Ishigaki: Your Next Vacation Destination

Ok, been rather busy lately, as you may have noted by my absence from any and all things blog-related as of late. On the plus side, the less I'm writing here the more I'm finding new and interesting things to write about! So without any further ado, allow me to present the topic of this entry: a little island I recently had the pleasure of visiting called Ishigaki. If you live in Japan, I highly recommend that you make this your next vacation destination!!

For those of you not in the know, you are in for an absolute treat. Before I get into the nitty gritty, just take a look at the picture above - look at that water! You can see all the way to the bottom in what is some of the clearest water you will find anywhere on the planet. The color that is there is mostly a pale blue to green, colored largely in part by the copious amounts of corals that abound, sometimes mere inches from the surface. Seriously- this was the only place I've ever been where you could see tropical fish swimming around your feet by merely wading in a few meters from the beach! Tiny little bright blue fishies (and one big gray guy they kept nibbling at my back), one big jump from the shore on the northern beach of Ishigaki.

Ok, so now that I have your attention, a little background. Ishigaki is the highest populated island in the Yaeyama island chain, the most southern and western cluster of islands in Okinawa (and Japan, for that matter). Okinawa itself is closer geographically to Taiwan than it is to Tokyo, and Ishigaki is another hour's plane ride from the main island of Okinawa. Here's a nice little travel guide of the area I found.

So once you get down there, what is there to do you ask? Well besides the clear waters that are perfect for diving and full of all kinds of coral everywhere and manta rays if you go to the right part, there is a culture that is about as far removed psychologically from Tokyo as it is spatially. These guys are laid back, and they can cook to boot. Champuru is probably the most famous Okinawan cuisine, and it's great down here whether you go with the goya (see right) or tofu variety. To drink, you either have your choice of Orion beer or Awamori, Okinawa's version of Shochu. For those interested, I've looked up a rather decent tofu champuru recipe which I will more than willingly translate and share with anyone.

So that's all rather common knowledge for anyone who knows anything about Okinawa, but what isn't that common knowledge is that Ishigaki is also home to a huge number of Black Angus cattle and a great local beer, named rather simply but aptly Ishigaki Beer. Yes they take orders online, and I highly encourage you to flood their inbox with requests for their Weitzen, modeled proudly by yours truly on the left. I can think of no better way to try it out than to head out to a steak house in the sticks run by a farm and use it to wash down some succulent beefy bits of... beef. It's still what's for dinner. So now you have your choice between goya and steak, Orion and Weitzen, check.

What about the sights? Well personally I liked the caverns there, but more than that are the other islands that come with the package, some as close as a 10 minute ferry ride away. Yaeyama basically just means "8 islands", so take your pick and hop on the boat. I saw two others, Iriomote and Taketomi. For info on the other islands, check the guide referenced above.

First off for me was Iriomote, home to 75% of Japan's mangroves. This place is almost totally jungle and totally amazing, wildlife and everything. There are also some great waterfalls to go along with the crazy trees and vibrant wildlife - they are also known for their cats, the yamaneko, and have some great lizards and butterflies around. An all day jungle tour here with some optional diving is a great way to go. Here we also stopped off on Barras island, but really calling it an island is generous. It's basically a mound of coral that is barely visible at high tide, but at low tide juts out high enough for you to "land" there as a jumping point for diving or snorkeling.

Next on the agenda was Taketomi, the butterfly island. At only a 10 minute ride from Ishigaki port, you'd be stupid not to check this place out for at least an afternoon. If you rent a bike, you can make your way around the entire island in about 3 hours, which basically consists of a tiny village with a population of 350 residents or so, probably 50 times as many butterflies, and beaches. Some of the beaches have coral sand shaped like little stars, and the village itself has sweet architecture which is nothing like you'll see anywhere at least in mainland Japan. This is a great place to spend a totally relaxing afternoon on the beach and just zone out.

So plenty to see, and because Japan is goofy like that you can spend a week seeing all this for about the same price as you would pay to rent a car and drive from Tokyo to Hiroshima with a few stops along the way... I did the math. Next time you wonder why so many Japanese people travel more abroad then they do within their own borders, ponder on that one for a few.

Here are a few other choice photos I took in my travels, with the full album available on my flickr account.

View from Sunset Beach - NW part of Ishigaki

Shisa statue on Taketomi island

Taking a drink at Pinay Sara (sp?) falls, Iriomote island

A cow put to manual labor, pulling suigyuu duty. These are most famous off of Iriomote, but this picture was taken on Taketomi.

Another shisa, just because they're that cool.

Japan and swine flu hyper reactions

Well here I am, back in Japan for a week now. Time back home sure seemed to fly!

So before we even landed in Narita, we got smacked with the most recent pandemic that has swept the nation of Japan: swine flu hysteria. Note that the pandemic is not swine flu itself, which has been widely shown to be only about as strong as the seasonal flu and only has a few hundred cases worldwide, but the hysteric hyper over reactions to it I've witnessed everywhere.

In the plane they gave everyone in the plane a health survey to fill out along with the standard customs and disembarkation papers, which is ok enough I guess, but then the real fun started when the plane touched down. We were made to wait in our seats 30 minutes for a quarantine inspector to make it to our plane, at which time the less-than-comfortable-or-attractive masks were summarily passed out to all passengers (note: none of the stewardesses were wearing masks at any time, even during the inspection, so I assume that they at least realize the folly in all of this). Then the inspector comes through with an industrial-sized mask and a heat-sensing camera to check us all out. He checked our surveys one by one then gives us this sheet saying they'll call to check on us later.

Another half hour later we're out of the plane, and after showing the paper to the new makeshift quarantine gate it's reentry as usual... except for another camera crew and yet another accompanied by news staff trying to interview people on their "scary" bouts with the flu abroad. I'm sure they were sitting there for a while trying to get someone that was actually scared about the flu so they could put it on tv and spread baseless fear across the country. Looking around, we weren't the only ones that had shed their masks before even leaving the airport, so I'm imagining that most all of the people coming from abroad are much more cool-headed about things since they have not been exposed to said Japanese media scare-mongering.

