Here are the long and convoluted pieces of travelogue that made their way across the Pacific during my sojourn in the Tokyo area in June of 2005. All of them are too long, none are great literary works, and any errors in typography, lapses in wit, or gaps in chronology are hereby preemptively acknowledged. Read and enjoy what you like. Criticize all you want. Remember that the way these things are posted will put them in reverse chronological order, which won't matter for most of them, but if you want the complete experience, you'll need to read from the bottom up.
Kent
Saturday, October 08, 2005
Sayonara
June 21, 2005
The time has come at last to say goodbye to Japan, a country that I've become quite fond of over the last ten days. It's easy to love a culture that will bend over backwards to be hospitable and will walk you two blocks down the street or eight floors down the escalator to get you pointed in the right direction. After you're here longer than a day or two, though, you have to either keep on loving a culture for what they'll do for you or start noticing all of the things that make a country or a group of people lovely even if it doesn't mean getting a free ride or outstanding hospitality. Sometimes it means overlooking the inconvenience of walking two heavy suitcases two miles to the station without help or paying three dollars for a cup of coffee just so you can get off your feet. But I think that coming to appreciate and love Japan when it wasn't giving me anything has turned out to be a large part of the reason I came in the first place.
I've learned a lot about the culture of the people here, and even though it's incredibly different from ours, it's very easy to appreciate. It's been working well for a lot longer than ours, so there's something to be said for it. Even in the parts of Japan that aren't packed beyond reason like Tokyo is, you'll find houses crowded together and people living practically on top of each other, at least by our standards. Not going outside Tokyo while I was here, I've only read about this, but you can see the same tendency in the school kids that wear their school uniforms when they go out with friends on Sunday so that they will be distinguishable as one of a group. You can see it in the groups of businessmen that get on the train together all wearing the same suit. In the Western world (and I'm borrowing this also from what I've read), we fear missing the chance or lacking the ability to achieve something individualistic. In Japan, the people fear being alone, even if it means being alone at the top. The idea of harmony has all the positive connotations in the Eastern mind that freedom does in the West.
It's easy to think of a culture like this, especially as crowded together and homogenous as they appear to be, as one big mass. I'm so grateful for the opportunity to just watch the Japanese be Japanese and grow to love the individuals here one at a time. I think I might even be able to tell a Japanese person from a Korean by now. Maybe not. :) But I can definitely appreciate the wide, wide variety within the people of Japan in a way I had an idea of but had to see for myself to understand.
I spent last night getting a few last minute pictures and buying a few gifts for people. I didn't really buy tons and tons gifts, and nothing at all extravagant, so my apologies if you expected a kimono or diamond-encrusted samurai sword. I might have gotten you a coffee flavored marshmallow. I was up this morning in time to see Scott and Kathi off for a meeting they left for around 8:45. I needed to pay a visit to the post office and then be over at Kiyose station by about noon. As it happened, I made it by about 11:35, so I'll be in plenty of time to check in at the airport and be rid of these two annoying, large bags for the next 14 hours.
As I probably should have expected, I didn't do nearly all there is to do in Tokyo. I got very few pictures, less than a quarter of the video I wanted to get, and as I was packing last night, I realized that the only souvenir I didn't buy for someone else is one t-shirt. But I got the chance to come here and experience Japan. I got to stay in the suburbs, commute through the stations, go to the after-work hangouts of wealthy executives (and boy, was that a blast) and of working-class salarymen, and I got to eat Japanese food. I got to watch sometimes ninety percent of the commuters in a train car sleep until their stop. I got to see a whole lot of neon. I got to have exotic sushi that had a piece of hamburger on top. (This is what you do when you're in a place where sushi's not exotic, just to change things up a little; here's a picture. Also a real live rice paddy viewed from the train to the airport and Mister Donut, a frequent morning stop.) Overall, it was pretty darn close to a perfect trip. I'd love for you to come with me next time.
I'm writing this on the train out to the airport, and I think we're almost there, so I'll finish up from the plane home and let you know how the last legs of travel end up going.
-----
Narita International is not nearly as easy to depart as it is to arrive in. Can't blame this one on language either, since every sign is in both Japanese and English. It's just not tremendously clear where you're supposed to go. But I still managed to check in two hours and twenty minutes before my flight, grab a bowl of katsu-don (that pork cutlet and egg and rice thing I told you about before), and get through immigration and down here to my gate before boarding. We're supposed to start boarding in about five more minutes, and I'll be off across the Pacific over the course of the shortest night I've ever experienced. I'm not sure exactly the speed we'll be going and what direction at what time and the rotational velocity of the earth, etc., etc., but I think it will only be dark for about three hours, maybe four, and then it will be... today. Again. And the sun will be back up and I'll need to do what I can to stay awake all day to begin my fight against the jetlag that never really managed to get me on the way over here.
-----
Ask any veteran traveler and they will tell you: the only thing better than having someone nice and just the right degree of talkative in the seat next to you is having nothing but a pillow in the seat next to you. The trip back to the US is two hours shorter than the one to Japan was (a hop, practically, at nine hours and twenty minutes), and it looks like I'll be able to do a little sleeping in between my attempts to find level six in my Zelda game.
-----
I have reached a conclusion. Unless I'm up in first class where they have those big huge queen size beds, I'm not going to do any sleeping on a plane ever. Most planes are at least fairly comfortable for sitting in, but they all stink when it comes to sleeping.
Have you ever seen the moon from up here? It's so white. There's nothing in the way. It's worth the price of a plane ticket just to come up here and see this.
-----
Alright. I made it back to the United States after an uneventful flight. I'm in San Francisco now, and my plane leaves in about an hour and a half for the east coast. I'm sure all of you have been on an airplane before, so I guess this concludes the chronicling of my trip. I know these things were long, hastily written, full of typos (because of being hastily written) and boring parts, etc., but for those of you who did read it all, thank you so much. The next time I plan a big crazy trip like this one, I will be sure to keep you in the loop. Please do the same for me. Bye bye.
Kent
The time has come at last to say goodbye to Japan, a country that I've become quite fond of over the last ten days. It's easy to love a culture that will bend over backwards to be hospitable and will walk you two blocks down the street or eight floors down the escalator to get you pointed in the right direction. After you're here longer than a day or two, though, you have to either keep on loving a culture for what they'll do for you or start noticing all of the things that make a country or a group of people lovely even if it doesn't mean getting a free ride or outstanding hospitality. Sometimes it means overlooking the inconvenience of walking two heavy suitcases two miles to the station without help or paying three dollars for a cup of coffee just so you can get off your feet. But I think that coming to appreciate and love Japan when it wasn't giving me anything has turned out to be a large part of the reason I came in the first place.
I've learned a lot about the culture of the people here, and even though it's incredibly different from ours, it's very easy to appreciate. It's been working well for a lot longer than ours, so there's something to be said for it. Even in the parts of Japan that aren't packed beyond reason like Tokyo is, you'll find houses crowded together and people living practically on top of each other, at least by our standards. Not going outside Tokyo while I was here, I've only read about this, but you can see the same tendency in the school kids that wear their school uniforms when they go out with friends on Sunday so that they will be distinguishable as one of a group. You can see it in the groups of businessmen that get on the train together all wearing the same suit. In the Western world (and I'm borrowing this also from what I've read), we fear missing the chance or lacking the ability to achieve something individualistic. In Japan, the people fear being alone, even if it means being alone at the top. The idea of harmony has all the positive connotations in the Eastern mind that freedom does in the West.
It's easy to think of a culture like this, especially as crowded together and homogenous as they appear to be, as one big mass. I'm so grateful for the opportunity to just watch the Japanese be Japanese and grow to love the individuals here one at a time. I think I might even be able to tell a Japanese person from a Korean by now. Maybe not. :) But I can definitely appreciate the wide, wide variety within the people of Japan in a way I had an idea of but had to see for myself to understand.
I spent last night getting a few last minute pictures and buying a few gifts for people. I didn't really buy tons and tons gifts, and nothing at all extravagant, so my apologies if you expected a kimono or diamond-encrusted samurai sword. I might have gotten you a coffee flavored marshmallow. I was up this morning in time to see Scott and Kathi off for a meeting they left for around 8:45. I needed to pay a visit to the post office and then be over at Kiyose station by about noon. As it happened, I made it by about 11:35, so I'll be in plenty of time to check in at the airport and be rid of these two annoying, large bags for the next 14 hours.
As I probably should have expected, I didn't do nearly all there is to do in Tokyo. I got very few pictures, less than a quarter of the video I wanted to get, and as I was packing last night, I realized that the only souvenir I didn't buy for someone else is one t-shirt. But I got the chance to come here and experience Japan. I got to stay in the suburbs, commute through the stations, go to the after-work hangouts of wealthy executives (and boy, was that a blast) and of working-class salarymen, and I got to eat Japanese food. I got to watch sometimes ninety percent of the commuters in a train car sleep until their stop. I got to see a whole lot of neon. I got to have exotic sushi that had a piece of hamburger on top. (This is what you do when you're in a place where sushi's not exotic, just to change things up a little; here's a picture. Also a real live rice paddy viewed from the train to the airport and Mister Donut, a frequent morning stop.) Overall, it was pretty darn close to a perfect trip. I'd love for you to come with me next time.
I'm writing this on the train out to the airport, and I think we're almost there, so I'll finish up from the plane home and let you know how the last legs of travel end up going.
-----
Narita International is not nearly as easy to depart as it is to arrive in. Can't blame this one on language either, since every sign is in both Japanese and English. It's just not tremendously clear where you're supposed to go. But I still managed to check in two hours and twenty minutes before my flight, grab a bowl of katsu-don (that pork cutlet and egg and rice thing I told you about before), and get through immigration and down here to my gate before boarding. We're supposed to start boarding in about five more minutes, and I'll be off across the Pacific over the course of the shortest night I've ever experienced. I'm not sure exactly the speed we'll be going and what direction at what time and the rotational velocity of the earth, etc., etc., but I think it will only be dark for about three hours, maybe four, and then it will be... today. Again. And the sun will be back up and I'll need to do what I can to stay awake all day to begin my fight against the jetlag that never really managed to get me on the way over here.
-----
Ask any veteran traveler and they will tell you: the only thing better than having someone nice and just the right degree of talkative in the seat next to you is having nothing but a pillow in the seat next to you. The trip back to the US is two hours shorter than the one to Japan was (a hop, practically, at nine hours and twenty minutes), and it looks like I'll be able to do a little sleeping in between my attempts to find level six in my Zelda game.
-----
I have reached a conclusion. Unless I'm up in first class where they have those big huge queen size beds, I'm not going to do any sleeping on a plane ever. Most planes are at least fairly comfortable for sitting in, but they all stink when it comes to sleeping.
Have you ever seen the moon from up here? It's so white. There's nothing in the way. It's worth the price of a plane ticket just to come up here and see this.
-----
Alright. I made it back to the United States after an uneventful flight. I'm in San Francisco now, and my plane leaves in about an hour and a half for the east coast. I'm sure all of you have been on an airplane before, so I guess this concludes the chronicling of my trip. I know these things were long, hastily written, full of typos (because of being hastily written) and boring parts, etc., but for those of you who did read it all, thank you so much. The next time I plan a big crazy trip like this one, I will be sure to keep you in the loop. Please do the same for me. Bye bye.
Kent
A new low
June 19, 2005
I am writing to you from Jonathan's, a restaurant that appears to be near pretty much every station that isn't right in the heart of Tokyo. It's a very popular place, because it's open 24 hours. It feels more like IHOP than any other place I've been to in Japan, but even though Jonathan's does serve pancakes, it's not mostly breakfast. I just ordered a chocolate and banana parfait, and there are a couple of other desserts on the menu, including the terrific-sounding sesame and dumpling parfait. There are also a couple of pizzas and a bunch of Japanese takes on Western food. (That is not lasagna on page four.)
I went to church this morning and then slept and read for a little while this afternoon, so it was close to seven by the time I got out to Ikebukuro. I don't know if I've explained why I'm at Ikebukuro so much. Kiyose, the area where I'm staying, is a little ways outside the center of Tokyo. There is a train line that goes in a big loop around what is basically the heart of Tokyo. This called the Yamanote-sen, which just means the Yamanote Line. Hibiya-sen is the Hibiya Line, Ginza-sen is the Ginza Line, etc. If you've heard of the Japanese bullet trains, they're called the Shinkansen, and Shinkan means something cool like lightning or wizard or lightning cave wizard or something. The Japanese are not afraid to use names that sound like they're from a fantasy novel to name very official sort of things. I mean, the country's shaped like a big dragon, so it makes sense. Anyway, the area inside the Yamanote line is prime real estate for offices, apartments, department stores, etc. Any of the things you want to go see in Tokyo are either out an exit from a station on the Yamanote line or you can transfer to the right line from one of the stations on the Yamanote line. And Ikebukuro is the point where the Seibu line, which comes out to Kiyose, connects to the Yamanote loop. So it's been my jumping-off point each day as I go out to explore the city.
Well, as I was saying, it was close to seven by the time I got out to Ikebukuro, and it was getting dark. The night time in Tokyo involves a lot of neon, a lot of pedestrians, and a very different aspect of the city from what you get during the day. And tonight, that aspect led to what is easily the most ridiculous experience I've had since arriving here. Part of me wishes that I'd had someone with me so that we could laugh ourselves silly over it years from now, but being alone is a lot of what made the experience what it was. I deliberated a bit on whether to even pass this along or not, but in the interest of journalistic integrity, and since I've already ridiculed myself for it more than you will, I decided I should fill you in. So.
Since arriving here, visiting a karaoke place has been on my list of things to do. I saw one (called Bigecho!) the other night in Shinjuku, but I passed it up for some reason. Well, tonight, I walked past a few karaoke places before I finally decided that I needed to go ahead and go in. They couldn't force me to sing, and it would be fun to watch other people sing, which I guess is the point anyway. Now, there are various themes to the karaoke places here, and a lot of them are really fancy, very much unlike the American places that feature karaoke one or two nights of the week or something. There are eighth floor, city view VIP rooms and private rooms with champagne and all sorts of things. So I'm crossing the street when I see that my ship has most likely come in. The admission for this place is 500 yen, which I was assuming was for the freeloaders who come in and watch their buddies sing without ordering anything. This place, the Urban Oasis (an English name that actually sounds good), has nine floors, and the sign out front says that there is a Los Cabos cantina and has all of these pictures of nachos and burritos and stuff. So I figured I'd go in, grab some nachos, watch some businessmen singing, and get off my feet for a little bit. I like Mexican food a lot, so I was looking forward to seeing whether or not Japan managed to screw it up.
