who make rice paper snacks to feed the neighborhood children breakfast. Quite a remarkable thing.
I arrived in Nha Trang on the 8th. It's a very touristy city with a very nice beach and boat trips out to the islands for snorkelling, diving and fun in the sun. I signed up for one, not really realizing that it's more of a drinking boat tour than one focused on nature. They can be fun, but when it's just you sitting there and everyone else with their friends, it can get a bit lonely. I eventually met the people around there and went snorkelling (where I realized my dream of getting certified for diving won't happen if I can't see anything underwater without glasses). We had a bit of excitement when a Korean girl panicked and inhaled seawater through her snorkel, briefly passing out. Fortunately, a Dutchman proficient in CPR was there and prevented the crew from severely damaging her when they attempted to rescucitate her. She recovered and was more embarrassed than hurt, but they still took her off for an examination. A fun part was the floating bar, which is what it sounds like, a small raft with wine and everybody has a rescue donut and floats/drinks.
Nha Trang is fun if you're on a honeymoon or part of a group of partiers, so I didn't stay entertained long, and caught a night train to Danang. I met (another) Spanish couple, Gerard and Marta, while looking for a fruit stand near the station. We decided to pool resources and split a taxi to Hoi An, a small, well-preserved town 30km south of Danang. They wanted to stop off at the Marble Mountains, which I'd not heard of, not being interested at all in Danang. I'm lucky I met them, since it turned out the be quite a nice sidetrip. There's a huge marble-carving industry, and as the Lonely Planet guide says, they'd make great souvenirs if they didn't weigh so much. I don't quite comprehend how the showrooms make any money, but they've made quite a lot of statues ranging from Christ to the Fat Buddha.
We arrived in Hoi An on the 10th ready for a shower and lunch. I stopped a random couple walking down the street to ask for a hotel recommendation. They, surprise-surprise, turned out to be Spanish also. Exhibiting that typical inclusive Spanish spirit, they offered to show us where they were I can't believe how many I've met on this trip. My first day in Hoi An I must've met at least 15, including 4 older ladies from Barcelona I'd met on my Mekong Delta tour. Small world.
I haven't seen too much of Hoi An yet, we spent yesterday just wandering and soaking up the culture. Marta's been having problems with the malaria prevention pills she's taking, which makes her skin photosensitive. I'm glad I didn't take anything, since the side-effects can be so severe for such a low-risk problem. Well, low-risk if you use mosquito spray and don't get bitten often, something I haven't managed to do yet.
Well, it seems to have stopped raining for the moment, so I'm off to see about having some clothes made. This is THE place for tailored clothes in Vietnam, so I'm going to see about a suit and maybe a few traditional Vietnamese shirts. Actually, what I really need are more pants. Both pairs I have are filthy, and I can only have one pair washed at a time, obviously. I'm planning on staying here for 4 or 5 days since the small-city atmosphere is so pleasant, and I got a good deal on a hotel room, so I'll post more on books and thoughts. I finished Robert S. McNamara's book, "In Retrospect," a must-read for anyone with a tangential interest in the Vietnam War or foreign policy. His conclusions are also extremely relevant for today, discussing limited war, involving the US in a politically unstable country, and being incapable of understanding the enemy. Next up is Graham Greene's "The Quiet American."

A day in Da Lat

Well, today was my first full day in Da Lat. We'd met the Easy Riders, a group of independent guides who offer motorbike tours around the region, the day before and made an appointment to take a tour today. So we met up with them early in the morning and headed off for a day of fun in the off-and-on rain. The first stop was at the aptly-named Crazy House. It's a Gaudi-esque construction built by the daughter of a former Premier of Vietnam. The whole building seems to be organic and alive. It's actually designed as a hotel, with about 10 rooms now, and more under construction. It should be completed in another five years. Each room has a different name, which pertains to the fireplace in the room. My favorite was the Kangaroo Room with a giant, kangaroo-shaped fireplace and the opening for wood below where the pouch would be. The glowing red eyes kind of freaked me out, though. The garden around the hotel is straight out of Alice in Wonderland, with iron rebar spiderwebs and giant toadstools. All in all, it was a spectacular departure from the square, unimaginative buildings around Saigon. About this point, I realized that my camera wouldn't work, so I wasn't able to take any pictures today. I learned after the tour that it was the cheap knockoff batteries I'd purchsed that made it not work. Fortunately, the Spaniards I was with, Ricardo and Laura, and Inyaki and Pilar, took plenty of photos. I just hope they send them to me.

Afterwards, we headed out of town to get an idea of the economy of the region. The Da Lat area was populated by the Lat people, a hilltribe not related to the Vietnamese. In the 19th century the French discovered the area and found that not only was it a pleasant temperature year-round and a welcome respite from the mosquitos and heat of Saigon, but it was also ideal for growing flowers and coffee. So the major crops grown here are various flowers and coffee plantations, with each rural house having a small garden to grow squash, corn, cabbage and various other temperate vegetables they sell at market to supplement their income.

Really, the people around here have several small enterprises they run out of their homes, and they're all intertwined. The major industries here are silk, mushrooms, and bamboo. Some people weave bamboo baskets and lattices. They sell these to various locals who feed silkworms mulberry leaves in the bamboo baskets. When they're ready to spin their coccoons, the worms are put on the bamboo lattice. Once they've spun the coccoons, they're put back in the baskets and taken to the factory where they're processed to make silk, and the worms are boiled and taken to market to be sold as food.

Other people grow coffee on their land. They also tend to grow mushrooms, which use as a growth medium quite a bit of rubber tree sawdust. This sawdust is recycled after growing mushrooms as a fertilizer for the coffee plants. This ties with the silk in that the dried coffee bean skins are used as tinder for everything from the boilers in silk factories to the the small one-man rice wine distilleries.

I guess it's normal that everything has a purpose and a use, and poor rural folks won't waste anything, but I'm amazed by the complexity of the economy here that seems so simple on the surface, but seems to involve a very complex balance.

We also visited the Koho (sp?) hilltribe, one of the 50-odd ethnic tribes that populate the mountains of Vietnam. They have a fairly modernized way of life, in that they no londer wear their own style of clothes, live in their own style of houses, and are currently learning to speak Vietnamese more. We also visited a rather impressive waterfall, the Elephant Falls, which since we're in the rainy season was very strong and large. I'm thinking of doing a longer trip later that will see the 3 largest falls in the region.

Tomorrow we're off again on another trip, but minus Inyaki and Pilar who I think are ready to move on. So the younger couple, Ricardo and Laura, and I will head out with the same guides on motorbike to see some of the sights around town. We were thinking of doing an elephant ride, but that may have to wait. I have to say that at first I didn't want to see the hilltribes and the Mekong Delta tour wore out my patience for visiting various types of factories and such, but today I was fascinated by everything. We also got to view a bit of the Ho Chi Min Trail that was bombed heavily with napalm, and is just starting to regrow trees now. Incidentally, because of the use of Agent Orange around here, a Danish NGO has built of the first water treatment plants in the country here in Da Lat. So I suppose the water should be safe to drink, but I don't really want to risk it.

I found out there's also a university here with some American professors who teach English. I can't imagine what it would be like to live here and work in a university in this country. It seems rather crazy. Anyway, I'm off to sleep so I can be alert tomorrow on the tour. Hopefully I can post again tomorrow.

Out of Saigon, into Dalat

The Mekong Delta in the southwest of the country was rather interesting, though the 3-day tour I took wasn't. It was nice because I got to meet plenty of people, though nobody who was going my way. The first day I met a group of 5 Spaniards from Madrid who invited me to spend time with them. It felt good to practice my Spanish even though I know I've lost a lot of it. The first night we had a variety of new foods, including fried frogs, grilled turtle still in its shell, and grilled mudfish. The frogs and mudfish were pretty good, but the turtle was awful. It smelled like sewage and I could hardly find any meat on it worth eating. Definitely don't want to try that again. I got to be pretty good friends with the people, and one of the girls wants to do an apartment exchange next summer, so I may have a place to stay if I want to head to Madrid for a month or so.

The Mekong tour felt like we were being herded from one place to another. Most of the things we saw were interesting, such as how they processed rice into noodles or paper for spring rolls, but after a while of that and floating up and down the river without having much context to put it in, I got bored and spent my time sleeping or reading. The last day was nice because we headed to a nice pagoda on a mountain that jutted up out of the delta and gave us a great view all around. The guide pointed out the Cambodian border, but that's as close as I got to it. Then we had to head back, which was a 2.5 hour trip by boat and then a 6 hour bus ride back to Saigon. I was exhausted by the time we got back, at nearly 9:00. I grabbed some dinner and rested up for another grueling ride to Dalat in the central highlands.

