She's a Character

There are various jokes about people getting tattoos of Chinese characters only to find out later they mean something entirely unexpected.

The appeal of a foreign character tattoo makes some sense to me. It's not instantly decipherable to most people in the US (forgetting for a minute that nearly 1/6 of the world's population can read Chinese). "Mother" or even "Semper Fi" convey instant meaning.

But strength written in Chinese script provides a little bit of intrigue. Hey! What does that mean?

I suppose it also provides that sense of public privacy that's all the rage. Like posting a private tweet about your bowel movements.

My Chinese class has a native helper, Jia Jun, that I took to a Rockies game on Tuesday. We drank baishi kele (Pepsi, he's only 19) in the Rockpile while I explained the little that I know of baseball rules and he taught me how to shout "Bendan!" (literally, "dumb egg") after a bad call.

Sometime in the 7th inning some girls from the nosebleeds made their way down to the end of our row. I noticed that one of them had Chinese characters tattooed on her inner wrist.

We're studying nationality in class right now. I'd just learned that the word for "American" is mei guo ren (美国人) which literally means "beautiful land person."

Mei ren must mean beautiful person. "Beauty," Jia Jun corrected me.

He laughed and said the Chinese generally consider it weird that people get Han characters tattooed. He removed the pocket translator from his backpack and began thumbing furiously. "There aren't many people in China with tattoos of English words."

Smiling, he handed the translator to me and asked if I knew the English word that was on screen.

That word: Narcissist.

Cause/Effect

I saw this sign at a temple in Ayutthaya, Thailand but its wisdom reaches farther.

Japan Wrapup and Pictures

Digital photography is great because it lets you take lots of pictures without worrying about the scarcity of film.

Digital photography is a pain because it lets you take lots of pictures without worrying about the quality of image.

When I got back to San Francisco, I had something like 2500 images stored on my laptop from the trip. After I caught up on sleep, I began the tedious task of sorting the images (which mostly meant deleting the bad and/or out-of-focus ones). So far I've made it through March 22nd which was my time in Japan and makes a nice break to post.

Why Japan?
Japan became a travel destination because of Spain. More specifically, because of a friend I made in Granada. Ayumi stayed at the same hostel I did and clearly shared a passion for travel (she was in Europe for two weeks and would also head to Australia for the end of her school break).

There are two things that can dramatically enhance a trip abroad. One is speaking the language. The other is knowing someone who lives there. I barely speak traveler's Japanese but had a gut feeling that even half a day with endless questions and Ayumi's companionship I would get a great deal more from the trip.

It didn't hurt that the airfare was cheaper than normal.

Like the trips to Vietnam and Spain I booked my first night at the hostel before I left and cracked the Lonely Planet once I was on the airplane.

Tokyo A-Go-Go
Tokyo is a sprawling metropolis. It was much smaller in the Edo era and over the years has gradually grown and annexed suburbs for miles in each direction. The areas hang on as "wards" and house a smorgasbord of neighborhood niches.

There are several metro rail networks that make it easy to get around. There's Japan Rail (serving destinations inside Tokyo and beyond), the Tokyo Metro and the TOEI Subway. Despite the initial complexity it only takes two trips or so to get rail travel down. You can ride most networks on a single ticket and they have another great feature: Fare Adjustment.

If you can't figure out how much it costs to get somewhere, you can buy the cheapest ticket to get through the gate and then use a Fare Adjustment machine at your destination to bump the ticket up to the correct fare.

Service is frequent, runs until a little after midnight and I think the most expensive trip I took (not counting the train from the airport) might have cost $2.50.

Friends on the Road
The great thing about staying at most hostels while traveling solo is that it's easy to meet other travelers. Nearly every place I stayed had a crop of people I could join up with to explore the city. Because travelers often hit them same cities it makes it possible to meet up with people down the road.

Another great resource was the CouchSurfing project. It's a website that matches travelers with people willing to host them. I've only participated once in that capacity though it yielded two great friends in Austin. On the road, I used the CouchSurfing message forums to track down people who were in the same city (traveling or living) and up for exploring.

To Do: Tokyo
I spent most of my time wandering around the various neighborhoods of Tokyo trying to get a feel for the city. I would say my overall feel is this: Tokyo is the most crowded, yet simultaneously civilized city I've visited.