I walk in the front door to an impressively posh lobby, and one of the tuxedoed gentlemen at the counter greets me. I go and tell him that I'd like to get some food and karaoke. He explains some stuff in Japanese, which includes the word "karaoke," and I'm like, "Yes, karaoke. Whichever floor is best." He gives another long explanation with some gesturing toward the elevators and again includes the word "karaoke." I smile, nod, and tell him I don't speak Japanese, so he shows me on a calculator that it is 750 yen for an hour. OK, more than I'd planned on, but I'm only here one more day, so bring it on. I pay my 750 yen and another guy in a tuxedo takes me up in the elevator to the sixth floor and shows me to Room 63. Now, you're probably thinking "But Kent, how can they have sixty-three whole karaoke establishments in one building?" I found out very quickly. The friendly guy in the tux opened the door to a soundproofed booth of a room, maybe seven by ten feet, and welcomed me to Room 63, where a TV was playing a live concert by a Japanese Yanni. The L-shaped seating around half the room was leather, the table in the center of the room was some nice wood, and everything there was just as posh as, if not more posh than, than the lobby downstairs. And here I am in shorts (shorts!) and a t-shirt wondering desperately how the heck I'm going to get out of this situation. James (his name probably wasn't James, but I've started giving this name to everyone here because it's easier) gave me a tutorial on how to use the remote to order food and cue up the next song, and by this point, I figured I had already paid, so I might as well settle in and enjoy some karaoke. He left and I ordered a plate of churros, the only Mexican item on the menu and one of the very few items that wasn't frighteningly expensive. It's fun ordering food with a remote. You should try it.
So five minutes later and here I am in a city across the world with very little idea just how I ended up in this room singing "Janie Jones" by The Clash at the top of my lungs and eating Japanese churros. This is about as stupid as it gets. But I challenge you to do any better being 99.9% illiterate in a country with customs as different from your own as they could possibly be. I was determined to make the most of it. So I did "Janie Jones" and "Rudie Can't Fail" by The Clash, "Red Hill Mining Town" by U2 (this is a good one for a soundproofed room: "...you're ALL that's left to hold on to..."), "Time is Running Out" by Muse, "Jackson Cannery" by Ben Folds Five (this is also fun since this is a band that played so strongly in a groove and the glorified MIDI of karaoke rounds everything to the nearest 1/32), and I forget what else. I can say with absolute confidence, though, that I more than got my money's worth. And I can see how if I was a successful and important businessman on an expense account (the actual target demographic of places like Urban Oasis), I might actually enjoy going out with the good old boys once in a while and singing "Last Christmas" like I mean it.
Japanese karaoke has very nice videos to go with it. They all basically revolve around the same idea, and that is the daily life of lots of white, black, hispanic, but not Asian people in big Western cities, specifically London and New York. I'm sure this wouldn't be the case with the videos to Japanese songs, but since I don't know any of those, I got to watch people sitting on park benches and eating subs walking down the street with shopping bags, getting in and out of taxis, and looking at a whole lot of English billboards and storefronts. One of my favorites was a shot of a little girl holding an ice cream cone and crying her eyes out right on the part of the song where it said "say it ain't so-wo-wooo!" Nice touch, guys.
Also, the thing with karaoke, at least the songs I did, is that none of it uses the actual studio track from the record, so you either get a sequenced thing made with a keyboard and drum machine, or you get a recording done by something like the Tonight Show band, who are all great musicians but tend to excise a little of the humanity of a song that normally has a singer. So you get songs that normally have a really small sounding snare drum, for example, and the song's been reconstructed around a gigantic, stadium-filling eighties power ballad snare from a Bryan Adams song. It's a little surreal.
Well, the fellas downstairs were good sports. I got my full hour in, and they greeted me with big smiles when I came back downstairs and somehow managed not to laugh at me until, I'm sure, about six seconds after I was out the front door. As I rounded the corner, I noticed another sign on the same building but around the other side from the door I'd entered. It was pointing down a flight of brightly lit stairs to a basement restaurant: Los Cabos. Needless to say, I wasn't hungry for Mexican food anymore.
Well, tomorrow's my last day here, and then I'm off to the airport on Tuesday morning to start my long trip home. I'll be sure to fill you in on all I do tomorrow and what goes on between here and my last landing in Norfolk in a few days. Take care.
Kent
I am writing to you from Jonathan's, a restaurant that appears to be near pretty much every station that isn't right in the heart of Tokyo. It's a very popular place, because it's open 24 hours. It feels more like IHOP than any other place I've been to in Japan, but even though Jonathan's does serve pancakes, it's not mostly breakfast. I just ordered a chocolate and banana parfait, and there are a couple of other desserts on the menu, including the terrific-sounding sesame and dumpling parfait. There are also a couple of pizzas and a bunch of Japanese takes on Western food. (That is not lasagna on page four.)
I went to church this morning and then slept and read for a little while this afternoon, so it was close to seven by the time I got out to Ikebukuro. I don't know if I've explained why I'm at Ikebukuro so much. Kiyose, the area where I'm staying, is a little ways outside the center of Tokyo. There is a train line that goes in a big loop around what is basically the heart of Tokyo. This called the Yamanote-sen, which just means the Yamanote Line. Hibiya-sen is the Hibiya Line, Ginza-sen is the Ginza Line, etc. If you've heard of the Japanese bullet trains, they're called the Shinkansen, and Shinkan means something cool like lightning or wizard or lightning cave wizard or something. The Japanese are not afraid to use names that sound like they're from a fantasy novel to name very official sort of things. I mean, the country's shaped like a big dragon, so it makes sense. Anyway, the area inside the Yamanote line is prime real estate for offices, apartments, department stores, etc. Any of the things you want to go see in Tokyo are either out an exit from a station on the Yamanote line or you can transfer to the right line from one of the stations on the Yamanote line. And Ikebukuro is the point where the Seibu line, which comes out to Kiyose, connects to the Yamanote loop. So it's been my jumping-off point each day as I go out to explore the city.
Well, as I was saying, it was close to seven by the time I got out to Ikebukuro, and it was getting dark. The night time in Tokyo involves a lot of neon, a lot of pedestrians, and a very different aspect of the city from what you get during the day. And tonight, that aspect led to what is easily the most ridiculous experience I've had since arriving here. Part of me wishes that I'd had someone with me so that we could laugh ourselves silly over it years from now, but being alone is a lot of what made the experience what it was. I deliberated a bit on whether to even pass this along or not, but in the interest of journalistic integrity, and since I've already ridiculed myself for it more than you will, I decided I should fill you in. So.
Since arriving here, visiting a karaoke place has been on my list of things to do. I saw one (called Bigecho!) the other night in Shinjuku, but I passed it up for some reason. Well, tonight, I walked past a few karaoke places before I finally decided that I needed to go ahead and go in. They couldn't force me to sing, and it would be fun to watch other people sing, which I guess is the point anyway. Now, there are various themes to the karaoke places here, and a lot of them are really fancy, very much unlike the American places that feature karaoke one or two nights of the week or something. There are eighth floor, city view VIP rooms and private rooms with champagne and all sorts of things. So I'm crossing the street when I see that my ship has most likely come in. The admission for this place is 500 yen, which I was assuming was for the freeloaders who come in and watch their buddies sing without ordering anything. This place, the Urban Oasis (an English name that actually sounds good), has nine floors, and the sign out front says that there is a Los Cabos cantina and has all of these pictures of nachos and burritos and stuff. So I figured I'd go in, grab some nachos, watch some businessmen singing, and get off my feet for a little bit. I like Mexican food a lot, so I was looking forward to seeing whether or not Japan managed to screw it up.
I walk in the front door to an impressively posh lobby, and one of the tuxedoed gentlemen at the counter greets me. I go and tell him that I'd like to get some food and karaoke. He explains some stuff in Japanese, which includes the word "karaoke," and I'm like, "Yes, karaoke. Whichever floor is best." He gives another long explanation with some gesturing toward the elevators and again includes the word "karaoke." I smile, nod, and tell him I don't speak Japanese, so he shows me on a calculator that it is 750 yen for an hour. OK, more than I'd planned on, but I'm only here one more day, so bring it on. I pay my 750 yen and another guy in a tuxedo takes me up in the elevator to the sixth floor and shows me to Room 63. Now, you're probably thinking "But Kent, how can they have sixty-three whole karaoke establishments in one building?" I found out very quickly. The friendly guy in the tux opened the door to a soundproofed booth of a room, maybe seven by ten feet, and welcomed me to Room 63, where a TV was playing a live concert by a Japanese Yanni. The L-shaped seating around half the room was leather, the table in the center of the room was some nice wood, and everything there was just as posh as, if not more posh than, than the lobby downstairs. And here I am in shorts (shorts!) and a t-shirt wondering desperately how the heck I'm going to get out of this situation. James (his name probably wasn't James, but I've started giving this name to everyone here because it's easier) gave me a tutorial on how to use the remote to order food and cue up the next song, and by this point, I figured I had already paid, so I might as well settle in and enjoy some karaoke. He left and I ordered a plate of churros, the only Mexican item on the menu and one of the very few items that wasn't frighteningly expensive. It's fun ordering food with a remote. You should try it.
So five minutes later and here I am in a city across the world with very little idea just how I ended up in this room singing "Janie Jones" by The Clash at the top of my lungs and eating Japanese churros. This is about as stupid as it gets. But I challenge you to do any better being 99.9% illiterate in a country with customs as different from your own as they could possibly be. I was determined to make the most of it. So I did "Janie Jones" and "Rudie Can't Fail" by The Clash, "Red Hill Mining Town" by U2 (this is a good one for a soundproofed room: "...you're ALL that's left to hold on to..."), "Time is Running Out" by Muse, "Jackson Cannery" by Ben Folds Five (this is also fun since this is a band that played so strongly in a groove and the glorified MIDI of karaoke rounds everything to the nearest 1/32), and I forget what else. I can say with absolute confidence, though, that I more than got my money's worth. And I can see how if I was a successful and important businessman on an expense account (the actual target demographic of places like Urban Oasis), I might actually enjoy going out with the good old boys once in a while and singing "Last Christmas" like I mean it.
Japanese karaoke has very nice videos to go with it. They all basically revolve around the same idea, and that is the daily life of lots of white, black, hispanic, but not Asian people in big Western cities, specifically London and New York. I'm sure this wouldn't be the case with the videos to Japanese songs, but since I don't know any of those, I got to watch people sitting on park benches and eating subs walking down the street with shopping bags, getting in and out of taxis, and looking at a whole lot of English billboards and storefronts. One of my favorites was a shot of a little girl holding an ice cream cone and crying her eyes out right on the part of the song where it said "say it ain't so-wo-wooo!" Nice touch, guys.
Also, the thing with karaoke, at least the songs I did, is that none of it uses the actual studio track from the record, so you either get a sequenced thing made with a keyboard and drum machine, or you get a recording done by something like the Tonight Show band, who are all great musicians but tend to excise a little of the humanity of a song that normally has a singer. So you get songs that normally have a really small sounding snare drum, for example, and the song's been reconstructed around a gigantic, stadium-filling eighties power ballad snare from a Bryan Adams song. It's a little surreal.
Well, the fellas downstairs were good sports. I got my full hour in, and they greeted me with big smiles when I came back downstairs and somehow managed not to laugh at me until, I'm sure, about six seconds after I was out the front door. As I rounded the corner, I noticed another sign on the same building but around the other side from the door I'd entered. It was pointing down a flight of brightly lit stairs to a basement restaurant: Los Cabos. Needless to say, I wasn't hungry for Mexican food anymore.
Well, tomorrow's my last day here, and then I'm off to the airport on Tuesday morning to start my long trip home. I'll be sure to fill you in on all I do tomorrow and what goes on between here and my last landing in Norfolk in a few days. Take care.
Kent
Sushi for breakfast
June 18, 2005
Hello, everyone.
I'm back in Ginza on round two of a search for a shop I've heard about. I explained the address system in a previous e-mail, and if you read that, you understand that it's a nightmare to find anything with just an address. You need landmarks at the very least, or a guide if you can find one. As it happens, my guide book had bad directions for this place and just ended up pointing me to this noodle shop instead.
There are some small eating establishments here that have a very efficient way of doing business. Outside the front door of nearly every restaurant in Tokyo is a display of what the restaurant is serving. It's either picture menus or, and this is more often the case, plastic food that looks so much like the real thing that I'm not sure they didn't just serve up some food and shellac the whole thing. Well, places like the one I’m in now make it even easier for a foreign, non-Japanese-speaking person such as myself. Outside the front door is a vending machine. (The vending machines that line the Japanese landscape are another story in themselves and will be handled in a later entry.) This particular vending machine has a picture and a button for everything the shop sells, and the machine itself sells tickets. So you walk up, figure out what you want to eat, and buy a ticket. When you come inside, all you have to do is hand the girl your ticket, smile and nod like an idiot when she gives you a seat and welcomes you in Japanese, and wait for your food. The concept of the tip is a Western thing (actually, I think it's a North American thing for the most part.), so all you have to do in a place like the one I'm sitting in waiting for my noodles to cool down is just smile and say "arigato gozaimasu" ("thank you") if you know how, and then walk out. For an interesting variation on this whole experience, you can go to one of the places that operates like this but has no pictures on the machine outside. It's just a luck of the draw chance to tempt fate and see what happens. From what I've seen, it doesn't look like this type of place serves anything too scary, so it's not like you're going to get anything that's still moving or might contain a neurotoxin.
Speaking of which, I don't think I've told you about fugu. You know those cute little spiny fish that turn into cute little spiny balloon-looking things when you provoke them? Well, that's fugu. You have to be licensed if you want to prepare and sell fugu, which apparently is so good that people pay a ton of money for it and are quite willing to take their life in their hands to eat it. The reason the government won't just let anyone prepare fugu is that if it's done wrong (I think this involves puncturing a certain organ or removing it incompletely, but I'm not sure), that cute little blowfish turns into a plate of neurotoxin so quick and deadly that getting to the hospital for treatment is not usually an option. Apparently six or seven people a year suffer a painful death from this stuff. There's no way it's that good. I mean, could it possibly be better than red snapper? Of course not.
It's proper etiquette to slurp your noodles here, but you have to be careful. I just flipped broth onto my eyelid. Seriously.
Azusa-san took me over to Kawagoe yesterday, which was a little further than I thought it would be. It was quite a cool little area. The shopping and good deals that I had been promised were certainly to be had in abundance, and it was all very picturesque. So much so, in fact, that I took a whopping one picture ("Count 'em. one.") and left my camcorder at home. I am the man. Since I have no photographic proof, you probably wouldn't believe me if I told you I saw Elvis. Kawagoe is very much free of tourists, so I felt like a well-informed insider being there. The fact of the matter is that I was a well-informed total and complete outsider, but I've been there and you haven't, so allow me my hubris when I say that I now know something about Japan that the average tourist does not.
The appeal of Kawagoe, besides allowing Americans to be elitist jerks and providing them with pretty good deals, is the old-style architecture. Kawagoe, as I understand it, was Kawagoe when Tokyo was still a fishing village called Edo (but I might be wrong about that), and there are lots of old wooden buildings that date back ages and ages and have been converted to storefronts. The Japanese took a little while to figure out that their cultural tendency to huddle and build close together didn't mix too well with their predilection for wooden buildings, so a lot of the very old buildings are wooden, without any kind of nails or anything. They may have added nails since the original wave of construction that put Kawagoe on the map, but the buildings, at leats on the main shopping strip, are still the old style, and they make for very good pictures, a trait which I, as pointed out right up there, failed to exploit. If you want to spend ten yen on candy, eight or ten thousand on clothes, pottery, or knives, or three and four hundred thousand on beautiful furniture and wooden models of traditional Japanese buildings, Kawagoe will find a way for you to leave some money there. I got a lot of bang for my buck there, though, and it was well worth the trip out and the cost of sushi for two on the way back.