The ride left at 8 am and was supposed to be only 6 hours. With a stop for lunch and a gas break it took us 8 hours, plus another 45 minutes driving around looking for a hotel. The bus we took was from a tourist company, so they took us around to the various minihotels around the city. The problem is that everyone wants to see every one and decide, then they want to go to the next one and stay there. I wanted to just go to the one recommended by my place in Saigon, but it was at the end of the route. So I had to wait forever to find out that it was full and I'd have to find another. There were 4 Spaniards still on the bus by this point, so we all deliberated and decided to head back to the very first place. It turned out to be quite nice, except for the gutwrenching realization about that time that I'd never picked up my passport from the front counter in Saigon. So I had to call there and hopefully (cross your fingers) they'll send it to my hotel tomorrow by the same tourist bus I took. It sucks not having it because I think I'll be in very big trouble if I can't get it.

Off to sleep now so I can be fresh for my motorbike ride all over the place tomorrow. The 5 of us are meeting tomorrow to haggle with the 'Easy Riders,' a gang of motorbike tour guides that prowl around looking for fares. We'll take a tour around to see the waterfalls that dot the area around Dalat, plus maybe take in an ethnic village or two. Then tool around to see the sights here, which are rather numerous since it escaped damage during the Vietnam/American War, and off to Yok Don National Park where I want to ride an elephant. I'll try to write before I go and see what's happened. Brr, Dalat's actually chilly tonight since it's at a high altitude, which is a big change from the humid Mekong Delta and sweaty Saigon.

Illness and observations

So I've been here for 4 days now. I've seen the major sights, and I'm headed off tomorrow morning for a 3-day boat tour on the Mekong Delta. How much would you pay for transportation and hotel? How does USD14 sound? They don't cover my meals, but that's ok. I thought about going for the full-on 4 day tour with a 1 night homestay with a random family somewhere on the delta, but after wasting a day recovering from a hangover I decided I need to get a little back on track, there are more exciting adventures awaiting me further north.

I've been to a fair number of countries, and everytime I've gone to the more third world ones, like Morocco and now Vietnam, I typically last about 4 days before getting really ill. So, like clockwork, my stomach's been rumbly and I've not been feeling well. I'm a little worried since on my trips to Morocco I only felt ill in-country and as soon as I got back to Spain (only a few days), I started feeling a lot better. This time I've still got 3 weeks to go. I hope I don't feel bad the whole time.

When I was packing for my trip, I was pretty worried about what I would do with all that free time I'd have with no one to talk to. So I figured I should take a book to read and went out and spent quite a bit on a book in Spanish so it'd last me the whole time. Well, guess I wasted that money. Here, kids walk up to you on the sidewalk and try to sell you little, copied versions of various books. Just about ever book ever written on Vietnam is here, as well as almost the entire set of Lonely Planet guides pertaining to Asia. But they also have recently popular books like the latest Harry Potter and Bill Clinton's autobiography. Guess I didn't need to order those earlier, either. I feel bad about purchasing some of them, especially since I'm only choosing the most interesting books. I got When Heaven and Earth Changed Places, which I've finished already, and a couple other books I haven't gotten to yet. Heaven and Earth is a fascinating story of a farm girl who lived near the border between the two Vietnams and how she managed to keep herself alive and wrangle her way to a life in the US. It's very good because it's an honest view of both sides of the Vietnam War: the initially noble and idealistic Viet Cong, who quickly turned to terror in order to maintaing their hold on the village; and the corrupt and brutal Republicans. She also describes her experiences - both good and bad - with American troops. She eventually married a civilian contractor who took her to San Diego. The chapters of her life alternate with her modern tale of returning to Vietnam in the mid-80s to visit her family, completely unsure of what sort of reception she'd receive. It's uplifting and heartbreaking at the same time.

Yesterday I went to Cu Chi tunnels, a highly touristy attraction tailor-made for foreign tourists. First we watched this insanely propagandistic film about the heroic peasants who "held a gun in their right hand and a plough in the left," or something like that. Basically, it builds up their sacrifice without describing the tragedies that befell their families after they lost their relatives. Some families were completely obliterated, or reduced to one pitiful old woman. It's interesting to see the simple ingenuity the VC used to evade detection by the US troops, and a trip through a mockup of the tunnels was so claustrophobic I only did half of the entire 100m distance, and that tunnel had been built wider than the real ones. I couldn't fathom living or hiding down there.

Today was a visit to the "War Remnants Museum," Formerly called the "Chinese and American War Crimes Memorial," or something as unwelcoming to wealthy tourists. Guess they make more money this way. It's actually quite a well-put together exhibit, although rather one-sided. It has a great series on photojournalists on both sides, many of whom lost their lives to bring the horrors of war home to America. There's also an exhibit on the various Geneva-prohibited weapons that were used by the Americans, though I don't know how many of the weapons displayed really were prohibited. The section on Agent Orange and the horrors it still wreaks on the innocents, civilians who weren't even born at the time of the conflict, was quite gruesome. I couldn't stand it after a while and had to get out for a bit. Of course, they don't mention the atrocities committed by the Viet Cong, but it's still good for showing that war is brutal and should be avoided at all costs, and that the people who suffer most are the people who want it least - civilians caught in the middle.

I'm still forming opinions on Vietnam, and they alter with every account I read. My current book, Shadows Wind, is a rather negative portrayal of the Vietnam regime and seesm to comdemn tourists to Vietnam and just about anyone who's ever written a book about the country. The author likes to stand on his high horse and say no one's described the real Vietnam, and he will do that for us. We'll see. The next one I got was Robert S. McNamara's account of how we got into the war. After watching the documentary he made earlier, I'm very interested in delving deeper into it. I think it's something that will be pertinent well into the future, and something our current leaders would have done well to read. He describes the Vietnam War as a colossal and horrific misunderstanding. We saw it as a struggle to prevent the spread of Communism whereas the North Vietnamese saw it as just another fight against another race of imperialists (in reverse chronology, they French, the Japanese, the French before that, the Chinese, and probably some others I missed). So in failing to understand the adversary, a terrible wound was inflicted.

Arrival in Vietnam

I pulled into Vietnam last night at almost midnight. The guy was waiting to take me to my hotel, and I have a nice double bed for a pretty good price. The people there are friendly and all. I spent today just wandering around. Constantly people call out and try to get me to ride on their motorbike or taxi or to sell me something. After all day of it, it gets a tad old. I visited the Ho Chi Min museum and got a private tour from a couple really nice volunteer girls. I guess they go to college and do tours in order to practice their English. It was fun since I learned a ton more than I would've been able to glean from the signs. After that I stuffed myself with Thai food. It was ok, but not the best I've ever had. Tonight's dinner will be something Vietnamese. I'm gonna try and set up some tours over the next three or four days, to see the underground tunnel villages built by the VC during the French and American conflicts, and also to take a boat tour through the Mekong Delta. After that, I'll probably just head up to Dalat and go around there.

I want to buy a decent backpack somewhere here, and there are tons for sale, but I suck at bargaining, and they're marked higher than I want to pay. I tried my hand at haggling for a new change of clothes, but that didn't go too well. I got them down to about 55% of what they asked, but I think it was still too much. Oh well, guess they can have a nice dinner tonight.

I'm headed back for my afternoon siesta and then in the evening I'll head back out to check out the local nightlife.

PS - I tried writing emails to people, but the extraordinarily cheap cafe doesn't like the web-based emails for some reason. So most of them will have to wait until later.

On my way, sorta...

After a rather rough last night in Hiratsuka, I'm heading off today to meet up wtih my friend Elaine and crash on her couch, since it's much closer to Narita airport. Better to do 2 of the 3 hours today rather than rushing and possibly being late/missing my plane tomorrow.

Last night I had dinner with Ana and Damien at one of our favorite (ok, at least my favorite) restaurant: The Ramen. Mmm, ramen. Then we went to a little bar to hear the sweet sounds of the band Green Shit. It was rather interesting listening to Japanese stoner folk music. I couldn't understand much except when the guy starting belting out "Pass the green shit-o," and "ganja." About half an hour was all we could tolerate, so we took off to watch Batman Begtins at the theater. Pretty good, I must say. It was much more plausible than the previous ones, although you can tell they're getting low on evil villians when they have to pull out the Scarecrow.

So after saying goodbye to them, I had a few drinks with my roommate Tracey, who doesn't go out very often, and Miwa. It was sad to leave Miwa since she just got back, but we said our goodbyes and we'll see each other soon.

