I was having a conversation with a very insightful friend of mine about dreams and memories and she told me that the reason that most only children don’t recall many childhood memories is because they didn’t grow up alongside anybody and hence never get the chance to retell stories that reinforce those memories. So by that logic, the only/best way to keep and hold onto memories is to practice the art of retelling stories. This means that me blogging about my trips is really one of the best ways that I can remember my trips besides reminiscing over old photographs. This conversation served to accomplish two things simultaneously, lament for my lost childhood and motivate me more to continue travel blogging. New posts coming soon, stay tuned.
Friday, December 23, 2011
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
The Final Chapter of Asia: China Tour
So I could go on and on about why I’m over a year behind in updating my blog and why it ended as abruptly as it began. Yes, I was really very busy with concentrating on my graduation project, I moved out of and back into my old place in a 6 month period (for reasons I will not get into), looking for work and planning a new epic trip (more on that later). But honestly, the short and simple answer was I got lazy. Sorry. So without further adieu, let’s get right back into the swing of things. (Bonus: I’ve had a year to reflect on some of these experiences and I think I have a better grasp on a lot of things that I have experienced than I did before. Hopefully that will come out in some of my blogging.)
In August of 2010, I decided to make China is a fitting last stop in my year of travel. Symbolically, it’s almost a perfect fit to the cliché of going back to my roots and my “motherland” after seeing a bit of what the rest of the world has to offer. But also it was a great opportunity to see both family and friends while going to the Shanghai World Expo (which only happens once every four years). So far I’ve been to two in a row, the first was in Aichi, Japan and now that I’ve gone to Shanghai. Looks like I have no choice but to just keep going now. The short 1 hour flight was surprisingly expensive during the busy season but thanks to my friend Peiming Kin (or just Kin as I knew him), a native Shanghainese, I was able to get the lowest possible price on tickets and circumvent an otherwise two day journey of bus and cruise boat to Shanghai. I left myself a 2 week gap after getting back from China to wrap things up in Japan and to say many fond and bittersweet farewells. The time just flew by and I realized that time always moves very fast at the end of any chapter in life. This was no exception.
I arrived in Shanghai in the afternoon and with very little idea of how to rendezvous with Alvin Chen (an old friend from the states) or my mom’s friend Amy who was supposed to pick me up from the airport. I wanted to keep the process as simple as possible but somehow ended up in the Shanghai airport with nobody to meet up with and no way to contact anyone. I ended up paying a Chinese cleaning lady 100 yen (not quite sure what she’ll buy in China with that) and used her cell phone to call Amy who was on the opposite end up the airport and we finally met up 30 minutes later. I had planned to meet Alvin at a specific carousel except we arrived in completely different terminals which my mom warned me about (yes, mom is always right). By the time I realized we had made a severe mistake I was already scrambling around Shanghai airport using my terrible broken Mandarin to try to find Alvin. And even though people cringed and probably thought I was a deaf-mute trying to speak Mandarin, they actually let me pass. Just when I was beginning to lose hope of ever finding Alvin, I caught him out of the corner of my eye. I finally contacted Frances Chen (also an old friend from the States) who was already in Shanghai staying with her uncle and told her we had arrived and were on our way to our hotel. I just didn’t know it would take an hour and a half to get there… on the new Shanghai subway system. She would later be very mad about that. Sorry Frances, I DIDN’T KNOW.
Pictured: Frances and Alvin enjoying authentic Chinese... KFC?
We arrived and soon made our way to meet Alvin’s two brothers, who had both recently moved to Shanghai. I’ve met one of his brothers before remembering him distinctly as the cooler older brother in high school. They now reassumed the same role as they showed us around town. I also noticed that Alvin and his brothers all share the same distinctively Chen-family walk as they walked down the street together, which is best described as a strut that all three seem to unconsciously share. Our first hotel that Alvin and I checked into was not very notable except that the room we stayed in required us to cross through a very public restaurant area in order to gain access to our rooms. So in the middle of people’s meals, we crossed through a formal Chinese restaurant with rolling suitcases and backpacks in hand because China’s building planning codes really just don’t give a damn. Alvin shared stories of what it was like to live in India for 2 month while he did water treatment research. He is a tougher man than I am adapting to conditions that I could never imagine adapting to. He also seemed unable to stop doing the Indian head bobble best described by this clip:
Xian Jian Baos: My Favorite Meal in China and How to Get a Seat
I have eaten the “best” Peking duck in Beijing (multiple times) and the “best” Xiao Long Bao in Shanghai and I honestly feel we do them better in America. I’m disappoint to say, but the original is not always the best because they are locked into their original formula. What made them good in the first place is also what dooms them to culinary stagnation because they can’t change their recipe even is a better version exists out there. Of course, they will always be classics and like Coca-cola and KFC most people would be perfectly happy with the original recipe, but for my money, I think innovation means improving on the original.