-----
I'm now at Ikebukuro upstairs at McDonald's. I had a sudden craving for something American, and the one dollar McChicken is 100 yen here, so it's about 8 or 9 cents cheaper than back home. It tastes basically the same, except there is a lot of black pepper in the mayo. It's very good. This is the first Western establishment I've eaten at since I've been here unless you count 7-Eleven yakitori. I managed to find the shop I was looking for earlier. I got some help from the girl working at the Yanase Ginze Mercedes showroom. Not only was she willing to step away from the $172,000 (yes, that's a dollar sign) S-Class, she actually walked me a block and a half down the street before thanking me for asking her for help and returning back to work. And that's not the slightest bit unusual. People are very very good about helping you find things here, provided they know where it is. Whether they do or not, though, one thing you can count on with the Japanese is that they will tell you something. In this culture, apparently, it is worse to give no help at all than to give bad directions. So you can ask three people for directions to the same place and get the world's top three biggest smiles and get pointed in three different directions. So. When you're in Tokyo and Tokyo's got you confused and turned around (and you really can't experience either without the other), here's a tip. Rather than saying "[Noun]-wa doko desu ka?" like your instinct would tell you (right?), you should say "[Noun]-wa deSHO ka." The part in caps is an O with a line over it, which means that it's stressed, which the vast majority of syllables are not in Japanese. This phrase roughly means "I wonder where [noun] is," which sounds kind of funny if you think about in an English, man-on-the-street situation. "Excuse me. I wonder where the PCH is." I mean, most people would answer it like it's a question, but it's still a funny way of asking. Anyway, this is a little softer and less obligating to a Japanese person, and apparently you're a little more likely to get an "I don't know" out of it.
This morning, I finally made it out to where I intended to go the first day I was here, which was the Tsukiji fish market, officially known as Tokyo Shijo or Tokyo Central Wholesale Market. I could be remembering wrong, but I think I remember reading that one sixth of the world's seafood comes through this place. And I would certainly believe it. I was nowhere near being able to see the end of the stalls and vendors in any direction by the time I left. This one fish market is literally the size of some small towns. It was truly unreal. And the things that apparently are edible were a bit surprising as well. I don't think I saw anything that I had never heard somewhere that people eat, but I definitely saw plenty of things being sold and being eaten that I have never seen in person. And boy, was it a grisly affair! There were fish so big it took three guys to carry them around, and there were very many scroll saws and hand saws and six foot sword-looking knives being used to disassemble these creatures. There were heads and spinal columns and general guts everywhere, and one place looked like someone had put a lit M-80 inside a tuna and run. It was all very appetizing, as you can imagine. Each morning from around 3 AM, this place is packed and incredibly busy. The ships start coming in at 3, and there are people already lined up to buy the larger fish at auctions. The vendors either take the seafood from the boats they own or buy it from the ones they don't, and they take their place in the dizzying madness of the market. Various people come from all over the place to buy the freshest fish to serve in their restaurants and sell at their sushi stands. By about 10 AM, the action slows down, and everyone is on their way out by noon. Of course, that doesn't include the hundreds of vendors that line the streets all through the Tsukiji area selling produce, rubber boots for the fish dealers, kitchen ware, and of course the world's freshest sushi. I stopped and got a piece of tuna that still had synapses firing. Very fresh and very good.
OK, that chicken sandwich was good, and now I'm ready for dinner, but I'm not going to get it here. I can get McDonald's back home any time. I think there's a KFC around the corner...
-----
As it turns out, I couldn't get Mister Donut just any time, so I had to go ahead and get it while the getting was good. Mister Donut is between Kiyose Station and Scott and Kathi's house, and I was fully prepared to save my money and be content with my McDonald's chicken sandwich, but then my plans gave way when I passed by Mister Donut. I got a devil's food donut with coconut on it. Between McDonald's and the ride home, I got a bunch more video of the trains here and the people that ride them, found some great examples of poorly translated English, and enjoyed the sights of Ikebukuro at night. It's a very nice part of Tokyo. Not too fancy and expensive, not too dodgy. Just right. Along with the fish market, which was nearly worth the trip to Japan all by itself (right up there with a kendo lesson), I definitely recommend Ikebukuro for your wandering around aimlessly needs. It's almost as good as watching eels twitch while a guy cuts them up for sushi.
Here are a couple of pictures of the shijo, the one picture of Kawagoe, and a very typical butchering of English on the side of pachinko/slot machine place. Enjoy.
Kent
Hello, everyone.
I'm back in Ginza on round two of a search for a shop I've heard about. I explained the address system in a previous e-mail, and if you read that, you understand that it's a nightmare to find anything with just an address. You need landmarks at the very least, or a guide if you can find one. As it happens, my guide book had bad directions for this place and just ended up pointing me to this noodle shop instead.
There are some small eating establishments here that have a very efficient way of doing business. Outside the front door of nearly every restaurant in Tokyo is a display of what the restaurant is serving. It's either picture menus or, and this is more often the case, plastic food that looks so much like the real thing that I'm not sure they didn't just serve up some food and shellac the whole thing. Well, places like the one I’m in now make it even easier for a foreign, non-Japanese-speaking person such as myself. Outside the front door is a vending machine. (The vending machines that line the Japanese landscape are another story in themselves and will be handled in a later entry.) This particular vending machine has a picture and a button for everything the shop sells, and the machine itself sells tickets. So you walk up, figure out what you want to eat, and buy a ticket. When you come inside, all you have to do is hand the girl your ticket, smile and nod like an idiot when she gives you a seat and welcomes you in Japanese, and wait for your food. The concept of the tip is a Western thing (actually, I think it's a North American thing for the most part.), so all you have to do in a place like the one I'm sitting in waiting for my noodles to cool down is just smile and say "arigato gozaimasu" ("thank you") if you know how, and then walk out. For an interesting variation on this whole experience, you can go to one of the places that operates like this but has no pictures on the machine outside. It's just a luck of the draw chance to tempt fate and see what happens. From what I've seen, it doesn't look like this type of place serves anything too scary, so it's not like you're going to get anything that's still moving or might contain a neurotoxin.
Speaking of which, I don't think I've told you about fugu. You know those cute little spiny fish that turn into cute little spiny balloon-looking things when you provoke them? Well, that's fugu. You have to be licensed if you want to prepare and sell fugu, which apparently is so good that people pay a ton of money for it and are quite willing to take their life in their hands to eat it. The reason the government won't just let anyone prepare fugu is that if it's done wrong (I think this involves puncturing a certain organ or removing it incompletely, but I'm not sure), that cute little blowfish turns into a plate of neurotoxin so quick and deadly that getting to the hospital for treatment is not usually an option. Apparently six or seven people a year suffer a painful death from this stuff. There's no way it's that good. I mean, could it possibly be better than red snapper? Of course not.
It's proper etiquette to slurp your noodles here, but you have to be careful. I just flipped broth onto my eyelid. Seriously.
Azusa-san took me over to Kawagoe yesterday, which was a little further than I thought it would be. It was quite a cool little area. The shopping and good deals that I had been promised were certainly to be had in abundance, and it was all very picturesque. So much so, in fact, that I took a whopping one picture ("Count 'em. one.") and left my camcorder at home. I am the man. Since I have no photographic proof, you probably wouldn't believe me if I told you I saw Elvis. Kawagoe is very much free of tourists, so I felt like a well-informed insider being there. The fact of the matter is that I was a well-informed total and complete outsider, but I've been there and you haven't, so allow me my hubris when I say that I now know something about Japan that the average tourist does not.
The appeal of Kawagoe, besides allowing Americans to be elitist jerks and providing them with pretty good deals, is the old-style architecture. Kawagoe, as I understand it, was Kawagoe when Tokyo was still a fishing village called Edo (but I might be wrong about that), and there are lots of old wooden buildings that date back ages and ages and have been converted to storefronts. The Japanese took a little while to figure out that their cultural tendency to huddle and build close together didn't mix too well with their predilection for wooden buildings, so a lot of the very old buildings are wooden, without any kind of nails or anything. They may have added nails since the original wave of construction that put Kawagoe on the map, but the buildings, at leats on the main shopping strip, are still the old style, and they make for very good pictures, a trait which I, as pointed out right up there, failed to exploit. If you want to spend ten yen on candy, eight or ten thousand on clothes, pottery, or knives, or three and four hundred thousand on beautiful furniture and wooden models of traditional Japanese buildings, Kawagoe will find a way for you to leave some money there. I got a lot of bang for my buck there, though, and it was well worth the trip out and the cost of sushi for two on the way back.
-----
I'm now at Ikebukuro upstairs at McDonald's. I had a sudden craving for something American, and the one dollar McChicken is 100 yen here, so it's about 8 or 9 cents cheaper than back home. It tastes basically the same, except there is a lot of black pepper in the mayo. It's very good. This is the first Western establishment I've eaten at since I've been here unless you count 7-Eleven yakitori. I managed to find the shop I was looking for earlier. I got some help from the girl working at the Yanase Ginze Mercedes showroom. Not only was she willing to step away from the $172,000 (yes, that's a dollar sign) S-Class, she actually walked me a block and a half down the street before thanking me for asking her for help and returning back to work. And that's not the slightest bit unusual. People are very very good about helping you find things here, provided they know where it is. Whether they do or not, though, one thing you can count on with the Japanese is that they will tell you something. In this culture, apparently, it is worse to give no help at all than to give bad directions. So you can ask three people for directions to the same place and get the world's top three biggest smiles and get pointed in three different directions. So. When you're in Tokyo and Tokyo's got you confused and turned around (and you really can't experience either without the other), here's a tip. Rather than saying "[Noun]-wa doko desu ka?" like your instinct would tell you (right?), you should say "[Noun]-wa deSHO ka." The part in caps is an O with a line over it, which means that it's stressed, which the vast majority of syllables are not in Japanese. This phrase roughly means "I wonder where [noun] is," which sounds kind of funny if you think about in an English, man-on-the-street situation. "Excuse me. I wonder where the PCH is." I mean, most people would answer it like it's a question, but it's still a funny way of asking. Anyway, this is a little softer and less obligating to a Japanese person, and apparently you're a little more likely to get an "I don't know" out of it.
This morning, I finally made it out to where I intended to go the first day I was here, which was the Tsukiji fish market, officially known as Tokyo Shijo or Tokyo Central Wholesale Market. I could be remembering wrong, but I think I remember reading that one sixth of the world's seafood comes through this place. And I would certainly believe it. I was nowhere near being able to see the end of the stalls and vendors in any direction by the time I left. This one fish market is literally the size of some small towns. It was truly unreal. And the things that apparently are edible were a bit surprising as well. I don't think I saw anything that I had never heard somewhere that people eat, but I definitely saw plenty of things being sold and being eaten that I have never seen in person. And boy, was it a grisly affair! There were fish so big it took three guys to carry them around, and there were very many scroll saws and hand saws and six foot sword-looking knives being used to disassemble these creatures. There were heads and spinal columns and general guts everywhere, and one place looked like someone had put a lit M-80 inside a tuna and run. It was all very appetizing, as you can imagine. Each morning from around 3 AM, this place is packed and incredibly busy. The ships start coming in at 3, and there are people already lined up to buy the larger fish at auctions. The vendors either take the seafood from the boats they own or buy it from the ones they don't, and they take their place in the dizzying madness of the market. Various people come from all over the place to buy the freshest fish to serve in their restaurants and sell at their sushi stands. By about 10 AM, the action slows down, and everyone is on their way out by noon. Of course, that doesn't include the hundreds of vendors that line the streets all through the Tsukiji area selling produce, rubber boots for the fish dealers, kitchen ware, and of course the world's freshest sushi. I stopped and got a piece of tuna that still had synapses firing. Very fresh and very good.
OK, that chicken sandwich was good, and now I'm ready for dinner, but I'm not going to get it here. I can get McDonald's back home any time. I think there's a KFC around the corner...
-----
As it turns out, I couldn't get Mister Donut just any time, so I had to go ahead and get it while the getting was good. Mister Donut is between Kiyose Station and Scott and Kathi's house, and I was fully prepared to save my money and be content with my McDonald's chicken sandwich, but then my plans gave way when I passed by Mister Donut. I got a devil's food donut with coconut on it. Between McDonald's and the ride home, I got a bunch more video of the trains here and the people that ride them, found some great examples of poorly translated English, and enjoyed the sights of Ikebukuro at night. It's a very nice part of Tokyo. Not too fancy and expensive, not too dodgy. Just right. Along with the fish market, which was nearly worth the trip to Japan all by itself (right up there with a kendo lesson), I definitely recommend Ikebukuro for your wandering around aimlessly needs. It's almost as good as watching eels twitch while a guy cuts them up for sushi.
Here are a couple of pictures of the shijo, the one picture of Kawagoe, and a very typical butchering of English on the side of pachinko/slot machine place. Enjoy.
Kent
The Way of the Sword
June 16, 2005
Call me paduwan. I might have just misspelled it (Sam, I think you're the best equipped to call me out on this one), but a paduwan is a jedi in training, and I have just experienced my first training in the Japanese art of kendo, which was the model for the Star Wars light saber fights. It was awesome.
I spent this morning meeting with a couple of people who work here in Japan but speak perfect English. Cal Johnston is a Canadian that is the headmaster of an English-speaking school just around the corner from where I'm staying, and Jon Reasoner is the son of American missionaries, so he grew up between Japan and the US and speaks fluent Japanese, but if you ran into him back in the US, you'd have no reason to think he's not a hundred percent American in every way. Like his parents, he's also working here as a missionary, so we went to lunch and talked about the mission agency he works for and then went and saw their offices. It was a good look at what a couple of other people are doing here and a nice way to spend the morning. I set up the appointment with Cal a couple of months ago, but his secretary's last day was yesterday, and I think she took the memo with her. So he had no idea I was coming. But I got a tour of the very impressive school and got to talk to him a little about what was going on. And then lunch with Jon was at a pasta place, where I had a dish that would have been pretty normal and Italian (spaghetti with alfredo sauce and ham) if it didn't have a raw egg yolk on top. I stirred that in and really enjoyed lunch.
Kathi meets with a neighbor named Azusa every Thursday to work on English with her, so Azusa was here when I got back. Kathi had told Azusa and her mother that I was coming. Azusa was glad for another person to try some conversation with, and her mother was very grateful that I would take the time to help. Originally, Azusa had said something about bringing her boyfriend along, because he and I apparently have some common interests, but it didn't work out. So we managed to get through a pretty decent conversation. She takes a very long time to put a sentence together, because her vocabulary is impressively large, but she won't let something out until it's right. A bit of a perfectionist. So it can take a while, but it was fun anyway.
From the time I walked into the house and was introduced, I was Kento-san, which naturally made Azusa into Azusa-san. The "-san" ending is like our prefix "Mr." sort of. But it's not just masculine, and you can use it a lot more places. For example, Gaijin-san means Mr. Foreigner, and you could have the Japanese equivalent of Postman-san, Milk Man-san, or Grocery Checker Lady-san. So when you're at the diplomatic level of having just met someone, and actually for a good bit of time afterward and often forever, depending on the person, -san is the way to go. T can't come by itself, so Kent becomes Kento becomes Kento-san.
At 6:30, Azusa and her mother Sugino-san came around to pick up Scott, Kathi, and me and go to the kendo lesson. Sugino-san thanked me profusely for doing what basically translated to taking good care of her daughter, and we made our way down to the gym where the kids come twice a week to learn to whoop up on each other with honor, civility, respect, and precision.