By tomorrow evening I'll be in Saigon, and I'm looking at a trip to the Mekong Delta by boat for a couple days, as well as a trip to the Cu Chi Tunnels, an extensive tunnel system built by the VC during the war. I'll post before I leave Saigon to travel north and let you all know what's happening.

...Not Only in Japan

Bizarre English translations aren't limited just to Japan. via some anime site I was checking out

Only in Japan

A good match of fake food and computing. Also available in thumb and duck (scroll down).

(via ODK)

A short respite

So I finished classes on July 15th, and I've had the past week off to enjoy some R&R before I get down to the hardcore R&R when I go to Vietnam. I spent the time doing mostly mundane stuff like cleaning the apartment - something I hadn't done lately and was probably driving my roommate Tracey crazy - and reading. I've been reading "My Life," Bill Clinton's autobiography. I'm into the 2nd volume of the paperback series, but I probably won't finish it before I go to Vietnam, which means I'll have to give it back to Ana and wait til I return to finish. He's an interesting guy, and seems a lot smarter and shows much more humility than we're usually led to believe from the media of the time. I also tore through the new Harry Potter book. It wasn't as good as the previous ones, I think the 4th one was Rowling's peak. But that's what that kind of pressure and expectation will do to a person. I wish they'd lay off her and let her work at her own pace, but that's not how the world works, I guess.

When I didn't have my nose stuck in a book or a grimy corner of my house, I spent a lot of time hanging out with my good friend Miwa, who's back from Valparaiso. She spent the last couple years studying at Ivy Tech there. She's graduated now and is looking for a permanent job. I hope she finds one around here since I enjoy her company and I don't relish returning to only chatting online or by email. Last night we went to the beach to watch the fireworks with some other random Hiratsuka gaijin. I went to a festival of floating lanterns at Enoshima island with Ana, Damien, and Amanda. Steak night was on the 20th, so a few of us went there also, where one guy tried to down a kilo of undercooked meat, which didn't sound like a good idea beforehand, and didn't look very pretty afterwards, either. On the way, we managed to stumble upon a gang of sweaty Japanese guys carrying an o-mikoshi (portable shrine) down the street in one of the myriad neighborhood festivals that go on throughout the summer. I also tried to make another trip up O-yama with my friend Kanako, recently returned from Vancouver for study. She had some trouble with the stairs, so we decided to rest and have our picnic at the shrine halfway up, until we were chased out by a gignatic bee that sent Kanako screaming and me flapping my hat around like a loon. So we sat in the restaurant up there and enjoyed tofu ice cream (which was pretty good, but didn't taste at all like tofu).

So, check out the photos page for some more photos from my week off and check out Damien's and Ana's pages for a different photographic perspective.

I'll clean up and pack, then it's off Tuesday for Vietnam for 4 weeks. It should be a good trip, although probably there will be some lonely spells since I'm going solo. I hope to meet some people and make friends along the way, but you never know what happens. I'm taking along Gabriel Garcia Marquez's autobiography, Vivir Para Contarla (Living to Tell the Tale), in Spanish. Hopefully it'll take me the whole time to read it so I don't end up lugging a book I've read as well as trying to hunt down a new one to read. I'll try to post before I leave with a rough itinerary of what I'm doing. I should be able to post from abroad, since internet cafes are supposed to be rather prevalent. Let's hope so.

A Tale of Two Festivals

This past weekend saw two very different festivals take place. First, in Hiratsuka, there was the annual Tanabata. I said I'd post some pictures, but there wasn't really that much worth putting up. I should've taken a photo of the garbage piled chest high on the street, but by that time my camera was out of batteries and I was exhausted and riding home.

On Saturday, Ana, Damien and I escaped from the festering piles of rotten food to go to Narita for the Gion Festival there. It's really funny to tell Japanese people you went to Narita for the Gion festival, because in the first place, the only conceivable reason to go to Narita is to use the airport. One of my friends, after I emailed her that I was going there for a festival asked me if I was also going to take a plane. The other part is that the name Gion is most famous as a historical area of Kyoto where the geisha were/are. So everyone, upon hearing I was going to Narita for Gion, would then ask if I was going to Kyoto. It got old, so I've given up saying where and why, and just say I went to a festival.

It's amazing the difference between the two. Tanabata in Hiratsuka is mainly a commercial affair, the streets jam-packed with food stalls and a few decorations hung along the streets. But Gion in Narita is magical. First of all, despite being known in Japan as only having an airport, and actually being infested with arrogant flight crews from said airport, Narita has a very historical part of town, including one of the top 3 Buddhist temples in the country, and the 2nd most visited at New Year's (all the more strange nobody seems to recognize the name of the temple unless it's used in the same sentence as New Year).

We theorized that Narita must've escaped much of the bombing during WWII (more on that subject in Hiratsuka some other time), and to this day retains an amazing Main Street, filled with old wooden restaurants and ryokan. One shop is filled with folk remedies, including ginger roots in glass jars, stuffed snake, elephant tusks and a polar bear skin (most of which is probably illegal to buy nowadays), while another building houses an eel restaurant. We stood and watched as the man would grab a live eel, slit it behind the gills on one side, and proceed to drive a nail through its head and fillet it, still squirming on the cutting board. Talk about fresh!

The festival lasted from Friday through Sunday. During the weekend, various neighborhoods compete (I think) by pulling out ancient and elaborate dashi and parading them around the city. Dashi are enormous portable shrines that are pulled on 4 wheels by dozens of people pulling on two ropes. The pullers are dressed up in traditional clothes and chant, while some guy runs between the two columns yelling hoarsely into a megaphone. This cacophony is accompanied by a group of drummers and flutists who ride in the dashi as well as a few guys who dance on top holding lanterns, fans, or parasols. The guys on top also have the uneviable job of making sure the statue on top doesn't hit power lines as they roll through the city. And at night, the dashi are lit up and roll through the streets like glowing beacons of revelry.

On Sunday, we were invited to a dinner given by some of Ana's old students from Narita, the Kiuchi's. Dr. Kiuchi and his wife Takako are a real unique couple. They completely defy the Japanese stereotypes. Kiuchi has a great sense of humor, and Takako is a lovely and generous hostess. Ana said they saved her when she was first in Japan, and I can see how those two could lift anybody up out of a bad experience. Anyway, this dinner was a full-course Japanese meal with 5 or 6 courses varying from amazingly tender roast beef to sea snails (which I ate successfully) and whole raw shrimp and prawns. All this was washed down, of course, with an endless supply of Japanese sake and beer. I was sad to leave early, but I had to make work Monday (which I did, though barely). The three of us were decked out in yukata and jim bei. We also met up with her former coworker, Elaine, and another former student, Yumi.

In other news, we hit a good conveyor sushi restaurant and I was the only one to actually enjoy eating raw goose meat. And nothing's more pathetic than a dog in a yukata. And you can buy anything from a vending machine. I'll write more later about my summer plans, I'm going to Vietnam for 4 weeks. Also, check out the photos I've posted from the weekend. Once I finish work this week, I'll try and get through the backlog of photos I have to post.

Tanabata is here again

So Tanabata is here again. This is THE festival for Hiratsuka, so people go all out. It's supposed to celebrate two lovers who were tragically separated and died, so they can only meet on the 7th of July. Or something like that. But the reason isn't important, it's time to have a party! There are lots of streamers and decorations up, and the whole place is packed with people and food and game stalls. And no festival in Japan is complete without a large animatronic dinosaur. This year it's an apatasaurus (sp?).

The downside is that it's all located around the station, which means if you're going anywhere (like work) you have to wade through the crowds and you can't park your bicycle anywhere near the station anymore. And like all festivals that go on for 5 or 6 days (this one ends Monday, I believe), after a while all that piled up garbage and food starts to smell pretty ripe in the hot, humid weather. I feel sorry for the poor sods who live around there. Most people from Hiratsuka don't really care for it because there aren't really any big parades or ceremonies, it just seems to be a way to get people to go out and buy outrageously priced food. Of course, I found a place last year that sells gyros, so I'll be there every day for dinner.

I'll skip out on the smelly bit, since Saturday and Sunday I'll be in Narita with Ana and Damien. We're headed that way for the Gion Festival, the largest in that city. There'll be huge omikoshi(portable shrines), so big that they'll be on wheels pushed by a couple dozen guys and somebody who has to stand on top with a stick to keep the power lines out of the way. Now that's a festival!

We all went out and got jimbei (a traditional summer thing, like a really short kimono top and shorts) and yukata, so we can walk around in style. I even bought some geta, those funny wooden shoes that balance on two vertical pieces of wood. I'm getting better at walking in them, and with the added height I'm a veritable giant here.

I'm taking it easy tonight. I had a ocuple late nights and I feel a cold coming on. Don't want to be sick in the middle of a party. I'll post up some pics of the fiesta soon.