The thing about China is that the sheer amount of people makes doing everyday things seem damn near impossible and often doing everyday things require taking a whole new approach. Manners and etiquette goes out the window when you’re spending most of your time trying to avoid getting trampled by little old ladies who show amazing strength and aggression when getting off the subway. This dog eat dog mentality applies directly to finding a seat in a crowded restaurant. The following are directions on how to get a seat in China:
1) Find a table where people are sitting and eating their meal
2) Stand next to that table and stare at them while they eat
3) Wait until they are too uncomfortable with your staring and/or have finished their meal to leave
4) Take a seat!
Bonus step: Wait for next party to do the same to you.
This is not only the accepted practice in many places in Shanghai it is the recommended practice if you ever want to get a seat in a crowded establishment. Note: Don’t do this in fancy places. My undoubtedly favorite meal was a little crowded shop that Alvin and his brothers showed us that had freshly steamed xian jian baos which are essentially like very large dumplings filled with savory pork soup broth that sloshes around inside a thinly pan fried bread pocket enclosing a large meatball. The quality of these little miraculous dumplings was out of this world and you can watch the master chef churn out batch after batch out of 3-feet wide steamers. We used the method described above to get seats and had both the dumplings and a beef noodle soup, both perfectly complementing the other. Oh, and did I mention each giant cue ball sized dumpling cost 25 cents USD!?
Good food, good friends.
Side Story: The Shanghai Boob Slap
You might think that the fact that there are people everywhere in China would keep people in check and everyone would behave decently in public. Counter intuitively, this is not the case because since there is always somebody watching anyway, people just stop caring about who sees what they do. Case in point, in the middle of a busy Shanghai subway station while waiting for a train, a man and his partner stand somewhat impatiently waiting for the train. The man without warning or provocation just decides to slap the woman’s boobs around like Newton’s Cradle batting around from left to right because… he just feels like it, that’s why.
Newton's cradle... I'll let you come up with your own mental image.
Mike’s Masseuse Mishap
I learned that the quality of any business in China is not reliant of the quality of the lobby, the seating area or even the dining area, but in the bathrooms. I say this because too many times, I’ve been fooled by what seems like a 1st world quality business only to be teleported back to the third world the minute I ask to use their restrooms. China’s need to impress people with an image skews their priorities and most of the money is spent on making the grandest initial impression but the overall quality is sacrificed once they realized they’ve run out of money when they get to building the restrooms.
The bathroom is right this way... maybe I don't really need to go that badly...
Owen, Mike and I decided to take advantage of the many foot massage places that line the streets. (We would later do this again because it was so cheap, why the hell not?) The business itself seemed pretty legitimate and spacious at first glance. But after turning the corner to the restroom, I found myself in a dark and dank hallway walking by a break room which seemed to be stuffed to capacity with idle masseuses waiting for their turn to make a few bucks. With laundry drying in the open air, dishes piled high, I realized China’s still far from the first world. Mike hilariously asked for a prettier masseuse as he was not satisfied with the one who was assigned to him. I was content with my girl who we both agreed was much prettier and he wanted me to translate for him “can I get a prettier girl” right to the “ugly girl’s” face. I simply said he wanted somebody else. He then got someone even uglier and eventually gave up disappointed that this didn’t turn out like a clip from rush hour.
Rush hour lied to us.
This is when I realized that China, culturally has a long way to go even if it’s well on its way to owning half of the world. To call what some people do in public uncouth would be an understatement. My mom warned me about stories she had heard of ladies in China who would wear dresses not for style but because it would allow them to squat in the middle of public areas and just relieve themselves wherever and whenever they pleased (at the world expo). I spent much of my time in line at the expo slightly paranoid and expecting at any moment to dodge a strangers pee. Luckily, my fears were not realized but I’m sure there is half a truth in this rumor. The correct and expected etiquette for crossing a busy street is to walk headfirst fearlessly into the blur of traffic knowing in good faith the cars will (at the last minute) avoid hitting you because idiots and foreigners wait for the streetlight. Doing the right thing in China is suddenly made the wrong thing simply because everybody else does it the wrong way. That is why I question if I could ever live in China for a long period of time because it will train you to be tough, but also rude and cutthroat. I’m not trying to make China sound like a barbaric wild west, but the truth is that it is still a very rapidly developing country. The industrialization and modernization of its technology and its people are not growing at equal rates and will take some time to even out throughout the general populace. I’m not sure it actually ever will.
Shopping in China
Chinese business lesson of the day: repeat after me, cliocoddle means you don't have to pay franchise fees.