2 days later, my girlfriend and I both separately got calls from the quarantine center asking us if we had any signs of the flu or anything. After I told the lady no, she said to call her if anything arose and that she'd waste her time again in another 10 days to call me and the hundreds of others that flew in.

Since getting back I've seen various reactions of people, with a strong delineation between those that read news elsewhere and those that get all their information locally. One friend told me that someone in her office that went to Hong Kong over Golden Week was told not to come into work for 10 days, and that he would be forced to use his own vacation days to do so. He was understandably upset. While I do find this disturbing, as 病休 (sick leave) is basically only used in Japan (by Japanese, at least) if you wind up in a hospital overnight I was not entirely surprised. I've heard other direct accounts that even people that are sent abroad for business trips at certain companies are forced to take a voluntary leave of absense upon returning on their own time.

I also ran across this story over at Japan Probe about university rules for travel on Golden Week, etc. This in from Waseda:

日本大学は全学渡航禁止命令を出しました。日本国内で一人でもインフルエンザが確認された場合、全学休講となります。外出をなるべくひかえ人混みに行かないように注意。

Student travel is forbidden, and students are told to avoid going out - especially to crowded places. The e-mail states that if one single human infection is confirmed in Japan, the whole school will be shut down.

One case in the country, and the whole school shuts down. Forget international travel, they won't even allow national traveling, say to visit family? Geez, over-react much?

So you'd imagine from all this that there's been at least a few cases in Japan thus far, right? Well just the other day there was finally a bonafide case of swine flu in the news. 3 Japanese coming back from Canada contracted it, so the reaction was to quarantine them and about 50 others on the plane, putting them up in a hotel. The account of one of the guys stuck in the hotel were just incredulous to me:

A Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry official asked the man not to leave his the room, except for meals, to wear a sanitary mask and not to touch anything if he had to leave the room.

Hotel employees have been prohibited from entering the travelers’ rooms, so the man cannot get room service, he said.

He said he has to wash his clothes in the bathroom of his room. He puts used towels inside a plastic bag and leaves them outside the room to be picked up by a hotel employee, he added.

For lunch Saturday, he said he had curry rice in what appeared to be a conference room. In the room, about 15 round tables were set at intervals of about three meters apart, apparently to prevent quarantined people from coming into contact with each other and spreading the virus they may possibly be infected with, he said. He sits alone at a table to eat, he said.

For dinner that day, he said he had steak.

He was asked to take his temperature in the morning, afternoon and evening.

A doctor visited him Saturday evening and told him he showed no flu symptoms, he said.

The man said he was in an unfortunate situation, but quarantining him and the other travelers was the only way to prevent the virus from spreading.

A certain phrase comes to mind that I think sums up the whole situation rather nicely...

"The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."
-FDR

Heading home!

Ok well I haven't made any official announcements on here yet, so for those of you that don't know I'll be back home next month for 3 whole weeks! The dates are April 14th to May 4th, so mark your calendars and stop by to say hi.

It's so great getting home to see people... although I must admit that I think a month or so of 'home' is about all I could take before I'm ready to come running back to Japan.

An interesting take on Beijing

I ran across this editorial from an economist (I think) that just got back from China. I really found his take on Beijing to be rather interesting, and it definitely affirms my desire to get out to China one of these days. Thing is though, as big as China is it'd take an eternity to see it all so you have to be selective... of the two biggest cities on the mainland, Shanghai and Beijing, I think I'd have to lean towards the more culturally-centric Beijing over the economic center of Shanghai.

Anyway check it out - he talks about how Peking Duck is made, the Great Wall, Buicks and Mao, the Olympic buildings, and Chinese hip-hop. Good stuff.

Shinkansen? Psshaw.

Well, they've been talking about it for a while now, and it looks like they're finally making some headway on talks of installing a maglev train in Japan. What's a maglev you say? Well it's basically a cross between the Shinkansen and Marty McFly's hoverboard, and it's got a top speed of something ridiculous like 581km/h (361mph) - according to the link "imagine a commercial jet aircraft flying past at full throttle at ground level."

Now my feelings on this are rather mixed... the inner nerd in me thinks it's a cool idea and would love them to push the technology forward to the point of commercial viability. The technology has been around since the 1960's, and it's about time someone's making it work right. Currently the only working specimen of this that I know of is the maglev in Shangai servicing the airport, which from what I hear is a total waste of space and is actually slower than normal travel due to the poor planning associated - a white elephant of the highest degree. There are no really nationwide-scale applications of the technology anywhere... the why comes next.

The pragmatist in me, however, knows that the reason the technology hasn't really seen widespread use is because it's frickin expensive: the Japan project tops off at a sombering 28,530,743,199 Doll hairs... in Zimbabwe. Ok, it's 5 trillion yen ($50 billion USD), but that's still a lot. And this is just to connect Tokyo and Nagoya, which means it's still got a long way to replace the Shink in practicality. It will eventually go at least to Osaka, which is a big step up.

And the payoff really isn't all that much - the Shink will get you to Nagoya in 100 minutes or so, while Osaka takes a little over 2 hours. In contrast, a plane ride from Tokyo to Osaka would take you about an hour, which is roughly how long the maglev would probably take. Ok, so maybe it would be nice to cut down on the flights in the whole gas-guzzling, carbon footprint clean technology sense, but it would probably still be quite a bit more expensive than a plane ride unless they totally redo the pricing schemes and cut Shink prices.

And the Shink has been around since the 70's... ok, so maybe by 2025 it would be nice to start waving in the next big thing. It's no flying car or hoverboard, but I guess it'll just have to do.

Vietnam, in a macademian nut shell

Ok, back from Vietnam and all rested up! Time for a quick summary of my impressions of country #7. First off, my 6 days took us from a flight transfer in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) to the beaches of Nha Trang, then up to Hanoi for a night and out to Halong Bay for a day before flying back to Narita. Pretty busy for just under a week, but unfortunately that's how vacations usually go out this way as time off in Japan is rather limited.