Kendo means "the way of the sword." There are ten ranks of kendo practitioners. Apparently there are a handful of level 7's and level 8's but only a very few (it seemed like maybe four or five) 9's and 10's in the whole country of Japan. And the world outside Japan doesn't count when it comes to kendo, obviously. Not that there are probably kendo grand masters anywhere else anyhow.
The differences between this style of Japanese fencing and the Western (primarily French and Spanish) style of fencing that you see in the Olympics and stuff are pretty large. This is not any sort of comment on which is better. A nice duel between d'Artagnan of The Three Musketeers fame and, say, Tenchu of Playstation fame (now there's a real Samurai!) would probably be riveting and long, with each contestant equally concerned about looking good while trouncing the other. In Western fencing, the weapon is held with one hand, generally with the palm up, depending on what type of grip you're using. The idea is to provide a series of pokes to your opponent and annoy them to death. In kendo, the sword is held with two hands with exactly the kind of grip you'd imagine would be most conducive to swinging straight down onto someone's head. The idea here is, um, pretty much just victory. The stance is also very different. In Western fencing, the back foot is pretty much perpendicular to the front one, with as narrow a target as possible presented to the business end of your opponents sword. You stay low, with most of your movements consisting of planting the back foot and lunging with the front knee and the remainder looking a little like a crab walk. In kendo, the feet are parallel facing straight forward, and all of the steps are executed more like a shuffle, with your feet staying pretty much on the ground as much as the action will allow. The steps are executed in quick pairs (onetwo, onetwo), with either the blow or the top of the upswing coming at the same time as the second footfall, from what I understand.
Sugino-san is one of five teachers that comes in and teaches the 9, 10, and 11 year olds at this place, but tonight, she was excited to take me on as her pupil, and I have video and photographic proof that I was actually doing this stuff. If you've never tried kendo... Well, then you probably haven't ever looked like as much of an idiot as I looked like tonight. Unless you've tried water skiing. Sugino-san understands a handful of English words, apparently, but only speaks five or six words herself. So there was a lot of demonstration and follow-the-leader. I worked on three basic swings.: "mein" (sounds like "main," sort of), which is the big over-the-head, split-down-the-middle stroke, "kote," which is similar but ends lower, attacking (and presumably severing) the wrists, and then "do," which is pretty much a shot to the love handles.
While a ten or eleven year old would be perfectly safe and careful with any real sword, your typical nine year old would not, so all of the students go at it with bamboo practice swords, which can thump pretty good but don't entail all of the mess, death, etc. of real weapons. Sugino-san gave me drills for footwork and the three basic strokes, and I galloped around smacking her sword and thumping her on the head with my bamboo thing. (She had on a mask.) I took a break for a little while and watched the kids practicing and the instructors occasionally pairing off and sparring, and then she pulled me back up and had me hit three or five of the instructors in a row, running past each one. And then, for a grand finale, she called every student and instructor in the whole room to stand around the perimeter, and I galloped around the whole thing three times doing the three types of hits on all 25 or so. It was awesome.
At the end of the lesson, all of the students kneel down on the floor and get the closing words from the three main sensei (teachers). This was the toughest part, because a gym floor is not a comfortable place to kneel, and all three of the sensei were just a little bit long-winded. After all of the thank you's and the bowing and everything, we were done, and we came home for dinner.
We were about halfway through dinner when the doorbell rang. It was Azusa-san and Sugino-san, and they were back with gifts. Since I enjoyed kendo so much, they brought me my very own bamboo practice sword and the matching dagger, as well as four little banner things that you fold a certain way and put on your head under your mask. I was blown away by their generosity, and I did my best to to say so. "Katana o domo arigato gozaimasu." It means "Thank you very much for the sword." and I did it with a big, long, deep bow. I was very, very touched, and I'm now in search of the perfect gift to give in return. Gift giving is a really big deal here, and Sugino-san was honored to be able to do this. It was just so kind. I think I'll go get her a melon.
Earlier in the day, when I was bushwhacking it through some conversation with Azusa-san, I asked her what I should see before I go, and she recommended an area near here with a bunch of old style Japanese shops and stuff. It sounded pretty cool. So during dinner, Sugino-san sort of offered to have Azusa-san show me around, because apparently it's not the easiest area to find. So she's coming by at eleven this morning, and we'll go stumble through some more conversation and buy some cool stuff at good prices. I'll let you know what I find.
Kent
Call me paduwan. I might have just misspelled it (Sam, I think you're the best equipped to call me out on this one), but a paduwan is a jedi in training, and I have just experienced my first training in the Japanese art of kendo, which was the model for the Star Wars light saber fights. It was awesome.
I spent this morning meeting with a couple of people who work here in Japan but speak perfect English. Cal Johnston is a Canadian that is the headmaster of an English-speaking school just around the corner from where I'm staying, and Jon Reasoner is the son of American missionaries, so he grew up between Japan and the US and speaks fluent Japanese, but if you ran into him back in the US, you'd have no reason to think he's not a hundred percent American in every way. Like his parents, he's also working here as a missionary, so we went to lunch and talked about the mission agency he works for and then went and saw their offices. It was a good look at what a couple of other people are doing here and a nice way to spend the morning. I set up the appointment with Cal a couple of months ago, but his secretary's last day was yesterday, and I think she took the memo with her. So he had no idea I was coming. But I got a tour of the very impressive school and got to talk to him a little about what was going on. And then lunch with Jon was at a pasta place, where I had a dish that would have been pretty normal and Italian (spaghetti with alfredo sauce and ham) if it didn't have a raw egg yolk on top. I stirred that in and really enjoyed lunch.
Kathi meets with a neighbor named Azusa every Thursday to work on English with her, so Azusa was here when I got back. Kathi had told Azusa and her mother that I was coming. Azusa was glad for another person to try some conversation with, and her mother was very grateful that I would take the time to help. Originally, Azusa had said something about bringing her boyfriend along, because he and I apparently have some common interests, but it didn't work out. So we managed to get through a pretty decent conversation. She takes a very long time to put a sentence together, because her vocabulary is impressively large, but she won't let something out until it's right. A bit of a perfectionist. So it can take a while, but it was fun anyway.
From the time I walked into the house and was introduced, I was Kento-san, which naturally made Azusa into Azusa-san. The "-san" ending is like our prefix "Mr." sort of. But it's not just masculine, and you can use it a lot more places. For example, Gaijin-san means Mr. Foreigner, and you could have the Japanese equivalent of Postman-san, Milk Man-san, or Grocery Checker Lady-san. So when you're at the diplomatic level of having just met someone, and actually for a good bit of time afterward and often forever, depending on the person, -san is the way to go. T can't come by itself, so Kent becomes Kento becomes Kento-san.
At 6:30, Azusa and her mother Sugino-san came around to pick up Scott, Kathi, and me and go to the kendo lesson. Sugino-san thanked me profusely for doing what basically translated to taking good care of her daughter, and we made our way down to the gym where the kids come twice a week to learn to whoop up on each other with honor, civility, respect, and precision.
Kendo means "the way of the sword." There are ten ranks of kendo practitioners. Apparently there are a handful of level 7's and level 8's but only a very few (it seemed like maybe four or five) 9's and 10's in the whole country of Japan. And the world outside Japan doesn't count when it comes to kendo, obviously. Not that there are probably kendo grand masters anywhere else anyhow.
The differences between this style of Japanese fencing and the Western (primarily French and Spanish) style of fencing that you see in the Olympics and stuff are pretty large. This is not any sort of comment on which is better. A nice duel between d'Artagnan of The Three Musketeers fame and, say, Tenchu of Playstation fame (now there's a real Samurai!) would probably be riveting and long, with each contestant equally concerned about looking good while trouncing the other. In Western fencing, the weapon is held with one hand, generally with the palm up, depending on what type of grip you're using. The idea is to provide a series of pokes to your opponent and annoy them to death. In kendo, the sword is held with two hands with exactly the kind of grip you'd imagine would be most conducive to swinging straight down onto someone's head. The idea here is, um, pretty much just victory. The stance is also very different. In Western fencing, the back foot is pretty much perpendicular to the front one, with as narrow a target as possible presented to the business end of your opponents sword. You stay low, with most of your movements consisting of planting the back foot and lunging with the front knee and the remainder looking a little like a crab walk. In kendo, the feet are parallel facing straight forward, and all of the steps are executed more like a shuffle, with your feet staying pretty much on the ground as much as the action will allow. The steps are executed in quick pairs (onetwo, onetwo), with either the blow or the top of the upswing coming at the same time as the second footfall, from what I understand.
Sugino-san is one of five teachers that comes in and teaches the 9, 10, and 11 year olds at this place, but tonight, she was excited to take me on as her pupil, and I have video and photographic proof that I was actually doing this stuff. If you've never tried kendo... Well, then you probably haven't ever looked like as much of an idiot as I looked like tonight. Unless you've tried water skiing. Sugino-san understands a handful of English words, apparently, but only speaks five or six words herself. So there was a lot of demonstration and follow-the-leader. I worked on three basic swings.: "mein" (sounds like "main," sort of), which is the big over-the-head, split-down-the-middle stroke, "kote," which is similar but ends lower, attacking (and presumably severing) the wrists, and then "do," which is pretty much a shot to the love handles.
While a ten or eleven year old would be perfectly safe and careful with any real sword, your typical nine year old would not, so all of the students go at it with bamboo practice swords, which can thump pretty good but don't entail all of the mess, death, etc. of real weapons. Sugino-san gave me drills for footwork and the three basic strokes, and I galloped around smacking her sword and thumping her on the head with my bamboo thing. (She had on a mask.) I took a break for a little while and watched the kids practicing and the instructors occasionally pairing off and sparring, and then she pulled me back up and had me hit three or five of the instructors in a row, running past each one. And then, for a grand finale, she called every student and instructor in the whole room to stand around the perimeter, and I galloped around the whole thing three times doing the three types of hits on all 25 or so. It was awesome.
At the end of the lesson, all of the students kneel down on the floor and get the closing words from the three main sensei (teachers). This was the toughest part, because a gym floor is not a comfortable place to kneel, and all three of the sensei were just a little bit long-winded. After all of the thank you's and the bowing and everything, we were done, and we came home for dinner.
We were about halfway through dinner when the doorbell rang. It was Azusa-san and Sugino-san, and they were back with gifts. Since I enjoyed kendo so much, they brought me my very own bamboo practice sword and the matching dagger, as well as four little banner things that you fold a certain way and put on your head under your mask. I was blown away by their generosity, and I did my best to to say so. "Katana o domo arigato gozaimasu." It means "Thank you very much for the sword." and I did it with a big, long, deep bow. I was very, very touched, and I'm now in search of the perfect gift to give in return. Gift giving is a really big deal here, and Sugino-san was honored to be able to do this. It was just so kind. I think I'll go get her a melon.
Earlier in the day, when I was bushwhacking it through some conversation with Azusa-san, I asked her what I should see before I go, and she recommended an area near here with a bunch of old style Japanese shops and stuff. It sounded pretty cool. So during dinner, Sugino-san sort of offered to have Azusa-san show me around, because apparently it's not the easiest area to find. So she's coming by at eleven this morning, and we'll go stumble through some more conversation and buy some cool stuff at good prices. I'll let you know what I find.
Kent
Ginza, etc.
June 14, 2005
Lads and lasses.
You knew I'd get here eventually. I am on the fourth floor of the Ginza Apple store. Like I'd come all the way here and not see this place. If you have a fast internet connection, check out this video. Apparently I am not the only one enthusiastic about this place. It is five floors high, with a regular Apple store on the first floor (a fun place in itself; if you’ve ever been to one, you know), a media concentration with video and music and stuff on the second floor, a theater with free product and system demonstrations on the third floor, a software store and internet café here on the fourth floor, and the Apple Studio on the top floor. I’m not sure exactly what that is, but it sounds good.
I spent another morning walking around doing pretty much nothing specific. I did stop in to a little place in Ikebukuro that I get the impression may be sort of the Japanese equivalent of Waffle House or something. I got a thing that’s a bowl of rice with a pork cutlet on top. The cutlet has been battered and fried and then cooked into the middle a fried egg. It’s actually really good. Fast food, certainly, but tasty. This may sound to all of you like a kind of boring way to spend a morning, just walking around. Just walking down the streets here, though, gives you an awful lot to take in, and I could spend a week just walking around and not “doing” much of anything. It’s cool to see how the different areas of town can be very, very different from each other.
For example, Ikebukuro, where I spent the earlier part of my day, has some shopping and the famous Sunshine-dori, which a major pedestrians-only street with pachinko places and theaters and a lot of entertainment. Roppongi Hills, where I went last night, is a very upscale shopping district but also has a good amount of “normal” retail. It’s just down the street from Roppongi, which is absolutely dead during the day and is Tokyo’s biggest source of international night life. If you want to see more than about three or four Westerners together in one place, Roppongi is your place. Unfortunately, it’s also an area with a lot of drunk international tourists flopping around and what can sometimes be the sleazier end of the party scene. So I passed on that. Ginza, where I am now, is sort of like Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills. You can’t afford anything here, but it’s fun to gawk at.
I’m going to a very famous seven-story paper and stationery store when I leave Apple, and I’ll be sure to let you know what the rest of the evening holds. There is a place by Yurakucho station that is supposed to be a hot spot for yakitori stands. Yakitori is basically just a skewer of charcoal-grilled chicken. It’s the big Japanese working man’s food for going out with co-workers at the end of the day. Sort of analogous to wings in the US, I think. Anyway, this spot is underneath the tracks and is supposed to be a real experience. We’ll see.
-----
The Apple store was right outside the exit of Ginza station, so it was pretty much the first thing I saw. I spent most of the remainder of the evening looking at all the expensive shops and noting how many designers have actual boutiques. I don’t know how exactly I was thinking they got their stuff out there without boutiques. Chanel has a whole building here, as do Ferregamo, Bulgari, Burberry, and Brooks Brothers. There are shops for Louis Vuitton, Prada, Anna Sui... You name it, it’s here. I don’t know a whole lot about the fashion world, though I do find it kind of interesting, but I do know expensive stuff when I see it. And when a crowd of couple in tuxes and black dresses are crowded into the Helmut Lang store to toast a new line with complementary glasses of champagne, that’s expense and pretentious behavior like nobody’s business.
My mission in Ginza was to find and probably purchase things from a couple of stores. I don’t know if you know anything about getting around in Japan, but finding anything specific is pretty much impossible if it’s any smaller than Lake Michigan. The address system is pretty difficult. Japan is divided up into 47 prefectures, and each one has a few cities in it, and past that, I forget what happens next. But eventually you get down to an area called a chome, which is roughly like saying “district.” Inside each chome, the various areas (sometimes a block, sometimes a few blocks) are each numbered, and then each individual building has a number. Not in any sort of consecutive order down the street or something random and weird like that. Nope. In the order of construction. Yeah. So 47 might be next to 12 and across the street from 3, and so on. This is all nice, oh, I don’t know, say, when you’re back in the US and don’t have to worry about it. It’s a real big pain when you’re looking for a specific address and it all works on this system and one in every ten buildings actually has its address marked on it. Needless to say, I found neither building and left the area utterly defeated. Shops were starting to close, so I figured it was time to cut my losses and head out.