Shopping in Shanghai is an adventure unlike any other. It requires cunning, strategy an undying curiosity to see what’s behind the curtain. Expect to be taken for a sucker unless you’re prepared to verbally spar every vender you encounter and come ready to put your best bargaining skills into practice. Chinese is a prerequisite at the door or the price will be 200% higher for everything that you buy. The original plan for Shanghai was to meet up with all my friends and explore the city and go to the world expo together. That plan was quickly revised to wander around the city aimlessly and shop three out of our four days. All the guys had one major goal, to buy a nice watch. But we were confused when we walked all around the indoor shopping stalls and found no watches on display. They had tons of other knockoffs in plain sight but aside from one guy who actually approached us on a street corner (seriously) we could not for the life of us find the watches. Actually, the ipads were pretty cool considering somebody had to come up with their own operating system in a device that was about the same size and shape as an ipad. It was slightly thicker and little inconsistencies between the thickness of the metal border were telltale signs it was a fake. That and the fact that touching it felt like holding a weak electric hotplate and the programs didn’t actually work. So how were we supposed to get to the secret land of name brand products? Well we were in a stall selling t-shirts and the vendor asks us if we want to buy a watch or a purse. We said sure and she leads up to the back wall of the stall and pulls aside a layer of t-shirts. Behind the t-shirts, she pushed a button and a secret door flings open. This really happened. I couldn’t believe my eyes. This was possibly the coolest thing I had ever seen. Ever since preschool my imaginary adventures would always include some sort of elaborate series of secret doors, probably an influence of watching too many Indiana Jones movies, but here for the first time ever, was the real deal. It was a strange sort of dream come to life for me. When I stepped inside, it was even cooler. The rundown store outside was just a cover for the huge secret collection of name brand purses, wallets, bags and watches. Inside were a Mr. and Mrs. Smith worthy set of display cases with pull out drawers and decent product lighting. We discovered that each of these stalls each had their own secret room. The fancier the room, the better the vendor was at doing business. This is also meant that he/she probably had better products since more people were buying from them and they could afford to build a better looking secret compartment. The really fancy ones had multiple sets of secret compartments. Each time you entered one room, the door would be closed behind us and another door would open to reveal even more products. This was a fascinating look into the underbelly of the Chinese retail market. Mike is the worst at bargaining… or maybe Alvin. I tried to keep Mike from showing his enthusiasm whenever he saw something he seriously wanted. He doesn’t understand the basic principles of being a tough customer, and that coupled with his complete lack of Chinese made him an easy target. Also, Alvin was surprisingly bad at haggling. Even though he can speak Mandarin decently sometimes we would lose him for a while and he would come back with like 3 polos for the price of… 10. Our secret weapons in our shopping arsenal were Frances and to some extent Owen (minus the Chinese). They had different styles but both were well practiced and were the most likely to get us the best possible deals. The art of haggling is exactly that, an art. Like a well choreographed dance, it is a dance between two partners, a give and take; a back and forth. I tried my skills a little bit and I think I would be able to get about 80% of the total discount that Owen or Frances could probably get. I was proud that I was able to do that much with my tenuous grasp of the Chinese language. In general, we all got what we wanted and maybe a little more.
Going... up?
The World Expo
Finally, we decided to take one day out to go and fight the crowds at the world expo. Frances had already gone a few days and in fact would go a few more days after we all left. She was obviously the most experienced and we gladly followed her lead to the best exhibitions. The day we chose to go was an overcast day, and after we entered the expo it really started pouring. We naively tried to get into line for the Japan Pavilion only to find the line was somewhere in the ballpark of a 6 hour wait! I have never stood in line for 6 hours for anything (with the exception of black Friday shopping and that usually includes a tent and bathroom breaks). How people stand shoulder to shoulder in a packed line for 6 hours with no bathroom breaks just to see one exhibit will forever elude me. After about a nanosecond of consideration we decided to spend our day wandering the grounds and finding shorter lines.
Frances did not like rain but she's learning to like it.
For the most part, the main complaint people have about the world expo are the crowds and the heat and I felt both were somewhat tolerable depending on what you wanted to accomplish. Every indoor pavilion was well air conditioned but the sheer size of the expo meant that there would undoubtedly be a lot of time spent walking in between outside in the humid Shanghai air. Perhaps the crowds would have bothered me more if I had actually decided to commit to a major pavilion line of 2 hours+ wait time. China’s need to always out-do everybody else pushed it to build the largest, most expensive and elaborate world expo’s ever in history. It succeeded in breaking the world record in attendance with 73 million visitors (beating out expo 70’s 60 million visitors), but 94% of the visitors were Chinese nationals who were strongly coaxed into going (and sometimes forced to do so). Leave it to China to break another record, by cheating.
This is how Chinese people tan.
The Food
Panda may have sweet and sour pork but not with spinach pyramid.