On the total opposite end of the spectrum, Vietnam is great if you'd like to forget about all concept of time and just relax. They're not too big on schedules out there from what I could see... or maybe that's just how the beaches work. In any case, a watch was definitely not needed or of much use in Nha Trang.

My top 3 impressions of Vietnam:

1. Nice people
2. Traffic in Hanoi
3. Crazy tropical fruit


Nice People

At first I was rather sceptical, as the big scam in Vietnam with expensive taxi rides from the airport that take you to their over-priced hotels was my first impression. Now while I say expensive, I'm talking basically of a difference between normal at about $15 to expensive at maybe $25 or so for a 35km ride. In otherwords, expensive in Vietnam is still cheap, and once you get the hang of how things work you can get around the ripoffs.

As time went on and I got more used to things though, I found that the people were in general pretty nice, although knowing absolutely no Vietnamese and their spotty grasp of English meant that while they generally got the gist of things, details were definitely lost in conversations. In stark contrast to Japan, however, while most can't speak English everyone tries, even if it takes them beyond their abilities.

Probably the best example was on the way back to the airport. We made a stop at the hotel we stayed at in Hanoi the night before to pick up luggage and take a shower - the plan was to grab some Pho before hitching a taxi to the airport. We asked the guy at the hotel front desk about a good place for some quick noodles... he nods, then gets up and goes in the back. I thought he'd come back with a map, but instead he brings a case of beer and proceeds to start loading the fridge! We didn't have time so I went to look for the other guy manning shop, who was helping someone out on the internet. Then the first guy comes back and says he's going to take us to a Pho place, but as it was sorta far we'd have to hop on the back of his bike. I've never actually had hotel staff escort me to a restaurant before, and this meant that we got to ride through town in the transportation of choice, a scooter. Not only did he take us to a nice place which made for a lovely last evening in Vietnam and fit perfectly into our schedule, but it also leads into the next point of...

Traffic in Hanoi

Amazing... simply amazing. This is one of those things you really just have to see for yourself to believe. By luck of the draw we spent our one night in Hanoi during the Moon Festival - think of it sort of like Vietnamese Thanksgiving and Halloween all rolled into one - which meant that the normal craziness of Vietnamese traffic was compounded by a factor of like 5 or so. The roads are packed with motorbikes and seemingly have no order to them whatsoever, and yet no one seems to drive any faster than about 40kph or so and I didn't see one crash. You get people riding on both sides of the road and weaving all over the place, with pedestrians crossing pretty much anywhere, and yet it all works. With the traffic and watching them shoot off lanterns into the sky for the Moon Festival, we sat at this one interesection for a good 1-2 hours, just watching.

Crazy Tropical Fruit

Ok, so there is fruit in this world that unless you've been around SE Asia you probably have never heard of in your life. I had this one thing called a dragon fruit, there were these others called mangosteens, some spiky-looking lychee things called rhambutans, and some wierd grape-like things with a shell on them. We had fruit pretty much with every meal as it was cheap and excellent.

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See, now I would provide you with pictures of all this, but unfortunately I lost my brand new camera on the last day, dropped in the sea in Halong Bay. I think I miss the 300 or so pictures I took even more than the $300 or so that I lost on the camera... cameras can be replaced.

Other than that I would say it was one of the most enjoyable trips I've had, despite having a cold for most of it.

Good Morning, Vietnam!!

Ok, finally sealed the deal on my Vietnamese domestic transfer, which means that I will officially as of tomorrow night be on the beaches of Nha Trang, Vietnam!

I shall take this week to lick my wounds from failing my driving test today... not totally surprising since most everyone I know that brings a license from the US fails their first time out here. Once I get back I'll work on the "New Doug for 2008" series outlined previously, but as things are running tight here I need to get packing... right after I go pick up my tickets!

Quick note to anyone going to Vietnam: if you checked the prices of domestic flights online, know that those prices are only good WHEN YOU ARE IN VIETNAM. Also, you need at least a minimum of two days with which to procure said tickets, or else you wind up buying them through your local branch and paying the normal [insert your country here] prices. This means that if at all possible, you should stay in Hanoi/Hochiminh for 2 days and fly out on the 3rd to take advantage of this... if you can find 2 days worth of stuff to do in Hanoi/Hochiminh. My suggestion - do Hanoi and hit up Halong Bay or something.

Ok, back in a week with pics and stories!

The tale of two keitais

So this past week was Golden Week, which meant a couple 4-day weekends for yours truly. I took the opportunity to take a trip up to my old stomping grounds in Miyagi, which was definitely relaxing and enjoyable.

The only caveat - I had to say goodbye to something that has been near and dear to me for the past year or so, my cell phone, taking with it all the numbers accumulated in it over the past year. Pictured on the right are the culprit (right) and its replacement, with a new buddy tagging along known as marimokkori, the Sendai version. I call him Date Mokkori since it's the marimokkori of Date Masamune of Sendai fame.

So what is this marimokkori exactly you ask? Well I'm glad you did, because you know I'm going to tell you anyway as they exude more awesomeness than a platypus's mammary glands. Marimokkori is this cute (apparently) green toy that originated up in Hokkaido. Marimo is a kind of algae they have up in Hokkaido, and mokkori is another name for... a crotch! As you may notice from his likeness to the left, mari is always rather proud of his bulging mokkori. I used to have a mokkori monkey as my keitai strap for a while actually, but I lost him. I guess monkeys are meant to be free.

Oh, and if you're wondering how my phone died it was rather abrupt and with no warning, but I do have an idea what might have happened... it was shortly following this incident that I noticed it died:



Totally, totally random. Ah well, this time around I got one with a SIM card and a memory card. Backups people!

Summer of Doug, pt. III - Doug hits the road!

Ok, this one'll be a little long...