I went a couple stops down to Yurakucho, left the station and passed another Yoshinoya, the place where I had the mediocre beef the other night. I wasn’t up for eating there again, so I went on down the road. To make a long story short, I wandered for an hour trying to find a yakitori place that wasn’t completely packed full and never did find one. I didn’t even find many yakitori places at all, actually, but the ones I did find were completely full (ippai), as was pretty much every other place. The ones that weren’t had their menu entirely in Japanese. Most places have all of the writing in Japanese and the prices in normal Arabic numbers. And the majority of places have pictures on the menu, too, so all you have to do is point, smile, eat, and pay. But these places even had the numbers in kanji, which I couldn’t quite decipher (I learned the numbers once, and then promptly forgot them). So I wandered back toward the station. I was tempted by a Wendy’s, but I decided not to get American junk food. As it turned out, I took the option of Japanese junk food. Out of hunger, desperation, and a sense of the greater good for my feet, I somehow wound up back at Yoshinoya. Just like the first time I ate there, I didn’t really mean to or want to, it just kind of crept up and made itself available at the right moment. The food was not quite as good as the first time. Kent zero, Yoshinoya two.
It’s pretty cool that after a day of not really accomplishing much of what I set out to do, I still feel like it was a very worthwhile and productive day. I mean, I’m on the other side of the world, and I got to see more of Tokyo today! How often can you really say that, you know? It’s such a privilege to be here.
My feet hurt very, very badly right now. So badly, in fact, that A) I think I might have broken a bone in my left foot, and B) I’m considering staying in tomorrow to revive my feet. This many hours of pavement every day is no good.
Alright, I’ve decided that jetlag is a myth, but I’m still sleepy after a long day. So good night to you all, thanks for reading, and be good! Here are a couple of pictures I forgot to send in the last e-mail (Tokyo Tower and the view from the government building) and a shot of the Apple store.
Kent
Lads and lasses.
You knew I'd get here eventually. I am on the fourth floor of the Ginza Apple store. Like I'd come all the way here and not see this place. If you have a fast internet connection, check out this video. Apparently I am not the only one enthusiastic about this place. It is five floors high, with a regular Apple store on the first floor (a fun place in itself; if you’ve ever been to one, you know), a media concentration with video and music and stuff on the second floor, a theater with free product and system demonstrations on the third floor, a software store and internet café here on the fourth floor, and the Apple Studio on the top floor. I’m not sure exactly what that is, but it sounds good.
I spent another morning walking around doing pretty much nothing specific. I did stop in to a little place in Ikebukuro that I get the impression may be sort of the Japanese equivalent of Waffle House or something. I got a thing that’s a bowl of rice with a pork cutlet on top. The cutlet has been battered and fried and then cooked into the middle a fried egg. It’s actually really good. Fast food, certainly, but tasty. This may sound to all of you like a kind of boring way to spend a morning, just walking around. Just walking down the streets here, though, gives you an awful lot to take in, and I could spend a week just walking around and not “doing” much of anything. It’s cool to see how the different areas of town can be very, very different from each other.
For example, Ikebukuro, where I spent the earlier part of my day, has some shopping and the famous Sunshine-dori, which a major pedestrians-only street with pachinko places and theaters and a lot of entertainment. Roppongi Hills, where I went last night, is a very upscale shopping district but also has a good amount of “normal” retail. It’s just down the street from Roppongi, which is absolutely dead during the day and is Tokyo’s biggest source of international night life. If you want to see more than about three or four Westerners together in one place, Roppongi is your place. Unfortunately, it’s also an area with a lot of drunk international tourists flopping around and what can sometimes be the sleazier end of the party scene. So I passed on that. Ginza, where I am now, is sort of like Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills. You can’t afford anything here, but it’s fun to gawk at.
I’m going to a very famous seven-story paper and stationery store when I leave Apple, and I’ll be sure to let you know what the rest of the evening holds. There is a place by Yurakucho station that is supposed to be a hot spot for yakitori stands. Yakitori is basically just a skewer of charcoal-grilled chicken. It’s the big Japanese working man’s food for going out with co-workers at the end of the day. Sort of analogous to wings in the US, I think. Anyway, this spot is underneath the tracks and is supposed to be a real experience. We’ll see.
-----
The Apple store was right outside the exit of Ginza station, so it was pretty much the first thing I saw. I spent most of the remainder of the evening looking at all the expensive shops and noting how many designers have actual boutiques. I don’t know how exactly I was thinking they got their stuff out there without boutiques. Chanel has a whole building here, as do Ferregamo, Bulgari, Burberry, and Brooks Brothers. There are shops for Louis Vuitton, Prada, Anna Sui... You name it, it’s here. I don’t know a whole lot about the fashion world, though I do find it kind of interesting, but I do know expensive stuff when I see it. And when a crowd of couple in tuxes and black dresses are crowded into the Helmut Lang store to toast a new line with complementary glasses of champagne, that’s expense and pretentious behavior like nobody’s business.
My mission in Ginza was to find and probably purchase things from a couple of stores. I don’t know if you know anything about getting around in Japan, but finding anything specific is pretty much impossible if it’s any smaller than Lake Michigan. The address system is pretty difficult. Japan is divided up into 47 prefectures, and each one has a few cities in it, and past that, I forget what happens next. But eventually you get down to an area called a chome, which is roughly like saying “district.” Inside each chome, the various areas (sometimes a block, sometimes a few blocks) are each numbered, and then each individual building has a number. Not in any sort of consecutive order down the street or something random and weird like that. Nope. In the order of construction. Yeah. So 47 might be next to 12 and across the street from 3, and so on. This is all nice, oh, I don’t know, say, when you’re back in the US and don’t have to worry about it. It’s a real big pain when you’re looking for a specific address and it all works on this system and one in every ten buildings actually has its address marked on it. Needless to say, I found neither building and left the area utterly defeated. Shops were starting to close, so I figured it was time to cut my losses and head out.
I went a couple stops down to Yurakucho, left the station and passed another Yoshinoya, the place where I had the mediocre beef the other night. I wasn’t up for eating there again, so I went on down the road. To make a long story short, I wandered for an hour trying to find a yakitori place that wasn’t completely packed full and never did find one. I didn’t even find many yakitori places at all, actually, but the ones I did find were completely full (ippai), as was pretty much every other place. The ones that weren’t had their menu entirely in Japanese. Most places have all of the writing in Japanese and the prices in normal Arabic numbers. And the majority of places have pictures on the menu, too, so all you have to do is point, smile, eat, and pay. But these places even had the numbers in kanji, which I couldn’t quite decipher (I learned the numbers once, and then promptly forgot them). So I wandered back toward the station. I was tempted by a Wendy’s, but I decided not to get American junk food. As it turned out, I took the option of Japanese junk food. Out of hunger, desperation, and a sense of the greater good for my feet, I somehow wound up back at Yoshinoya. Just like the first time I ate there, I didn’t really mean to or want to, it just kind of crept up and made itself available at the right moment. The food was not quite as good as the first time. Kent zero, Yoshinoya two.
It’s pretty cool that after a day of not really accomplishing much of what I set out to do, I still feel like it was a very worthwhile and productive day. I mean, I’m on the other side of the world, and I got to see more of Tokyo today! How often can you really say that, you know? It’s such a privilege to be here.
My feet hurt very, very badly right now. So badly, in fact, that A) I think I might have broken a bone in my left foot, and B) I’m considering staying in tomorrow to revive my feet. This many hours of pavement every day is no good.
Alright, I’ve decided that jetlag is a myth, but I’m still sleepy after a long day. So good night to you all, thanks for reading, and be good! Here are a couple of pictures I forgot to send in the last e-mail (Tokyo Tower and the view from the government building) and a shot of the Apple store.
Kent
From high atop the 45th floor (and other points)
June 13, 2005
I am currently facing north in one of the two observatories that occupy the 45th floor of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building near Tochomae station in Shinjuku-ku. I know this because there are things up by the ceiling to tell you so that you can spot famous landmarks and sights in Tokyo. Up until recently, and I'm not sure exactly how recently, since the word is relative in a place like Japan, Tokyo building and zoning ordinances placed a good amount of restriction on building height because of the earthquakes that are very common in this area of the world. A couple of decades ago, there were advancements in structural design and such, so now there can be buildings like this one. For the most part, the rest of Tokyo hasn't kept up, so this works out well. It has made for an incredibly expansive landscape (the greater Tokyo area is over twice the size of the greater New York area) and very few obstructions to the view from this tower.
There is a little café up here, and I'm sitting at a table sharing this floor with about 60 other people. It's still pretty peaceful. One thing I've noticed here is that even large groups of people in big public places like this tend to be very good at keeping it down. Maybe it's just my perspective following a year of the daily company of twenty students who were not good at keeping it down. It's cool, though. Areas like this observatory, the busiest trains, and even the platforms in the stations to some extent, are all pretty peaceful affairs. I'm getting some understanding of why Westerners, Americans specifically, have our reputation abroad as loud, clumsy spacehogs. The atmosphere here makes you very conscious of how loudly you set your glass down, how you conduct yourself on the trains, etc. I'm already very conspicuous as a white guy in Japan (this is the first place I've seen more than two or maybe three non-Asians at once), and those of you who know me well know that I'm not a really big fan of being conspicuous. It's not that it's been at all unpleasant, it's just made me conscious of how I handle myself.
In contrast to the quiet nature of most of the people I've encountered so far, though, is the fact that all sorts of things talk. The elevator talks. The escalator talks. The train ticket machines talk. The trains themselves, of course, talk. ("Sunira..." This means "Next stop..." and you'll hear it, well, between every stop.) I've heard that the toilets talk in some places, but I have yet to encounter this. I think one of them laughed at me today when it was out of toilet paper, though. The nice thing is that packs of tissues are one of the most popular forms of advertising here, with people handing them out on the sidewalk outside stations pretty often. So it wasn't too big of a stretch to improvise on that one.
The other really cool thing in the stations, and I'll make sure to get this on tape at some point, is that instead of just going ding-ding-ding or buzzzz or what have you, the platforms play little songs when the doors are about to close or a train is about to arrive. There are several different songs that I've heard so far, and some are better than others, but they're all pretty darn catchy. They have the makings of a good pop song if somebody
just did a good arrangement. One of them reminded me of "Gracie" by Ben Folds enough that I thought maybe he had ripped it off for a minute. I listened closely the next time I heard that one, and it turns out that it's pretty different and Ben Folds is still a creative genius.
Similarly, I woke up this morning to the sound of the ice cream man, and I got kind of excited. But then I looked out the window, and it actually wasn't the ice cream man. It was the garbage truck. It plays songs too. Catchy ones. Quality ones. Kathi said, and I'm serious here, that the one in the next neighborhood over plays "It's a Small World." This is something I need to hear.
I had a very surreal experience today in Ueno Park. I went to see the zoo, but as it turns out, pretty much all of Japan is closed on Monday, and the zoo was not an exception. The museums, the zoo, the fish market, and something else big that I'm forgetting, are all closed on Mondays. So I just walked around the park for a little while, which was nice. I think I like Yoyogi Park better, though, just because more of Ueno is paved in big, wide
plazas. Both are nice, though. Anyway, as I was walking, two guys came up to me. And they spoke Japanese. And I spoke Japanese. We really connected. The conversation went something like this:
Guys: Excuse me.
Me: Hi. (This sounds like "hai," the Japanese word for yes, which cued Guys to start speaking Japanese instead of more English.)
Guys: [While pointing on their map to the lake at Ueno Park] something something doko desu ka? ("Noun-wa doko desu ka?" Means "Where is the noun?")
Me: [not understanding the "Do you know" part or the "lake" part but having been blessed with an innate sense of whether or not someone is holding something in front of my face and pointing] Ah, so. (I couldn't resist.) [pointing down the path] Asoko desu. (This means "it's over there.")
These Asian travelers and myself looked each other in the eye, aghast at the depth of fraternity established so quickly, the birds stopped singing, traffic slowed to a crawl, and a sumo somewhere stopped in mid-toss (I don't recommend this). Such was the gravity of the moment. They went on their way after thanking me and bowing. And asking where I was from. In English. It was really something.
This building closes soon, so I'm leaving. I'll get back to you later.
-----
I'm writing to you now from Tokyo Tower, which is like Paris's Eiffel Tower, only a little bit better, apparently. The brochure has some tower data and points out very specifically that this tower is higher than the Eiffel Tower by 13 meters. And then, just to rub it all in the faces of the French, the brochure goes on to say that Tokyo Tower weighs only 4000 tons, as compared the 7000 that the Eiffel Tower weighs. This is, and I quote, "the result of remarkable advance in steel manufacturing and construction technology." I don't know about you, but this sounds like a fair bit of boasting to me. But hey, it's their tower, let 'em brag.
I walked over here with three Americans. I was watching a huge crew tear down the stuff from the "War of the Worlds" world premiere (apparently Tom Cruise and Steven Spielberg had just been there minutes before) when these
three came up and asked if I knew how to walk to Tokyo Tower. I had been wondering myself, and I told them as much. They invited me to walk with them, so we set out and went over winding streets, through alleyways, and down what was basically a cliff before arriving here at the tower. (This last part was Rob's idea, and since he went first and there was clearly no retrieving him, it was either follow him down or walk away and let the city eat him.) We actually asked a Japanese guy right at the beginning of our little trek, and he laughed at us when we told him we wanted to walk. Right out loud. And then we made it. If there was any chance in the world of finding that guy again and letting him know that it can be done after all, I think we'd all four be up for making the trip back to say so. As it is, we'd never find him, and we have things to do anyway. I have no idea what, but I'm sure it's something. I haven't had dinner yet, so maybe that'll be it. Rob, Melissa, and Pinder (a guy whose nickname is Pinder) were willing to pay $14 for a ticket to the observatory. I wasn't, so I'm waiting down here on the first floor.
-----
Well, the remainder of the evening involved lots of going in the wrong direction, asking a few people who didn't improve things, and then realizing that between the four of us, a taxi would be pretty cheap. So we took a taxi back to the Mori tower where we started for two bucks each and spent some time in a really cool bookstore before I left to catch the trains out of the city before I was stranded in Tokyo.
I'm not sure what tomorrow will hold. I think the zoo will be open, and Sony has a cool technology center here, apparently. I'll be sure to fill you in on everything and send some good pictures. Good night.
Kent
I am currently facing north in one of the two observatories that occupy the 45th floor of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building near Tochomae station in Shinjuku-ku. I know this because there are things up by the ceiling to tell you so that you can spot famous landmarks and sights in Tokyo. Up until recently, and I'm not sure exactly how recently, since the word is relative in a place like Japan, Tokyo building and zoning ordinances placed a good amount of restriction on building height because of the earthquakes that are very common in this area of the world. A couple of decades ago, there were advancements in structural design and such, so now there can be buildings like this one. For the most part, the rest of Tokyo hasn't kept up, so this works out well. It has made for an incredibly expansive landscape (the greater Tokyo area is over twice the size of the greater New York area) and very few obstructions to the view from this tower.
There is a little café up here, and I'm sitting at a table sharing this floor with about 60 other people. It's still pretty peaceful. One thing I've noticed here is that even large groups of people in big public places like this tend to be very good at keeping it down. Maybe it's just my perspective following a year of the daily company of twenty students who were not good at keeping it down. It's cool, though. Areas like this observatory, the busiest trains, and even the platforms in the stations to some extent, are all pretty peaceful affairs. I'm getting some understanding of why Westerners, Americans specifically, have our reputation abroad as loud, clumsy spacehogs. The atmosphere here makes you very conscious of how loudly you set your glass down, how you conduct yourself on the trains, etc. I'm already very conspicuous as a white guy in Japan (this is the first place I've seen more than two or maybe three non-Asians at once), and those of you who know me well know that I'm not a really big fan of being conspicuous. It's not that it's been at all unpleasant, it's just made me conscious of how I handle myself.