Jules

Here's Julian, the other ex-Nova teacher who works in the same city as me. We have the same days off, so we hang out a lot then and after work. He can make any hat work.

With friends like these...

So here are Ana and Damien, the happy couple sharing food. Very unique :P Anyways, I like these new photo options. So stay tuned for more embarrassing photos of all of us.

MEAT!!!!

Now I like a good hunk of dead animal like any other good American. One day I want to try training to surpass the 2kg challenge at steak night someday (that's 4.4 pounds for you non-internationalists out there). So I worry a bit for my carnivorous friends and relatives back home who have to deal with this. I don't know how much of it is actually true, it'd be worthwhile for somebody to check up on. But I do know that, given our government's policies favoring American businesses at all costs, it probably is. And even if it's not, shouldn't people be checking up on this. I know from my experience here in Japan is that the Japanese government is under immense pressure to lift the ban on American beef, even though the Americans flat out refuse to perform the checks and practices that are listed in that article.

So all you red-blooded Republicans can go and get a good case of BSE. You've got no one to blame but yourselves for not doing something about this. Japan may have BSE problems, but they're at least following WHO regulations now (or should be, the Japanese seem to be even worse about not punishing misbehaving companies).

Rainy season, cousins, and summer break

Well, it's been a whilen (why do all my posts seem to start this way?). All the other ALTs that I know don't have much to do during the day, and few lessons to teach, and they all seem to leave early nearly every day. I guess my town's Board of Education wants to get the most out of its employees. The school I was at last week had its version of field day, and instead of letting me experience a distinctly Japanese event (no wussy events, a kid dies every few years somewhere in the country due to some of these), I was sent to work at my colleague Julian's school for the day. It's not like he was pressed for help, there were two lessons to do the whole day, so we each took one, and spent the rest of the day chatting and watching to students prepare for their field day. But I can't really complain, since I enjoy the teaching and the teachers are all super-helpful, for the most part. I guess it's just the absurdity of having me stay the whole day, even when the kids have gone home and it's just me and the vice-principal sitting around doing nothing. My Japanese is getting better, I've just passed the 80 kanji mark, which is how many kanji 6-year olds have to know. Soon, I'll be catching up with those 2nd-graders, they better watch out.

We've reached the humid part of the summer, and soon we'll be due for the rainy season. There's a defined date when it begins and ends, and no amount of rain before or after those dates will change a Japanese mind as to when the rainy season begins. It can rain the entire week leading up to rainy season, but the season doesn't come early, and if it doesn't rain at all during the rainy season, it's still the rainy season. Go figure. So I'm concerned about what to do, I spend a lot of time riding my bicycle around hiratsuka, which means going to work won't be a pleasant prospect. Even now, at 7 am I can only make it a couple blocks before I'm drenched in sweat. So maybe the rain won't be so bad.

For those of you who are in the know, namely my relatives, my cousin Amanda made it here safe and sound, and has taken up residence in a company apartment previously inhabited by my friend Linley from Oz. The nice thing about her place is that it's right around the corner from the steak night restaurant. On the 20th of every month the entire gaijin community in the area converges on a Mexican restaurant to gorge themselves on half-price steak. So I forsee a few nights sleeping off a couple pounds of steak on her couch. But don't tell her I said that.

Unfortunately, since she just arrived, she hasn't gotten a cell phone yet, and it's driven me insane because for some reason my phone won't ring when a payphone calls, so I've missed every one of her calls, and the only reason we were able to meet up was because I knew where she lived and just showed up one day. Bleh.

If I can actually save any money the next couple of months, I'll be heading to Vietnam for vacation. I'll have the last half of July and all of August off. If I just hang around here, in addition to going stir crazy, I'll probably spend all my money. So I might as well spend it somewhere new, like Vietnam. And comparing the cost of living, I'll probably end up saving money. Let's keep our fingers crossed for Jeremy and hope he can actually reign in his spending. So that means I should probably spend more time at home doing productive things like organizing photos and writing emails and posting.

Amanda's on the way!

Well, I'm rather excited now. My cousin has taken a job at Nova in Japan, and she'll be living in Fujisawa, the city that I work in. She'll show up this Wednesday, and the fun all begins next week. I'm not really sure if she qualifies as my cousin, she's my cousins' half-sister. What the heck is that? For that matter, what am I to her? Is there even a name for it?

Anyway, I haven't seen her in a while. The last time was at my oldest cousin's high school graduation party, and I can't even remember when before that. Maybe when we were 14 or something. But all her travelling puts me to shame: she's worked in pubs in Ireland, done Peace Corps-type stuff in Africe (I think), and now she's coming to Japan. I only hear through the grape vine, and only recently have been in touch with her. So here's to having friends in the country. One of the reasons Ana and I decided to come to this area was because my friend Sean was in Yokosuka, and now Amanda's coming here (I'd like to think) because I recommended it. Cool! So what're the rest of you waiting for?

The Shinto vs. the vinyl

There are two sides to Japan. There's the 'Shinto side,' and then there's the 'vinyl side.' The 'Shinto side' deals with old, traditional Japan. It's the shamisen wailing at the station at dusk, a tiny shrine in a forgotten corner which somebody once thought was beatiful or serene before it became clogged with traffic. It's nature and being close to it, the old Japan when everyone was a farmer and had a close connection to the land.

Then there's the 'vinyl side,' a frenetic pace of life where half-crazed business men launch themselves into a train carriage and hope there's room, skinny girls with fake-bake bronze skin and silver eyeshadow wear plastic schoolgirl uniforms while posing to chatter on their cell-phones.

From what I can tell, the Japanese as a whole seem to shun the natural side, like the crazy uncle who pees his pants at Thanksgiving dinner and lives with 20 cats. They seem embarrassed about it, ashamed that they'll be seen as backwards and hickish. Maybe it has something to do with the post-WWII trauma, who knows. But when I mention how I want to find shamisen music, or that I enjoy visiting temples and shrines, people either giggle nervously or stare at me in disbelief.

There are two parts to the vinyl side. One is happy, fun, and childlike. The other contains all the downsides of our modern society. This dark side is the side moviemakers and cyberpunk authors draw on to create "Neuromancer" or "Blade Runner." I finished a book yesterday called Coin Locker Babies by Ryu Murakami. It's not really an uplifting story, but the translation was amazing, they convey Murakami's vivid detail and descriptions I could only dream of creating. I definitely recommend it.

If you want to see the happy vinyl side, check out OctopusDropKick, a quirky montage of graphic design, technology, and the funny side of Japanese vinyl culture. Definitely worth checking out.

Summer's back

The heat and humidity have returned. Gone are the days when I would break a sweat only when I'm running really late some where or sitting in an onsen someplace. At 7:30 am yesterday, when I walked out to my bike to head to work, I felt like I was in a poolhouse, minus that funny chlorine smell. By lunchtime, the sun was on full blast and I'd been persuaded by some students to play a half-field game of soccer. I'm not exactly in the best of shape either, so when the bell rang to go back, I huffed and puffed my way inside where I had all of 5 minutes to prepare for class. In class I felt like a melted candle and, from the kids' faces, probably looked as pretty as one. They all were supposed to get up and give a short self-introduction to me. I pity them.

Today was my last day at Muraoka JHS until October. I said my goodbyes to the kids, and headed out. There was an English teachers' party, I never found out in whose honor, and so I got to sit and have a nice chat with my favorite teachers. So it was myself and 4 middle-aged ladies until the one male English teacher, who's younger than me, showed up. Mori-sensei's a cool guy, a very dedicated man who was inspired by his trip to Canada to help others learn a foreign language and expand their horizons. We exchanged emails, so hopefully we'll have the chance to hang out this summer. The food was pure Japanese style, and the teachers were all concerned I couldn't handle it. It was all delicious, except for the opener, which was a nice little reddish mousse made of red bell peppers. I don't know if it's because I expected something sweet or because I'd never had peppers in this texture, but something was definitely off with it. Mori-sensei couldn't handle it, so I officially ate more Japanese food than a Japanese. Good thing they didn't offer natto.

Tomorrow I'm going to see Star Wars on the base at Yokosuka with Sean. Let's hear it for the Armed Forces: bringing us movies they won't release forever in Japan.

Jeremy's Book Corner & Maintainance

The post below was one of my diary entries I wrote yesterday. Hopefully I can write something that day and post it at night, although I recognize that may not be possible. But it's a goal. So, in my ample free time and while riding the train to work, I've been reading like a fiend.