When we last left our hero, I finished up my year in Shichigahama on a rather busy note. Ok so that's not exactly true... my job actually left me in Narita with my old boss, and on a Friday night no less. We went out for a drink or two, and that was pretty much that. I'm drawing a blank on what happened that Saturday - I'm sure it was magical and wonderful - but on Sunday we had tickets to Summer Sonic! Summer Sonic is one of the two huge music festivals here in Japan if you didn't know, with this year featuring the likes of the Polysics, the Pillows (another kickass Japanese band), Black Eyes Peas, UNKLE, Social Distortion, and... the Offspring!!! Along with a bunch of other people. There was actually a band called Hadouken, which as cool as it sounds with all its Street Fighter goodness was rather disappointing. Maybe if they had backup dancers dressed like Chun Li doing spinning dropkicks across the stage it'd help a bit. Anyway, it was a wild and crazy time, as you can see.

From there, I took the next Tuesday off from buying stuff and settling in to meet a friend and go to the land of monkeys, Nikko! I was extremely disappointed not to find any actually monkeys, but there was plenty of monkey memorabilia to play with if you remember a certain video. The carving below shows the famous "hear no evil, speak no evil, see no evil" in monkey form outside a world heritage site that is absolutely stunning. The saying in Japanese actually includes monkeys, which automatically makes it cooler than the English.


Another note about Nikko monkeys - they're known for being rather mischievous. Apparently you really have to watch your wallet or they'll swipe it, along with anything else loose in your pockets. I've heard stories of them breaking into unlocked cars and stuff too. It'd almost be worth it to be mauled by these primates just to have them waiting in my car looking for tasty morsels of... whatever. MONKEYS!! My obsession with monkeys is rather unhealthy if you didn't know. But then, if you ask me an obsession with monkeys is never unhealthy.

There was also a really nice waterfall and this crazy and awesome road known as Irohazaka (the other 2 videos previously posted) that you have to go up (and down) to get there and back. See, in Japanese there's this poem that basically contains the whole Japanese "alphabet" called the Iroha poem - 47 characters in total, all used only once including two that have fallen out of usage, to make a perfect pangram. The Irohazaka coincidentally enough has 47 turns, which are each ridiculous if you remember the pictures/video, with one character assigned to each turn. All this in one day!

So from there I go back to Yokohama, took a trip up to Miyagi one more time to finish moving all my luggage and try and sort out some car stuff (still have to work that out!! grrr....) while attending the party of the same friend that went to Nikko with me. From there I went directly to my birthday party, which was a beach bbq with jungle juice and topped off with "Gay Music" (if you don't know then don't ask... or do, whatever).

Then a week later was Okinawa... still need to get the pictures up for that one. I have about 300 to sort through, so it's taking me a while. I believe that one deserves its own post, so I'll break there for now.

Summer of Doug, pt. I

Ok this one's gonna be a biggie, so I'll be parsing it out over a couple posts in the next week or so. First the big news - as of Monday, I start a nice, new shiny job in Tokyo as a translator++ at a big-ass company known as the IHI Corporation! They actually changed the official name recently to IHI from the original Ishikawajima-Harima Heavy Industries, probably because it's just too damn hard to say. So anyway, this means that over the past month or so I finished up my stint as CIR in Shichigahama with most likely the busiest 10 days I had there ever, then took the last few weeks to settle into my new environs with a whole bunch of partying and traveling interspersed between. I'm currently living in (technically) Yokohama, just south of Tokyo with my new roomie and old friend from the Chiba days, Matt.

There's a whole bunch to cover... I've been back to Miyagi, up to Nikko, down to Okinawa, and out to Tokyo a bunch with wrapping up one job and lining up things for another while moving in and all that jazz. This means that I've ridden the shinkansen 7 times, flown twice, and driven the main island of Okinawa from tip to tip, north to south with a whole bunch of stops in between for a grand total in the ballpark of I'd guess 6,000km traveled. It certainly hasn't been cheap (especially weekends in Tokyo), but it has been entertaining! And with that, I'm off to bbq today! I'll be uploading pictures from my last trip and updating you here shortly.

"Thank you for safety driving"

The title is borrowed from a girl that went with me and some others on a trip this weekend. Her English is pretty good actually, but stuff like that just makes me wonder if they get as much of a kick out of my Japanese as I do of their English. Yeah, probably. ;P

So if driving is necessary I'm usually more than happy to oblige, and this past Sunday was one such occasion. We took a day trip down to the next prefecture and took in some sights in scenic Fukushima. All toll I drove us a total of 500km for the day, and it was my first chance thus far to actually drive on the highway and exorcise my speed demon. Cops are a pretty rare sight out here and there's very little enforcement of traffic laws - although I hear they're trying to really crack down on drunk driving lately (zero tolerance policy in Japan btw) - with the rare cop car on the roads and apparently the occasional speed camera on the highway. The only real big pain is that the highways here are pretty expensive. For example, we spent basically 50USD today on tolls. Bleh. Along the way and after going down a nice little windy road that wrapped around a beautiful lake, we stopped by an old Japanese village, a rock formation, a castle, and a lake. For pictorial evidence and further explanations, proceed to flickr.


Oh, and I know how people love drama, so along the way I heard a rather messed up tale of misguided love that I figured I'd share with you guys - don't tell anyone! (like you know who I'm talking about anyway) So this girl was telling us how the night before she slept over at this guy's place that she's seeing, but was rather upset about things so of course we asked for a story. Apparently she gets to his place only to find some feminine undergarments that were not hers. Of course she asks for his story, and here's what she got: "Oh well those are a friend's that slept over, but we didn't do anything." Yeah, because I have girls over and we sleep together in the buff (in the winter, mind you), but it's purely platonic. She proceeds to tell us how there are 3 other girls, that she knows of at least, that are basically in the same boat as her, but it's ok because he says that she's special. Her response? "Well I like him, so I want to believe him."

There's no real point to that story, I just thought I'd relate it to give you an idea what goes through the head of some Japanese girls... or maybe I should say girls in general? I dunno, I could never figure out what they're thinking either way. Oh yeah, and the guy is American, so it shows you the respect some guys that come over here have for the women too... or again, maybe just guys in general. I hear a bunch of people that say they're not really that crazy about dating Japanese guys. I don't have any personal experience on that one, so I can't really say why.

Thailand - welcome to the jungle!!!