The city has a population density that would make most cultures kick and punch, but there's no other way to say it: people are extremely considerate of others.

It's a blanket statement, to be sure. And at times, inaccurate. There's still a problem with women getting groped on crowded subway trains, but it's a nice place to be as a traveler.

Provided you're not one of said women getting groped on said trains.

From an overview, the highlights of Tokyo included:

• Spending a day bumming around Harajuku and Shibuya with Ayumi
• Renting a karaoke room with Ayumi, some of her friends and a few kids from the hostel at 11pm and not leaving until 6 the next morning
• Meeting some awesome traveling couchsurfers for a shabu-shabu (Japanese hotpot) dinner
• Meeting the same couchsufers later in the trip for an eel Kaiseki (beautifully presented traditional) meal and drinks at a random izakaya
• A $15 sashimi breakfast the day I flew home at the Metro Tokyo Fish Market (I suppose tuna is fresher if you are on the boat).

The Eats
Speaking of food it was generally pretty great. Udon, soba, tempura, sushi, okonomiyaki, yakitori and takoyaki were just a few of the things I ate.

The overwhelming quality I would use to describe the food is: clean. With the exception of the takoyaki which I found to be a little heavy, even the fried food tasted clean.

Prices were reasonable, $5 - $15 for most meals. And between dual-language menus, menus with pictures, and the ubiquitous plastic display food it was pretty easy to get what you wanted if you didn't speak Japanese.

Beyond Tokyo
This blog is getting long, and the captions in the pictures probably tell a better story. But briefly, I went by overnight bus from Tokyo to Nagoya for the Honen Matsuri festival. After that I took a bullet train to see the historical and cultural sights in Kyoto, and then a bullet train back to Tokyo for my flight to Thailand.

At some point I hope to break up the time and experiences in Japan into separate posts. Until then, the pictures:

• Tokyo
• Nagoya / Komaki
• Kyoto / Nara
• Signs (from all of Asia)
  
• Food (from all of Asia)

It's Expensive Not To Obey The Law In Singapore

Nevermind that they cane jackass American kids and give the death penalty out somewhat liberally, Singapore has high fines for the following infractions on the metro system:


A US dollar is about 70% of the Sing dollar (0.70USD:1.00SGD), which means lighting up on the MRT will cost you about a $700 fine.

It's just as well since a pack of cigarettes would set you back $10 here.

This is also the first official prohibition I've seen for durian fruit.

Who Pays What?

It was an unbelievable relief to see this sign at the entrance to Wat Phrathat Doi Sutep outside of Chiang Mai. Especially since I'd missed the opportunity to see both Journey and Styx a few weeks ago in Japan.

All kidding aside, signs like these have been somewhat common in my SE Asian travel. At many sites that are free or cheaper to locals, foreign tourists are charged entry fees from the nominal (20 Baht, about $0.75 US in this case) to the substantial.

For example, entry to the Taj Mahal in Agra, India costs resident Indians 20 Rupees (45 cents US) while the rest of us will pay 750 Rupees (about 17 bucks US) to see the same attraction.

The first time I encountered the difference (at the Taj Mahal) it was frustrating. I had traveled a long way at considerable expense to share culture and see places of great importance to many Indians. Should I have to pay more for the pleasure to do so?

Almost immediately, though, the entitlement gave way to feelings of guilt. One of my favorite things to do while traveling is to walk around in a new city -- even if it's difficult to do so (e.g., no sidewalks). I remembered my first afternoon in Hyderabad just a few weeks before that.

The conditions on the street weren't exactly squalid, but they were easily labeled unsanitary by my Midwestern standards. Passing a hospital during a rickshaw ride I resolved to do everything in my power to avoid having to go to a hospital during my time in India. (Again, these first impressions are coarse, emotional and often overlook truths like India's excellent facilities for training doctors).

During that initial walk, a group of scraggly young children came up tugging on my shorts asking me for five rupees. The guidebooks instruct you to say "no" which is what I did. The kids followed us for several blocks. No. No. No. All the way until an adult yelled something to the children that made them scatter.

What I had refused them, essentially, was a dime.

Through an accident of circumstance (quite literally in my case) I was born into a country of relative affluence, and they were born into poverty. I think everyone who encounters disparity like this is forced to confront their own feelings about equity.