In contrast to the quiet nature of most of the people I've encountered so far, though, is the fact that all sorts of things talk. The elevator talks. The escalator talks. The train ticket machines talk. The trains themselves, of course, talk. ("Sunira..." This means "Next stop..." and you'll hear it, well, between every stop.) I've heard that the toilets talk in some places, but I have yet to encounter this. I think one of them laughed at me today when it was out of toilet paper, though. The nice thing is that packs of tissues are one of the most popular forms of advertising here, with people handing them out on the sidewalk outside stations pretty often. So it wasn't too big of a stretch to improvise on that one.
The other really cool thing in the stations, and I'll make sure to get this on tape at some point, is that instead of just going ding-ding-ding or buzzzz or what have you, the platforms play little songs when the doors are about to close or a train is about to arrive. There are several different songs that I've heard so far, and some are better than others, but they're all pretty darn catchy. They have the makings of a good pop song if somebody
just did a good arrangement. One of them reminded me of "Gracie" by Ben Folds enough that I thought maybe he had ripped it off for a minute. I listened closely the next time I heard that one, and it turns out that it's pretty different and Ben Folds is still a creative genius.
Similarly, I woke up this morning to the sound of the ice cream man, and I got kind of excited. But then I looked out the window, and it actually wasn't the ice cream man. It was the garbage truck. It plays songs too. Catchy ones. Quality ones. Kathi said, and I'm serious here, that the one in the next neighborhood over plays "It's a Small World." This is something I need to hear.
I had a very surreal experience today in Ueno Park. I went to see the zoo, but as it turns out, pretty much all of Japan is closed on Monday, and the zoo was not an exception. The museums, the zoo, the fish market, and something else big that I'm forgetting, are all closed on Mondays. So I just walked around the park for a little while, which was nice. I think I like Yoyogi Park better, though, just because more of Ueno is paved in big, wide
plazas. Both are nice, though. Anyway, as I was walking, two guys came up to me. And they spoke Japanese. And I spoke Japanese. We really connected. The conversation went something like this:
Guys: Excuse me.
Me: Hi. (This sounds like "hai," the Japanese word for yes, which cued Guys to start speaking Japanese instead of more English.)
Guys: [While pointing on their map to the lake at Ueno Park] something something doko desu ka? ("Noun-wa doko desu ka?" Means "Where is the noun?")
Me: [not understanding the "Do you know" part or the "lake" part but having been blessed with an innate sense of whether or not someone is holding something in front of my face and pointing] Ah, so. (I couldn't resist.) [pointing down the path] Asoko desu. (This means "it's over there.")
These Asian travelers and myself looked each other in the eye, aghast at the depth of fraternity established so quickly, the birds stopped singing, traffic slowed to a crawl, and a sumo somewhere stopped in mid-toss (I don't recommend this). Such was the gravity of the moment. They went on their way after thanking me and bowing. And asking where I was from. In English. It was really something.
This building closes soon, so I'm leaving. I'll get back to you later.
-----
I'm writing to you now from Tokyo Tower, which is like Paris's Eiffel Tower, only a little bit better, apparently. The brochure has some tower data and points out very specifically that this tower is higher than the Eiffel Tower by 13 meters. And then, just to rub it all in the faces of the French, the brochure goes on to say that Tokyo Tower weighs only 4000 tons, as compared the 7000 that the Eiffel Tower weighs. This is, and I quote, "the result of remarkable advance in steel manufacturing and construction technology." I don't know about you, but this sounds like a fair bit of boasting to me. But hey, it's their tower, let 'em brag.
I walked over here with three Americans. I was watching a huge crew tear down the stuff from the "War of the Worlds" world premiere (apparently Tom Cruise and Steven Spielberg had just been there minutes before) when these
three came up and asked if I knew how to walk to Tokyo Tower. I had been wondering myself, and I told them as much. They invited me to walk with them, so we set out and went over winding streets, through alleyways, and down what was basically a cliff before arriving here at the tower. (This last part was Rob's idea, and since he went first and there was clearly no retrieving him, it was either follow him down or walk away and let the city eat him.) We actually asked a Japanese guy right at the beginning of our little trek, and he laughed at us when we told him we wanted to walk. Right out loud. And then we made it. If there was any chance in the world of finding that guy again and letting him know that it can be done after all, I think we'd all four be up for making the trip back to say so. As it is, we'd never find him, and we have things to do anyway. I have no idea what, but I'm sure it's something. I haven't had dinner yet, so maybe that'll be it. Rob, Melissa, and Pinder (a guy whose nickname is Pinder) were willing to pay $14 for a ticket to the observatory. I wasn't, so I'm waiting down here on the first floor.
-----
Well, the remainder of the evening involved lots of going in the wrong direction, asking a few people who didn't improve things, and then realizing that between the four of us, a taxi would be pretty cheap. So we took a taxi back to the Mori tower where we started for two bucks each and spent some time in a really cool bookstore before I left to catch the trains out of the city before I was stranded in Tokyo.
I'm not sure what tomorrow will hold. I think the zoo will be open, and Sony has a cool technology center here, apparently. I'll be sure to fill you in on everything and send some good pictures. Good night.
Kent
Muggiest place on earth
June 10, 2005
It's a good thing it's not particularly hot in Japan this time of year, because the humidity here is pretty much visible. You'd have to be here to believe it. I'm sitting in front of some fountain in Shibuya, a ritzy shopping-and-looking-impressive sort of district. Here's a picture. I have no idea if this particular fountain has any significance, but there is a distinct shortage of place to sit down in Tokyo, and this place actually has a little terraced sort of thing around the fountain for people that have been on their feet all day and need to sit down before they lose their minds. Which pretty much describes me. It's about quarter to seven and already getting dark. The cars have their headlights on, and the stores are putting on their outside lights as well. It feels only a little bit later than it is, and I slept until close to seven this morning, so I think I'm just about functional. A guy today told me to expect it to "really hit around day four." Well, hey, thanks. You should expect nightmares not tomorrow night, but the one after.
I went to Tokyo Baptist Church this morning. In addition to a desire to see a Japanese church in action, I wanted to go because this is an international church (over forty countries represented) conducted in English, and they had a coffee hangout deal afterwards. I figured I might be able to meet an English-speaking person or two. As it turns out, I met three Americans, two of whom were named James, a guy from the UK, also named James, and two Japanese guys who spoke English. Oh, and a Swiss guy named Hans, which I think means James. I had a really crazy experience with an older Japanese man named Kenjy. He looked like he was around sixty, but Japanese people get to be about six hundred before they actually look old, so who knows. Anyway, he came up and said hello and then tried out his English on me for a little while. He was very friendly, but also very difficult to understand. Let me give you a very quick rundown on the pronunciation challenges the Japanese face when attempting to speak English. Number one: this one's obvious; "L" and "R." There is no "L" sound in Japanese, and the "R" is sort of somewhere between an "L," an "R," and a "D." Number two: there is no "F" sound in Japanese. This one sometimes becomes "P" and sometimes becomes "H." Obviously, I have no idea the rules that dictate which is which.
The light in the fountain just turned on. Or got brighter. I forget.
Number three: the only consonant sound that can appear by itself in Japanese is "N." Every other consonant sound is followed by one of the five vowel sounds, which makes basically any imported word about four times as long in Japanese. Take "McDonald's" for example. You can't put two consonants in a row, so it becomes what sounds like "Makudonarudosu." I could probably come up with a host of other issues the make the gap between Japanese and English very wide, but this gives you a good enough idea.
Now, what made my "conversation" with Kenjy interesting was his choice of topics. I kid you not, within the first three minutes, he goes, "Patika pysisa?" Particle physics. It's difficult enough (OK, it's actually completely beyond me) to talk stations and train stops and weather. I sort of expect certain English words, so it's not nearly as much work to figure out which ones just came out. But this guy started talking about Einstein (I made an explosion gesture up by my head and said, "His hair was crazy.") and aeronautic engineering and all of this. Apparently he was a pilot and aeronautic engineer who worked on the design teams for the X33, the F-15, and the 777. Which would intrigue me to no end if I could understand a word of what was being said. I felt like I was missing out on so much.
After drinking coffee and playing with my empty paper cup for about 25 minutes or so, Toshi, one of the Japanese guys that I had by this point nicknamed James, invited me to go along to lunch with a few people. We went down the street to a placed called Monsoon. It serves food from several Asian countries that aren't Japan, and it was really, really good. On the menu to the left of each item was a flag to tell you whether the item was from Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand, Laos (and of course I was like, "Sweet! Laotian food!" Sadly, the moment was lost on every last person in the restaurant.), Korea, etc. I had the best green curry chicken ever. Ever.
Hans and I walked around the corner ten minutes or so to his stop, and I set off from Shibuya Mall -I mean station- to walk around and be a tourist-y dork taking pictures and video of really normal stuff.
The first place I went was Yoyogi park, where I spent a couple of hours. The area just outside the park is a really popular spot for teenagers that get in groups and wear costumes. Gothic stuff, sailor uniforms, radioactivity-handling suits (is there a name for these?) with floppy disks in the clear plastic pockets, insanely frilly fairy tale garb... There were a lot of groups represented. There was also a handful of people playing guitars and singing, but without any sort of tip jar or empty coffee cups. Apparently it was just for the experience of playing. Which was nice and much easier to watch for a few minutes at a time.
Inside the park, there were people skating, a rockabilly club of some sort that were dancing around and playing air instruments (I'm serious) to 50's rock and roll (which featured a lot of lyrics about being "rock and roll"), and about fifty rock bands that had brought their equipment out to play for everyone and maybe get some notoriety. Yoyogi Park is ridiculously huge, and I have no idea how far it goes. I stopped after after walking
continuously in pretty much one direction for probably thirty minutes. There was no end in sight, and I was afraid I'd never find my way back out. This is an incredibly fun place to watch all sorts of people having a ton of fun on their one day of the week that they aren't at work. There were Frisbees flying all over the place, dogs playing catch, people playing catch, pet rabbits just sitting there, a couple of drum circles, and basically just a huge crowd having a great Sunday afternoon. On the way out, I saw my favorite thing of the whole day, which I'm including a short video of because I'd never be able to do it justice trying to describe it. This guy was doing a combination of DJing, dancing to techno, and speed painting. It was awesome. He'd pick one of the spectators, cue up some beats on the boom box he was wearing over his shoulder on a long strap, and start a portrait in black paint. At the end, he would add highlights with white, gold, and light blue pastels. It was awesome. I got a couple pictures as well as about ten minutes of video. The next time you're over this direction, swing by Yoyogi park and look for this guy.
From the park, I continued down Koen-dori, which means park street. But don't be misled. This isn't actually a named street. There are like six of those in all of Tokyo, and heaven forbid they start naming more and make getting around an easy thing. I didn't capitalize it up there because that's not a name. It's just what it was. Anyway, I came down here to the main shopping area of Shibuya, and the first I did was visit the eight floor Tower Records store, which was tall and crowded and awesome. I love record stores, especially big old monstrosities like this one, and it was on my mental list of things to see at some point. I came across it by accident, but I was glad I did.
After Tower, I wandered around to Seibu, which I had heard of but was not at all ready for. There is a train line called Seibu here, too, so I guess it means something significant in Japanese. But the maybe not. Ikebukuro, which is a major station in town, means "River Bag," and Ueno –I think it's Ueno; it's one of the big ones- means, if I remember right the definition given me, "Top Grass." So you could basically call it Sod Station. Anyway, Seibu consists of four buildings. The footprint of each one, the actual square footage of each floor, is about like if you put your average American mall Sears and your average American mall JC Penney together. Each of the buildings has eight floors and a roof area, and three of the four (I think) have at least one basement as well. Each floor is
completely open, with each vendor in its own area separated by walkways between them. There is everything from school supplies to art supplies to furniture to a little bit of food, but most of the space is occupied by way way upscale clothing companies. One Hugo Boss suits and stuff sort of store, a Hugo Boss Green and Orange label store (Boss has different label colors for their different lines, as I understand it; green and orange are the "after work" but still insanely expensive lines), a Burberry store, a Lacoste store, a Dolce store, a Prada store, and on and on and on it went. There were $193 t-shirts, $220 jeans, $560 linen blazers, $685 shoes, $37,000 necklaces, a pair of earrings for 82 grand. You know, basically just one big bonanza of impulse buys. On the way down to this fountain, I went by the Levi's store, and they had 505's, which I happen to like a great deal and which I paid 30 dollars for in a "normal" store, for 200 dollars. This type of fashion is just a world I do not live in, but I figured as long as I'm in a portion of the globe I don't belong in, I might as well go look at some of these things.
It's now 7:30, and I have a lot more that I want to do tonight, and that brings you up to right now anyway, so I'll finish this later.
-----
OK. 11:30, and I couldn't really put a definite finger on anything particular that I did between the fountain and this train back to Kiyose, which is my stop. I pretty much just wandered around, took a bunch of pictures, watched some people play some crazy arcade games that I forgot to take pictures of, and wandered around some more. My feet hurt. Two things of note, though.
Japanese fast food may be different from American fast food, but it's still fast food. When it comes to a Japanese meal for 420 yen ($4), it pays to know what you're getting yourself into. And I haven't cashed in yet. If I hadn't been very very hungry by the time I dropped into Yoshinoya for a bowl of rice with stir fried beef on top, I would probably have considered it sub-par. Maybe even poor. There are some parts of a cut of beef that you just can't cook into submission. These parts should be buried with the rest of the cow, in my opinion.
I also ran into a couple of guys who were out from Canada filming some field reporting for something having to do with Steven Spielberg and Tom Cruise and "War of the Worlds." The reporter for You Talk Daily (their show, which I hadn't heard of) was doing a few takes of "Thanks Veronica! I've just landed in Tokyo with Tom Cruise and Steven Spielberg, who are just minutes away from starting the "War of the Worlds" world tour! Of course, he was lying, unless he's been using the International Date Line to travel through time and space. You can do that, you know.
-----
Alrighty. I am back at home after a long-ish walk from the station, and I believe I will grab these pictures from my camera and capture the video from my camcorder tomorrow and send this then, because I am tired. And because I am an Apple snob, you'll have to to get Quicktime (from Apple.com) to see the video. Thanks for tuning in, props if you made it all the way through, and you'll get another chance later if you didn't.
Kent
It's a good thing it's not particularly hot in Japan this time of year, because the humidity here is pretty much visible. You'd have to be here to believe it. I'm sitting in front of some fountain in Shibuya, a ritzy shopping-and-looking-impressive sort of district. Here's a picture. I have no idea if this particular fountain has any significance, but there is a distinct shortage of place to sit down in Tokyo, and this place actually has a little terraced sort of thing around the fountain for people that have been on their feet all day and need to sit down before they lose their minds. Which pretty much describes me. It's about quarter to seven and already getting dark. The cars have their headlights on, and the stores are putting on their outside lights as well. It feels only a little bit later than it is, and I slept until close to seven this morning, so I think I'm just about functional. A guy today told me to expect it to "really hit around day four." Well, hey, thanks. You should expect nightmares not tomorrow night, but the one after.