I am a Chinese American who has grown up in a fairly Chinese neighborhood eating Chinese food and being for the most part, pretty Chinese. So when I thought about going back to the motherland and enjoying the richness of authentic Chinese cuisine I was very excited with high expectations. These expectations were quickly dashed and replaced with a bewilderment of how it’s possible that many of the Chinese dishes I’ve had in America were better than the Chinese food actually being cooked by Chinese chefs in China. My conclusion is that as with many other things, Chinese culture as a whole has been set back many generations in terms of quality and richness because of the current government regime. This may take some explanation and even though I don’t usually like to get too political whenever avoidable, I feel this epiphany has happened slowly but I feel evermore strongly as I realize how pervasive this problem has become.
“So this is what Communism tastes like…”
“So this is what Communism tastes like…”
Okay so this isn't food, but she was the dinner entertainment and I couldn't think of any other way to work her into this post. Look at how many hula hoops she's spinning!
I entered what seemed to be a fairly nice Chinese restaurant with my tour group. A strange sense of unease came over me as an excessive number of waiters and waitresses posted every few feet stood watch ready to serve an empty restaurant. The food came out in puddles of grease and oil. All the familiar ingredients and tastes were there, but this food was even worse than a panda express would dare pander off as authentic Chinese food. Downstairs in the gift shop (of the restaurant, yes, the restaurant had a gift shop) were even more employees who seemed to have very little to do but stand around waiting for a customer to come to them with a question. Then my tour guide explained that all many of the restaurants we were eating at are owned and operated by the communist party and it suddenly all made sense. Quality control was nearly nonexistent, the food was greasy, the service lackluster and there were way too many people working who did not care one bit about their job because it was meaninglessly assigned to them. This is why communism doesn’t work, that and everything else.
To it's credit, this actually tasted much better than it looks. Even if it really did not set the bar very high.
.
Note: I did have some really delicious Chinese food (from non-communist owned restaurants)
A Night Out on the Town
First things first, China takes karaoke way too seriously. As a guy who more than appreciates a good night of karaoke, I was still shocked to walk into a karaoke bar and feel like I had just wandered into a weird pseudo-outdoor palace. Still not sure what I mean? Take a look for yourself. China tends to take things just a little too far most of the time though.
Makes American karaoke bars look like a filthy crack house.
Clubbing on the other hand is also quite a different animal than clubbing in the states is but was in line with the style of clubbing that I’d gotten more accustomed to in my time spent in Asia. The girls don’t respond to forward advances and displays of aggression and confidence as they do in America. In fact, that’s a direct turn off and Mike’s gung-ho approach all night rendered us little results. Chalk it up to cultural differences.
You mad bro?
Part 2. Family reunion in Beijing.
I step off the plane in Beijing greeted by the heart-melting smile that I’ve taken for granted every day. My mom embraces me with a big hug that falls short to make up for nearly a year’s worth of hugs but is a start. I also see my god-grandmother who moved to Beijing a year earlier and who is just as excited to see me. She takes us back to her apartment which is surprisingly posh even by American standards. I’m comforted by the fact that I know she has a good and comfortable life in Beijing. She enjoys a beautiful view from her balcony window of her condominium flat and can take a walk in the parks provided just downstairs and across the street at anytime assuming she can stand the choking pollution that eternally blankets the city. The Beijing I am seeing now is a much newly improved Beijing because of the 2008 Olympics. The city apparently decided to finally clean up its streets piled high with trash and implement strict traffic limitations to reduce overall pollution. The city was still noticeably dirty and I shudder at the thought of what the city was like before the drastic changes were made.
Buildings drowning in Chinese pollution.
Along with my mother and god-grandmother, my two cousins, Angie and Amy, and uncle also came to meet up with us from Hong Kong. Together we toured the city led by my god-grandmother who acted as our tour guide. We ate excellently, toured enthusiastically and I enjoyed a rare feeling, a large family gathering. I took the opportunity to spend time with my cousins Angie and Amy who I had grown up with in America but have had relatively little contact with since they moved back to Hong Kong over 10 years ago.
Family photo.
I also contacted my friend Condy, I had made with an exchange student 2 years earlier in Cal Poly. She had come from Beijing and studied architecture at Cal Poly for a year. We became good friends in that time and I did my best to help her in her classes. I met with her in a reggae bar and enjoyed some live music together only to see an…
Asian Doppelganger
Right in front of us was a guy who spoke perfect Chinese but looked exactly like my good friend Alex Hernandez (who is Hispanic). Ironically, Alex was just in Beijing a year earlier studying abroad and I questioned whether he had just come back to join a reggae band and play in a small café along the river. I later found out the guy who looked Mexican but spoke Chinese was from the very western portion of China which borders the Middle East and people there have a very mixed look which can be very hard to identify for most people.