Ok, so I said I'd be gone for about 10 days and now I'm back - Thailand is absolutely amazing! There's no way that you could be satisfied with going to a place like that with so much to see and only spend 10 days there. It's the kind of place where it's way too easy to just lose all track of time and get lost in the moment. Most of the time I had no idea what day it was because it simply doesn't make a difference - the only time I needed to know was when I had to make sure I made it back in time for the plane at the end of it all. I really only had time to check out 2 areas - Krungthep Mahanakhon Amonrattanakosin Mahintharayutthaya Mahadilokphop Noppharatratchathani Burirom-udomratchaniwet Mahasathan Amonphiman Awatansathit Sakkathattiya Witsanu Kamprasit (you probably know it as Bangkok) and Ko Phi Phi - and even there I could've used a few more days in each location as I didn't get to see and do everything I wanted to. Ok, well if you're bored with words now then feel free to proceed onto the pictures anytime you please - otherwise, go ahead and read on for my take on what I saw.

So impressions? Well the first thing you think when you drive into Bangkok is that it looks like a dirty place. There are stray dogs all over the place and the streets are teeming with seedy looking people walking around looking at street vendors and soliciting prostitutes-a-plenty, keeping an eye out to make sure that the "girl" they're talking to isn't really one of the infamous "ladyboys". There are also plenty of beggars and vagrants. And driving - well the taxi driver that gave us a ride from the airport was weaving through traffic at 14okph like it was Fast and the Furious or something, and he refused to stay in one lane the whole time. Bangkok is a pretty crazy place to be and there is plenty going on at all times, just like any other big international city. One thing that stood out were the number of foreigners walking around, which is in stark contrast to my existance in Japan.

There are definitely some beautiful things about the place though, along with some great people and great sites. It's known as one of the best places to shop in all of Asia because you can find quality stuff there and all the prices are really just guidelines as it's only worth as much as you can talk the seller down to. Things are often only really worth about a 3rd of whatever price they tell you in the beginning, and this is doubly true for any taxi/tuk-tuk rides as well as tickets to attractions such as a Muay Thai boxing match. Much to my dismay, there were not guys running around like Tony Jaa in Ong-bak: Muay Thai Warrior. That would've been cool.

As for the people, well I didn't get to talk to them nearly as much as I would've liked, but most all the ones I did talk to were really friendly. Most everyone knows at least some basic English and can answer basic questions if you stick to the major areas, so I'd say it's easier to get around than in Japan in that respect. It was my first real foray into the world of broken English, as in how you have to talk to get through to locals without making their heads explode. The Thai hookers had especially good English and made for some interesting conversation when they weren't trying to get you in bed with them. If you're sitting at a table outside in some of the busier sections they'd just come right over and sit down next to you without asking unless you push them away. If you buy them a drink then you get the pleasure of their company. Talking around, being a prostitute seems like just another job out there, and a decent paying one from the looks of it as well. One person I ran into said that a friend was married to a Thai woman, and one of the woman's sisters was a prostitute and they would openly talk about business was going and how many guys she had gotten over the past week and the like over dinner with the family.

All the fellow travelers were great as well and it was easy to meet plenty of new people from all over... except for the fact that there were so very few Americans out there for whatever reason. The vast majority of the people I met and hung out with were European (hi Maria and Richard!). Right off the plane I started talking to a guy who was in the same boat as me with no set plans on what to see and do, and I offered to split a cab with him. Shortly afterwards before we got through customs another guy joined us, and we all set out to find somewhere to crash for the night. Amazingly and totally randomly, I ran into a fellow JET from Miyagi that lives less than an hour's drive from me once we found a place and hung out for the whole night! It was the same deal on the way down to the islands - I met a guy on the bus going to the same place as me and we shared a room and stuck together pretty much for the duration of my time in Ko Phi Phi. From there we'd go out with some girls that he met up north and some people that I met during the days I went diving to get my open sea license.

So moving along, Bangkok is known for its nightlife and craziness, but there are also some pleasant sites such as river markets and temples, and also some great food. They also have a lovely, almost resort-like hospital with a Starbuck's and a Sizzler steak house on the first floor if the food doesn't happen to like you too much - I found that out due to something I must've eaten before arrival given the timing as the mud butt arose deep inside my bowels on the plane ride over before I even had a chance to eat anything. I was keeled over in bed for a day listening to the crazy guy in the bed across the way from me, but at least the view from the room was spectacular from my 8th floor vantage point. Oh, and given that it's a tropical country (especially as you move south) the weather was great pretty much the whole time with temperatures in the mid-30's (80-90's F). It rained for 2 hours one day and everyone was complaining how horrible it was even when the weather was just a little cloudy - it didn't really bother me much though coming from my freezing cold apartment.

As you move south, the temperatures don't really change too much, but the scenery does. We drove through Krabi before taking the hour and a half ferry ride to the islands known as Phi Phi (pronounced "pee pee" - Ko or Koh just means 'island'), which is a great place for rock climbing and is right on the shore. Ko Phi Phi has the whitest sands and clearest waters I've seen with some rather well-maintained beaches. You can hardly even tell that a tsunami came through 2 years ago and totally ravaged the entire area killing thousands, other than the few remaining places still being rebuilt and the extreme hike in the prices. People don't really mention things about that since it affected a lot of people, but there are some subtle reminders scattered about.

So I didn't get to go cliffdiving or parasailing, but in Ko Phi Phi I did get to go diving and see... are you ready for it? Monkeys!!! In addition to being famous for having some great coral at relatively shallow depths (you only had to go down about 6-10 meters) and plenty of sharks, sea turtles, manta rays and other aquatic life in spades, they are also known for having the beach from "The Beach" and even have a place on the other side of the island known as Monkey Beach! "The Beach" beach does have a name - Maya Bay. I couldn't remember that for a while though, so me and my Hollander roommate buddy guy came up with a great way to remember it. Maya makes you think of the Mayans, which were an ancient civilization in Mexico. All Mexicans are gay (for the purposes of this story at least), so they love Lenny DiCaprio, which starred in a lovely little film known as... The Beach! See, easy right? I guess all those little mind and memory tricks I picked up in my Japanese studies and working at warping, um I mean molding, the minds of little children for a while pay off in the end!