The first has nothing to do with Japan, but is great nonetheless. It's The Bridge on the Drina by Ivo Andric. Ana's on a Nobel Prize author hunt, and she loaned this one to me. It has one of the most graphic depictions of a torture and execution. I nearly threw up reading it and eventually had to skip that part. But it's a very vivid historical novel based around a bridge in Bosnia. Very good if all you know about the area is what you think you learned from watching the news.

The second is a great book called Beyond Sushi: A Year in Japan, by Kenneth Januszewski. It's about a guy who goes on the JET program back in the mid-90s to a very small backwater town in southern Japan. It's basically the same kind of job I do, and I relate to a lot of his interactions with the teachers and students. But he and I live in different areas, so I can only dream of attaining some of his experiences. A great book for anyone who wants to know about today's Japan.

The third is by Robert Twygger called Angry White Pyjamas. This book is about a guy living in Tokyo who decides to do a one-year ultra-intensive aikido course, the same course that Japan's Riot Police train in. It's fascinating because it tells about a part of Japan that was rather dominant up until WWII, and one that has been subdued and redirected into other ways, from kimono and katana to business suit and briefcase. It also touches lightly on the latent authoritarianism that still exists even today. But mostly it's about pushing your body to the limits and beyond. I've had the same feeling now and again, am I actually tough, what would i do in a dangerous situation. This guy pushed himself to find out. Makes me want to take up aikido.

A final observation: while walking to work this morning I ended up walking next to a Buddhist monk with a shaved head, traditional robe and briefcase. Just when you get lulled into thinking here is just like home, this happens.

I Have Returned

So, now I have internet. Yay! I'm happy. I have plenty of free time at my new job. I work at 5 different schools, so sometimes I have more free time than others. But most of the time I teach a few hours during the day, and the rest of it is spent during class hours writing a diary or studying kanji. I'm up to 65 characters, although I don't know them perfectly. Each character can have different ways of pronouncing it, ranging from one way (I've only seen 2 or 3 like that so far) to 4 or 5. Two is usually more common, but it still can be embarrassing when you read somebody's last name the wrong way. Hopefully I'll get better with time.

So I'm back at Muraoka JHS, the school I went to on my first week. It's also my favorite school for commuting, as it's near Fujisawa station, which means a short walk instead of transferring and going through hassles. I'm a little under the weather from too much partying this weekend.

On Saturday I went to Harajuku in Tokyo for a Thai festival. I got there a bit early, so I decided to wander a bit. The Harajuku area is famous in Japan as a place where the young people hang out, all dressed up in the freakiest clothing possible. My friend has a photo of one girl in a Nazi SS uniform. I didn't see anything too weird, but the press of shops spilling out into streets and crowds mingling gave me that too-close-for-comfort feeling that is Tokyo. About 300 meters away is Meiji Shrine, a calm, ancient shrine that has stook in Tokyo for ages. It's torii gate is new, but it's made of 1000 year-old trees. So in the space of 30 minutes I saw the living paradox that is Japan: old and new, funky plastic dresses and spike heels living in harmony with red and white miko (shrine maidens) and nature worship.

The funniest part in Meiji was watching the weddings. Japan is a crowded country, so they have to economize space and time in popular places like Meiji. One couple would finish exchanging vows and the procession of priests and miko, followed by bride and groom, would head out around the courtyard, followed by no less than 4 guys with video cameras getting in each other's way. Even the New Japan has forced its way into the old.

In early afternoon I met up with my friend Elaine and part of the crew that was going to the festival. They all turned out to be Interac teachers, and all but one were American, which was the most Americans I've been around at one time since leaving home. The food was fantastic, I gorged myself on green curry and rice, and the people, despite my usual dislike of Americans abroad (I think many of them are rather brash and arrogant), turned out to be a very friendly and intelligent group. All but Elaine were recent arrivals, and a few I talked to had been placed out in the countryside, in very small towns. I feel like my experience here, while different from back home, is not the extreme, at least not like some I've heard or read about. These people I met were living in towns of 11,000 people, where they were the only foreigners and everyone knew their name. Nowhere close to my (comparatively) foreigner-infested Hiratsuka. I'll bet they learn Japanese quickly.

This weekend has hardened my resolve to spend my summer vacation either in Thailand or Vietnam. It just involves buckling down and not really going out all the time, a hard prospect, but I think I can pull it off. I've decided I lack discipline, I'm all too easily enticed out by friends and myself. Discipline is something I need to try and instill in myself. I've missed the last two weeks of kendo practice, which is bad. I want to learn, but after work I'm usually so wiped out mentally that doing anything physical seems to be too much. Or maybe it's just my lethargy playing games with me.

A prolonged absence

Well, since I last posted here, I've left my old job, gone through a week of training for my new job, had a week off, and today I just finished my 1st day at the new job. Whew! Lots has happened. The big one is that I finally got a visa, which means I can get internet at home. In the blazing fast world of Japan, the company should start installation somewhere between 3 and 4 weeks from now. And that's just getting the phone line installed for ADSL or whatever the heck I've signed up for. Internet providing here is very different than in the States, both in types of services offered and quality. I was going to use nice, really cheap cable internet, but my landlord forbade the cable company to install the cable hookup in my apartment. Talk about silly. So now I'm going for some broadband service that goes at 47M, whatever that may be. I just pointed to something that was in my price range, and said, "I want that." Usually that works.

So anyways, I've started my new job working as an Assistant Language Teacher in Fujisawa City. After going through a week of training and a week off to do nothing since I'm just about broke, I had my first day yesterday. It wasn't exactly everything I imagined it would be like. Over the course of the school year, I'll travel to 5 different schools, ranging from really convenient to a huge pain to travel to. And I'll never stay at the same school for more than 5 or 6 days at a time. That's the thing that I can see being the worst, since it'll take 5 or 6 weeks before I'll be back at the same school. I won't get a great chance to build very strong friendships with the teachers or students. So far, so good, though. We do a team-teaching thing, where I work in the class with a Japanese teacher and we work together for that lesson. I thought it would be really difficult and strange being in the same classroom as someone else and teaching, but it wasn't that bad. Higashi-sensei, the teacher I worked with today, was very kind and helpful, and knows how to control a classroom. She made it a lot of fun working with her. So that's where I'm at. We're having a leaving party with the folks from my Nova school in Chigasaki for myself and for one of the staff members, Shiho, who's moving to be with her boyfriend in Scotland. She was one of my favorite staff, so I'll miss hanging out with her.

Still No Internet (ToT)

This sucks. For those of you following how stupid Japan's rules can be, you'll remember that I couldn't get a new phone back in January because my visa expired in less than 90 days....83 days to be exact when I tried. Now that I've moved into my new apartment, I find that I can't get internet because my visa expires too soon. So even though I have all the necessary paperwork, I have to wait until I can get my updated visa and then update my alien registration card and then I can get internet, when they'll probably take another month to send me the modem and everything else. It's full of absurdity.

Speaking of absurd, my daily patience quota dropped to zero really quickly today. It wasn't helped by the fact that I had to work early today on my day off for somebody in Fujisawa. Biking in my suit doesn't seem too appealing, so I tried to take the bus. Arriving at the bus stop, I find that there's a bus due in 2 or 3 minutes. Unfortunately, the little notation above the time evidently meant that no bus would come at that time, because no bus came, and I ended up wasting 10 minutes. 10 minutes isn't that much, but when you then have 10 more minutes to make the 15 minute bike ride to the station before the train leaves, it's rather frustrating.

Lunch was at Subway. We don't have one in Hiratsuka, so I figured I'd treat myself this one time. Everything in this chain is in English because that's the cool thing to do. The staff there try to speak English to all the foreigners, but their vocabulary is usually limited to "OK." All the toppings and sandwich types are in English. But it's in the funny Japanese pronunciation, which means that no matter how any foreigner tries to say it, they can't figure out what you're saying. So after watching a middle-aged Japanese woman order about 6 sandwiches using English, I thought, "No sweat." 10 minutes later the emloyee finally figures out that I want honey and oats style bread. Now I start to understand why one girl at the McDonald's literally shrieks and runs away whenever one of the teachers at my school goes there for lunch.

OK, how bout some substantial news. Last Monday I simultaneously signed a contract to work for a new company, renewed my visa using my old company (hah, take that NOVA!) and resigned from NOVA. So my last working day will be the 27th, although since I never took a vacation day they have to pay me through the middle of April. On the 28th I start a week of training for the new job, then a week off and on April 11th I start the new job. I'll be an Assistant Language Teacher at a junior high school in Fujisawa. I was hoping to get a position in Hiratsuka, but it didn't pan out. There are benefits, since I'll finally get a train pass so I can scam JR and ride home from Tokyo or Yokohama for about a 10th of the price. But I'll have to be at work at 8:30 am, which is a huge change considering that I don't even wake up until that time for my early days, and well past that on my normal days. So besides a slight sleep schedule change, it's mostly for the better: I get off work at 4:30 so I can actually see daylight when I finish and I'll have Saturday and Sunday off, which means a vaguely normal social life. Nobody wants to go out on Monday night ever. Maybe now I'll meet some Japanese people. The biggest thing is that I can practice my Japanese more.