For me, more exposure led to the replacement of guilt and entitlement with awareness.

At times there's an emotional component. (Unfair! ...to whom?) Sometimes my thoughts take over (with the increased fee as a percentage of GDP, we often still end up paying "relatively less").

Within the US, business travelers pay more for weekday airfares and hotel rooms. Municipal governments frequently tack on "out-of-towner" taxes to lodging and rental cars. These fee arrangements take advantage of the understanding that a willing traveler is on the way and in most cases 9% of financial pain won't keep them away.

These days, I don't get too worked up over such fees. Compared to what I've already spent to get to a place, they're usually minuscule.

Even if they're more than someone else has to pay.

How do you feel?

Crunching The Numbers

It's inexpensive to be in Thailand, and not just compared to the astronomical costs of Japan.

The following represents a pretty reasonable daily budget assuming a stay in a decent guesthouse and eating at local spots:

- Accommodation: 400฿
- 3 Meals: 150฿
- Water: 40฿
- Transportation: 60฿

Your grand total would clock in at about 650฿/day which at current exchange rates is about $20 US/day.

You could do it way cheaper than this if you actually lived here. I think you could get it below $300/month living quite comfortably.

Something to think about when that amount represents many American car payments.

Unexpectations - Real Men Wear Saffron

I'm sitting at the train station in Chiang Mai and have an hour to kill before my train to Lampang, the first stop on my trip toward Bangkok and a flight to Singapore.

To my right is a huge parking lot and at the far end of it about 50 people sit on plastic chairs dressed in varying shades of red tee shirts listening to a radio broadcast of the UDD protests from Bangkok.

At my side on the table, a Chang beer costing 40 baht (about $1.30 US, train station prices be damned).

But I'm not writing this to talk to you about my immediate surroundings, or the 150 baht Thai massage I'm considering from the booth next to the restaurant. I want to talk to you about expectations. And monks.

The Rough Guide to Thailand says this about monks:

Monks come just beneath the monarchy in social hierarchy, and they too are addressed and discussed in a special language. If there's a monk around, he'll always get a seat on the bus, usually right at the back. Theoretically, monks are forbidden to have any close contact with women which means, as a female, you musn't sit or stand next to a monk, or even brush against his robes; if it's essential to pass him something, put the object down so that he can then pick it up - never hand it over directly. Nuns, however, get treated like ordinary women.

Guidebooks are a crapshoot but also play this odd role in setting expectations with unfamiliar places. In the US, monks aren't generally easy to spot (they really do wear saffron robes in Thailand) and regardless I didn't have any direct experience to reconcile this against.

So you might imagine my initial surprise when I saw monks:

• Shopping at the gaudy tourist market on Khao San road
• Congregated at the UDD protests near Bangkok's Democracy Monument
• Riding motorbikes
• Texting on cellphones
• Goofing around with their 13-year-old lay friends at Wat Phrathat
  

Okay, not exactly the kind of behavior that causes fathers to lock up their daughters, but still completely unexpected to me.

The last location is a Buddhist temple high in the hills of Doi Suthep national park. On a motorbike, it's a 30-minute ride out of the inner walled city. As you motor along a four-lane road to the northeast, car dealerships, chain stores and shopping malls give way to the Chiang Mai University campus with an energy that only thousands of students can provide.

Soon, the zoo also passes into your mirror and you begin the climb inside the park. The road is steep and carrying two people even my 125cc motorbike has to think-it-can to make some of the tight uphill curves.

Legend has it that sacred white elephant made a similar climb up Doi Suthep with a Buddhist relic on its back. Almost to the top, it trumpeted three times before dying. And on the site of its death Wat Phrathat was erected.

After climbing the 300 dragon-flanked steps from the parking lot to the Wat I didn't feel the need to trumpet before keeling over, but I certainly had more appreciation for the burden of our coarse-skinned friend.

Inside the main temple hall a chorus of monks bellowed with throaty chants. The sound was piped through loudspeakers in the complex such that it took some looking to find the source. There, along with 20 or so orange robed monks were 4 Western students in simple white garments.

The sun was 30 minutes from setting and even with the haze of motorbike exhaust and burning crop fields, the view over the Chiang Mai valley was sublime.