Ok, so let's finish off with some fun facts and tidbits I picked up along the way. First, Ko Phi Phi is owned and run by 2 families which comprise the Phi Phi mafia! For this reason, anywhere you go on the island there's little price variation and vendors aren't permitted to sell things below a certain price. This goes against things in the rest of the country where prices are wide open and totally dependant or your ability to negotiate and not get ripped off... which is relative of course since you can buy a pair of Pumas or nice jeans for $10USD and beer at bars for $1USD. I hear that they also enforce martial law in the area if anyone gets too stupid and starts trouble with the local businesses. I heard word of a Brit that was dabbling with the drug market that got knocked off last year. There was also a bar on the island that had a ring for Thai boxing which advertized having ladyboy boxing (never saw it) and would give you a "bucket" if you would get in the ring with a friend and pummel each other in your drunken stupor... plenty of people took them up on that, including one guy we saw get a bloody nose before his friend beat him down to the canvas.

Elsewhere, I heard some interesting things about the seedier sides of Bangkok. In addition to the standard massage parlors with benefits (the real massages are great and cheap btw... although they can be painful) and Turkish bath houses (the girls bathe you - think that scene in Coming to America), I also caught wind of strip shows where girls would do all kinds of crazy stuff with their hoo-hahs like shoot out ping-pong balls or darts, smoke cigarettes, or serve bananas to the patrons. The place is also known for ladyboy cabaret bars, which are supposed to be quite interesting from what I hear if you can get past the fact that some of the guys are more beautiful than most of the women you see on the streets... scary. One guy even told me that there's a place you can go and pay the girls to lick you. Seriously!! It's a full body tongue massage, and they lick you from head to toe! Knowing Bangkok I'm sure they make some stops along the way, but they have hourly rates and you can double up on girls and stuff... with all this it's no wonder that the majority of the foreigners you run into in Bangkok are guys. Some of the worst are supposed to actually be Japanese salarymen who come over to indulge in some of their more... uncouth fetishes. Some of it really is just dirty businessmen catering to a sick and demented audience sometimes, but not all of it is. There is a fair bit of exploitation going on, but in general I would say that they definitely don't hold the same taboos as western society does on such things, which I don't necessarily see as bad.

So that's my take on Thailand, as incomplete as it is. I would say that you'd really need to take about a month or so to really get a feel for things, but knowing the way that place is a month would just make you want to stay even longer. There are just too many entrancing places in the world and only a lifetime to see them all. So the real question is: what are you guys doing staying in the same place for so long?!? Get out and see the world around you!

Back in the office... for now

So today's the first day back at work for the new year... I guess. We're in the office, but the place is still closed to the public until tomorrow I think. Everyone showed up in suits today, but apparently that memo didn't get around to me. A bunch of the important people around town have come by today to say happy new year, which means lots of bowing.

From here out though, I'm actually taking the next 10 days off to visit Thailand: the land of spicy salads, muay thai, painfully good massages, and clear blue waters. Yesterday I was on a ski slope with -10C(15F) weather, and the day after tomorrow I'll be on a beach with 30C(mid-80's F) weather. I've never been in a country where I couldn't speak the local language before, so this should be a nice little adventure. And with that said, enjoy your frosted lawns and windshields, and I shall see you on the flip side!

I shall leave you with the pride of my weekly picture collection - allow me to present: Monkey Crossing!!! It looks a bit more like a gorilla to me, but whatever it's still cool.

My boss wears a girdle, and I have 2 month's worth of "pet bottles"

True story. So I'm back in town from Tokyo - had a conference in Shinjuku this past week and decided to go down early for a much needed vacation. I got a free ride down with a friend in his truck last Friday night, so I taught him some very useful English along the way. He now knows how to say "I gotta pee", "you are lame", "I'm a pimp", "you suck", and "I'll lay the smackdown on your ass." Gotta start with the basics, right?

So once we got down to Tokyo, the main 2 highlights were 1) food, and 2) meeting other CIRs from around the country. I had some pretty nice Korean BBQ, a Thanksgiving dinner starring pumpkin pie (but no gravy), some Mexican food twice, and some pretty good Indian food. On the people end, it was really good to network with people - in addition to fresh faces I got to meet a few people that I had talked to online but never had a chance to actually meet yet. It was fun.

Oh yeah, and there was this 20th anniversary dealie for JET, so they had a big reception and ceremony and stuff which I scored an invitation to - the crown prince of Japan was there, which was cool. Even cooler though was this one chick from Kyoto that spoke at the panel discussion they had in a really thick Kansai accent. If that means nothing to you, imagine some southern Georgia belle or a guy from the Bronx at a snazzy symposium and you'll get the same effect. I must say though that the Kyoto accent to me is totally hot! What can I say, I'm a sucker for girls with a foreign accent, even if it's a regional one in Japanese. Then again, Japanese accents in English are stupid to me, so I guess it isn't always true. Maybe it only works for girls that are already hot, in which case one could argue it's not working at all... ok, I'll stop now.

Where was I? Oh yeah, anniversary dinner which came with a free extra night in Tokyo, with which I went out to a club. I got to do my "tako dance"(tako = octopus). Then I come back, and my boss is wearing a girdle for back pains. He insists it's because he's too fat, but he's also been under a lot of stress because his dad's in bad shape - currently still in the hospital. So he says that he's as fat as an American, to which my response of course is that I'm American and he's fatter than me, which makes him fatter than an American. Then I told him maybe he should change nationalities. Since he's one of the like 5 people out of 20,000+ in my town that gets American humor he laughed.