Gotta run, we're doing print club soon. I'll write more about the new job, how much NOVA sucks, and Ana's new roommate and various other things later.

Chickens and Apartments

You know how they always tell you to wash your cutting board real well between cutting chicken and veggies, and how dangerous raw chicken can be? Well, last week we went to one of our favorite yakitori (like chicken shishkebabs) restaurants for dinner. On a whim, we decided to point to something on the menu we didn't know and try it. What came out was, of course, raw chicken. It'd been sliced and seemed to be slightly boiled or seared on the outside, but it was as raw as you can get on the inside. We must've looked pretty weirded out, because the waiter gave them to us free of charge. We ate it though, and nobody got sick or anything. I don't know if I'd have it again, but it wasn't that bad. That doesn't mean you can go to the store and start gnawing on raw chicken out of the meat counter. I think it's prepared similar the raw fish here, which is frozen to kill the bacteria and then thawed and served.

In other news, I'm moving house this week. The new place looks really homey, thanks to my roommate Tracey who has decorated everything. She spent all of yesterday organizing and unpacking her things. My room, however, is a total disaster, and half the stuff isn't even moved yet. I got a friend of mine with a car to give me a hand. He'll probably come over tonight also and help move stuff around. I'll be spending all my free time this week cleaning both rooms and organizing the mountain of knickknacks and random junk I've accumulated here.

Better photos than mine

This guy's a professional photographer in Tokyo. He's got some really cool and artsy photos on his site, but the ones I'm interested in are some of life around Japan. Specifically, the ubiquitous vending machines, where Ana and I have dropped countless hundred yen coins for Frog Style, and warning signs up around Tokyo. (via OctopusDropKick)

And for photos only slightly better than mine, my friend Damien has a new photo site up, taken with his cooler-than-Ana's camera he just bought, much to our jealousy. I vow that one day, I shall own a better one than him.

A rollercoaster of emotions over technology

One week and counting til I move the the new place. And no internet there. Actually, no internet here, either. The account for our apartment's internet is in the name of some guy who's back in the States now. He evidently was getting charged by the company, even though we've been paying the bills. So he cancelled it. Funny thing is, I'm using the internet right now, and the modem's sitting unplugged in a bag waiting for the people to pick it up. Which makes me wonder if that modem ever worked for me, or just for the guy who had the cable plugged into it. Maybe I've been mooching off of someone else in this building and didn't even know it. Oops. Ain't technology grand?

Speaking of technology, I was getting pestered by emails from a friend begging me to sign up for some friends network based around people's SMS on their cell phone's. I kept wondering why they were so adamant that I sign up, so I did. Then I got a couple emails from others who said I'd been sending them that same type of email to join the same network. Long story short, if you get this kind of email, it's not me, and don't sign up. If anything, click on the link and at the very bottom in tiny print is a link to block it. Do that. I've never had a service so brazenly use my MSN contact list to push their product on other people. I've contacted them, let's see if something gets done.

New Pics

New pictures posted. Evidently, I thought I'd posted these photos from January and then realized I hadn't. So here you go. I haven't really been doing much worth photographing lately, so there probably won't be any added for a couple weeks.

A small maintenance note, now that I've got 30+albums up stretching over the past year, it's now time to start some spring cleaning. I'm going to delete all the albums from 2004, at least up until my Kyoto trip. So if you haven't seen them, you have a few days til they're gone for good, or at least until I return and subject you to a 10,000 photo slideshow/torture session.

Alexander

I just got back tonight from seeing Alexander, the overblown saga brought to you by the guy with as big an ego (at least) as Alexander the Great himself, Oliver Stone. Overall it was OK, and fairly accurate historically, at least more so than Troy. The whole homosexuality thing was played up for shock value, I guess. He says he didn't, but I'll bet Stone couldn't come up with anything to be controversial about, so he has all the soldiers cheering about dancing boys and the "pretty army." I guess it's good for all the homophobic American boys who've seen it to realize that you can like other men and still be a military hard-ass. It's just too bad Stone had to play it up to sell more tickets.

The military tactics from that age are interesting to me, and they were pretty accurate as far as I could tell, but the accuracy was ruined by the crappy cinematography. Many movies use shaky camerawork and rapid cuts to heighten the sense of urgency, but what was used here was ridiculous. I couldn't keep track of what was going on, and several times I started to get motion sickness and a headache. The war elephants were interesting, although I don't think a huge elephant would rear up against a horse like that.

I know it's been out a while back home, and everyone's probably forgotten about it by now, but if you're interested in learning more about Alexander the Great, a history professor from Idaho has a really informative and easy-to-read site. Another page with a great map of Alexander's conquests was created by a few highschoolers (if only I made things as cool back then). I like watching historical movies, especially the more accurate ones, and knowing a bit about the history makes it all the more enjoyable.

Weirdness & Random

Today was a really dreary and bleak day. It was cold and rainy, not to mention the fact that I'm near broke a week before payday. So today didn't involve doing much other than sitting in front of the computer surfing and watching strange anime. But lucky for you all, I did find some interesting stuff out there. One site is OctopusDropKick, a graphic design/CG page with a special emphasis on Japan and lots of japanese sites (though it does seem to have gone down in the past 15 minutes, but that's probably just me).

I'm also a little sore from kendo last night. I still show up at the beginner (read: little kids) class, since I don't have the cash to shell out for armor and all that gear yet. So I did the warmup with the kids, which made the parents laugh a lot. It's good to know that, if nothing else, I provide comic relief for these people. But I've been trying to keep up a daily workout routine, and I can actually feel myself getting into shape, rather than the blob that I usually am. Someday I'll be in really good shape and I'll try this out. Until then, I'll just have to stick with pushups.

All your base are belong to us

Just got a new shirt, I'll try to get a pic of it up. A bunny silhouette says: "All the accidents that happen wake up!" Almost on par with my "No F*cking" T-shirt. I'm planning a special photo album just for the strange English pics I find.


...after writing this post, I realized how lame it was. Oh, well, not all of them will win me a Pulitzer.

Cha-cha-cha-changes

Hey all, just a quick update to let you know the news. I got the apartment, which I'm very pleased about. My coworker Tracy is going to move in, and I'll get her stuff when she leaves. So that all is looking very good. Another piece of news that many of you may not be aware of, I'm currently looking at changing jobs when my contract comes up for renewal.

I interviewed with a company that places native English speakers as Assistant Language Teachers (ALTs) in public junior high schools to help with English education. I've thought long and hard about it. Nova is one of the highest-paying employers in this field, although they do make some of that back in apartment rentals and other ways to bilk us gullible and helpless teachers out of our hard-earned yen. Nova also is very much a vacation-type of school. You can change the days you work with other people and work it out so you have several days off in a month to go travelling somewhere or do something. It's very convenient. But lots of teachers complain about how unteacherlike the company is, how we're not really teachers, etc. You have to take the good with the bad. And I've decided that I would rather be in a more teacherlike environment. I've also realized that I'm nowhere close to learning Japanese in a useful capacity, as I found out when I went to the realtor and I had to have her write notes of what she wanted to tell me so I could have someone else translate for me. Working for Interac in public schools should put me more into the culture and the language than working for Nova.

There are some good points about Nova: it pays quite a bit (compared to other Enlgish schools), you can swap your vacation days around, and you don't really have to even think to teach lessons.

There are also some bad points: you're essentially encouraged not to have anything to do with Japanese culture in any way. You're prohibited from socializing with students (a fireable offense), the Japanese staff is randomly swapped around every few months, partly so that we won't get to know them, and the workdays are timed such that you have to work when any of your Japanese friends are off or there are any interesting holidays to see.

This doesn't mean it's bad overall, it just means that it's not for me. Ana loves it there, despite the problems, and I do quite enjoy interacting with the students. Like any teaching job, the students are what make or break the job, more so than the company. If I remember, I'll try to dig up a link to the English-language newspaper that had an interesting article on the treatment of EFL teachers. Some people (at smaller schools, I think) were fired and the reasons given were that they clicked their pens, didn't eat all of their lunch, or some other laughable reason. Nova by far isn't the worst, but it isn't the best for me.