I'm functionally aetheistic, but I can think of no other way to describe the site and its inhabitants other than "holy."

I put my shoes back on and made my way to the temple exit behind a group of 13-year-old boys who took great pleasure in ringing a series of large bronze bells despite a posted sign forbidding it.

These were kids screwing around. Being loud in a temple. Shadowboxing. And having a great time of it. Their playfulness was as infectious as the tranquility of the monks.

Soon they were joined by three other kids the same age. Identical in every respect save the wearing of saffron robes. Their friends were monks, and more than happy to join in the roughhousing.

Chiang Mai valley at night.

I wondered aloud if perhaps the monastery functions as a sort of Buddhist "military school." A place where frustrated parents threaten to send their children if they don't shape up. But that quickly gave way to a realization.

Monks are people.

As simple as that statement is, it had been strangely elusive.

I'm thankful for the many ways travel exposes our shared humanity.

On A Bullet Train From Kyoto to Tokyo

This is as close as I'll be getting to Mt. Fuji on this trip.

My Japanese Is Not So Easy To Understand

On the bullet train to Tokyo I asked the beverage girl "コカコーラ わ あります か," (koka kora wa arimasu ka) which the phrasebook assures me means "Do you have Coke?"

"No, I'm sorry," she answers me in perfect English. "We only have hot coffee, apple juice, water and Coke."

I will keep trying.

A Walk Through Akihabara

Akihabara is one of the main electronics areas in Tokyo. It's about a 15 minute walk from where I'm staying in Asakusabashi.

The area is anchored by the Yodobashi Akiba department store. Floors one through seven are crammed full of electronics and household appliances and the 8th floor features a food court of about a dozen different restaurants. I hesitate to use the phrase "food court" since the places aren't fast food like you'd find in an American mall.

Two other things Akihabara is known for are Anime and Maid Cafes. In the Anime shops you can find everything from Hayao Mizayaki works to both drawn and photographed porn. A detour on the latter -- a handful of these shops are stocked with DVDs of scantily glad girls. And when I say "girls," this is precisely what I mean. Young teenagers. To say it is uncomfortable and creepy to me would be a gross understatement.

I'd chalk the predilections of Japanese men up to cultural difference, though I don't know how accurate that would be. Even though the national age of consent is 12 (yep, 12) many prefectures, including Tokyo have officially raised this age to 18. To me this says that enough people in Japan share the Western notion that a relationship between a grown man and a child is repugnant. Nonetheless, there seems to be tacit indulgence of this appetite as judged by the proliferation of the material.

According to the guidebook it is not uncommon for Japanese men to pay high school-aged girls for "companionship." What companionship means was unstated though Lonely Planet implied that these relationships often skew sexual.



This fascination with youth and also fetish carries over into the idea of a Maid Cafe (you can see a girl advertising one at about 0:48 in the video). These cafes are like any other place you'd stop for a beer or coffee, with the exception that you are being served these items by a girl dressed in a French maid outfit. This type of practice has its origins in Geishas who would provide company (conversation, musical performance, singing) to guests of Ryokan (Japanese inns).

As the pastoral gave way to the urban this tradition was extended by Hostess Bars, where women provide patrons with their company sans the Geisha attire. From the best I can tell, Maid Cafes are the most recent (and probably not the last) update.

Don't let my discussion of these issues fool you into thinking this is all that goes on in Akihabara. Though they were certainly the most striking features to me, the area is by all measures a normal commercial district in Tokyo in which Manga/Hentai shops and Maid Cafes play a limited role.


Taito and Sega both have several multifloor arcades on the main street where you can play everything from claw/crane prize machines to the latest fighting and dance/music games. Most of the players are young (high school aged kids, or younger girls taking cheesy pictures in the photobooths) but you also see fully-suited people in their 20s and 30s.

The unexpected mix of people occupying every area of town is quickly becoming a source of joy for me and I hope that it continues.

Today I'm going to try my hand at walking to Roppongi from where I'm staying. I don't have a map exactly, just some notes from the Google directions I pulled:


View Larger Map

I'll have the afternoon to explore on my own before I meet up with Kiomi, someone that my friend Rawi in Sacramento arranged for me to meet.

