Love hotels

So I've kind of dropped the ball on updating again. Since my last post, I've been to Ise-Shima, Nara, Nagoya, Kyoto, Hiroshima, and Tokyo. Unfortunately, lately, I've fallen in to the trap of thinking that I need something worthwhile to write about to post to my blog. I mean, having to been to so many places in Japan, something must have surely happened that is worth writing about. There are writers out there on the Internet, after all, that can turn the most mundane interactions from the daily lives into entertaining prose, and they aren't even travelling across Asia! Unfortunately, I'm not one of them.

I've come to the conclusion, that if I'm going to keep this updated, I pretty much just have to sit down, and write for the sake of writing.

I'm back in Osaka again, until friday, when I take a ferry back to shanghai. I'm living in a capsule hotel, which is in the heart of a few blocks of love hotels. This makes for some pretty interesting people watching.

So I'm standing outside my hotel last night, and notice a man and woman exiting the love hotel next door. The man is a short early 30's Japanese guy, which I know, sounds a little redundant, but I noticed that he was a good six inches shorter than the girl, who was a maybe mid to late 30's Japanese woman. They give each other a bow at the entrance, and then take off in opposite directions.

The guy does, what I like to call the I-Just-Got-Done-Screwing-A-Whore Walk "A" - Cheerful, hop in his step, big huge shit eating grin, completely oblivious to the world around him. I like this walk.

The girl walks five feet the opposite direction, into the building across the street from my hotel, which, although I can't read the signs, I'll assume houses a bunch of different escort services.

A few moments later, I notice another couple walking out of the love hotel. They do the same bow(which kills me btw, the hooker-john relationship here is apparently one founded on excellent manners). The girl is in the same age range as the last one, the guy this time though, is a skinny 60ish businessman. They part directions again, the girl goes into the building across the street. The businessman does, the I-Just-Got-Done-Screwing-A-Whore Walk "B" - "Oh my god I hope no one sees me I gotta get outta here what if the missus finds out... - why is that foreigner giggling?"

So that's the kind of thing I replace movies and books with. Pretty entertaining.

More Japan

I'd really like to get some pictures up, but unfortunatley, most of the internet cafes I go to don't have a usb connection that I can use, or, when I show up to one that does, I don't have my camera or USB cable. So no pictures for a while.

After spending a few nights in Osaka, enjoying the nightlife and playing pachislo(Japanese version of slots), I decided that it was time to get moving, Japan ain't cheap, and a day here costs me as much as a week in China.

So far I've been to Koya-san, Ise-Jingu, Nara, and I just arrived in Kyoto. Not including Kyoto, I've enjoyed Koya-san the most.

Koya-san is the headquarters of the Shingon sect of Buddhism in Japan. It's located on top of a mountain, which to get to after getting off the train, you have to take a trolley that's been built at a 60 angle.

Shingon is the Japanese version of Tantric Buddhism. In terms of doctrine it's closest to Tibetan Buddhism, but a lot less colorful, and without books by the Dalai Lama that sound like extended Hallmark greeting cards.

I stayed overnight at the temple there, attended the temples mediatation, morning services, and fire puja cermonies, then went exploring. Koya-san has one of the most beatufil graveyards I have ever seen in my life(yes, I know that sounds creepy). Actually, I won't try to describe it, I'll put pictures up when I get a chance.

Viva Japan!

My internet access in Shanghai pretty much sucked ass, and blogspot got blocked(apparently China blocks and unblocks blogspot every other month), so this has not been updated recently. So if all both of you that have been following my blog would come back, that would be great!

For the near future, this should be updated again fairly frequently, however when I get to back to China/India, I might have problems again.

Japan is a big change from China. Differences -

1. Cleanliness. Whereas China is a dirty mess, Japan is very clean. In China, a little kid will take a shit on the bus, and no one will raise an eyebrow. In Japan, I dont even think they can conceptualize what would happen if someone did that.

2. Noise. The general Chinese population never seems to have learned an appreciation for silence. There are not that many cars in China, but the ones that do exist make up for it by constantly honking at every oppurtunity. Someone going to slow? HONK!, Changing lanes? HONK!, about to stop? HONK!!. Mix that in with people screaming, people listening to music on their cell phones(through the speaker), and cities in China are extremely loud.

In contrast, when I first arrived in Osaka, I was bit spooked at first. I was in downtown by the subway station, tons of people walking, tons of cars going by, and yet, it was almost completely silent. I joked with someone that was with me, that talking might get you arrested for disturbing the peace.

3. People. Chinese in big cities assume that you are on a mission to give your money away, and basically try to screw you every chance they get. Carrying exact change is very important, since if you give someone a large bill, they will start to play games and insist that there was a misunderstading and that you actually agreed upon a higher price. Or if they do give you change, it will be in counterfeit bills.

