Any Given Sunday

So I got back from Japan about 2 weeks ago and I haven't had a thing to write about since. I got this great quote from a friend in China: "Visit someplace for a month, you can write a book, 6 months you can put out an essay, in a couple of years, you're lucky if you can squeak out a sentence." As it goes no matter where you live. The things that once were mind blowing have a way of becoming pedestrian. So I looked at some photos I've taken recently and tried to recreate the last 2 weeks.

• The Return of Song Krang. A week long water fight dressed up as the Thai New Year celebration. The old city of Chiang Mai is surrounded by a 6km moat. About the most fun you can have is getting up around 9am and walking the perimeter with a bucket. For the next 8 hours you enter a shoulder to shoulder procession of the walkers vs. the drivers. Continually getting hosed down with ice water from the backs of trucks while in turn dumping on them the grossest, dirtiest water you've ever seen on them dredged out of the moat. I think maybe the most important thing is to make sure that you keep that moat water out of your beer. Video of the festivities.


• Zip-Lining throughout the forest. Usually reserved for moviestars and reality tv-show contestants, a zip-line company opened up in Chiang Mai about 6 months ago. Honestly it isn't half as exciting as it would appear on TV. I think the most exciting thing that happened was my shoe came off during one of the flights. Actually, here is a video of Pui. This is what happens when you don't carry enough speed to make it between platforms.


• Hiding in the masses. I really appreciate the anonymity that living in a large city affords you. I can now grow the mustache that humility would never afford me in Jackson. And really why stop there? I let my hair grow back for the first time in 4 years so I can shave my girlfriends name in the back, just like I always wanted.

The Things You Do for the Ones You Love

Whenever you travel somewhere with a camera, you usually have some idea of the photo that will capture the experience. For instance you've got your: DisneyLand/Mickey photo, Jackson Hole/Elk Antler Arches photo, Moon Landing/Earth in the background photo, etc. For Pui and Japan that photo meant getting dressed up in a traditional kimono and getting her picture taken (think the old west photos on the Town Square). The second day in country we drove 2 hours with Pui's aunt and uncle to visit Japan's answer to Universal Studios (not to be confused with the real Universal Studios which we visited on 3rd day). So anyways, we come across this place that does the full on geisha makeup and photo shoot. It was kind of pricey and the makeup took over an hour and we were with her aunt and uncle, so we talked ourselves into finding another place while we were on vacation and had a little more time. Which brings me to a very, very important travelling postulate that I've come up with:

While traveling: If you come accross anything that you really want to see, do, or buy, but at the time it seems inconvenient, pricey, (insert excuse here)- forget all those excuses, just see, do, or buy it RIGHT THEN. Because if you wait, there is a very good chance that later it will be much more inconvenient, much pricier, much more whatever at a later date.

After 2 more weeks in Japan we had yet to see another one of these photo places; and beleive me, we asked just about everyone we knew or didn't know. So we find ourselves with 2 more days in the country. I could write a 3 page story here of what I did to go through to get that photo, but here are the highlights:

Day 1 (Started at 8am):

• Made a reservation at a photo studio early in the day. (this was accomplished by drawing pictures for a travel agent and having her guess what we wanted)


• Travelled 2 hours via railways to Nagoya (tickets cost 2x what the original photo shoot cost)


• Spent a good amount of time trying to follow a map that I had taken a digital photo of to get around Nagoya.


• Finally make it to the photo place at 4pm. After 1/2 an hour of more picture drawing turns out they will only take a photo of you if you have your own kimono


• Rode the train all the way back home

Day 2 (Started at 7am):

• Freaked out that the only place in all of Japan to get this photo was in Kyoto (the first place we started)


• Turned down Pui's relatives offer to drive us there (2 hours), because damn it, I love an adventure and I know everything in the world about Japan's railways


• Got confused by the train system no less than 5 times resulting in missed trains or boarding the wrong trains (we would board no less than 12 trains in the 13 hours we would spend travelling that day)


• Got to the theme park exactly 1 hour before they closed (looking at your watch all day count down from 8am until 4pm, knowing that if you don't make it there by 3:30, you're screwed is about as nerve wracking as it gets)


• Tried everything under the sun to get the manager to allow us to get into makeup to take the picture. Even after Pui crying, me pleading and offering 5x the asking price, I was turned away.


• Was referred to the low rent place down the street with bad costumes and no makeup. I convinced Pui I could photoshop all the makeup in later.


• Looooong train ride back home.