Pictured: Condy, Asian Alex Hernandez and Me
The remainder of the trip was a tour my mother had booked from the states. The Chinese style tour bus would shuffle us around like a brood of ducks from site to site. I was not particularly looking forward to this leg of the journey but was pleasantly surprised when 1) The tour guide spoke mostly in Cantonese and not in Mandarin (I’d spent a less enjoyable vacation in the Canadian Rockies on a bus of only Mandarin speakers) and 2) I enjoyed the company of nearly everyone on the tour. It was a small tour of about 10-12 people consisting of about 4 families from Canada, America and elsewhere.
I know he's not a major tourist site, but I just liked how SUPER Chinese this guy looks.
The tour itself was pretty decent led by a guy named coincidentally enough, Eric Leung. We finished obligatorily touring Beijing’s forbidden city and great wall of China and flew to Shanghai to swiftly explored two nearby famous towns, Suzhou and Hangzhou, each of which are understandable Chinese national treasures. The absolute best part of a trip (and I’m convinced, of any trip) are the good people that I had the opportunity and privilege of meeting. The reason I had so much fun on this trip was because each of the families on the trip had children of their own who were in or around my age group. Together after our long days on the bus, we would go and explore the city or hotels ourselves. Supplied with a surplus of energy from long hours of forced sitting, we would have pure and innocent enjoyment in just a little bit of freedom at night to see whatever we wanted to see. Sometimes, that would mean walking around the corner to see a few stores or streets of town, other times that meant going up as high as we could in our hotel to try to find a great view. We enjoyed a public bath and sauna which was included in one of our fancy hotels and sat together happily eating complimentary sesame ball dessert dumplings. And yet another time, I took a cab with my new friend, Bryton to the club/bar areas of Hangzhou and shared some of the cheapest/lowest alcohol content beer I’ve ever had. The toughest thing about the tour was the goodbyes at the end and in a span of 4 short days, I had made some great connections and great friends who I hope to see again in the future.
And fine, here are some obligatory photos of the Great Wall.
Me, trying to be cool.
And being seriously outdone by this g...
How Chinese Tours Scam You
So how a Chinese tour works is that they seem so cheap it’s too good to be true. It is true what they say though, there’s always a catch. In this case, the tour alternates taking you to a major sightseeing destination and then to a place where a group of salesmen try to sell you everything you don’t need. Such things include, pearl jewelry, down comforters, Chinese herbal remedies and tea leaves (all of which my mom bought hook line and sinker). I had failed horribly at my job of stopping her from buying nearly everything despite my best efforts.
Okay, so this photo is not taken in China, but I think it accurately represents my mom in shopping mode.
My view of China is constantly changing. Most of the time, I can barely believe that stories that come out of the country. The news stories are often hilarious, ludicrous and downright shocking. But having seen for myself first hand just what kind of strange world China really is, I watch with high hopes that it will regain its lost, but hopefully not forgotten virtues. I want to speak proudly of my culture, heritage and tradition but am forced instead to read about the terrible types of stories and people who callously and selfishly hurt others to benefit themselves. I’d like not to immediately associate Chinese with people who spit on the streets and wear shirts above their exposed bellies to cool themselves off. Who wants to do business with Chinese businesses that have become notoriously immoral making fake baby formula that causes disease in sickness in order to make a few extra Yuan? I’m disgraced by every report of corruption and greed. Every single story makes me realize more and more how American I actually am and how I would never think of hurting my own people just to get rich. The priorities of the people in China are very obviously backwards. China has adopted the very worst parts of America and focused on the worst parts of capitalism. The society is too focused on making money and it seems morality has taken a backseat to getting ahead. The Chinese have turned their competitive nature into a tool and excuse to hurt others. I hope that one day, I can be proud of you, China and can be proud to call myself Chinese.
Sunday, December 12, 2010
Japan Tour
First off I believe an apology to my readers is long overdue. For those of you who have either faithfully or even sporadically followed my blog only to see it quickly and abruptly stop I’m sorry. Officially, this blog has two more posts coming at least (maybe a bonus trip will be added). Although I’m already home I wanted this blog to be a thorough documentation of my years travel abroad and since I’ve gotten home, I’ve succumbed to laziness as well as been overwhelmed with the onslaught of schoolwork. I have just completed my fall quarter back at my home university and will once again be reinvesting some time to this blog, at least until it is complete. So here goes as I see how many details I can remember. This is going to be a long one as I show you my trip through Japan…
First, some context. After school ended in Japan, I had roughly a week before leaving for my trip to China. Andrea at the same time wanted to plan a brief trip around Japan to see a list of major cities and sights around southern Honshu and asked if I wanted to join him. I worked it out perfectly so that I would be able to stay in Fukuoka long enough to get my Chinese visa which was 15,000 YEN!!! with no discounts for being of Chinese decent *sigh*. Also I got to work one more night at Cream and celebrate with Nick on his birthday which was an added bonus. The plan was I would travel by local train (because it’s the cheapest option to travel) with Andrea to Yamaguchi, Miyajima, Hiroshima, Okayama, Naoshima, Himeji, Kobe and Osaka. At Osaka we would branch off and he would head for Kyoto while I would head home. This was good for both of us because I had never been to any of these cities yet and at the same time I could show him how to use the “Juhachikippu” ticket and navigate the sometimes frustrating local JR (Japan Rail) train system. It worked out so that I would end up traveling for 6 days in Japan, return home to Fukuoka for only one day to rest and recoup before going to China for two weeks. So here goes…
Fail at Yamaguchi
Yamaguchi is a small and often overlooked city that we decided somewhat on a whim to go to. It was conveniently along the way to our first intended destination and we decided it was worth taking out about 2-3 hours to see Brittany’s recommendation, YCAM – Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media. Unfortunately after taking about 40 minutes off the main JR line to get to the station and walking for about another 30 minutes with our huge backpacks to YCAM we were met with some bad news. Apparently, there were no exhibits to see that day because they were setting up a new exhibit called, “Cloud Forest”. It was scheduled to open the very next day and there were still preparations still being set up for the grand opening. We were just too late to see anything and just in time to see… nothing. Despite our foiled plan we remained in high spirits as we made our way back on our original path. We don’t regret stopping in Yamaguchi because the city was quaint and we still had enough time to hit all our intended destinations. Plus we got to see this huge cat!
My Favorite Place in Japan
Our next point of interest was Miyajima (AKA Itsukushima), a place that is famous in Japan as having the only torii gate in the bay and is a UNESCO world heritage site. It is one of the major attractions listed in most guide books and travel websites and for good reason, I learned. We were happy because we saved money on the ferry since it was included in our train ticket. And at first I didn’t really get what all the fuss was a about. When we arrived and asked the information booth what to do, they said to wait for sundown because that’s when the tide would come in and the torii gate would be its most beautiful for viewing and taking pictures. At the moment, it was just muddy and the temple surrounding it looked like it was built on a dried up swamp. So we explored the little town and few surrounding temples and pagodas to kill time. The city itself was very likeable and like Nara filled with random friendly deer like this fellow…
There were plenty of sites to keep us clicking away and busily taking pictures until sundown. Here are just a few pictures of the temples and moments we encountered:
But the real beauty of Miyajima is definitely at sunset. Andrea and I grabbed ourselves a prime spot on the beach next to the water temple and basked in the unrivaled beauty. The best part about this site that was unlike other major sites in Japan was that it really wasn’t crowded at all. We shared the whole beach with maybe 2 other pairs of people and that was it. We took a ton of pictures of the gate at every angle, setting and perspective we could think of. Maybe this is unusual since we at our next destination…
Hiroshima
We arrived on the 65th year anniversary of the day the atomic bomb was dropped on August 6th, 1945. This was also the same reason that there was a huge influx of visitors who wanted to see the yearly memorial which looks something like this (even though we missed it, this is not my picture):
We got into the station at about 8 PM and scrambled to find a place to stay for the night. We had not been able to book any hostels since everything was full online. In fact most of this trip had little or no planning and we had to find lodging for many of the cities we went to without first booking something in advance. We found a nearby internet café by the station. This was going to be Andrea’s first time staying at an internet café and he was very excited by each of the perks and grew increasingly giddier as I moved down the list of things that was included in our admission. He particularly liked the unlimited soup and soft serve ice cream.
Ice Cream
One thing to note about traveling with Andrea who I will first say was a great travel companion, but Andrea is a guy who loves his ice cream. And when I say love, I mean he loves his ice cream. Every day of the trip we would stop at least 2 or 3 times at a convenient (conveni) store to get an ice cream bar/cone. We would have ice cream more often than we would have real food. This was fine since it’s 1) once of the cheapest things to eat in Japan especially out of convenis and 2) it was summer and hot as hell most of the time.
We explored Hiroshima which was exactly as heart wrenchingly sad as I had expected it to be and moved before the nightfall by train to our next city, Okayama and had…
Pictured: Heart Wrenching
The Worst Night Ever
We arrived in Okayama, a city we knew very little about after the information offices of the train station had closed. With nowhere to find any information we wandered around for an hour before we found an internet café that had room but was kind of pricey. Andrea was also travelling with a very limited budget which I completely understood and we agreed to continue to try to look for a more affordable café. Another hour of wandering around the confusing streets of Okayama later, we stumbled upon another internet café behind a group of similarly aged Japanese guys/travelers. The employee at the café informed us that there was one option left and it was a single room that had a couch and had to be shared by two people. After taking a little while to discuss it we gave in and just took the cubicle. What went wrong:
1) We had to sign up for the one shower in the café and after an hour of waiting, just decided to go to sleep.
2) The leather couch meant we would get hot and be forced to turn and change the surface area of our body that came in contact with the couch every hour or so or just succumb to extreme heat and melding into the couch itself.
3) We had not realized, but the internet café was located directly below, above or next to a club. A constant but disturbing beat was thumping through the walls until about 4 AM.
4) Just the most uncomfortable night I’ve spent anywhere in all my travels.
Me vs. Homeless Man
The next day we tried to put it behind us and moved on to our next port city and ferry to the island of Naoshima. Naoshima is a unique island because it has very little development on it except for a small population of residents and one single resort. An art collective organization took over the development of the island and had placed pieces of art in very specific locations throughout the island. All the pieces and buildings on the island are carefully designed and placed to be integrated perfectly into the surrounding natural landscape. It also came highly rated by everyone who visited it.
The island is small but filled with treasures like the Lee Ufan museum designed by Tadao Ando which was dramatic, stunning and really a place that can only be experienced. A lot of the architecture I didn’t even really understand, like an abstract painting, his lines and intentions are not obviously stated but definitely meant to elicit a specific emotion or feeling. The one thing I did get out of it was a small square skylight cut into a few feet thick concrete ceiling that would change the lighting on the art piece on the ground depending on the time of day.
Pictured: Architecture
Secret Garden
We got back to Okayama late and were disappointed since we were almost sure that Okayama garden (rated one of the three best gardens in all of Japan) was closed. But as we got closer we were pleasantly surprised as we entered and found there was actually a special summer festival where the whole garden was lit with lights. This served 3 purposes: it let us explore the beautifully illuminated garden while avoiding the heat and even see Okayama castle in the far background which was just one more castle to scratch off the list.
Contemporary Tradtion
Ramen! The best meal ever.
We had been so busy traveling and sightseeing that we had skipped right over dinner and at 9 o’clock we were really almost certain that all we’d find was lame conveni food. But just in our time of need, our prayers were answered as we came upon the most beautiful shop that could have been there, it was Ippudo, my favorite ramen shop in all of Japan. I got a bowl of ramen with 2 extra noodles, a side of discounted gyoza and to top off the perfect meal a free soft boiled egg because the employee screwed up the order. If any of you could have seen me then… well, it was not a pretty sight but you would have seen what I assume was pure happiness on my face.
My first time in a capsule hotel…
We had came across a cheap looking capsule hotel before we’d left for Naoshima in the morning and had decided to stay the night there. We were sure as hell not going to go back to the worst night ever internet café and were both excited to try the capsule hotel. So how was it? It was GREAT!! The worst night of sleep ever was completely made up with the best sleep of night ever in the capsule hotel. Andrea and I didn’t know exactly what to expect when we went to see our “rooms”. But when we found our boxes we were actually very happy with the space and surprised by the extra amenities. Amenities included:
1) Not-so-coffin-like box/room that had plenty of comfortable sitting up height with clean towel, bathrobe, sheets and pillow.
2) Personal speakers and built in television (with as-expected AV programming)
3) Blind for privacy
4) Access to in house public shower/onsen
All for about $25! Not too shabby. I would do it again in a heartbeat.
Himeji Castle
This is Japan’s most intact original castle and is currently being preserved and restored to its original condition. This is good, but it also means the castle right now has many main sections closed off and the main structure has a really dorky looking metal brace on most of it supplementing the structure. This makes for terrible pictures and made taking good pictures of it particularly difficult. We made do, came to terms with it and moved on to Kobe to find…
The Giant Robot: Tetsujin
I was very disappointed when I heard that I had missed seeing the giant Gundam Robot in Yokohama by less than a year. But when I heard there was one more giant robot left and it was in Kobe, I knew I had to find it. While we got into the main Kobe station and tried to find our way to the giant robot, we asked everyone around the station and nobody seemed to know where the giant robot was located. This started to puzzle us. How could everyone just miss the gigantic robot? After exploring the area a little bit and seeing the major sights around Kobe station we found that the robot was actually two stations back. Though it was starting to drizzle we were determined to see the robot and I wasn’t about to be deterred by a little rain. We finally got off at the right station and found a sign pointing us in the right direction to… TETSUJIN!