Also, in China, the concept of lining up for something seems to be very loose. If you are in line for something, dont be surprised when someone elbows past you. Once, after hailing a taxi, while I was talking to the driver through the window, and lady decided to hop in. In other words, in China, its pretty much a dog eats dog world. No such thing as common courtesy. Way worse than America, which is extremely polite in comparison.

In Japan, on the other hand, no one will ever do anything that could ever be considered rude. Like say no. A few times I have been confused as to whats on the menu, and ordered something that was not on it. Instead of just saying no, a 5 minute discussion insues on whether or not they can get what I ordered, usually while I insist that its not a big deal and I can order something else, and then they will turn, and apoligize, and tell me that its very difficult.

4. Price. China, even in the big cities, is cheap as hell. Even when you get ripped off, you will still end up paying half what you would in America. Japan, on the other hand has prices pretty similar to America. I have actually found them to be a little cheaper even, by maybe about ten percent.

College Days

Woke up at the hostel, and did my usual routine of wandering around in my flip flops, standing outside the front door of the hostel and watching people walk by, then showering. Ran across Mark, a Canadian of the french persuasion, and he mentioned that he was going to the electronics district in Beijing.



I left my iPod at home, not wanting it to get stolen, and I've got a 12 hour train ride in a few days, so I'm in need of some kind of music device. Mark mentions that he's going to the "electronics" city section of Beijing, which sounds like as a good a place as any to pick up a cheap mp3 player.



A few days ago, Mark met a college student at Tianamen square. Meeting any Chinese person at Tianamen square is pretty sketchy, especially "students" who commonly want to take you out to a 500 dollar cup of tea so they can "practice their english", and so on. Apparently Mark decided to give the guy a chance, and discovered that he was in fact, a very nice college student. Any flags that went up in my head about the guy immediatley dissappeared after I heard what his name was. Most asian people give themselves random and simple english names. "Joe", "Jim","Dave". If they are clever, they might come up with an english name that sounds similar to their asian name, like "May". This guy however, came up with a pretty unique name. What was it?

Wait for it....

Wait for it....

Switzerland.

I have no clue how he came up with that.

Anyway, after Switzerland showed up, we strolled through the electronics market, haggled with vendors over different products, and I finally ended up getting a 1GB mp3 player for about 30 bucks, which is roughly what I would have paid in the US. Most of the electronics I saw in the market were priced pretty close to what you'd pay in the states.

After that, we went back with Switzerland to his univerisity, to have dinner with him and his friend. Seemed like a pretty normal college university from what I saw, with the exeception that the food in the cafeteria was pretty damn good and cheap, and they served beer. I'd go into more detail about the food, but I don't really know much about what the dishes were.

We then walked around, and went to the rec area, where there was the biggest room of ping pong tables I have ever seen in my life.

I'd put a picture up, but the only decent one I have is pretty crappy, and blogspot doesn't want to let me upload it for some reason, so it'll have to wait.

Great Wall

So me and a group of people from my hostel decide to go clubbing weds night, free drinks all night long. After running into two guys from insomniac games in what had to be the most random chance encounter of my trip, shooting the shit with an African drug dealer from Nigeria, and having some Italian millionaires gay fashion designer friend serve me drinks all night, I stumble back into the hostel at around 4-5am(I think the sun comes up at 4am in Beijing). I nod off into a drunken slumber....

Roughly two hours later I'm shaken awake, and one of the hostel ladies says "Secret Wall". Fuck. The hostel offers a tour to an unrestored non-touristy part of the wall, and I start to vaguely remember booking the tour. I also remember being told that getting to the wall is quite a bit of a hike. I'm still drunk, but I know that's it's a three hour minibus ride there, so hopefully I'll be able to sober up somewhat by the time we get there.

Three hours later, I'm now just hung over and tired. We have to wait in the minibus a while because it's raining outside, and it's too dangerous to climb up to the wall while it's raining. Eventually the rain subsides, and we meet up with our guide, a cheerful Chinese farmer that doesn't speak a word of english. He kind of reminds me of an ewok.

We start our trek up to the wall. It's fucking steep as hell, and the dirt has been turned into mud, making each step potentially your last. As we go up, all around me are epic, exotic, majestic, and extremely scenic views of the great wall and the Chinese countryside. I'm too hungover and cranky to care, so I don't bother taking pictures.

Once we get to the top however, my hangover subsides, and I start feeling fairly cheerful, so I bust out my camera, and start taking tons of pictures to make up for the time that I missed. The Chinese mountains are perhaps the most beautiful mountains I have ever seen in my life, the fog rolling across them gives them a very mystic feeling. Having read my share of Chinese literature, I'd always read stories about hermits who would go to the mountains to mediate. This always kind of puzzled me - "Isn't it kind of fucking cold to be doing that sort of thing?". Now I understand.