New Apartment

I'm going in tomorrow to put my John Hancock on a new apartment contract. This will mean the first time I've signed my life away in Japan to a 2-year lease. Basically, this commits me to living here for an additional 2 years, which is something I've thought long and hard about, and have decided it's something I want to do. That doesnt' mean I won't be back for a visit, I plan on it either around Thanksgiving time, or perhaps for Christmas, depending on the job situation.

I'm taking a 3DK here in Hiratsuka. Japanese apartments are measured by the number of rooms involved, plus some measurement of what the dining room/kitchen involve. My 3DK could be construed to be a 3 bedroom, but then again, so could my first apartment, where my 'bedroom' was a tiny storage room with no closet. There are 2 tatami rooms of 6 mats each, plus another roughly 6 mat carpeted room with a tiny sunroom-type place for drying laundry in bad weather. The area isn't as nice as my previous apartments, there are no views of Fuji from my bedroom window, but then again, I'll be paying half the price, with my choice of one roommate.

It's located NNE of Hiratsuka station, just north of a big Nissan R&D center. Lots of my students work there, I guess. It's not a difficult ride, about what my first place was. It runs about 66,000 yen (a bit over $600) per month plus utilities. The price isn't too bad, considering what Nova teachers pay, but the up-front costs are insane. I've ranted before in emails about the living situation. Basically, you are expected to shell out roughly 4-5 times the monthly rent for the 'privelige' of renting the space, and that usually doesn't include the first month's rent. I've managed to negotiate with the realtors, through some Japanese friends, who will give me a slight break, and will allow me to include my first month's rent in the up front fees.

There's a thing called reikin that translates as 'key money,' or a gift to your landlord for their graciousness in renting the space to you. It's more or less against the law, but lots of people still do it, and many realtors find a way to slip it in under other fees. I looked at one place that wanted to charge me no deposit or key money, but over $1000 in 'cleaning fees.' Talk about crazy. This place should be better. I'll have a roommate, one of my co-workers who's leaving in August. She has the complete furnishings for an apartment, down to the light fixtures (no, apartments in Japan don't come with light fixtures or light bulbs). I'll buy them off her when she leaves, and I'll inherit a fully furnished place. I'm happy because this means I'll be paying nearly half the rent I pay now, and will allow me greater freedom, i.e., I can quit working for Nova and take another job and not have to worry about being thrown out of my house. All in all, not bad. Wish me luck, moving day is March 1st.

Kyoto Trip photos are up

What the title says, the Kyoto trip photos are up. I wish I could embed links in my posts to photos on my yahoo account, but I don't think it'll work. I might give it a shot, though, see what happens. Anyway, they're all up, so you can now do a read-along with my post from way back when. Look at it this way, I've gone from 3 months between photos and posting to merely a month. Ain't technology wonderful?

A Tale of Two Mondays

One of the amazing things about Japan is the schizophrenic culture here. Like the buildings here, everything is either brand new neon, pastel and tacky; or it's very old, traditional, and musty. I experienced this firsthand over the past week.

Last week, Ana, Damien, and I went to Tokyo to visit a place called 'Cats Livin.' It bills itself as a 'cat theme park.' Basically, you shell out cash to go into various themed rooms and play with cats. There are about 20+ cats running around the place at any given time. Others are on display behind glass cases and brought out for periodic shifts. Now keep in mind, these cats don't always want to be petted. Nor do they always get along with the other cats. One cat was brought out and tethered to a table leg so that customers could pet it and coo over how kawaii (cute) it was. It squirmed, yowled, and generally didn't want to be touched. And for some reason it was named "Caribou." Go figure. And there was the obligatory little boy who'd pet the cats and then suddenly clap his hands loud to try and freak them out.

Afterwards, we hit the top of the Tokyo Metro Government Building, which has a free observatory that has to be the best observatory I've seen in Tokyo. The day was crystal clear and from the 48th or so story you could even make out Mt. Fuji in the setting sun. It was really good to see.

So that was the kitschy, cute side of Japan. Last night I saw one of the older sides still set in tradition. I've wanted to do something for a long time that would force me into using my Japanese and increase my knowledge of the Japanese culture somewhat. All I know of it now are an obsession with cute animals and Frog Style.

One of my students told me about a community kendo club at an elementary school in Hiratsuka. They meet on Mondays, and I dropped by to see what was going on, what it was like. I arrived a bit late, I guess. I walked into the gym and was completely lost. I was on the complete opposite side from the spectators (mostly the parents of the kids practicing). I stood in the doorway for awhile before I decided to dive in with my crappy Japanese. One of the instructors approached me and used his few sentences of English to tell me that he climbed Mt. Rainier in Washington last year. He invited me to watch, so I sat down next to one of the parents to watch what was going on. Evidently though, they thought I should jump in. The head instructor lent me the use of his shinai (bamboo sword) to practice with and sent me over with the tiny kids to practice. I ended up taking turns trying out various attacks on a dummy with a number of 7 year olds who would just stare at me when not galloping towards the dummy or pretending their shinai were rifles and shooting at each other.

Towards the end, the head instructor brought over his katana sword to teach me how to grip the handle and swing the sword. He cleared the area behind me, but everytime I swung back, I had an image of swinging back and lopping off a little kid's ear or something. It was pretty cool to see and try out, I'm definitely going to go back to see if I can learn anything. I have a feeling I'll be put with the little ones again, but since they're about at my level of Japanese I might be able to carry on a real conversation with them.

Quick Update

Hey all, I've been distracted this past week by a video game. It helps me save money by not going out and spending a ton on alcohol. But it's also prevented me from posting anything up here and getting that mountain of pics from Kyoto sorted, not that I've had anything interesting going on anyway. It's just the same old routine lately, now that we're back from New Year's break. I got sent off to Yokohama for half a day for Chibiko training. Basically, that means that after a few hours of singing and dancing, I'm now qualified in the eyes of Nova to teach 2-3 year olds. Kinda scary. But at least they're required to have a parent or guardian present to keep them under control and clean up any messes.

I can't believe that I've been here for 9 months already, it's kind of strange, it doesn't feel like that long a time. But I guess it has. Like you know, I'd planned on staying for 2 or 3 years. Which means my contract renewal time is coming up. Unfortunately, Nova likes to keep things in suspense, so they'll do the end of contract lesson observation in February, but they won't actually offer or decline a contract until exactly 3o days before my contract's up, leaving me almost no time to find another job. They've done that in the past to lots of people. I guess they do it so that when they offer you renewal, you're supposed to feel so grateful that you won't mind them not bothering to give you a raise at all, even though you've worked hard, and certainly are more capable than others. Many Japanese companies are known for standards of the lowest common denominator, and I guess this one isn't too different. So I'm keeping my options open. I've applied to be an ALT, which means teaching in a public school, or several to be exact, in my city. The interview was Tuesday, I think it went well, we'll see where it goes. I'm keeping my options open at the moment.

Anyway, if anyone who knows about html knows how to create a links sidebar, I'd be most grateful to figure out how to do it. I want to post up links to other pages, photo blogs set up by friends, that sort of thing. Until then, here's a little something to tide you over, the Engrish website

Good day all, off to work now!

Happy Bags

There are minor phenomenons that I see in daily Japanese life that are odd or unusual or strange to my way of life and/or thinking. And I always mean to expound upon them here. But doing so can be time-consuming, especially when I'm trying to live a life here. So I haven't had much opportunity to write about my experiences all that much. But one thing I saw over the holidays were Happy Bags.

Happy Bags, or Fortune Bags, Lucky Bags, or Pleasure Bags, are basically grab bags put out by Japanese retail shops after the new year. Since there's no big shopping day between Thanksgiving and Christmas as in the US, I guess most of the sales happen over the New Year's holiday, which basically begins after Christmas and runs until about the 4th of January. But these aren't the standard $2 grab bags you see all over the States. Some of these bags can cost you over $150. Clothing stores, boutiques, and even jewelry stores offer Happy Bags. And you never know what's in them. Obviously, most clothing stores post the size of clothing on the outside of the bag and they keep it uniform for gender, so you don't end up buying a bra for a guy or something like that. Well, usually.

These bags are also nice in that the value is usually a minimum of 3 time the price of the bag. Ana, Damien, and I bought Happy Bags from a boutique/hippie shop in downtown Kyoto. The girl there gave us options of various kinds, so Damien and I took the curtains, and Ana took one with a bag or purse thingy in it. When we got home, we were in for quite a surprise. The contents of my "men's clothing and curtains" Happy Bag was this: one tiny ladies' print shirt with leaves and little elephants, a ladies' scarf, an ashtray, a tiny leather purse, a small belt or waist thingy made of string and seashells, and some curtains. Oh, and a funky day-glo Indian sticker. It only cost me about $10, and the curtains alone went for 3 times that price. So I made out ok, but I have all these girl's clothes, and the shirt doesn't even fit me. Damien and Ana both got girls' pants, complete with a flowered skirt sewn onto the outside. Surprisingly enough, they fit Damien, so they dressed up and we went to the convenience store near the hostel for some drinks. The cashiers couldn't help laughing and staring at Dam-o and his flowered skirt/pants.