Roppongi is supposed to be one of the more popular night spots, but I'm most interested in a chance to bounce a handful of the questions I have about life in Tokyo off of someone who lives here.

On Pre-Travel Handwringing

There are two main sources of my pretravel anxiety: language and metro systems.

I talk to myself before I travel. I talk to myself a lot. As soon as I have my hands on the travel phrase book I repeat words over and over again. Muttering to myself. I'm certain I look crazy, because I certainly feel crazy.

The funny thing is, this repetition doesn't actually do me much good. The words don't sink in when I get where I'm going. Inevitably amnesia strikes when I need to bust one of my crammed phrases out and I end up flipping open the phrase book anyway.

And this does nothing to address my lack of preparation for understanding the answer to my question to be delivered rapid fire in another tongue.

The only exception to this is Spanish, in which I consider myself semi-fluent. If there's a piece of vocabulary I need for a situation, I only need to repeat it a few times and am generally able to recall it since I already have the support of grammar and a pretty robust vocabulary.

Japanese presents a special challenge. Not only are there new sounds and grammar to learn, but there are different character sets. Three of them: hiragana, katakana and Kanji.

I'm sitting on the plane with about two and a half hours to go and though I know I'm supposed to take the Keisei line out of the airport toward my hostel, I'm almost certain the sign will be written like this 京成本線 and only because I looked up the symbol.

If I take the Keisei train bound for Ueno, I have to remember to stop at the Aoto station, and in either case once I get to the Oshiage station I have to transfer to the train toward Asakusa Bashi. It makes my mind race, and my stomach hurts a little bit thinking about it.

What will the ticket machines look like? Will I feel more pressure to navigate this all when the dreaded Tokyo rush hour strikes (a sea of humanity, I'm told, packed ass to elbow)? I actually took this last point into account when I booked my ticket -- there are only a certain number of flights a day into Narita from SFO, LAX and PDX and I took the one that would get me in at 3:30, hoping to have a fighting chance against the subway crowds.

San Francisco's BART system has 5 lines with 7 end destinations. From what I can tell, the Tokyo Metro has over 12 lines with dozens of endpoints. Then there is JR (Japan Rail) and a handful of private-owned rail services shuttling between various destinations.

There is no doubt an order to all of this, but my unfamiliarity makes it appear chaotic.

So what stops this from becoming a full-on freak out? Faith in humanity, in a few flavors:

First: metro system design. A metro system's value predicates itself on delivering thousands of daily passengers through its network. This requires a certain amount of intuitiveness in the design. If people can't figure out where they're going that means either lower revenues, higher costs (more information kiosks), or slower service due to clogging in stations.

Second: some international support. Though it's not always person-to-person I've yet to encounter a metro system (counterexamples and new travel destinations welcome) that hasn't made an attempt to include some degree of international support. Sometimes it's pictographic (a guy with an arrow pointing toward a box can be interpreted by most people as an exit sign). Sometimes its ticket kiosks that allow you to switch them between a variety of languages.

Third: People, people, people. If you stand in one spot looking lost for long enough, someone will eventually make an attempt to help you -- even if they don't speak your language. This one takes constant self-reminding because in my desire to look cool and keep my map stashed, I'm also missing out on one of the biggest flags that I'm in need of directional assistance -- the damn map. (American tourism-city dwellers take note: if you see someone with a map out, offer to help. You have the power to turn someone's trip around!). On this trip, I have the added bonus of being Caucasian -- there's no blending in to be had, so there's also no point in hiding the map. I'm not from here, and people will be instantly aware of this fact. Hopefully, to my directional benefit.

In some sense, this is the part of the ride where you're being towed up the first hill. Your mind is busy click-clacking as a lift chain sags and glides. You stomach gnurls as you look down, off to the side and the ride ahead. You bought your ticket. You stood in line for the ride. Yet somehow at this moment, you are forgetting how, exactly, you got your self into this mess.

If it's your first time on the ride, you have to take someone else's word. If you've done it before you can take your own: you only feel your stomach in your throat for a moment on that first drop before it's replaced with the exhilaration of the rest of the track. You are going to careen around with exhilarating ups, downs and bank turns that defy physics. Before you're ready, you'll be back to the place you left from. Wishing you could go around again.

It's going to be one hell of a ride.

From UA837, Seat 21F