Sunday, 17 July 2005

Sayonara

Well, Japan, it's been real. I'm sitting in the airport writing this post over Osaka's free wireless network. How cool is that?

We're leaving on July 17 at around 5 PM. We'll be in the air for around 11 hours, and we'll be landing at 11 AM on July 17. We'll arrive before we depart. The International Date Line is a hell of a thing.

In case you can't tell from my incoherent rambling, I'm absolutely exhausted. It's been an intense couple of months, and I can't wait to get home. In less than a week my entire family will all be hanging out at Laguna Beach. I couldn't think of a better thing to come back to.

I can't believe I almost forgot - last night we stayed in a capsule hotel! It was so cool - just like sleeping in a morgue except you get a TV and it's not as cold.

Wow, I'm looking around at my fellow passengers on this flight to LA and it's quite a crew. I see one tremendously fat girl with the most impressive camel toe I've seen since I left the states. To my left is a Thai Buddhist monk in orange robes. He hasn't made a move for my penis yet - maybe it's because I have my laptop in a strategic position. To my right is an 8 year old kid who's flipping between a spot-on American accent and what I can only imagine is perfect Japanese. Lucky punk.

But most importantly, I don't see any babies. Praise Allah for small favors.

OK, boarding call. Catch you on the flip side.

Posted by flow Frazao on July 17, 2005 at 03:39 AM in Japan | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Friday, 15 July 2005

Bringing Up the Rear

One thing I've really gotten into here in Asia is their great toilets. Actually, not so much the toilets as the way they deal with their asses when they've finished doing their thing. In the West, we just grab a pile of toilet paper and kind of smear it all around back there. However, in Asia they actually use a little water squirter (like the one you probably have by your kitchen sink) and clean up properly.

Of course, the downside to the Asian way is that you spend a decent amount of time walking around with a vaguely damp ass. But that's a hell of a lot better than skid marks, right?

Posted by flow Frazao on July 15, 2005 at 11:19 PM in Japan | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Beetlemania

Last weekend we were hanging out with Ted, who is currently my main man in Japan. He's teaching English in a school outside Hiroshima, so it was a great opportunity to pick his brain since Fiona and I will soon be teaching as well.

He said the actual classroom time was fine, but the most interesting things he had to say dealt with the kids themselves. One day we were walking down the street and he started telling us how Japanese children are obsessed with beetles. He said that they all have picture books and little toy beetles that they drag around with them and basically just flip out over.

Of course I found this fascinating. Beetles? I guess they're cool, but I would have thought that what with being surrounded by dope transformers and video games from the year 3000 the kids would pay a bit less attention to bugs and a bit more to all the cool toys they have access to.

However, about 15 minutes after Ted dropped this little knowledge nugget on us I happened to find a small toy beetle on the street. I was psyched - I figured I'd come upon a cool little souveneir that I could take home.

Boy was I wrong. About 30 seconds after I picked it up a grown woman came rushing over to me with a frantic look on her face and said what I can only imagine was "Oh thank God you found my beetle" in Japanese. Then she ripped it out of my hand and jogged up the street to where her friend was waiting for her with a relieved look on her face.

It's worth mentioning that she didn't appear to have any children with her. It was her beetle, and she wasn't afraid to love it.

Then, last night we were strolling around the Gion Festival in Tokyo and we walked by a stall where there were a bunch of kids flipping out. Being huge gaijin (foreigners), we muscled our way through the crowd and got to the front of the pack to see what was up.

I should have known that there is only one thing that can drive Japanese kids to such hysteria. It was a beetle raffle. Apparently, you pay a couple hundred yen and you get to stick your hand into a box and pull out a number. If that number is over 10 then you get some little toy beetle like the one that meant so very much to that lady. However, if your number was from 1-9 then you got an actual live beetle. And these were big, luscious beetles. I can only imagine how happy the kid who pulled out that number 1 must have been.

I thought about sticking my hand in the box, but then I realized that with my luck I would have pulled out the number corresponding to the biggest, weirdest, pincer-est beetle, and I just didn't want to deal with that at all.

I tried to get a shot of the beetle stall, but it was too dark and they all came out blurry. Instead, here's a few photos I've taken over the past couple days. Sorry, no time to put them in an album:

A line of Geisha-to-be waiting for their turn to walk in the Gion Festival Parade

The infinite thrill of conveyor belt sushi. Look at all those plates!!