I went to Tokyo Baptist Church this morning. In addition to a desire to see a Japanese church in action, I wanted to go because this is an international church (over forty countries represented) conducted in English, and they had a coffee hangout deal afterwards. I figured I might be able to meet an English-speaking person or two. As it turns out, I met three Americans, two of whom were named James, a guy from the UK, also named James, and two Japanese guys who spoke English. Oh, and a Swiss guy named Hans, which I think means James. I had a really crazy experience with an older Japanese man named Kenjy. He looked like he was around sixty, but Japanese people get to be about six hundred before they actually look old, so who knows. Anyway, he came up and said hello and then tried out his English on me for a little while. He was very friendly, but also very difficult to understand. Let me give you a very quick rundown on the pronunciation challenges the Japanese face when attempting to speak English. Number one: this one's obvious; "L" and "R." There is no "L" sound in Japanese, and the "R" is sort of somewhere between an "L," an "R," and a "D." Number two: there is no "F" sound in Japanese. This one sometimes becomes "P" and sometimes becomes "H." Obviously, I have no idea the rules that dictate which is which.
The light in the fountain just turned on. Or got brighter. I forget.
Number three: the only consonant sound that can appear by itself in Japanese is "N." Every other consonant sound is followed by one of the five vowel sounds, which makes basically any imported word about four times as long in Japanese. Take "McDonald's" for example. You can't put two consonants in a row, so it becomes what sounds like "Makudonarudosu." I could probably come up with a host of other issues the make the gap between Japanese and English very wide, but this gives you a good enough idea.
Now, what made my "conversation" with Kenjy interesting was his choice of topics. I kid you not, within the first three minutes, he goes, "Patika pysisa?" Particle physics. It's difficult enough (OK, it's actually completely beyond me) to talk stations and train stops and weather. I sort of expect certain English words, so it's not nearly as much work to figure out which ones just came out. But this guy started talking about Einstein (I made an explosion gesture up by my head and said, "His hair was crazy.") and aeronautic engineering and all of this. Apparently he was a pilot and aeronautic engineer who worked on the design teams for the X33, the F-15, and the 777. Which would intrigue me to no end if I could understand a word of what was being said. I felt like I was missing out on so much.
After drinking coffee and playing with my empty paper cup for about 25 minutes or so, Toshi, one of the Japanese guys that I had by this point nicknamed James, invited me to go along to lunch with a few people. We went down the street to a placed called Monsoon. It serves food from several Asian countries that aren't Japan, and it was really, really good. On the menu to the left of each item was a flag to tell you whether the item was from Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand, Laos (and of course I was like, "Sweet! Laotian food!" Sadly, the moment was lost on every last person in the restaurant.), Korea, etc. I had the best green curry chicken ever. Ever.
Hans and I walked around the corner ten minutes or so to his stop, and I set off from Shibuya Mall -I mean station- to walk around and be a tourist-y dork taking pictures and video of really normal stuff.
The first place I went was Yoyogi park, where I spent a couple of hours. The area just outside the park is a really popular spot for teenagers that get in groups and wear costumes. Gothic stuff, sailor uniforms, radioactivity-handling suits (is there a name for these?) with floppy disks in the clear plastic pockets, insanely frilly fairy tale garb... There were a lot of groups represented. There was also a handful of people playing guitars and singing, but without any sort of tip jar or empty coffee cups. Apparently it was just for the experience of playing. Which was nice and much easier to watch for a few minutes at a time.
Inside the park, there were people skating, a rockabilly club of some sort that were dancing around and playing air instruments (I'm serious) to 50's rock and roll (which featured a lot of lyrics about being "rock and roll"), and about fifty rock bands that had brought their equipment out to play for everyone and maybe get some notoriety. Yoyogi Park is ridiculously huge, and I have no idea how far it goes. I stopped after after walking
continuously in pretty much one direction for probably thirty minutes. There was no end in sight, and I was afraid I'd never find my way back out. This is an incredibly fun place to watch all sorts of people having a ton of fun on their one day of the week that they aren't at work. There were Frisbees flying all over the place, dogs playing catch, people playing catch, pet rabbits just sitting there, a couple of drum circles, and basically just a huge crowd having a great Sunday afternoon. On the way out, I saw my favorite thing of the whole day, which I'm including a short video of because I'd never be able to do it justice trying to describe it. This guy was doing a combination of DJing, dancing to techno, and speed painting. It was awesome. He'd pick one of the spectators, cue up some beats on the boom box he was wearing over his shoulder on a long strap, and start a portrait in black paint. At the end, he would add highlights with white, gold, and light blue pastels. It was awesome. I got a couple pictures as well as about ten minutes of video. The next time you're over this direction, swing by Yoyogi park and look for this guy.
From the park, I continued down Koen-dori, which means park street. But don't be misled. This isn't actually a named street. There are like six of those in all of Tokyo, and heaven forbid they start naming more and make getting around an easy thing. I didn't capitalize it up there because that's not a name. It's just what it was. Anyway, I came down here to the main shopping area of Shibuya, and the first I did was visit the eight floor Tower Records store, which was tall and crowded and awesome. I love record stores, especially big old monstrosities like this one, and it was on my mental list of things to see at some point. I came across it by accident, but I was glad I did.
After Tower, I wandered around to Seibu, which I had heard of but was not at all ready for. There is a train line called Seibu here, too, so I guess it means something significant in Japanese. But the maybe not. Ikebukuro, which is a major station in town, means "River Bag," and Ueno –I think it's Ueno; it's one of the big ones- means, if I remember right the definition given me, "Top Grass." So you could basically call it Sod Station. Anyway, Seibu consists of four buildings. The footprint of each one, the actual square footage of each floor, is about like if you put your average American mall Sears and your average American mall JC Penney together. Each of the buildings has eight floors and a roof area, and three of the four (I think) have at least one basement as well. Each floor is
completely open, with each vendor in its own area separated by walkways between them. There is everything from school supplies to art supplies to furniture to a little bit of food, but most of the space is occupied by way way upscale clothing companies. One Hugo Boss suits and stuff sort of store, a Hugo Boss Green and Orange label store (Boss has different label colors for their different lines, as I understand it; green and orange are the "after work" but still insanely expensive lines), a Burberry store, a Lacoste store, a Dolce store, a Prada store, and on and on and on it went. There were $193 t-shirts, $220 jeans, $560 linen blazers, $685 shoes, $37,000 necklaces, a pair of earrings for 82 grand. You know, basically just one big bonanza of impulse buys. On the way down to this fountain, I went by the Levi's store, and they had 505's, which I happen to like a great deal and which I paid 30 dollars for in a "normal" store, for 200 dollars. This type of fashion is just a world I do not live in, but I figured as long as I'm in a portion of the globe I don't belong in, I might as well go look at some of these things.
It's now 7:30, and I have a lot more that I want to do tonight, and that brings you up to right now anyway, so I'll finish this later.
-----
OK. 11:30, and I couldn't really put a definite finger on anything particular that I did between the fountain and this train back to Kiyose, which is my stop. I pretty much just wandered around, took a bunch of pictures, watched some people play some crazy arcade games that I forgot to take pictures of, and wandered around some more. My feet hurt. Two things of note, though.
Japanese fast food may be different from American fast food, but it's still fast food. When it comes to a Japanese meal for 420 yen ($4), it pays to know what you're getting yourself into. And I haven't cashed in yet. If I hadn't been very very hungry by the time I dropped into Yoshinoya for a bowl of rice with stir fried beef on top, I would probably have considered it sub-par. Maybe even poor. There are some parts of a cut of beef that you just can't cook into submission. These parts should be buried with the rest of the cow, in my opinion.
I also ran into a couple of guys who were out from Canada filming some field reporting for something having to do with Steven Spielberg and Tom Cruise and "War of the Worlds." The reporter for You Talk Daily (their show, which I hadn't heard of) was doing a few takes of "Thanks Veronica! I've just landed in Tokyo with Tom Cruise and Steven Spielberg, who are just minutes away from starting the "War of the Worlds" world tour! Of course, he was lying, unless he's been using the International Date Line to travel through time and space. You can do that, you know.
-----
Alrighty. I am back at home after a long-ish walk from the station, and I believe I will grab these pictures from my camera and capture the video from my camcorder tomorrow and send this then, because I am tired. And because I am an Apple snob, you'll have to to get Quicktime (from Apple.com) to see the video. Thanks for tuning in, props if you made it all the way through, and you'll get another chance later if you didn't.
Kent
Hello again.
June 9, 2005
Hello again everybody.
If you missed the first of these missives, it's nothing to worry about since it was all a bunch of domestic blah blah blah. Here is where the international part of my trip starts. I'm on another long flight and will, consequently, be writing another long e-mail to all of you. No apologies for the length; I have ambitions of some day being a novelist. But please don't feel like you have to read every word; skip any parts you want to, because I understand that I write things that are too long. I enjoyed spending some time in San Francisco with Andy and his family, and now I'm on my way across the ocean to the Land of the Rising Sun. I got up this morning and went to San Francisco International, where I made a couple of Stupid Traveler comments. (Occasionally, when you're only into the airport as deep as the front doors, you'll run into people who, believe it or not, are not taking the same flight you are and will neither relate to nor be able to comment on your particular itinerary. And thus were born my Stupid Traveler comments.) They let me on my flight anyway, and it was just a short hop down to Los Angeles.
This was the second time in my life that I've landed in a city that spreads out as far as you can see, and it's a weird feeling. Four million people is a very large amount of humans, but when you see something like Los Angeles or Sao Paulo, you almost think "Really? Just four million?" I've included the best picture I could get from the plane for your reference. After landing somewhere apparently on the outskirts of the city and taxiing all the way back in (we passed some sweet looking Qantas planes, which was
cool, but good grief, was that a lot of driving for a vehicle intended for the air), I got off and noticed that LAX looks much nicer than I expected.
Smooth landing at LAX, and my connection, fortunately, was in the same terminal. I was supposed to have forty minutes to make the connection, but we ended up a little early into LAX, so there was plenty of time to take a seat, talk to my brother and find out that my NEW NIECE was born this morning. Her name -and my advance apologies for possibly misspelling one or both names, because phones aren't good at these things- is Riley Katherine. Very exciting! Christopher and Bethany are parents. That's too cool.
I'm on a Boeing 777 (picture enclosed), and Mr. Miyagi's sensei is somewhere on board. I think, and I realize that I am speaking as a stereotyping animal of a Westerner here, that East Asians are the coolest-looking old people. It's just something about the snow white beard and deep wisdom and the impression I get that the guy could Zen-whip me to death without moving (but won't) that's very awe-inspiring.
I'm so ecstatic to finally be under way across the Pacific. This trip has sort of been a few years in the making. I've had the ticket since February, at least, and it's been quite a test of patience waiting for it to finally come.
_____
The flight map channel on the little mini-TV in front of me says we're exactly four hours from landing in Tokyo, and it also says that we're just about to cross the International Date Line within probably fifteen minutes. Oop. Yeah. There it was. That was a weird sensation. OK, seriously, the IDL (I think I'm allowed to use such familiar terms, having now traveled over it personally) is an interesting invention. It makes you go back in time when traveling east. Observe the following from my return itinerary:
Tokyo to Los Angeles:
American Airlines flight number 170 departing from Tokyo at 4:25 PM on June 21st, arriving at 10:10 AM on June 21st.
This, as I'm sure you're already thinking, is wild. If there are enough jiggawatts to pull it off at 88 miles per hour, we should certainly be able to pull it off at 536, which we're currently going.
American Airlines' sushi and sashimi are surprisingly edible. I mean, sure there's the incentive of having a discriminating audience on board, a good 70% of the passengers being Japanese, but I was still somewhat impressed. Not being, honestly, the world's foremost connoisseur of sushi, I'm easily impressed. Then again, we're only seven miles from the ocean, so it could be pretty fresh.
-----
We're now a little over 600 miles from Tokyo (this is practically bike riding distance, really, though not from our current location), and we have one more imaginary line to cross before entering the airspace of Japan Standard Time. Japan doesn't observe daylight savings time, so I don't know why the word "standard" is included, but then there are an awful lot of things I don't understand. There is quite a little twinge of excitement that comes with looking at the progress monitor when it gets to the zoomed-in view and seeing Wuhan, Seoul, Sapporo, and of course Tokyo, where it said Bering Strait just a few hours ago. Our travel trajectory was something like a lazy left field fly ball, up and over, and we're at the point now where Griffey has seen the pitch and swing, run down the landing spot, planted himself, and is just about to stick his glove into the air and prepare for the catch. Flying in an arc like this, while probably extending our total flight time slightly, decreases our chances of a water landing dramatically, and there are those who take great comfort in this when riding a 777, which has only two engines, according to my brother Scott, whose familiarity and expertise with aviation and aircraft rivals Billy Graham's grasp of the four spiritual laws. And that's the brother that doesn't work for the airline.
Things are pure white outside in every direction, and the cabin feels like it. It's making me a little dizzy to try and focus on the squirming computer screen during the fluff cycle here. We're landing in just over an hour. And American Airlines also serves very good fresh pineapple and passable udon noodles.
-----
So apparently a typhoon was arriving the same time as me, and the Japanese weather service also announced today the official beginning of Tsuyu, which is the rainy season. Things could always change, but it looks like Tuesday will be the non-rainy day of my stay here, with the rest of the time varying between a sneeze and a, well, a typhoon, which is not so much like a hurricane as it is what Virginians call a nor'easter. Should make for nice atmosphere on my journeys.
After way too much traveling, I am finally here. It's 9 PM, and I feel about like I should at 9 PM after pretty much a full day of traveling. We'll see how the hands of jetlag fate deal with me. I'll write again tomorrow, probably. Take care.
Kent
Hello again everybody.
If you missed the first of these missives, it's nothing to worry about since it was all a bunch of domestic blah blah blah. Here is where the international part of my trip starts. I'm on another long flight and will, consequently, be writing another long e-mail to all of you. No apologies for the length; I have ambitions of some day being a novelist. But please don't feel like you have to read every word; skip any parts you want to, because I understand that I write things that are too long. I enjoyed spending some time in San Francisco with Andy and his family, and now I'm on my way across the ocean to the Land of the Rising Sun. I got up this morning and went to San Francisco International, where I made a couple of Stupid Traveler comments. (Occasionally, when you're only into the airport as deep as the front doors, you'll run into people who, believe it or not, are not taking the same flight you are and will neither relate to nor be able to comment on your particular itinerary. And thus were born my Stupid Traveler comments.) They let me on my flight anyway, and it was just a short hop down to Los Angeles.
This was the second time in my life that I've landed in a city that spreads out as far as you can see, and it's a weird feeling. Four million people is a very large amount of humans, but when you see something like Los Angeles or Sao Paulo, you almost think "Really? Just four million?" I've included the best picture I could get from the plane for your reference. After landing somewhere apparently on the outskirts of the city and taxiing all the way back in (we passed some sweet looking Qantas planes, which was
cool, but good grief, was that a lot of driving for a vehicle intended for the air), I got off and noticed that LAX looks much nicer than I expected.
