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.