• At the train station we boarded the bus to go 15 minutes to the house. Got on the wrong bus, which was also that last bus of the night and ended up parking the bus at the bus depot 1 hour out of town (we had to call the relatives to come pick us up)

And with no further ado, here is the photo in all its glory.

Also, this isn't actually part of this story, but it's worth mentioning that for our final flight leg from Bangkok to Chiang Mai we were held up in immigration so long we missed the flight and had to buy new tickets for a later one.

And lastly, just so you know I updated the photo album with the Japan Photos.

My #1 travel tip

I'm sure this has been posted somewhere, but I can't tell you how valuable a digital camera can be when you are in a foreign country with a language barrier. The basic idea is you snap a photo of anything that might need further explanation and then just look at the details on the view finder (zooming to any detail you want). Here are some original ways I was able to use it:

• Taking photos of train maps at the stations. While you are on the train you can look to see if you are going where you think you should be going.


• Taking photos of maps in the phone book (or anywhere you see a map that isn't a brochure). Show the map to people in the neigborhood and you get to the right place eventually.


• Map of a landmark that you need to get back to. I took a picture of my locker at the 2 sq. km tokyo train station with a recognizable koala statue in the photo. 4 hours later when I needed to find the locker, the staff knew where I should go.


• Photos of intersections that you walk through in any big city, then check them later when you're lost and you think you've been there.

The funniest momemt when I used this technique was when I was lost on a train with no station map. At every stop I would frantically run out (you've got about 20 seconds) look for a map, try to get an in focus picture, and then run back in right away.

NYC, Take 2

To my chagrin, I spent a good part of my 20's as a self-proclaimed metrosexual. At one point I actually had room in my life for leather pants and matching alligator shoes and belts. For about 6 years, I travelled to New York to soak in the city life and obsess about the culture of style that I wasn't getting in Jackson.

Then Thailand happened. Along the way I cut down my wardrobe to 2 shirts and 2 pairs of pants. If you look through my photo album for the last 3 years you'll notice in every photo I'm always wearing either a red shirt, a black fleece, an orange jacket or some hopelessly outworn Gap jeans (circa 2005). (*the jacket you see in the Japan photos is on loan from Pui's uncle) Other than the pain of having to do laundry a lot more often, I haven't missed having all those extra clothes one bit.

That is until I landed in Tokyo. I felt the exact same sort of insecurity as I felt walking down 5th Avenue in my Carhart jacket and Levis in the 90's. This city is every bit (if not more) style obsessed than New York. I commented to Pui on how much make up the women wear here and she pointed out that she has seen almost as many men wearing eyeliner. I would say 60-70 percent of the women in their 20's are wearing high heels and the other 30 percent are wearing knee high hooker boots.


What really reminds me of New York though is how you can blow your whole day doing nothing but people watching, riding subways and eating great food. The metro system (see map in previous post) is absolutely fantastic. The hairdo's alone are worth coming to Japan to see. As for as the culinary side, I'm blown away- the sushi is like butter, the noodles taste like they were made 10 minutes ago. Of course this is coming from someone that used to think that the best 'ramen' I would ever have came from those little dried noodle packages at the grocery store.

So anyways, the whole point of this rambling entry is that had I visited this place in my mid 20's, I have no doubt this is where I would have ended up. As far as big cities go, I think this one is about as good as it gets.

Hurricane Tokyo

When Pui and I booked the trip to go to Tokyo with the travel agent, we went ahead and threw in a day for Tokyo DisneyLand. Turns out the day we had booked coincided with the worst weather I've ever seen in Asia. The kind of wind that shreds your umbrella the second you open it, rain falling in reams, temperatures hovering around 40; it was pretty bleak. Neither of us were that excited until we saw what happens to DisneyLand when a hurricane blows through- the throngs of people disappear. The first 6 rides of the day we were the only two people on the entire ride.
I remember riding Space Mountain when I was a kid and waiting for 2 hours in line for a 2 minute ride. Usually you get so sick of waiting in lines, an average day to DisneyLand is probably 5-6 rides. Without the lines however, we rode a total of 25 rides in 6 hours. Really the only reason we stopped at that was because we both started to go hypothermic.