And now for the other part of the title. What's a "pet bottle" you ask? Well, that's a pet bottle. Or more exactly, according to wiki... "Polyethylene terephthalate (aka PET, PETE or the obsolete PETP or PET-P) is a thermoplastic polymer resin of the polyester family that is used in synthetic fibers; beverage, food and other liquid containers; thermoforming applications; and engineering resins often in combination with glass fiber." Wiki is my friend.;P


See here's the deal: see that chart? That's a sample trash schedule from somewhere's in Japan. You're supposed to seperate things into like 6 different categories before you throw them away, and they give you this nifty color-coordinated trash schedule to sort out which day you're supposed to throw what stuff away. If you try to throw the wrong stuff away on the wrong day they give it back to you. If you throw the right stuff away but don't use the right bag, they give it back to you. If you don't get there by 8:30am when the truck comes, you get to hold on to it til next time. And the best part is that there are certain things, like these pet bottles, which only get tossed one day out of the month. That day happened to be last week when I was out of town, so now I have an overflowing pet bottle trash recepticle with 2 months worth of the things. I think I might have to saunter over to the local 7-11 in the middle of the night all ninja-like and dump them in their trash can, since that's about the only place you can find public trash cans around here. It's either that or wait until December 21st, the next pet bottle day. I wonder how many I could collect by then...

And finally, I'm cold. That is all.

Blah.

I'm pooped... just trying to make it through the day here. I took a day trip up north a little to a place called Naruko and stopped by an onsen, then rushed back to run out to Sendai in the evening to make a practice for the play and did not get anywheres near enough sleep last night.

Here's a small compilation of funny videos I've run across in the past few weeks though for your amusement. I absolutely love that "old man bites tenderly" one, or whatever it's called. I'm pretty sure they're all SFW... as long as you can contain your inevitable outbursting fits of laughter.

http://archives.canneslions.com/media/2006/tv/high/2006_020_167_high.mov
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9M5ddlZOYg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUibe9NeJPQ
http://www.patrick.com/front/archives/000250.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8c2fMDatoU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ads_XnWvMd4

In other news, if anyone's heard from or has means of smacking James upside the head to get his attention, tell him it'd be nice to hear from him once in a while to make sure his cats didn't eat him in his sleep or something.

ｷﾀ━━━━(ﾟ∀ﾟ)━━━━ｯ!!

Oh yes, the moment of truth has indeed arrived, for Doug has at long last found himself some wheels!! Ok, so I've had it for like 2 weeks now, so I guess this is a tad overdue, but I was waiting until I could snap a few pics and the weather lately hasn't exactly been condusive. I've been told it wasn't a typhoon but merely a "low pressure front", and to that I say pshaw. The rain and winds were frickin plenty strong and lasted for a few days. Mr. Sun came out today though, so all is good in Mr. Dargie's neighborhood now. And in case you're wondering, yes my car is exactly what I wanted and yes it is everything I expected it to be. It is quite easily the fastest car I've ever owned... which sort of goes to waste as I'll explain shortly. Here's a picture of the new Party Wagon - not to be confused with the not-so-recently deceased Party Wagen, the cash cow that met its untimely demise last year after racking up nearly five bajillion miles, getting hit thrice in the space of a year, then smacking into a wall (sorry 'bout that one George). So hey, I took a picture with my K-tie (cell phone), which actually has better resolution than my digital camera (3mega-pixels vs. 2). The interior's actually even nicer than the exterior with race-like Recaro seats all around, a momo steering wheel and a very solid feeling clutch/short-shifter. Double-din stereo that handles tapes, cds, and MDs - and now iPods. ;P Oh, and last but most certainly not least, there's a full exhaust and intake on it with a nice blow-off valve, so it makes cool swishy noises when I shift hard. I love that! Stock my car's rated at 250HP, so with the stuff on it I'm guessing somewhere in the neighborhood of the 270s. It's fast enough basically.

So ok, let me give you a little shakedown on all the crap you have to deal with to get a car around here - I'll present the good and the bad as well as I can. First off the good news: used cars are dirt cheap in Japan. I picked up my precioussssss for the low, low sum of 200,000Y (1,680USD currently). That's for a '98 WRX with 110,000 miles on the odo that runs perfectly fine and has no major exterior blemishes. The bad news? After all was said and done it cost a total of 417,000Y to get it on the road! There're taxes and fees for every stupid little thing - sales tax, registration fee (50,000Y!!), inspection fees, special car taxes, manditory national insurance (which isn't enough since you have to get extra insurance anyway), you name it. Still though, when you consider that I just sold a '00 RS (not even a turbo) back home for 11,000USD, a pricetag of $3,500ish for that car boggles the mind... or maybe I'm just easily boggled.

Alright, so I'll start at the beginning. Asking around online I found out that auctions are supposed to be the cheapest way to pick up cars in Japan, so this guy introduced me to someone he knew. Long story short, I wound up going down to Tokyo to check out what I was told was the biggest car auction in the world - something like 10-13,000 cars go out of that place a week. I took the overnight bus (5 hours from Sendai) and was supposed to meet up with my man on the scene to go to the auction. I was totally expecting to take the train, then this guy rolls up in a brand frickin new Z3! Sweet! So we drive out there, and I'll tell you it was any car guy's fantasy land - you name it, they probably had one for sale. I saw countless GT-Rs of course (I saw a hakosuka... Davis eat your heart out!), a few Ferraris and Lambos, even an old pimpin 60's Impala and a few nice old Bugs. They were all sitting in this ginormous parking lot, and you could go out and start the engine and inspect them all if you wanted. Lots of fun! I dunno, maybe dealer auctions are like that in the States as well, but I wouldn't know.

So yeah, the day I went, out of the 10,000 cars there only 5 met my criterion, and given my restrictively low budget I didn't get one that day. The guy I met was really cool though, and we went back to his office in Tokyo and checked out things online. He even gave me his password and all so I could browse the national auction inventory from home by myself. So that was last month sometime, and within a week we found something that worked and he picked it up at the price I mentioned above... here's where it starts to get a little hairy.