Nothing all that interesting happened after that point, well, I'm sure something occuredthat was worth writing about, but I don't feel like writing any sort of graceful conclusion to this post, and I'm hungry, so I'll go now.

Bungee Jumping

The hostel that I'm staying at here has a tour that goes to some really big gorge in Beijing. I could attempt to impress people by actually remembering the name of the gorge, and then rattling off some historical information about it, but since I don't know either(and wikipedia is blocked), I'm not going to.

What's more important, was that I got to bungee jump for the first time. Bungee jumping for the first time in China seemed a little sketchy to me, the Chinese aren't known for their exacting safety standards, but it seemed really risky to me, which I think is a good enough reason to decide to do something.

After being weighed, I climbed up the tower in the picture above. Emptied all of the shit in my pockets into my backpack, then sat down to have the harness attached to my feet. The harness kind of reminded me of the those fuzzy sextoy handcuffs that attached to peoples beds, except for bigger, and tightend to the point that I couldn't feel my feet. After that I edged to the end of the platform, and realized that I didn't know what I was doing, this being my first jump and all. Nothing that couldn't be fixed by a short conversation with the bungee jump station staff I figured. The conversation went something like this -

Me: (gesturing and pointing down below on the edge of the platform, with a puzzled look on my face)

Chinese guy: You go!

After that, he pushed me off the platform, which was just as well, since I think I had reached the extent of his english language skills anyway. I heard laughter behind me for the first second or two, apparently because I was pushed off, and was ungracefully falling feet first, whereas most bungee jumpers dive. A half second later, the realization that I was falling really fucking fast hit me, my unconcious reaction to this was to wiggle my legs, my body searching for it's former companion, the ground.

After this, I got whiplashed like a mother fucker at the end, due to having to make the head over feet to feet over head transition at the end of the rope, which jostled me enough to forget any fear I had prior to this point. I got a nice round of applause from a boat full of korean tourists that was passing by underneath me in the river.

The next part of the jump was less exciting, but more painful, as I hung by my feet, with blood rushing into my head, over the river.

For this, I paid 10 US dollars, not bad.

Blah, sick

Caught some cold, at first I just thought was the air in Beijing, since every Chinese person here seems to have a recurrent cough, but it knocked me on my ass today. I spent the day on my bunk in the hostel, only coming out to eat.

I'll have to take a little better care of my immune system. You can get a 22 ounce tsingtao beer at the hostel for 60 cents, so drinking until the morning the first few nights I was here, didn't do much to strenghten my immune system.

The last couple of days have been pretty exiciting, but I'm going to wait until I don't feel like dog shit to write about them.

In Beijing

So I made it to Beijing in one piece. Its pretty fucking different here. The first thing that struck out at me about Beijing is how BIG everything is. The animated billboards that I saw while riding out of the airport reminded me of something out of Blade Runner.

Speaking of the airport, I was expecting that I was going to have troubles at customs. Whenever I've gone through customs in the United States, it seemed like every agent was a wannabe Jack Bauer. The worst time was when I was coming back from Canada. They tore my car apart, and played the "try to catch him in a lie" game.

"What did you say your name was again'?
"Brian"
"DIDN'T YOU SAY IT WAS BRAD BEFORE?"
"No, you've must have misheard"
"So... Brian...IF THAT'S YOUR REAL NAME!!!...."

Pretty hardcore for a Canadian border crossing. Coming into China was much easier. My bags didn't even get searched. My interview consisted of me sitting outside a police officers booth, while he briefly looked at my passport. Outside the booth was a box, which displayed his Badge number in red led lights, along with a row of buttons with two green and two red emoticons on them. The buttons are used to show your level of satisfaction with the officers service. Press the green emoticon with the gigantic smiley if you are "greatly satisfied', or the red frowning one if "service was too slow". I think that every police officer should have to hand you a smiley face box whenever you have to deal with them.

3 days and a wakeup

So, I'm running around, getting stuff ready for my trip, and decide that I should check my travel itinerary, to see what time I'm leaving on the 30th. I look at the itinerary sheet, and notice that my flight is leaving on the 23rd. Oh fuck. My heart skips a beat, as I briefly ponder what would have happened if I had waited until after the 23rd to check my travel plans. The notion that I was leaving on the 30th entered my mind while I was up late one night, when I spent a half hour haggling with different fare websites to get a decent price for the 30th. After spotting a cheaper seat for the 23rd, I quickly changed my plans, and then went to bed and forgot about it.

Now, instead of getting ready at a leisurely pace, I have to get ready pretty fucking quick, and hope I don't forget anything.

Getting a blog started was on my "todo" list, so now that's done. Now I just have to be good about keeping it updated. I'm also hoping that it isn't filtered out by China's firewall, which would obviously make updating it a bitch.

After having done some testing, blogspot is filtered out by China's firewall, so back to the drawing board....