What I know of the People

About 3 years ago I used an 8 hour layover to hoof around some Japanese temples. I was absolutely shocked at how I was treated by the people. I was coming back from Thailand where if you open a map people will openly walk up to you and ask not only 'Where are you going?' but can they help take you there. In Japan when I opened a map and approached them they would literally drop their eyes and turn around and walk away. Store owners would retreat into their shops. Years later when recounting this story to a friend more adept with the culture he filled me in. It wasn't because they were rude at all, but because they were so afraid that either 1. Their English wouldn't be good enough to talk to me or 2. They wouldn't know where I wanted to go, that they were too ashamed to even enter into a map imposed conversation with me.

This trip has definitely confirmed that explanation. Pui has made some friends with a few Tokyo natives through the climbing shop. These are people that have come to Chiang Mai once or twice and said casually 'Look me up if you ever come to Japan.' So we did, and I can't tell you how impressed I am. We emailed a friend she had met twice previously to let him know we would be coming. Here is how welcoming this guy was:

• He owns his own company, but took off a Wednesday to drive 2 hours from North of Tokyo to spend the day with us.


• He picked us up at our hotel and transferred us to our new hotel (an hour by car)


• He paid for everything all day, including memberships to the climbing gym for both Pui and myself, entry fees into temples, and food at some pretty sweet restaurants.


• Laid out an itinerary for us for our remaining time in Tokyo

Remember I had never even met this guy before and Pui had less than an hour of face time with him. I don't think I would drive 4 hours round trip for a blood relative :) The other friend that she met through the rock shop was just as great. Whenever we had a cultural misunderstanding we could call him on the cell phone and hand it to the shopkeeper and he would straighten us/them out. He helped us around the metro tirelessly. I had never met him before either but he made me feel like family.

I guess the point is that if you don't personally know someone over here, they aren't going to give you a warm fuzzy. However if you've got an in, they are the friendliest people I have ever met.

Doesn't Play well with Others

Part of Japan's success as an economic super power is built on how proprietary it's infrastructure is. The rest of the world might be using Japan's technology, but as far as I can tell, they are only using their own. They have their own cellular phone system that only Japanese cells will work on (no iphones over here). All the ATM machines only work with ATMs issued from Japanese banks. You go into a 7-11 in Thailand and you see Lays, Evian, Halls, Oreos and a hundred other imported brands. In Japan, the 7-11 stores have weird dried fish snacks and 100's of other things that are put out by Japanese companies (which makes me think that 7-11 is probably owned by a Japanese company). Actually the only thing I've seen that is mass imported are cigarettes- the Marbolo Man is making a killing over here.

As a computer guy I now completely understand why this country is continually putting out technologies that only work with their own things. When 95% of the world was using Compact Flash cards in their digital cameras, Sony was putting out the Memory Stick that nobody could use.

Too much efficency?

I never realized how travel friendly Thailand is. Sometimes you have to be exposed to how bad it can get before you appreciate how good you have it. In Thailand you're never more than 3 people away from someone who knows English. In my first 10 days in Japan I don't know 3 people in the entire country yet that have more than a 10 word English vocabulary. Granted, I've spent the majority of my time off the beaten path. I can count on one hand how many white people I've seen in 10 days. Honestly it didn't even matter the first part of the trip because Pui's Aunt and Uncle were there for everything we needed.

So how hard could it possibly be to venture out on our own? We decided to head up to Tokyo to go climbing for 4 or 5 days. We went to the train station with her Aunt and Uncle who were kind enough to buy us train tickets. Simple enough - 2 train transfers, straight to our hotel. So we headed out about 4 hours ago and so far I couldn't be more frustrated.

We got on a train that was about 2 minutes early of a 9:43am departure. There are no English signs, so other than matching up the time and platform, you really have no way of knowing if it's the right train. We asked 2 people before we got on by showing them the tickets and they both nodded long before they even looked at the tickets. It can be terribly frustrating asking anything here because the culture is setup that by asking someone a question, they stand to lose face if they can't answer it. Unfortunately, more often than not the answer is a meaningless up and down nod.When we reached what I considered to be our first transfer (again, only by judging the time that we should disembark), we got off amidst 100's of Japanese signs (the English ones were just as helpful). After quadruple checking with 4 people, none of who spoke even a word of English, I ascertained we were at the wrong station.

So climbing back on another train (this time an express), we grew concerned after the train continued on for another hour (40 minutes past our missed connection). It is a really sinking feeling you get when you are on a train, no idea if you are headed in the right direction, no one to ask, basically just waiting to see where the thing goes. When we finally got off at the next station, we again quadruple checked with the question 'Nagoya? + a finger pointing at the ground'. So we were in the right place now, but had missed the connection by an hour.