Another young Geisha.

Me and the horse sushi.

One of the many, many busy Tokyo intersections at night. On the left is one of the largest department stores in the world.

Posted by flow Frazao on July 15, 2005 at 11:05 PM in Japan | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Thursday, 14 July 2005

Cambodia Photos

I'm doing my best to go through a huge backlog of pictures. This is the remainder of the photos from our journey out of Cambodia from Phnom Penh to the Laos border. Hope you enjoy them as much as this lady enjoys her crunchy snacks.

Posted by flow Frazao on July 14, 2005 at 08:55 PM in Southeast Asia | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Back to Kyoto

Yet another overnight bus ride. Jesus, I'm so exhausted. After three and a half months of hard travel in Southeast Asia and the past week of sleeplessness in Japan I can't wait to get home.

But first, the Gion Festival in Kyoto. From what I've read, this is the biggest festival in all of Japan, so we're quite lucky to be here to see it. I can't say I know much about it, but from the pictures I've seen posted in my hostel it looks like it's going to be a lot of fun.

Here's an interesting thing I learned the other day that says a lot about this country. I asked a girl working at the hostel how to say "yes" in Japanese and she said "Hai". Then I asked her how to say "no" and she replied, "We don't really say that in Japanese." This really appeals to me on a variety of levels (too bad I'm not single anymore). Of course, this doesn't mean they don't express the negative, but they do it by saying things like, "you've got the right idea but..."

A land of square watermelons and people who can't say no. My kind of place.

Posted by flow Frazao on July 14, 2005 at 06:54 PM in Japan | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Wednesday, 13 July 2005

Chicken of the Sea, My Ass

We checked out "Electric Town" yesterday and it wasn't quite what I'd had in mind. It was just a bunch of stores selling cameras and cell phones and stuff. Nothing you couldn't find in any of those nameless electronics shops all over New York City. The only thing different about this place was the incredible number of Japanese porn stores everywhere, which, contrary to what I'd heard, is relatively tame. They're not even allowed to show a penis without pixellation.

However, this morning (at four fucking thirty) we went to the Tsukijimo Fish Market because Fiona had seen it on TV and it looked crazy. It was absolute madness. This one market supplies all of Tokyo with fish, and believe me when I say that's a LOT of fish. Tokyoites eat approximately six times the amount of fish as the average American, and the king of them all is tuna.

These monstrous tunas are auctioned off every morning in a frenzy of yelling and arm-waving that must be seen to be believed. Each one goes for between 10 and 20 thousand US dollars, and after sale the fresh ones are immediately taken away for consumption. The frozen ones, on the other hand, are sent over to enormous band saws to be hacked into pieces.

We bought a half kilo of raw tuna for 500 yen (5USD) and ate it right there. I had no idea that tuna could taste so good. It just melts away in your mouth like fish-flavored chocolate and leaves you with a few delightful hours of tuna burps, which is great fun during the rush-hour subway ride home.

Posted by flow Frazao on July 13, 2005 at 01:05 AM in Japan | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Random Thoughts on Japanese Society

Now that I'm over the initial shock of arriving in Japan, I'm starting to see that there's an awful lot of complexity under that futuristic sheen.

For example, it seems like the Japanese society is pretty lonely. It's rare to see groups of people hanging out in parks or walking down the street together in groups of more than two or three. And because of the astronomical price of real estate, bars and clubs are incredibly tiny. Most of the places we've stopped into are cramped with 20 people, which obviously makes it tough for big groups to get together and have fun. Which is not to say that people aren't friendly - they are. But I think it would be really difficult to live here and meet a group of people to hang out with.

Also, this past weekend we met up with my buddy Ted who's currently teaching English outside of Hiroshima. He told us that in his classes whenever they talk about hobbies most of his students say shopping is their favorite thing to do. Given what I've seen over the past week, this makes a lot of sense. Almost everyone on the street is dressed impeccably, and even the homeless people have their shirts tucked into a clean pair of slacks.

Posted by flow Frazao on July 13, 2005 at 12:45 AM in Japan | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Monday, 11 July 2005

Tokyo

After an overnight bus trip on the most comfortable bus I've ever experienced, we arrived in Tokyo this morning at 6AM. But that's not important right now.