Before nightfall we make our way to Osaka and find a special pass that covers a lot of major attractions in exactly the amount of time we have to spend in Osaka, how perfect! We check into our hotel near Dobutsuenmae station which means roughly, in front of the zoo station. This area used to be a bustling commercial center and the site for a major retail promenade but has since turned into a slum and definitely one of the most interesting neighborhoods in Japan. In my stay of one year in Japan I can honestly say that it was difficult to find any slums or neighborhood that looked or resembled or was equivalent to an American slum. How I asked could this society be so perfect that there was no poverty anywhere. I had seen homeless, but there seemed to be no middlemen between the middle class and the complete wino. Here in Osaka, I had finally found it. The streets were nitty, gritty, and full of interesting sights and sounds. The first night exploring I had seen homeless in the streets, shady looking characters (one of which had long shaggy stringy hair and went into the building we were staying in), naked men in rooms with doors flung wide open, bikes in the middle of entryways, vomit in the street and a random bra on the ground. All of these things you would be hard pressed to find in most other parts of Japan, but here I saw all these things in one night.
Just a small taste
Shadiest Hostel Ever
The room we had gotten was on the 4rth floor of a hostel that seemed promising at first. The staff was friendly and we went up to our floor to find our room. We emerged from the elevator to find ourselves walking down an eerie hallway lit by one glowing green exit light at the end of the hallway next to our room. The sign stood in the way of our door and prevented the door from fully opening. Inside the room smelled of an unidentifiable odor that was repugnant, lasting and like nothing I’ve ever smelled before. We really had no idea about the actual cleanliness of the room itself but we definitely questioned it. The other rooms down the hallway seemed to be permanently lived in and served as lower income housing. There were only squat toilets available in the bathroom and a trough for the sink. The public bath downstairs had too few stalls and was open from 8-10 for Men, 10-12 for Women and 12-1 for Men again. Every single time I went to take a shower however early or late, there was one man sitting on the far right stool showering the whole time. Even though everybody was patiently waiting in line and took only the amount of time necessary, this man stayed there in place showering the whole 2 hours every night. The reason nobody spoke to him was because he was most definitely yakuza and had a full dragon tattoo that spanned from the base of his neck down his back and sliding down his leg. I never made eye contact with him, got in, showered and got out without engaging him ever. Oh yeah and the last night we were there I took the elevator down and when I reached the ground floor the elevator jolted and dropped an additional 2 feet. When the doors opened a second later the ground level was two feet above where my feet were. I stepped up and the hostel clerk warned us not to use the elevator anymore. But it was cheap! =P
Thought I was kidding about the horror movie ambience? Think again.
Tennoji zoo, Shinsekai, Tsutenkaku (aka Hitachi Tower), the Natural History Museum, River Boat Tour, Fugu, Osaka TV building, Osaka Aquarium, Umeda Sky Building and Osaka History Museum
To my surprise, Andrea had never been to a zoo before, or if he had, he had forgotten what it was like because it was when he was very young. So when we went to the nearby zoo, he was very excited to see the animals on display even though in my opinion, the zoo was quite lacking. Next we tried kushikatsu which is an original Osaka food consisting mainly of skewered meat and organs deep fried and paired with raw cabbage that is popular amongst the locals and visitors alike. We ate it after going up to see a view from Tsutenkaku. It was good but much too expensive for the amount of actual food. The Natural History Museum is lame, don’t go. The river boat tour is lame too. But I do recommend the streets around the river are great to walk around. It is the iconic image of Osaka with both shores filled to the brink with brightly lit billboards. Osaka Aquarium has a very large tank with a whale shark, other than that, it is crowded and not that much fun. The Umeda Sky Building offers a great open air view of all of Osaka. Afterwards we rode a Ferris wheel since Andrea had once again been depleted as a child and had never been on one. One of the most educational and interesting museums is the Osaka History Museum that we decided to go to very last minute. I also tried the possibly deadly Fugu AKA blowfish in Osaka which is famous for Fugu. It is one of the few places in Japan that serves Fugu year-round despite it being out of season, it gets the fish from elsewhere when it is off-season. The taste and texture is very unique and unlike any other type of sushi I’ve had. I can’t very accurately describe it, but I did feel a faint numbing, dulling feeling on my tongue which is supposed to be the low level of paralyzing poison that is excreted from the fish itself. The texture is chewier than most other fish and the taste really isn’t good enough to risk your life too often. Worth at least trying once in your life though.
Food for Thought
On this trip I ate okinomiyaki which is a pancake type food from Hiroshima and takoyaki which is from Osaka and though it was good in both places, I would say that many parts of Japan may do an equally good if not better job of it. It’s not always better at the place where it’s from. After all these adventures, I said farewell to Andrea and wished him a good rest of his journey. The next morning we took trains in the opposite direction and I made my 13 hour trek home to Fukuoka. I spent 2 of those hours in a standing room only train doing pull ups every few minutes and getting a few strange looks from some train-goers. I arrived home, did laundry, got a night of comfortable rest, packed and left for China a day later.
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