A friend of Ana and myself came out much better. For about $100, he got roughly $400 worth of clothes, and all of them fit him. I'm debating the purchase of another Happy Bag, but this time from a shop I know and trust not to give me a bra or something this time around.

Welcome to the year 2005!

Happy New Year, everyone!! I got back on Sunday night from western Japan. I went with Ana and Damien to visit Kyoto, the old Imperial center and spiritual home of Japan, for 5 days of crazy fun and temple-viewing. Kyoto has a huge number of Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples. We also visited the Geisha district of the city, and saw a famous teahouse where the geisha still sometimes entertain exclusive guests, like European royalty. We paid a visit to Nara and Osaka, also. New Year's was spent meandering around Chion-in temple to watch monks ring a huge bell, then to another few temples to see smaller ceremonies.

Japan, as Ana has pointed out, is a land of extremes. We saw the largest wooden building in the world in Nara (Todaiji Temple, which is only 2/3 the size of the original structure), the tallest extant pagoda in the world (Toji Temple), the longest wooden structure in the world (Sanjusangen-do Temple, which houses 1,028 statues dedicated to the Kannon, the goddess of mercy), the largest temple gate and the largest bell in Japan (both at Chion-in Temple; the bell requires 17 monks to ring it 108 times for the new year), as well as the largest lake in Japan (Biwa-ko). All of these are located in Kyoto, with the exception of Todaiji Temple in Nara, and all or most of them are classed as UNESCO World Heritage Sites (except the lake, which I'm told is about as polluted as Lake Michigan).

Travelling in Japan is pretty expensive. For the cost of a flight or Shinkansen (bullet train) ticket to the other side of the country, you could fly to Korea or Guam sometimes. But during the New Year's holiday Japan Railways offers a cheap alternative. Kind of a Eurail deal, you get 5 free days of riding trains over the course of about a month for about 11,000 yen, half the price of a roundtrip ticket to Kyoto. Unfortunately, you don't get to ride comfy, cushy trains, and everyone else is doing it, so it's crowded. It took about 8 1/2 hours to get to Kyoto, using about 5 different trains. And we didn't get to sit down the whole way, either, which was a pain.

The three of us stayed in a Japanese style hostel. We had the standard thin futons and comforter that you have to fold up during the day. The room was about the same size as my bedroom, and we pretty much occupied all the space to sleep. Our bathroom was a full bath shoehorned into a typical American half-bath-sized room. It was tiny, and cramped, but I liked it; the owners were very friendly, giving us travel tips and oranges for New Year's.

The 1st day was spent travelling, we got in in the early afternoon. We checked out the Gion district, which is the birthplace of Kabuki theater, and is the extremely famous Geisha district. We hunted around the backstreets hoping to glimpse a geisha, and Ana was lucky enough to spot one riding in a taxi, probably on the way to a gig. We ate in a rather pricey traditional Japanese restaurant, but the food was good overall, though I didn't care much for plain, cold, boiled eggplant.

The 2nd day was our daytrip to Nara and Osaka, which form a triangle with Kyoto that's not more than 45 minutes by local train in any direction. Nara was an ancient capital of Japan, back in the 8th century AD, but now it's a rather quiet city that has a major deer problem. We'd heard that the place was famous for deer, which are seen as messengers from the gods or something like that. What they are now is a menace. But they're a great tourist draw. You can buy a packet of deer food for 150 yen. Somehow they know not to bother the vendors for food, but once that little packet gets into your hand, they swarm. I bought one and was immediately surrounded by hungry deer tugging at my jacket with their teeth, and butting me with their heads. One little girl sat on her dad's shoulders crying "Scary!" as her dad tried to fend them off without losing his balance. Other parents bought the food for their kids, only to have their kids be chased around by ravenous, mangy deer. The main road to the Todaiji Temple is covered with deer and vendors selling T-shirts with pious sayings like, "No Fucking." (I had to buy one of those shirts.) Todaiji Temple, you recall, is a huge building, built to house a huge statue of Buddha. It's so big that his palm can hold 5 or 8 standing monks. He was built using revolutionary techniques in casting (well, revolutionary for the 8th century). One of the support posts has a hole cut through it in the bottom that's roughly the size of the Buddha's nostril. It's said that if you can fit through it, you'll have good fortune. Of course, I had to try, and miraculously fit through to the applause of all the Japanese who thought the big, silly gaijin would get stuck.

After wedging all of us through the nostril-hole, we trekked on to Osaka for some more modern experiences. The only real sight we visited was Osaka castle, a famous example of the huge castles built by the Tokugawa Shogunate. Like nearly every castle, it's a 20th century remake, but it was still pretty to see, and it made for a good picture. I almost forgot, we saw the largest stone used in a castle defensive wall in Japan. I believe someone named it the "Octopus Stone," though I can't imagine why. The main reason to go to Osaka is for the modern pleasures in life, such as eating, karaoke, and LOTS of neon lights. We ate at a nice Thai restaurant, which you can't find in Hiratsuka, and meandered about the main shopping and going-out district, Dotonbori. Nighttime was back to Kyoto in time to crash early for a very long last day of the year.

Day 3 was New Year's Eve. This day was our main temple-viewing day. It was also pretty foul weather. It'd been nice, clear skies up until then, although a bit cold. Saturday was rainy and cold, so not very fun. We made it to Kinkaku-ji (the Temple of the Golden Pavilion), and saw one of the most famous temples in Japan. Just after was saw it and were down the path to head out, the rain turned to sleet and then snow. They say the Kinkaku-ji is very pretty in snow, and we had to turn around and check it out. The sight was amazing, and it made me stop caring for a while how bad the weather was. The next stop was Kiyomizu-dera, another Kyoto staple. The temple is set up on a hill, with a magnificent view of the city. It'd stopped raining/snowing by then, so we were able to see snow-sprinkled houses with their beautiful Japanese tile roofs. There temple's known for a spring there that pours out sacred water. 200 yen gets you a commemorative plastic cup to drink with. We met up with an American co-worker of Ana's to go out for New Year's Eve. That's when we went to Chion-in Temple and stood in a huge, long line in order to file slowly past and watch 17 monks ring a giant bell. Eastern bells aren't the same as the ones we're used to in the States. The bell is rung by pulling a large log back and thrusting it forward to collide with the bell and make the noise. There's no clapper or anything inside. The tone is much lower, since the bells are much larger than Western bells. The bell's rung 108 times, once for every sin Man is prone to commit, according to Buddhist lore. We thought that the ringing would start at midnight, like any Western ceremony. But it started about 11:20 and we were through the line in 10 or 20 minutes, leaving us with lots of time til midnight. We wandered up to a smaller temple where the priests were allowing patrons to come up and ring the bell. The onlookers stood around one of several fire rings to stay warm. I think for the Japanese, New Year's is more about the whole night and the next day, rather than the countdown to the new year. So when the new year came, it was only when one person did a 3 second countdown from the middle of the crowd, not much else.

Day 4 was a slow day to recover from the night before. We saw Sanjusangen-do, a really cool but really chilly temple with 1,001 statues of Kannon, the 1,000-armed goddess of mercy. It was pretty cool to see. Each statue is slightly different in face and clothing, so they say that everyone can find one that resembles themselves. Pretty neat, although I didn't find mine. There's a famous archery contest there every year. Historically, they talk about a famous archer who competed in a 24-hour endurance contest. He supposedly shot 15,000 arrows over that time, or about one every 9 seconds. People do strange things.

We also visited the Inari shrine, dedicated to the fox gods that are supposed to protect the harvests. There are thousands of them all over the country, but this one is the main shrine. It has a path winding through it with torii gates placed every foot or so. So you end up walking through a vermillion forest, wondering when it will end. The Inari shrine does have some of the coolest shrine offerings around. You can buy miniature torii gates to put in your home shrines or have some sort of prayer or invocation painted on and then place it on the graves of your ancestors.

Day 5 was time to see Nijo Castle, a famous castle built by Tokugawa Ieyasu, the man who started the 400-year reign of the Tokugawa Shogunate. Then it was time to head home. It was just as long and exhausting as the trip to Kyoto, but in reverse. I'm glad to be home, even though I loved visiting Kyoto and have to go to work tomorrow.

PS - I took a few hundred photos, so I have to sort through them before posting, so it may be a little while.