So now we are stuck, they won't let us in the gate and we have to communicate the above story using sign language. Of course you can probably guess how this played out... $300 later we've got some brand new tickets.

When we got to Tokyo I recounted this story to a friend and he explained where we went wrong. We got on that first train 2 minutes early. If we would have waited 120 more seconds, the correct train (the express) would have come along. Japanese efficiency. God Bless it.

The Little Things

This entry isn't about any one thing in particular. Just some of the weird stuff you come across.

• For my birthday, Pui and I (and her aunt and uncle) went to the Universal Theme Park in Osaka. Here is a video of Bert and Ernie 'Putting on the Ritz'. All the theme rides were dubbed in Japanese as well. I had a pretty craptastic burger at a Hollywood themed restaurant for $26. (this on top of the $100/person entrance fee). All that being said, it was pretty sweet. Pui got her picture taken with Popeye and I got the crap scarred out of me at Jurassic Park. What more could you ask for your 35th.



• At the lower end of the Sushi spectrum, it is very much the fast food of Japan. They have these restaurants everywhere that have a conveyor belt that is constantly running with Sushi. You don't actually order (although you can), you just wait until something comes along you like and you pick it off. For the tally, they just count up your plates. Pui and I can eat until I never want to see sushi again for about $15. Video here.



• The Japanese have got parking down to a science. I just wrote about a paragraph trying to describe it, but it's too hard to accurately tell you how cool it is. Easier to just check out the video here.



• This whole blog entry is probably just an excuse for me to talk more about Japanese toilets. How we haven't adopted these in the states yet I have no idea. First of all the seats are heated - and you control the temperature with a very sophisticated wall mounted control panel. When you are done going to the bathroom you press another button that pops out a lever that will shoot a warm jet of water so you pretty much don't have to do any wiping. In addition, you can control the jet of water ad infinitum: temperature, angle (both up or down and left or right), amount of water, pulse or constant flow, timer or manual shut down. There is a button on the wall to flush and when you hit it a compartment on the toilet rolls back revealing running water so you can wash your hands.



• Climbing Gyms: If you're not a climber, you can skip this one. We've been to 3 different gyms in Tokyo and everyone has the same weirdness. For starters, the holds on all of the sport routes have been painted. Normally gym's use tape to signify a route, here all the holds are just painted the same color. The result is that they are as smooth as glass, no friction. We asked our friend why in the hell they would do that and he said that there is a mentality that if you can climb on a 5.10 without friction, you can climb just about any 5.10 in the world. That to me is like forcing everyone in the gym to wear 10lb. ankle weights. The other weird/cool thing is that all of the bouldering problems are any feet. With the zillions of holds on the wall you would think that everything would be pretty doable. Not even close. I've never had my ass kicked so bad in a bouldering gym (and had so much fun at the same time).

Japanese Bathhouse

Let me preface this with I've never understood group male showers. In the high school locker room I never even once hung out for a spirited game of grab ass (whatever that is), never snapped a towel, and never stood in a line with 20 other naked dudes getting clean. When Pui's aunt suggested that we hit the spa, I didn't think in a million years it would be anything of the like.

Little did I know I was about to embark on a full on Japanese tradition - the bathhouse. It's basically like an amusement park in the shower. You've got about 20 stations all with varying temperates, jets, and tub sizes. Temperatures range from freezing to scalding. Jets range from tickling to just about breaking the skin. The tub sizes are anywhere from sitting in a pot sized for 1 human to sitting in a pool that could hold 50. My favorite was one outdoors where the temperatures were hovering at about 40. You lay down on about 30 little cement knobs that are trickling 100 degree water. It was so comfortable I fell asleep and didn't wake up until I started to get hypothermic about 30 minutes later.

So anyways, you pretty much just go station to station. When you're done you go out to the lobby, eat some sushi and drink an ice cold Sapporo. By this time you've completely forgotten that there were 100 other naked dudes in the shower with you.

Smoking Red Sun

It's so weird to be in a country where non-smokers are outnumbered by smokers 10-1. Everyone smokes. Everyone smokes everywhere. Here you'll see a picture of Pui's uncle lighting up in McDonald's. He also smokes: in the car, in the house, in any and every restaurant, all day, everyday. From what I can tell this is completely normal behavior. The 'No Smoking' section of restaurants is like 4 tables in a back room.

If the legal system can be proud of one thing of the work it has done in America it's shutting down big tobacco. I have no doubt that the life span of these people would jump up to over 100 if they could do something about getting those teens off of nicotine.