Smooth landing at LAX, and my connection, fortunately, was in the same terminal. I was supposed to have forty minutes to make the connection, but we ended up a little early into LAX, so there was plenty of time to take a seat, talk to my brother and find out that my NEW NIECE was born this morning. Her name -and my advance apologies for possibly misspelling one or both names, because phones aren't good at these things- is Riley Katherine. Very exciting! Christopher and Bethany are parents. That's too cool.
I'm on a Boeing 777 (picture enclosed), and Mr. Miyagi's sensei is somewhere on board. I think, and I realize that I am speaking as a stereotyping animal of a Westerner here, that East Asians are the coolest-looking old people. It's just something about the snow white beard and deep wisdom and the impression I get that the guy could Zen-whip me to death without moving (but won't) that's very awe-inspiring.
I'm so ecstatic to finally be under way across the Pacific. This trip has sort of been a few years in the making. I've had the ticket since February, at least, and it's been quite a test of patience waiting for it to finally come.
_____
The flight map channel on the little mini-TV in front of me says we're exactly four hours from landing in Tokyo, and it also says that we're just about to cross the International Date Line within probably fifteen minutes. Oop. Yeah. There it was. That was a weird sensation. OK, seriously, the IDL (I think I'm allowed to use such familiar terms, having now traveled over it personally) is an interesting invention. It makes you go back in time when traveling east. Observe the following from my return itinerary:
Tokyo to Los Angeles:
American Airlines flight number 170 departing from Tokyo at 4:25 PM on June 21st, arriving at 10:10 AM on June 21st.
This, as I'm sure you're already thinking, is wild. If there are enough jiggawatts to pull it off at 88 miles per hour, we should certainly be able to pull it off at 536, which we're currently going.
American Airlines' sushi and sashimi are surprisingly edible. I mean, sure there's the incentive of having a discriminating audience on board, a good 70% of the passengers being Japanese, but I was still somewhat impressed. Not being, honestly, the world's foremost connoisseur of sushi, I'm easily impressed. Then again, we're only seven miles from the ocean, so it could be pretty fresh.
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We're now a little over 600 miles from Tokyo (this is practically bike riding distance, really, though not from our current location), and we have one more imaginary line to cross before entering the airspace of Japan Standard Time. Japan doesn't observe daylight savings time, so I don't know why the word "standard" is included, but then there are an awful lot of things I don't understand. There is quite a little twinge of excitement that comes with looking at the progress monitor when it gets to the zoomed-in view and seeing Wuhan, Seoul, Sapporo, and of course Tokyo, where it said Bering Strait just a few hours ago. Our travel trajectory was something like a lazy left field fly ball, up and over, and we're at the point now where Griffey has seen the pitch and swing, run down the landing spot, planted himself, and is just about to stick his glove into the air and prepare for the catch. Flying in an arc like this, while probably extending our total flight time slightly, decreases our chances of a water landing dramatically, and there are those who take great comfort in this when riding a 777, which has only two engines, according to my brother Scott, whose familiarity and expertise with aviation and aircraft rivals Billy Graham's grasp of the four spiritual laws. And that's the brother that doesn't work for the airline.
Things are pure white outside in every direction, and the cabin feels like it. It's making me a little dizzy to try and focus on the squirming computer screen during the fluff cycle here. We're landing in just over an hour. And American Airlines also serves very good fresh pineapple and passable udon noodles.
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So apparently a typhoon was arriving the same time as me, and the Japanese weather service also announced today the official beginning of Tsuyu, which is the rainy season. Things could always change, but it looks like Tuesday will be the non-rainy day of my stay here, with the rest of the time varying between a sneeze and a, well, a typhoon, which is not so much like a hurricane as it is what Virginians call a nor'easter. Should make for nice atmosphere on my journeys.
After way too much traveling, I am finally here. It's 9 PM, and I feel about like I should at 9 PM after pretty much a full day of traveling. We'll see how the hands of jetlag fate deal with me. I'll write again tomorrow, probably. Take care.
Kent
On my way...
June 7, 2005
Subject: On my way…
Hello everyone-
I'm pretty sure that if you're receiving this, you already knew that I was making a trip to Tokyo this summer. If I somehow neglected to tell you, then hey guess what. Yeah, that. I finished my job at VCA yesterday (happy birthday; a summer break is certainly a nice present!) and started my journey early this morning. No down time for me!
I am currently in the second leg of what you could refer to either as an octopod or two pairs of twins, depending on which you think is the less ridiculous and ill-advised use of metaphor. I'm under no illusion that either is particularly winning or clever, but I think I like the twins thing better because of how my trip is arranged. Two trips of two legs each, and in two directions, making eight flights altogether.
At 6:00 this morning, after nearly missing a flight due to my stupidity (more on that presently), I left Norfolk for Pittsburgh, and I'm now somewhere over that is so flat that my best guess is that it's Ohio. This is the first of the pair of twins that will take me to Asia. I'm currently en route to San Francisco, where I will spend today with my awesome friend Andy, his awesome girlfriend Kirsten, and Kirsten's awesome roommate Lindsey. Andy's family is also awesome, and I'll be staying with them tonight and tomorrow night. I'm actually in their house sending this to them, so my apologies if that's awkward. They live just outside San Francisco in a small-ish Bay Area town called Livermore. Home of Donut Wheel. This is where I spent Spring Break last year. It will be a great time, I'm sure. On Thursday morning, I leave San Francisco for Los Angeles, to make a quick connection and get on my way across the Pacific for Tokyo. Coming back will be the reverse, except that I will connect through Charlotte between California and Norfolk instead of Pittsburgh.
So I got up to my gate at 5:38 this morning, and there were probably 20 or 25 people waiting at the gate. So I assumed they were all waiting for flight #3981 to Pittsburgh. At about 5:50, the man behind the counter got on the speaker and said, "Final call for boarding for flight number thirty-nine eighty-one to Pittsburgh. Waiting for passengers Dean, Blahdeeblah, Walter, and Blahblooblee." (These were the real names of these two, in case you were wondering.) So I hopped over to the counter and said, "Hey! I'm Kent Walter and I'm going to Tokyo!" And then I added "...by way of Pittsburgh." So he let me out onto the tarmac without even scanning the barcode on my boarding pass (which gave me a ton of ideas while I was waiting to take off... The possibilities...) and everything was cool. And there three other people getting on with me, so I'm sure the dirty looks from the other passengers were directed toward them, because I'm much too good-looking and magnetic in my demeanor. :)
I've heard that you can't actually walk on clouds, but as I was looking out the window sometimes down at the occasional glimpses of Penn's Woods but mostly at the hills and valleys of white that looked about six feet away until every now and then when that speck all the way down there showed up and I realized that it was the shadow of our plane, I wondered if this ability has been empirically disproved. (Holy cow, that was one sentence.) They just look so solid. It looked like the green foothills thousands of feet below the clouds had been cloned, lifted, and then bleached out. I love window seats. Especially on an exit row.
I just got up to use the vicious, blood-sucking monstrosity that is an airplane bathroom (flush one and you'll understand) about an hour ago, and I noticed that there is actually a flatter area of the world than Ohio. The captain announced, as the guy on the aisle was doing his best to let me out, that we were somewhere around an area known as Blue Mesa, Kansas. Yeesh. It looked like the world's biggest quilt fresh off the world's biggest ironing board. Flat and segmented into nice little squares. And I think I saw an honest to goodness crop circle. I'm as serious as I am intrigued. So that was a while ago, and about five minutes ago, he came on again and said that we are about eighty miles from Pueblo, Colorado and that we would have great views of the Rocky Mountains to the north and south. The only problem with a view that you're eighty miles from being able to see on a west-bound flight is that it's due west, which is a tough direction to look in through a plane window. But I am a patient lad (more now than ever), and now I am trying to take in the fact that there are snow-covered mountains off to my left at roughly the same latitude as the 92-degree day that temporarily disabled my car just yesterday. Wild.
San Francisco International is great fun to land in. If you haven't done it, I highly recommend it. You fly over the very famous San Francisco Bay, with all its multi-colored inlets and crazy canal-looking things, flying lower and lower on your descent, and then at the last possible second, when you swear you can't be more than a foot away from plunging into a scene from a movie and pulling the red string on the yellow vest and sliding down the yellow wing slide that no one has ever actually seen, you finally see some pavement out the window and everything is safe. It would be kind of ironic, I guess, making it past an entire country and then splashing everyone to their doom ten minutes from the destination. Anyway, I'm on the way across the bridge with Andy and Kirsten right now, and it's very nice to be on the ground and back in San Francisco. I love this place.
OK, in case the incongruous gaps in time and location haven't clued you in, I've written this to you in bits and pieces between pages of my book and stuff and in the middle of a five-hour flight with my computer plugged in to the armrest and my headphones on. Plus the view. Not a bad way to travel. But I'm not sure what kind of time I'll have each day when I'm in Japan, so this could very well be the only book-length e-mail I send. I don't really know. Any of you who used to get my monthly novels know that I'm more than capable of inflicting massive amounts of drivel on you in a short amount of time. Just as in the era of those periodic newsletters, though, I will make no apologies for the length. Especially since I'll be in a place that I'm pretty sure none of you have ever been and you have no excuse not to be interested.
I'm BCCing these e-mails to everyone, but if there's someone else you think I probably am not sending this along to that you know would be patient enough to put up with my rambling and would be interested in some pictures and maybe a video clip or two, let me know. Also, because I'm planning on sending a handful of videos to you in the next couple of weeks, any of you that have dial-up internet or can't handle file attachments up to about 4 MB, please let me know so I don't mess anything up in your e-mail. Microsoft is an awfully big monster to have on your bad side... I'll write again soon with the first of the pictures. Here are Andy and Kirsten to whet your appetite for those. Talk to you soon.
Kent
Subject: On my way…
Hello everyone-
I'm pretty sure that if you're receiving this, you already knew that I was making a trip to Tokyo this summer. If I somehow neglected to tell you, then hey guess what. Yeah, that. I finished my job at VCA yesterday (happy birthday; a summer break is certainly a nice present!) and started my journey early this morning. No down time for me!
I am currently in the second leg of what you could refer to either as an octopod or two pairs of twins, depending on which you think is the less ridiculous and ill-advised use of metaphor. I'm under no illusion that either is particularly winning or clever, but I think I like the twins thing better because of how my trip is arranged. Two trips of two legs each, and in two directions, making eight flights altogether.
At 6:00 this morning, after nearly missing a flight due to my stupidity (more on that presently), I left Norfolk for Pittsburgh, and I'm now somewhere over that is so flat that my best guess is that it's Ohio. This is the first of the pair of twins that will take me to Asia. I'm currently en route to San Francisco, where I will spend today with my awesome friend Andy, his awesome girlfriend Kirsten, and Kirsten's awesome roommate Lindsey. Andy's family is also awesome, and I'll be staying with them tonight and tomorrow night. I'm actually in their house sending this to them, so my apologies if that's awkward. They live just outside San Francisco in a small-ish Bay Area town called Livermore. Home of Donut Wheel. This is where I spent Spring Break last year. It will be a great time, I'm sure. On Thursday morning, I leave San Francisco for Los Angeles, to make a quick connection and get on my way across the Pacific for Tokyo. Coming back will be the reverse, except that I will connect through Charlotte between California and Norfolk instead of Pittsburgh.
So I got up to my gate at 5:38 this morning, and there were probably 20 or 25 people waiting at the gate. So I assumed they were all waiting for flight #3981 to Pittsburgh. At about 5:50, the man behind the counter got on the speaker and said, "Final call for boarding for flight number thirty-nine eighty-one to Pittsburgh. Waiting for passengers Dean, Blahdeeblah, Walter, and Blahblooblee." (These were the real names of these two, in case you were wondering.) So I hopped over to the counter and said, "Hey! I'm Kent Walter and I'm going to Tokyo!" And then I added "...by way of Pittsburgh." So he let me out onto the tarmac without even scanning the barcode on my boarding pass (which gave me a ton of ideas while I was waiting to take off... The possibilities...) and everything was cool. And there three other people getting on with me, so I'm sure the dirty looks from the other passengers were directed toward them, because I'm much too good-looking and magnetic in my demeanor. :)
I've heard that you can't actually walk on clouds, but as I was looking out the window sometimes down at the occasional glimpses of Penn's Woods but mostly at the hills and valleys of white that looked about six feet away until every now and then when that speck all the way down there showed up and I realized that it was the shadow of our plane, I wondered if this ability has been empirically disproved. (Holy cow, that was one sentence.) They just look so solid. It looked like the green foothills thousands of feet below the clouds had been cloned, lifted, and then bleached out. I love window seats. Especially on an exit row.
I just got up to use the vicious, blood-sucking monstrosity that is an airplane bathroom (flush one and you'll understand) about an hour ago, and I noticed that there is actually a flatter area of the world than Ohio. The captain announced, as the guy on the aisle was doing his best to let me out, that we were somewhere around an area known as Blue Mesa, Kansas. Yeesh. It looked like the world's biggest quilt fresh off the world's biggest ironing board. Flat and segmented into nice little squares. And I think I saw an honest to goodness crop circle. I'm as serious as I am intrigued. So that was a while ago, and about five minutes ago, he came on again and said that we are about eighty miles from Pueblo, Colorado and that we would have great views of the Rocky Mountains to the north and south. The only problem with a view that you're eighty miles from being able to see on a west-bound flight is that it's due west, which is a tough direction to look in through a plane window. But I am a patient lad (more now than ever), and now I am trying to take in the fact that there are snow-covered mountains off to my left at roughly the same latitude as the 92-degree day that temporarily disabled my car just yesterday. Wild.
San Francisco International is great fun to land in. If you haven't done it, I highly recommend it. You fly over the very famous San Francisco Bay, with all its multi-colored inlets and crazy canal-looking things, flying lower and lower on your descent, and then at the last possible second, when you swear you can't be more than a foot away from plunging into a scene from a movie and pulling the red string on the yellow vest and sliding down the yellow wing slide that no one has ever actually seen, you finally see some pavement out the window and everything is safe. It would be kind of ironic, I guess, making it past an entire country and then splashing everyone to their doom ten minutes from the destination. Anyway, I'm on the way across the bridge with Andy and Kirsten right now, and it's very nice to be on the ground and back in San Francisco. I love this place.
OK, in case the incongruous gaps in time and location haven't clued you in, I've written this to you in bits and pieces between pages of my book and stuff and in the middle of a five-hour flight with my computer plugged in to the armrest and my headphones on. Plus the view. Not a bad way to travel. But I'm not sure what kind of time I'll have each day when I'm in Japan, so this could very well be the only book-length e-mail I send. I don't really know. Any of you who used to get my monthly novels know that I'm more than capable of inflicting massive amounts of drivel on you in a short amount of time. Just as in the era of those periodic newsletters, though, I will make no apologies for the length. Especially since I'll be in a place that I'm pretty sure none of you have ever been and you have no excuse not to be interested.
I'm BCCing these e-mails to everyone, but if there's someone else you think I probably am not sending this along to that you know would be patient enough to put up with my rambling and would be interested in some pictures and maybe a video clip or two, let me know. Also, because I'm planning on sending a handful of videos to you in the next couple of weeks, any of you that have dial-up internet or can't handle file attachments up to about 4 MB, please let me know so I don't mess anything up in your e-mail. Microsoft is an awfully big monster to have on your bad side... I'll write again soon with the first of the pictures. Here are Andy and Kirsten to whet your appetite for those. Talk to you soon.
Kent
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