You see, in Japan when you buy a car there are a bunch of things you have to worry about. First off, there's the parking thing. If you live in a city or urban area like many do then you'll probably wind up having to shell out upwards of a few hundred doll-hairs to secure yourself a spot. Luckily I don't have that problem as my parking is free (go boonies!!), but you still have to prove you have parking in order to get the car registered. I had to go to the local po-po station and get some forms on which you have to provide dimensions and info on the car itself, then the parking lot layout which you have to draw by hand. Bleh. After that, I took it to my landlady, who in turn had to take it to the real estate company to get it stamped for approval. After I got that back I had to go back to the po-pos and give it back, along with money of course, to get a little sticker to put on the car. All that took a little over a week to sort out.

Then I got to take a trip to Japan's version of the DMV. I had to turn in the previous owner's plates after getting them pried off with the jaws of life thanks to some rust, and get new ones of my own. Thank God the auction guy drove the car up and helped me out with all that cause it looked about as bad and anal as the paperwork back home for stuff but in Japanese - apparently no one actually does that stuff themselves around here though. They have this little seal they put over your rear plate after the guy comes out to inspect it, and you have to get your plates changed every two years when you renew the shaken.

What's shaken (pronounced "shah-ken", not like the past tense of "shake") you ask? Well it's this safety/equipment inspection you have to go through every 2 years, or every year if your car's more than 10 years old I think. A new car's shaken lasts 3 years. It's prohibitively expensive, which is why used cars are so damn cheap out here. It makes them depreciate much faster. With many cheap old cars, a car might only be worth as much as the shaken that's on it - mine is still good for a little over a year in case you're wondering. So just how expensive is it? Well if you have a K-car (lawnmower-like engine and proportional speed, weighs less than 600kg I think) then you might get away with only paying like 50,000-70,000 or so, but for my gas guzzler I hear I should expect about twice that range. Oh, and there's an annual car tax as well I hear, like in Virginia. I don't like Virginia.

A couple other random tidbits I shall give you about driving in Japan - yes, it is weird (and yet really cool) to drive on the other side of the road while sitting on the other side of the car and shifting with my other hand. Also, the speed limits around here are rediculous - imagine all the numbers being the same as the US, but replace the mph with a kph. The highest local speed limit I've seen is 50kph, and the highways are set at something like 80-90kph. Luckily for me no one actually does the speed limit - you'll see people going anywheres from 20-40kph over the posted limit. I still haven't even cracked 100kph (~60mph), although I have cracked 6000rpm. ;P

Ah yes, and then there's gas. I got my "high ock man-tan" (full tank of hi octane, Initial D style) for the exhorbant sum of 8,000Y, so don't you guys go trying to complain to me about gas back home. Japanese high test is really clean though... I've heard high octane is something like 10 octane points higher, putting it at around 112 octane or so. Oh, and I have yet to pump my own gas since most of the stations around here are full service. With a smile even! It's like Jersey, but without the smell and I can turn left to my heart's content. ;P

I've been driving all over the place and it's a blast - gotta find new tires and a track or something quick though. I wonder if they have autocross in Japan... oh, and half the reason for me to get this specific car is for snowtime adventures to snowboard land, with a small stop along the way to doughnut central, or axis-spin city depending on how saucy I'm feeling. We're on the same parallel as Maryland, so I hear it snows plenty and the closest ski resort is a mere hour's drive away. Oh, but apparently they don't believe in plowing the streets so things might get a little hairy around here... especially since my town's like a big hill jutting out of the ocean. I do hear that it's usually a tad milder here due to shore effect. Still, woo AWD and snow tires!

Boats... grrr!

Yeah, one thing I've noticed is that I use an inordinant amount of exclamation points (one could even say I... "spackle" my writing with them), or as I like to refer to them, "bangs." I guess if you know me that is sort of indicitave of my character though, so I'll just leave it out there as a simple observation. Things that make me go hmm... Oh hey, and before I forget, Engrish of the day goes to the guy on the train wearing a trucker hat that read "I lost my virginity in Madagascar." Priceless.

So today's theme is me being totally pooped. I cannot for the life of me sleep in, whether it's a weekday or my day off, whether I go to bed at 11 or 3, whether I went out the night before or whatever. The fricking sun gets me up at like 6am or so just about every day and I'm hating it. One thing that luckily isn't going to be a factor anymore is that there's no DST in Japan. American occupational forces did enstate it in Japan during the post-WWII occupational period for about 6 years, but as soon as we left it was one of the first things to go. That means that while you enjoy daylight until 9pm on some days during the summer, I enjoy the sun rising at like 4am. Yeah.

Sooo... that means I need some thicker blinds. I went and checked, and it looks like I'll wind up dropping like $50-60 on curtains big enough to cover the window in my bedroom, and the same goes for if I want darkness in any of my other rooms as well. Strangely enough this didn't bother me in Chiba for whatever reason, but it sure does now so I gotta do something about it. As soon as payday comes around that is- I already spent 420,000+ yen this month. Oh, and that's only like $3,500 btw.

And just to top it all off, today I was not awoken by our benevolent source of sustenance and life... oh no, he didn't even get the chance. You see, today I arose to the onerous sound of fog horns, most likely from boats all the way on the other side of my area of town. The bastages!! They got me up at like 5am! I think I might have gotten back to sleep for a grand total of 30 whopping minutes before I had to get up to go to work since there was an opera today I had to help out with.

So dragging along I make it to work, with said opera on the horizon. I must admit it was rather impressive to see this Japanese woman no bigger than yours truly belting stuff out with force without need or wont for a microphone. This girl wasn't your stereotypical shy and demure Japanese girl by any stretch of the imagination. She was an honest to goodness soprano and had range that would give Mariah Carey back in the early 90's a good run. She wrote her own material, which was lackluster, but it was more about getting the town's kids involved apparently so whatever.

The theme? The Shichigahama awabi legend. It's about these fishermen who went out to sea a long time ago and got stuck in a storm. The storm tore a huge hole in the bottom of the boat and they started to sink, so they start calling out to some local god that was supposed to protect them. They start paddling back and notice the water's stopped. When they get back to shore, they look on the bottom of the boat and what do they see? A big 'ol awabi, blocking up the hole. And there you have it.

Alright, well now that that's said and done I'm off to catch up on some z's. Snore.