Last night I ate raw horse. It was served up at one of the aforementioned sushi=conveyor belt places and it was absolutely delicious. To be specific, I actually at one piece of raw horse meat and one piece of raw horse fat. The fat was a bit difficult to deal with, but I got it down like a champ. The meat, however, was some of the tastiest I've ever tried. It was tender and just melted away en la boca.

Now we're off to check out Tokyo. First stop is Akihabara, or ElectronicTown, where electronics are on display that are not yet available to the general public. I feel like I'm about to get a glimpse of the future`s future, and I'm practically quivering with anticipation.

Posted by flow Frazao on July 11, 2005 at 10:23 PM in Japan | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Sunday, 10 July 2005

I Think I'm Turning Japanese

Our plane took off on July 7 at midnight. Five hours later we landed in Osaka sometime in the year 4039. I have seen the future, and it's name is Japan.

Even the airport is from another dimension. The entire thing is built on a manmade island (which seems to be sinking, much to the consternation of the architects). After we'd gotten our bags and gone through customs we stepped out of the terminal, crossed a short bridge and walked into the train station.

In front of the platform we were faced with an enormous wall of the most intimidating ticket vending machines I've ever seen. Obviously, everything was in Japanese, but there were literally millions of buttons on each machine. There were also LCD screens flashing brightly and quickly, and I simply had no idea what to do. All I knew was that we needed to get to Kyoto.

Luckily, the Japanese are as helpful and friendly as they are futuristic. Within seconds, a tall, immaculately uniformed man was beside us asking us where we needed to go. I told him what our general plan was and he ushered us over to the wall of machines.

As I was being led to an English machine, I looked over at one of the other ticket dispensers and a woman in the process of buying a ticket. All of a sudden, a small window slid open next to the LCD screen and the entire torso of a man popped out and began pushing buttons and speaking in quick Japanese to the woman. He was jutting out of the wall at a 90 degree angle, defying gravity and all of the generally accepted spatial relations laws. The moment the ticket slid out of the machine he disappeared back into the wall. In Japan, this is all completely normal.

We managed to get our tickets and quickly found ourselves on a train to Kyoto (which left at precisely 10:03 - as promised). Obviously, this is all quite a change from the chaos and insanity of Southeast Asia. For the past three months we've been sitting on buses that take 9 hours to go 100 miles, so an air-conditioned train that leaves on time was like something out of a wet dream.

Two hours later we pulled into Kyoto station and followed a flawless set of directions to our hostel. We presented our registration number (!) and passports and checked in with no hassle at all.

After stowing our bags and showering, we decided we had no choice but to go eat sushi. We followed the desk clerk's recommendation and went to a restaurant called "Akido" for lunch.

As soon as we walked in the door we were enthusiastically greeted by a pair of women who spoke to us in what I can only imagine was flawless Japanese. They led us to a booth, next to which ran a conveyor belt of sushi which seemed to be on an endless loop. With no thought to cost or etiquette we began stuffing our faces with all manner of bizarre foodstuffs. Raw squid, strange jellies wrapped in seaweed, enormous chunks of uncooked fish - we ate it all. It was one of the most satisfying meals I've ever had, all for the low, low price of 2,400 yen (~24USD).

When we left, we walked by a tiny sink outside. Not wanting to seem like filthy foreigners, Fiona and I both washed our hands. Next to the sink there was a small machine attached to the wall at waist level. Everything was written in characters, but the pictures seemed to insinuate that it was some type of hand dryer.

In Western countries, the general idea is that with enough hot air and rubbing together, a pair of hands will become dry eventually. Here in the future, there is no need for warm air or friction. You simply insert your hands into the machine and it literally blasts every molecule of water off your skin. After about five seconds, you pull your hands out and they're dry as a bone.

As I'm sure you can imagine, Fiona and I left that restaurant in a state of sublime awe. I was already in love with this country. Then, as we walked down the stairs, I passed a man coming up who had three coins in his ear. I guess that's where the people of the future keep their spare change.

So that was our first four hours in Japan. After two days here, I can say with great conviction that anyone who thinks they've seen everything needs to come to this country. There are things here that are beyond imagination. Take, for example, this square watermelon:

(yes, it's real)

Like I said - I have seen the future, and it's name is Japan.

Oh, and if you think a cubic watermelon is something, you should see the toilets... but that's a different post.

Posted by flow Frazao on July 10, 2005 at 11:12 AM in Japan | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBack