Fuji-Q

The usual absurd line outside of Jirō Rāmen in Mita (right outside of campus), despite the rain. It's quite good... but... chalk this phenomenon up to unreasonable Japanese enthusiasm.
The horrific spider-god of Roppongi Hills, poised in perpetuity to unleash her deadly egg-brood on Tokyo's gentle upper crust.
One of the central performing spaces in Roppongi Hills, probably the highest-class neighborhood in Tokyo. The crowd is here for a free jazz concert (Japan is nuts about jazz by the way), as were I and a few of my friends.
I saw these guys in Tamachi station. My apologies for the pink fuzz in bottom-right of the screen; I'm fairly certain it was a streaker or some sort of albino bear. Anyone care to forward a guess as to why these two dark-suited men are doing chained to one-another with wires, or what the heck is in the one guy's backpack?
"ALL GOOD FRIEND / I AM VERY HAPPY / WE ACT TOGETHER ANYTIME / A PLEASANT THING WAITS FROM NOW ON / WE DO ANY KIND OF THING / AND DO PLAY?"
I was a bit early in my commute to school, and I spied the cat guy again! He seems to take the same walk every morning around 7:30-7:45, with a smile on his face and that placid grey cat on his left shoulder.
From left- Monika, Maya, and Yuffie. This is at the awesome Fuji-Q Highland amusement park, and yes, that's Mt. Fuji clearly visible in the background. Awesome.
I don't even know...
how to begin to explain this...
This is the wall above the urinals...
in one of Fuji-Q's restrooms...

"Wao! So big! Unbelievable! .....She loves it."

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My life took a sharp turn for awesomeness and madness last Saturday, when I hopped on a speeding train bound for Fuji-Q Highland with Maya and her friends Yuffie and Monika. It was a beautiful morning, and my light hangover lent the daylight a pleasing sharpness. The train was packed with day-hikers (and their gear) breaking free of the urban crush of Tokyo for the mountains and the swaths of rich green forest that lie to the west. We, however, were not to wander sun-mottled mountain paths: our destination was Fuji-Q, a massive amusement park in Yamanashi Prefecture, in the very shadow of Mt. Fuji. I would have slept on the train (it was a three hour ride) but I was far too excited about the park. Yuffie and Monika sat behind Maya and me, chatting in Japanese. In my state of hungover sleep-deprivation, the last thing I wanted to do was wrack my brain for long-buried Japanese words, so I was grateful to be able to speak with Maya in English. Unable to sleep, I flipped through a book of elementary French and watched a group of deaf people four rows ahead conversing in sign language. Every once in a while one of them would sign something funny and their faces would crinkle with laughter and one of them might slap his knee. Their laughter was... uncanny (more like 'bleating' than laughter). I suppose people learn "how to laugh" through imitating those around them, just like any other part of spoken language...
The hills, and then forested mountains, rolled past the windows lush and lovely with late-spring growth. Then the train rounded a bend and Mt. Fuji appeared painted in white and black against the crisp late-morning horizon. A few minutes later the twisted, colossal frames of Fuji-Q's world-class roller coasters, etched in white and red against the clear blue mountain sky, came into view.
Fuji-Q is a very serious park, on the scale of Six-Flags but much better. Three of their coasters hold or have held world records at some point- I think the "Dodonpa" coaster still holds the record for fastest acceleration (4.25 Gs), something like 0-170km/h in 3 seconds (yeah, it took a few seconds for my eyes to find their way out of my cranium after that). There's also a demented 160-ft take on rotating swings- a tower of steel called "鉄骨番長” ("tekkotsu banchō"- "Captain Ironbones") in classic construction black-and-yellow.
There's also a water ride complete with ridiculously flimsy ¥100 yellow ponchos. Poor Yuffie tore several gaping holes in hers, trying to fit her arms through, and got drenched. Somehow, I managed to tear a hole in mine with my nose while cringing upon impact with the water's surface (the ride is just a single amphibious car taking a steep drop into a large pond). I ended up wearing that tattered poncho for most of the rest of the day, because sometimes I do crazy stuff like that.
The first ride we rode is the newest in the park, called "ええじゃないか” or "Eejanaika," which I guess I would translate to "Ain't That Fine?" It's one of only a handful of so-called "4D" coasters in the world, meaning each row of seats can rotate 360 degrees irrespective of the motion of the cars. For the initial 250 ft. rise to the peak of the first hideous drop, we the passengers (victims) lie face up, suspended over a vast pool of cloudless blue sky. The only sounds, aside from occasional screams, are the cranking of the lift chain and a tense whistle of wind around the frame of the coaster. A turn of the head to either side reveals the vast downward slope of the mountain the park is built on, and the little valley towns that surround it, so impossibly far below and getting farther and farther...

And then suddenly I'm hurtling belly-up and head-first down an almost vertical drop, my stomach is in my pants, and before I can figure out what's happening I find myself spinning and tumbling downwards in a full zero-G roll as the hideous thing rotates the seats back and forth. I feel like a leaf in a labyrinthine jet-stream hurtling along at positively fatal velocities, utterly without bearing and completely unable to predict or understand the ludicrous inversions and loops and spins my body is being put through. After one last full backwards spin at the sharp peak of a last arc, the seats align into a relatively tame foot-first dive into the clamps and the cars and their traumatized cargo are wrenched to a halt. Best coaster I've ever experienced? You bet.
Another great thing about Japanese amusement parks (and Japan in general): people in costumes. Men in pink spandex or red silken robes, roving troupes of girls in bright yellow pikachu cosplay outfits, old ladies with bright purple hair (oh wait- that was on the metro this morning)... And pizza, sweet sweet pizza.

I have one more story to tell before this post crosses the tl;dr (Internet for "too long; didn't read") boundary: how I learned to tie a tie.

It all began innocently enough. I was sauntering to school, probably a few minutes late, with my usual grim face and thinking my usual grim thoughts, when who should intrude upon my melancholic, morbid musings but my friend Ai Roth, the improbably sexy half-Japanese half-Russian full-time-student-part-time wedding model whom I met for the first time at Daniel's farewell / birthday party, the night Jack and Daniel split a whole bottle of Jack Daniels and Jack took a bite out of the stairs in the Shibuya McDonald's, destroying his right maxillary central incisor.

Well, I have called her improbably sexy, and that is true, but that doesn't mean I remembered her name or how I knew her, so I was confused and surprised when she, gorgeous and vaguely familiar, came up to chat with me on my way to school. I must have played off my bewilderment fairly well, because I got myself invited to her birthday party. I managed to remain relatively cool for the rest of the conversation- at least I managed to avoid revealing to her that I didn't know who she was. I had now, however, a different problem: I was invited to a birthday party, furthermore a girl's birthday party, furtherfurthermore an attractive girl's birthday party, and I didn't know her name or how to contact her.
The answer to that question came quickly enough- I picked up from our brief conversation that she was an acquaintance of Maya's, and Maya has a far better memory than I do when it comes to people... and events... also facts... and most other things... : /

I had been explicitly instructed to dress up for the party, so Maya and I hit the H&M in Shibuya looking for some sexy garb. I picked up a slick green button-down and... a black silk tie. Maya got some girl pants and a short jacket.
Flash forward to the day of Ai's party: I've done a little research on tying ties, and I've chosen my knot and loaded an instructional video on Youtube. I'm tired, because I don't go to bed when I should, so I set an alarm for 6-something. The party is at 7-something, meeting slightly earlier at Shinjuku Station, which allows me ample time to nap, master the gentleman's art of tie-tying, and walk at a relaxed pace to Hiyoshi Station to catch the Tōkyū Tōyoko line to Shibuya... anyway, I sink gratefully into my delectably soft, freshly laundered sheets, and sleep... and sleep...
I am vaguely conscious that my nap has gone past its allotted time. I open my eyes, switch on the light, and realize that it's already half an hour past the time I was planning on leaving my apartment, fully dressed and groomed. I had set my alarm to am, not pm. Cue panic- I text Maya, leap into the shower, leap out of the shower, throw on my black slacks and my new green shirt and a black vest, and then I see the tie hanging like a noose from the clotheshorse. I hesitate. The tie hangs there nonchalantly. It mocks me, challenges me, flaunts its silky black sophistication and gracefully tapered maturity. I snatch it from its perch and throw myself into my desk chair. For the next ten minutes, I make failure after vexing failure while attempting to follow the seemingly simple instructional video for tying a Shelby Knot ("[...]tidy and fairly wide, well-suited for any dress shirt and somewhat wider ties made from light to medium fabrics[...]"). I am sweating. I cross ends, pull fabric through loops, and finally I manage to mangle the damned thing into an acceptable shape. I fly out the door in my cheap, heavily scuffed black leather shoes, tie fluttering in my wake. Within an hour I'm fashionably late to the party, slightly moist but reeking of confidence and style.
And it was a damn good thing I went the distance with the tie- I have never been to a fancier party in all my life. This was the closest I have yet come to something that could be called "high society." The venue was a large be-frescoed and thoroughly chandaliered chamber at the end of a long redbrick tunnel with incandescent glass panels in the floor. A steady stream of wine and beer and salads and hors d'oeuvres trickled into the room over the course of the evening. The room was full of people I recognized from the exchange program, as well as the sort of people you can only get to know through the modeling business (namely, models), many in evening gowns and suits. In a sentence, it was a most agreeable collision of coarse drunken youth and vague pretensions to wealth and style and loose cash and decent food and attractive but unreachable but then again drunk girls...

Long live youth and beauty~

Well Hey There

Nikkō, Tochigi Prefecture, in the arms of the mountains. I saw a man in a dark suit following this river with a silver trumpet in his hand, looking for a place to fill his lungs with bracing mountain air and send blast after piercing trumpet blast rocketing into the snowy mountains... Good way to live.

The tomb of Tokugawa Ieyasu, founder of the Tokugawa Shogunate (Tōshō-gū, Nikkō). Nikkō is also home to the tomb of Tokugawa Iemitsu (Ieyasu's son and successor).
Shrine gate to a path lined with jizō, near Kanmangafuchi Abyss. The Kanmangafuchi "Abyss" is a shallow gully weaving between the shoulders of the mountains on either side of the Daiya River. Jizō are statues of the Buddhist divinity Ksitigarbha, guardian of the souls of children- particularly those who have died before their parents. Beyond this gate, in the shade of a dense row of cedar trees, stretches a long line of jizō clothed in red bibs and caps. Some of them are little more than stacks of stones and shreds of red cloth left by grieving parents.
The Sacred Bridge (Shinkyō) to Futarasan Shrine, crossing the Daiya River.
Kegon Falls, in the mountains of Nikkō. A high school student named Fujimura Misao came here to die in 1903. After carving a farewell poem into a tree with his knife, he jumped to his death. I found a loose translation of the poem:

"Delicate line between heaven and earth...
The calm of the ages, all the world's worth.
Such minuscule measure, while we think it so grand...
Just five specks of smallness, This soft quiet land.
So frail and so fleeting, in the end you will see
Simple dreams were Horatio's philosophy.
For all the truth, all creation, all secrets of yore
Can be told in an instant, by then they're no more.
Ah, The Unexplainable
All worries unsettled, heartache unresolved...
All questions unanswered, with death, shall be solved.
We already teeter, this sheer cliff so high.
When we fall to corruption, insecurities die.
To end is to start; to surrender is to know.
Despair and depression, together they grow.
Hope shall meet hopeless when there's nowhere to go."

Lake Chūzenji, which drains into the nearby Kegon Falls. It's really up in the mountains- at an elevation of 4,124 ft.
A man prepares another batch of kurotamago (black eggs) in the sulphur springs at Ōwakudani Springs in Hakone. Something about the water turns the shells an ominous jet black, but eating one of these eggs is said to increase one's lifespan by 7 years (eat too many and you'll just get a stomachache, though).
At Shinagawa Station in mid-April. I arrived at the tail end of a suicide cleanup: the officers are folding up the tarp which was obscuring the scene from onlookers. One of my friends was on the train that hit the man- they were stopped for about half an hour.
An old lady brushing and feeding cats by the Yagami River on a Wednesday morning in April.
When she saw me taking her picture, I waved at her and she waved back and smiled.
Yes, snow in April... : /

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Hello all, it's been a while.

All is well with me, and Spring has come to Kawasaki. The steep banks of the Yagami River are traced with patches of pink and white flowers, and beneath the water's glassy surface small bands of black carp have been making their ponderous way upstream since mid-March.

I met an old man one bright afternoon a few days ago. The sun had re-emerged after a prolonged downpour, and the air was permeated with the smell of wet earth. He was gazing intently across the rain-swollen river at a small hole in the muddy bank, with one hand on an old tripod-mounted film camera. Just out of curiosity, I asked him what he was shooting. His eyes nearly vanished behind his wrinkles when he smiled. He pointed across the river.

"See that hole there, in the mud? That's a kingfisher's nest. It's been coming and going all day bringing things back to that nest."

"What's a kingfisher?"

"It's a little bird, a pretty little blue bird. You don't see them often around here."

"Ah... thanks." I stood with him for a little while, hoping to catch sight of the elusive little bird. His camera was slightly scuffed and chipped from long use. He had probably already focused the long telephoto lens on the nest. After a few minutes, I wished him luck and jogged off, leaving him standing placidly next to his camera. His eyes barely left the riverbank.

I've had a head-cold for the past day or so. Well, mum always says the best way to beat a cold is to outrun it, so this morning I jogged down to the Tsurumi River and alongside it towards the bay.

In the intervals between cold rainstorms, in the early mornings, the elderly emerge in force to tread the gravelly riverbank and chat and offer food to the growing colony of feral cats living beside the water treatment plant. In the afternoons children learn to ride bikes or fight with sticks, and sports teams from the nearby Hiyoshi campus of Keio University jog in jagged formation beside the river. The weather has been chaotic- it is raining now, and suddenly cold, and I am inside failing to be productive.

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Classes are shaping up to be quite challenging, which is fine, since I knew what I was doing when I got myself promoted beyond my abilities (to level 12). I think my original level coordinator, Misaki-sensei, really went out of her way behind the scenes to make sure I was placed where I wanted to go... just a hunch.

My new coordinator (the man in charge of level 12's core classes) is named Kimura. Kimura-sensei's head is rather squarish and his eyebrows are thick- traces, he suggests, of long-forgotten Ainu ancestry (his family comes from far northern Honshū, which the Ainu people once inhabited). At first glance he is a typical dry academic: tweed suit, an office overflowing with ancient books (some of them four hundred years old), and a vaguely awkward manner emphasized by his tendency to dra-aw ou-ut... the last... uh... syllable-les... when he spea-eaks... which he does very slowly-y... unless he's on a particularly interesting tangent in class. He abandons the thread of his lectures at the drop of a hat, and gleefully pursues any side-avenue of knowledge that even loosely correlates with the topic at hand.
He makes subtle jokes in class, and he's fond of using strange Japlish terms casually in the course of his lectures- like "Hungry精神" (Hungry spirit) and "楽しみのPeak" (the peak of pleasure) and "退廃的なMood" (decadent mood).

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As you may have gathered from the photos above, I had a chance a while back to visit Nikkō, in the company of Maya, Fabien (from France), and their mutual friend Valeny (from Indonesia). Unfortunately I don't have much time to write about the experience (I'm leaving in an hour to go clubbing in Shibuya with some of my fellows)... We stayed at a cozy mountaintop hostel with a wood-burning fireplace, in an attic-style room with a sloped ceiling. There were guitars resting by the television, soft couches deeply saturated with wood-smoke, and hot showers; I won't say anything about the food, though. All in all a lovely place to return to after a day of traipsing from one shrine to another to another.

Nikkō and its many temples, shrines, and gardens, are blessed by that particular serenity that only crisp mountain air can provide. Nikkō is also famous for yuba- sheets of sweet dried tofu- which its restaurants have worked into an abundance of delicious local dishes (highly recommended, of course). I'll be honest- I'm not a connoisseur of Japanese shrines and temples, and everything I saw that first day has pretty much blended into one long smear of forested paths and torii gates and altars. One great discovery, though, I remember clearly: at Tōshō-gū, we happened across a painted carving of three monkeys- one with his hands over his ears, one with his hands over his mouth, and the third with his hands over his eyes. Those monkeys are named Kikazaru, Iwazaru, and Mizaru: the original pictorial representation of the three wise monkeys ("Hear no Evil, Speak no Evil, See no Evil"). Their names are actually puns: the archaic negative verb ending "zaru" used to be written the same way the word "monkey" ("saru") is written in Japanese. Hilarious :D

Anyway, must be off. I'll try to write more tomorrow, and post more pictures- I have nearly 400 which I've saved up over the past couple months. Apologies if they don't correspond directly with what I write about- I don't think I have time to write about everything that's happened... : ( Anyway, all my love to my friends and family~

Ziplining in Chon Buri, A Farewell to Bangkok

At the Chatuchak Weekend ("J.J.") Market in Bangkok.

The morning after my return to Bangkok, I hooked up with a group of three strapping young Swedes (Anna, Chris, and Johan ;) who were on their way to the legendary Chatuchak Market. The Market sprawls over 35 acres of land and sees approximately 200,000 visitors every weekend. There are thousands of stalls (up to 15,000 depending on what you consider a "stall") selling a bewildering variety of wares- I saw live squirrels, crocodile heads (see above picture), bowls of plastic fruit and flowers, jelly toys in grotesque shapes, a pool of piranhas, a seven-foot-tall scrap-metal sculpture of a Predator, hundreds of puppies, and a tattoo parlor, just to recall a few.
The stalls are crammed into dense rows with narrow alleys, sorted into rough groups by the nature of what they sell (refreshments, clothing, decorations, etc). The whole chaotic mess is roofed over with sheets of corrugated tin. The claustrophobic alleyways, packed with sweaty tourists and locals of all stripes, bake as the tropical sun beats down on the low tin roof. In the afternoon, the temperature climbs easily into the 35-40 degree range, and the drink-sellers start doing very good business. The alleys curve, windowless and doorless, for hundreds of meters, and without a detailed map it is all too easy to get lost.
In the morning, however, the sun was only just starting to roast the market, and we spent several pleasant hours roaming the stalls. The animal section was heartbreaking.

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And then the time came for some Major Oral Surgery.

I left my friends at the market, took the train back to the dental clinic in Thong Lo, and within ten minutes of my arrival I was reclining on the dentist's chair in a freshly sterilized surgical room.
The most painful part of the procedure was the injection of anesthetic deep into my hard palate, directly behind the broken incisor. The doctor was calm and gentle, however, and within a few minutes most of my face was completely numb. A surgical shroud was placed over my face, blocking my vision.
"I will now extract the tooth. Let me know if you have any pain," said the doctor.
There was a great deal of leveraging and yanking and tightening of grips and application of pressure with unseen implements, but I was unable to visualize what exactly the doctor was doing. After several minutes, he succeeded in extracting the tooth (which, it turns out, had broken into two separate pieces).
"I will now perform the implant procedure. This should be very quick."
There was the threatening sound of a drill, which was then accompanied by a series of intense vibrations that echoed throughout the bones of my skull. Then silence. I was given a cotton swab to hold against the raw and bleeding hole in my jaw.
"There! That wasn't so bad!" the doctor laughed. "Now you will wait for the other doctor. He will give you the temporary crown."
I waited for ten minutes in the lobby, during which time I drooled blood on my bag because I was too numb to know when to swallow. Then I was called downstairs, and the same doctor who took the mold of my mouth earlier proceeded to shape my temporary crown. He would do this by jamming it into the socket, seeing how it fit with the surrounding teeth, removing it, sanding it down, jamming it back in there, removing it, (etc). Around this time, the anesthetic began to wear off, and each time he slipped the crown into the socket I could taste blood.
By the time the shaping was done and the crown cemented in place, I was in a good deal of pain, which was helped that evening by generous amounts of clinical-strength ibuprofen and beer (Swedish drinking games are insane. I hope to never again be forced to drink beer while hopping in a circle on one leg).
As I was leaving the lobby, a man I had talked to earlier (Australian, also at the clinic for implant surgery) asked me how it went. "Pretty well," I answered, and smiled to show him the work the dentists had done. Something about my bloody, swollen smile seemed to unsettle him- he turned two shades paler, and managed to say "Oh... very good."
"Oh, am I still bleeding?"
"Yes. A little bit."

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On Sunday, Daniel and I traveled up the Chao Phraya River to see the Grand Palace.

Wat Arun, "The Temple of Dawn," taken from a moving waterbus on the Chao Phraya River.
We returned here at the end of the day. Daniel's mother is a passionate collector of snow-globes, and Daniel had been searching all day for a snow-globe to send to her as a souvenir from Bangkok. It was at one of the souvenir shops here, as the sun was setting, that he finally found one.

If you want to get far within the grounds of the Grand Palace, you've got to dress properly. Daniel (who was wearing shorts that day) was forced to wait in a long line of indecently attired and frustrated tourists, to pay a small deposit for a pair of rental slacks.


The most sacred site in Bangkok: The Temple of the Emerald Buddha (Wat Phra Kaeo). It is one of the buildings within the Grand Palace and is the King's personal temple. Inside is housed the sacred Emerald Buddha. The Buddha sits at the top of a towering throne, surrounded by tall golden statues of Buddhist divinity. The Buddha, at only 45cm in height, is somewhat dwarfed by its audacious surroundings. The Buddha itself is roughly 2,000 years old, made of jade, and clothed in gold. The Buddha has three outfits, hand-tailored of pure gold, and these are changed depending on the season (hot, rainy, or cool) by the King himself.

The other buildings are similarly resplendent. There is an achingly beautiful and minutely detailed mural running for hundreds of meters along the interior walls, depicting the entirety of the Ramakien- the national mythological epic of Thailand. None of my photographs turned out well enough to do it justice, so you'll just have to see it yourself...


Precarious construction on the Chao Phraya.

Towards evening we returned to the BTS station via water taxi, and I spent that night at the hostel, drinking heavily with a mirthful group of my fellow travelers.

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And then, Monday: my last full day in Thailand and Daniel's 22nd birthday. Daniel had made reservations in advance for a zipline tour of the rainforests of Chonburi (90 minutes east of Bangkok) called "Flight of the Gibbon." Our scheduled pickup time was 6:30am, at a hotel on Sukhumvit Soi 1.
I woke up that day, saw sunlight streaming through the window, checked my watch, and panicked. It was past 8 am. I had forgotten to set an alarm.
I grabbed my laptop and ran downstairs, cursing and pacing and going through the histrionics I usually go through when I've really screwed something up. Then I half-remembered something about a second pickup time. I ripped open my computer, pulled up the website for the zipline tour, and found it: 8:30am. I checked my watch: 8:07.
Alvi (the manager) was watching me with open amusement.
"How long does it take to get to Sukhumvit Soi 1?!" I shouted.
"About half an hour if you catch a cab from Nana Station," replied Alvi, with a slight chuckle.
Alright! Things weren't hopeless. I looked up the number for the tour company, called it through Skype, and shouted into the tiny laptop microphone that I was on my way and would be no more than a few minutes late to the second pickup. I had no idea where Daniel was. Was he still waiting for me? Did he get picked up at 6:30? I didn't have time to think. I grabbed my bag, stuffed my computer in it, and ran to the train station. At Nana, I hailed the first taxi I could find, then suffered through a very tense, very slow fifteen minutes as the cab crept through heavy morning traffic. At 8:40 the taxi finally pulled up at the hotel. I overpaid the driver, leapt out of the car, and found Daniel busy cutting out pictures of himself to stick to postcards for his friends.
If I had checked my mail that day, I would have found that Daniel had emailed me the night before to say that he had changed our reservation to the 8:30am pickup time. Not only that, but the pickup didn't even happen until after 9:15 because we were stuck waiting for two other people.


Our zipline instructor, right, and the British family we were grouped with.


After being fitted for our gear, we were lead up a long, forested hike to the first of 26 platforms along the 3km course.


Part of the sprawling system of platforms and stairs and cables through the jungle canopy.

Directly to the right of the first landing platform was this terrifying hornet's nest. Each one of the pale spots is a hornet almost the size of your thumb. We were warned to keep our voices down, lest we upset them.

Our guides, apparently bored with the routine of safely shuttling group after group of tourists through the jungle, started teaching us tricks to perform while on the line. This was one of Daniel's better attempts to match them. One of the British guys wasn't so skillful, however- he burned his leg rather badly on the cable.

About halfway through the course, we found one platform undergoing repair by a burly, hammer-wielding Australian with a deeply tanned face and a big laugh.
As soon as we were out of earshot, the group leader whispered "That's the boss man. No tricks! Be safe!" Everyone was very well behaved until he was out of sight, at which point the acrobatics resumed.

We were given a tour of the nearby zoo as part of a package deal (seed pods to feed the giraffes were extra).

I have never gotten this close to something so much larger and stronger than I am. The thickness of its skin was incredible.

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And then came the night... the night of Daniel's birthday.

Oh, most wicked and debauched night, how shall I tell of thee?

I met Daniel near Phloen Chit station, with a small man I had never seen before. The man looked to be in his mid-thirties, and had Asian features. As it turned out, this was the only other person staying at Daniel's hostel, and Daniel had practically dragged him along. I believe he said he was in Thailand from Hawaii on business. Anyway, he was an awkward fellow and it was plain to see that he wasn't in a party mood. After Daniel produced a bottle of whiskey from his jacket the night got more and more twisted and eventually he vanished like a puff of smoke.

Anyway, we (Daniel and I) were so blitzed by the second hour (alcohol was not the only factor) that most of my recollections of the evening are extremely hazy. We were unmistakably in the middle of the worst kind of red-light district. Surrounding us on all sides was a cornucopia of sensory noise: flashing signs, proffered objects, the smell of vomit and asphalt, green lasers from second floor windows, doors to strip clubs, knives for sale. Strip clubs in Bangkok are infamous, for reasons I experienced first hand that night but refuse to relate in public.

We had dinner at around 1 am at a restaurant. I had been trying for an hour (without success) to steer us into a club- I wanted to do some dancing, hopefully with some attractive and lonely girls. I was looking for an open table when Daniel abruptly sat us down with a girl of roughly our same age. She was unmistakably Thai, but her hair was dyed a sort of auburn and her wide eyes were (likely due to cosmetic contacts) grey as granite. Daniel said something charming before sitting down, but it was clear from her look of puzzlement that she didn't understand English well. Then Daniel did something only a true gentleman, shrewd wingman, and fine friend would do: he smiled, indicated me with a sweep of his arm, and said "Haaaave you met Jack?" Then he promptly excused himself and went to the washroom. The girl and I finished our food, all the while attempting to make conversation (she had enough English to say some simple things- body language made up for the rest). She was really quite attractive.

The three of us left the restaurant together, at which point Daniel clapped me on the back, waved farewell, and left me alone with this girl to whom I could not speak and whose name I never asked. What normally would have been a hideously awkward situation was made infinitely more agreeable through the influence of drugs, and we wandered contentedly through the streets of Bangkok (our talk was never quite coherent enough for us to work out a plan). Then, somehow, we found ourselves enveloped in each-others' arms under a streetlight. After that things only got worse from a moral standpoint, and I returned to the hostel in the morning happy but utterly divested of my innocence (sorry mom).

I haven't seen Daniel since. He's in Europe now, in the process of conquering the planet.

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Tuesday evening, I began my journey back home to Japan.

Graffiti on a room divider in one of Manila International's waiting rooms. I had a 14-hour layover there, which gave me time to poke around. Actually, owing to the length of my stay, I was given access to the relatively luxurious "Mabuhay Lounge" and all its amenities (including full-size leather couches, free coffee, and complimentary hors d'oeuvres). It was quite nice.

A few videos I took while ziplining- hopefully they loaded correctly ^ ^;
The top one is a first-person take, and the second shows Daniel coming in for a smooth landing:



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Alas! I have been in a state of abject indolence for the last two weeks, owing to the long holiday, but I'm loving it.

m (. _. ) m

Will post some more adventures soon... Best wishes to all from Japan.

To Cambodia

The Thai flag flies beside the Skytrain rails. Beyond, the city of Bangkok.

The train to Chong Nonsi.
The reception desk at the Thong Lo Dental Clinic.

The lobby of the Thong Lo Dental Clinic. The man in the frame is the doctor who fitted my tooth.

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After a breakfast of bread with jam and butter at the hostel, I found my way to the Ekkamai Train Station, past stands selling whole chickens and sweets and smoked ribs and bags full of what looked to be white entrails. I took the green line to the dark green line, and took the dark green line to Chong Nonsi. My goal: withdraw enough cash for my immediate dental bills and my imminent journey to Cambodia.

I've learned something about asking for directions, and this applies especially to countries where English isn't necessarily well known: ask more than one person before you commit to a route. I walked up to one man, and said "Excuse me. Could you tell me how to get to the Citibank?"

He stared at me blankly with mottled brown eyes. I had an idea. I pulled out my wallet and slipped out my Citibank card far enough for him to see the logo.

He gave a little cry of recognition and then pointed down the road in the direction I had just come from. I was incredulous. "What? Really? It's not this way?"
He shook his head and kept pointing. Now, I was reasonably sure I had been heading the right way, since I was reasonably sure that's where the station attendants had told me to go. So I walked around the corner and had the luck of spotting an Indian restaurant with patio seating. Indians seem to speak fantastic English as a rule. The waiter was, as I had hoped, Indian, and he spoke excellent English. He took me outside and pointed over the top of the opposing line of shops to an imposing office building with shiny blue-tinted windows. "Right there," he said.

Ten minutes later I had my money, but my appointment was close at hand and time was short. My bags became oppressively heavy as I ran through the suffocating humidity and heat of Bangkok, back to the station. By the time I caught the train I was dripping sweat. Thanks to a combination of luck, common sense, and a half-remembered map, I made it to the clinic on time.

And so, the morning after my arrival in Bangkok, I was seated on the plush cushions of a new-looking couch in the sleekly modern and impeccably clean lobby of the Thong Lo Dental Clinic, waiting for the doctor. It was just after eleven thirty am.
Five minutes later, an assistant in a pale yellow uniform called my name and led me up two flights of gleaming white stairs to the dentist's office. We discussed my options. Either I could have the standard procedure done, or I could opt for an immediate-load implant. In a standard implant procedure, the implant is sutured over and allowed to gradually and safely integrate with the bone over a period of several months. An immediate-load implant, on the other hand, assumes that the bone is healthy and strong enough to immediately support a functional implant with a crown.
Several factors made me a good candidate for the immediate-load procedure, including my age and the fact that implantation would immediately follow extraction (meaning the bone around the socket would not have time to deteriorate). We decided it was probably worth the risk to have an immediate-load implant procedure performed to replace the broken tooth. However, I decided at the doctor's urging that, instead of a permanent crown, I would have a lower-quality temporary crown cemented in place- the reason being that after extraction of a tooth (even with immediate implantation) the gum line will inevitably recede slightly around the base of the implant. It seemed like a good idea to fit a permanent crown after the gum (not to mention the implant itself) had stabilized.
After the consultation, another doctor took a complete mold of my mouth and matched my natural teeth for color against a palette. It would take three days for the lab to prepare for my surgery. And that was that. I was off to Cambodia.

I gathered up my bags and made once more for the Skytrain, which I took to Mo Chit. From Mo Chit Station I was to hire a motorbike to take me to the bus station. I approached a gaggle of orange-vested men lounging under the train station footbridge with their scooters. One of them walked up to me with a smile. I said "Morchit 2 Bus Station."
"Fihty Baht. OK?"
"OK." And I was handed a helmet.
This was my first experience as a passenger on a two-wheeled vehicle, and on that little bike, screaming through highway traffic on uneven roads with the speedometer hovering around 90 km/h, all I could do was hold on and trust that the relaxed attitude of my driver was the result of long experience and didn't necessarily imply a fatal indifference to death.

Within two hours I was on an air-conditioned bus to the border town of Aranyaprathet, talking to the first in a long line of Swedes I would meet on this trip. We were handed a small box lunch which would turn out to contain:

1) A single piece of bread, coated in butter and sugar.

2) A cup of room temperature water.

3) A small packet of instant coffee (there was no hot water, so I pocketed it).

The solemn face of the King follows one always in Thailand.

Watching from highway overpasses, standing guard in a gilded frame outside of a new research building, peering out through the windows of the driver's cabin on the bus to Aranyaprathet.

For a time, the road hugged close to a reed-choked river, lined with palm fronds and sprawling complexes of shacks roofed with tin. Every few kilometers or so, an ornate riverside monastery would present itself at the edge of my vision as a searing coagulation of lush golds, reds, and blues.

There are signs on the trains in Thailand instructing you to give your seat to "children, the elderly, and monks." I passed many monks on pilgrimage in Cambodia, all wearing plastic sandals and draped in orange robes, often bartering for souvenirs or smoking.

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Night had fallen by the time the bus pulled in at Aranyaprathet. The hostel in Siem Reap was expecting me around 10:30 pm- I had just a little over three hours to get there. Now was the time to gird myself against the myriad scams I had been warned about. I shrugged off the touts and tuk-tuk drivers, making for a cluster of motorbike riders. The plan was to take the bike to the border, pay $20 for a Cambodian visa, then try to hook up with other travelers heading for Siem Reap.

I wound up on the back of a female driver's motorbike, with a young boy riding up front. She had agreed to take me to the border for sixty baht. The air howled past us as we gained speed on the thoroughfare, jockeying for space with all manner of traffic (animal-drawn carts, scooters, cars, motorcycles, trucks, bicycles...). My eyes streaming in the wind, I soaked in the warmth and the moisture and the sent of the night. A little over twenty-four hours ago it had been winter.

Without warning, we made a sharp right turn onto an unlit dirt road. The driver stopped the bike in the driveway of a squat open-fronted building and motioned for me to get off. The building was lit with unshielded fluorescent lights, and three or four men were sitting around a table in front, drinking beer. I was on my guard, barely managing to stifle alarm. I had been warned of fake border-crossings.

I turned to the driver. "The border. Border. Poipet. I want to go to the border." She indicated the building with an outstretched arm. "This is not the border," I said. After a few more moments, I gave up on communication and took a closer look at the building. A man got up to greet me.
"Cambodia visa?"
"Yes, I need one. But I'm going to get it at the border."
"Oh, no. Closed. No more. Very late," he tapped his watch.
"I was told the office was open until eight pm."
"Border crossing, yes, but visa only until seven."
I checked my watch. It was 7:35. I glanced back at the motorbike driver, who was reclining on the bike with the boy on her lap. I was sure she had been paid to take me here. But I was uncertain as to what to do. Perhaps the man was telling the truth. Perhaps I would make it to the border only to find that the visa office was shut. All I knew for certain was that I had twenty-five minutes to make it across that border.
"How much for the visa?"
"1,200 baht." ($36)
"That's ridiculous. It should only be $20 at the border crossing."
"No more visa. Only here."
"This is a scam, and I know it."
"Look, who you can trust? That's the Cambodia consulate." He indicated a nondescript white building. "If no trust Cambodia consulate, who do you trust?"
I was getting sick of this back-and-forth and I was running out of time. I couldn't be absolutely sure he was lying, and besides I doubted the driver would take me to the border until I had bought the visa. "Fine. I'll do it. But hurry."
I rushed through the paperwork, then handed the man my passport and half the money, and watched him walk off into the night. One of the men at the table called me over and offered me a beer. The cap was still on tight. I accepted it gratefully. When I asked for a bottle opener one of the men grabbed the bottle from me and popped the cap off with his teeth before handing it back to me, with a smile.
I downed the bottle just in time for the man's return. I took back my passport, checked the visa (it looked real enough), paid the rest of the inflated fee, thanked the men for the beer, and got back on the motorbike. I now had less than fifteen minutes to make it across the border before it shut for the day. In three minutes I was off the bike and jogging for the immigrations office through streams of cart-towing peddlers returning home after a day of hawking their wares on the border.
The official was just conscious enough to stamp my passport. Of course, the visa desk was still open. I just sighed.

Then I walked through the doors of the immigrations office and into Cambodia.

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My first memory of Cambodia is of a young man smiling at me from a backdrop of cheap hotels and dingy administrative buildings, his teeth shining white through the dark. "Hello! Where do you go?"
"Siem Reap."
"Ah, Siem Reap! Very dangerous here at night. Bad men. Mafia."
"Yes, I know. I didn't have a choice. I'll watch out," I said, raising my fists in mock defense. I trod through deep red dust toward a large roundabout in the distance, with many cars and scooters and people. People were milling about everywhere, bumping into one another, shouting, laughing. The sky was black. I stepped around a suspicious looking puddle, and when I looked back up the man was still following me.
"My brother owns a taxi!" he said. "He can take you to Siem Reap. Many would not take you so far so late at night."
"How much?"
"1,400 baht." ($42.36)
"That's about what I thought. I'm looking for some other people to split a cab with. It's too much for me to pay."
He paused for a moment. We had arrived at the roundabout, which was a large asphalt ring circling a parched hillock. All manner of moving objects appeared in the headlights of the waiting cars.
"Alright!" He said. "I'll find another. I find another, 800 baht. OK?"
"700."
"OK, 700. You wait here please." He indicated a sagging metal bench under a canvas awning.
I sat down with a sigh. I was in a strange place, waiting an unspecified amount of time for a man I knew I couldn't trust. Fifteen minutes later, I was debating whether or not to stay when the man returned, smiling broadly. "OK, come!" he said.
He led me through the tightly packed traffic of the circle to an unmarked Toyota Camry with a cracked windshield. He motioned for me to get in the front passenger seat. There were two other people in the back, and he squeezed in with them. "You have riel?" he asked.
"No, I was going to change my money in Siem Reap."
"Oh, no good. Pay in riel. This is Cambodia! Not Thailand! I know place here, very good price."
And so I was dragged to a grimy concrete box with a small sliding window. Inside was a tired-looking woman on a chair, and a shirtless man asleep on a carpet.

Here, I made several critical mistakes:

1) I was lazy. I had knew that a dollar was worth roughly 4,000 riel, but when I handed over 2,000 baht ($61) to the teller, I didn't check the rate I was getting and I didn't count the money. I was too tired to run through the calculations and the darkness made it difficult to count the unfamiliar money. I asked for a receipt (just in case- ha ha!), but I didn't even look at it. If I had, I would have found "1,000 X 600 = 600,000" printed on it, which is nothing more than a bunch of random numbers the teller punched into her calculator to make it seem like I was getting a proper receipt.

2) I let the man take the cab fare directly out of what I was handed from the window. Between the suspect money changer and the man's sticky fingers, I lost about $35 right then and there.

2b) Not only did I let the man hold (and almost certainly steal) my money, I paid before arriving in Siem Reap. This fact would become important very soon.

3) The bastard asked me for a tip, and I gave it to him. Of course, I didn't realize until later that he had robbed me.

The man saw me to the cab, then disappeared into the night. If I ever see him again, I'm going to sucker punch him.

Finally, motion. The car swung out of traffic and onto the highway. A sign read "Siem Reap 140km."

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The driver didn't speak a word of English, but I made disjointed small talk with one of the other passengers. The fact that everyone in the car but me was Cambodian should have been a tip-off. In fact, no-one in that car but I was going to Siem Reap that night.
The taxi pulled over and let one of the men out. There were three of us in the car then- myself, the driver, and another man who I'm convinced was also a part of the scam. I was content to sink down into my seat and close my eyes and hope I would be delivered to Siem Reap on time.
"Hello, friend?" It was the man in the back seat. I turned around. "Hello. The driver says you only pay to go Sisophon." Sisophon is less than a third of the way to Siem Reap.
"I paid to go to Siem Reap, and the driver knows it."
"Yes, I know. But he says you only pay Sisophon."
"Tell him to take me to Siem Reap, and get the rest of the money from the guy."
"He doesn't know who you talk about."
"The man. His brother."
"He said you only pay go to Sisophon."
This continued for fifteen extremely frustrating minutes. Finally, I pretended to break down. "Alright. How much does he want to take me to Siem Reap?"
They conferred in Cambodian for a moment. The man in the back seat wrote a number on a piece of paper and passed it up to me. It read "1,800 baht" ($54). No way in hell was I shelling out 1,800 baht to these scummy pricks.
"Alright, I'll pay. But after arriving in Siem Reap."
"You sure? Maybe spend the night in Sisophon. I know someone get you a room. Good price."
"No, I have a room in Siem Reap I've already paid for. I'm not going to stay at your friend's guest house."
We drove on a while in silence. Of course, I intended to ditch the cab as soon as it arrived in Siem Reap. I was fed up with people trying to victimize me. I'd happily shout it out with them in a police station, but they'd have to out-and-out rob me if they wanted another cent.
Then came an abrupt turn onto a dirt road, and another. We were in between two rows of shacks. There wasn't a light anywhere. The driver stopped the car, opened the door, and shouted something into one of the shacks. A fluorescent light flickered to life inside. I could see a woman with bleary, sunken eyes through wide gaps in the siding of the shack.
The man in the backseat leaned forward. "The driver needs 750 baht for gas money."
"Gas. Here?"
"Yes, he goes to buy gas. He needs money."
"He can use what he has."
"No, no money."
"I saw the man hand the driver money. He can use that money to buy gas."
"No, no money. 750 baht."
"He needs 23 dollars more for gas money?"
[ETC]
This escalated slowly, until it was almost a shouting match. I was livid at the whole situation. I felt that my words had no power. Frankly, I was scared. But damn them. Damn them. I made up my mind. I made sure nothing had slipped out of my pockets, grabbed my bags (which I had the sense to keep close to me), and threw open the door of the cab. After making certain I was leaving nothing behind, I kicked the door shut as hard as I possibly could with the heel of my shoe, denting it. Then I was off into the dark, determined to hitch-hike to Siem Reap or walk. I checked over my shoulder repeatedly to make sure I wasn't being followed. I didn't feel like being run down in the street by an enraged Cambodian cabbie and his accomplice.

Eventually I found the highway and started walking. As it turned out, I was walking in the wrong direction. But no matter. I hailed a passing scooter, said "Siem Reap," and was taken instead to a gaudy hotel in the middle of nowhere. Somehow I wasn't surprised. One of the managers walked out to meet us, and was kind enough to act as an interpreter. The driver of the scooter made a call on his cell phone "to find a taxi."
"He says he found a taxi to take you to Siem Reap for fifteen dollars."
"Great. Can he take me there?"
"Yes. Be careful."

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The "taxi" was an ancient Honda in a small village off the highway, with six people inside it (if you don't count the baby). I hopped off the scooter, and paid the man 40 baht. A short, fat kid sauntered over to us.
"My friend'll take you to Siem Reap," he said with a very good accent. "Ten dollars."
At this, the driver of the scooter said something in Cambodian like "You idiot. I told him fifteen dollars."
But I said "Sure, ten dollars. But I'll pay after arriving."

I squeezed in the back of the sedan. The suspension groaned and sagged under the weight of the passengers as the car swept onto the highway. It soon became apparent that the only English words any of them knew were "OK" and "no." I amused myself by venting to myself in Japanese and watching the night sky through the back window. Never have I seen a sky so black, with so many stars.
I don't know whether I was surprised or just relieved when the car actually arrived in Siem Reap just before 11 pm.

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I took a long shower at the hostel, changed into comfortable clothes, and went for a walk to the Old Market to clear my head. This was a mistake. I got no peace at all. I was harried constantly by tuk-tuk drivers and bike drivers and hawkers and pimps and drug dealers and beggars. When I collapsed into bed later that night I was more relieved than exhausted.

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Arrival in Bangkok

At Manila Int'l Airport, written in magic marker on a notepad. Note the retro typewriter. When I came back here on my return trip, the sign had two red lipstick kisses on it.

View of the drop-off area of the Suvarnabhumi Airport (BKK) [Thanks to Wikimedia Commons for the Photo]
Terminal D5 at BKK. Credit again to Wikimedia Commons for the photo. Incidentally, this is the very terminal where I caught my return flight.



The patio of the Wanderlust Hostel, with free live music. Alvi, the manager, is dressed in green.
Chong Nonsi, Bangkok.


"The city of angels, the great city, the eternal jewel city, the impregnable city of God Indra, the grand capital of the world endowed with nine precious gems, the happy city, abounding in an enormous Royal Palace that resembles the heavenly abode where reigns the reincarnated god, a city given by Indra and built by Vishnukarm"


Bangkok glowed through the air beyond the cabin porthole like a bed of coals smoldering in the dark. The internet travel guides were full of strident warnings of fraud and grift- all kinds of petty scams aimed at unsuspecting foreigners. Don't ride in a meterless taxi. Don't take the minibuses. Pay after you arrive, if possible. Know the exchange rates, and count your money. Beware of touts and don't believe a word they tell you. Choose motorbikes over tuk-tuks if you have a choice but never, never let a tout ride with you. In Bangkok, bribery is rampant, money is synonymous with power, and everyone is fair game.

As dawn broke over the train to Narita Airport earlier that day, I was having a conversation with a man named Ida. I had been reading a book in my usual unsociable way when Ida-san leaned over and asked me what I was reading. That's how I was sucked into an hour-long conversation with a strange, deeply thoughtful man about the chronic ills of society.
Ida is a man of sixty-five years with regular features and metal-framed glasses. He had kicked off his shoes to reveal fluffy yellow socks.
The conversation was in Japanese, but Ida seemed to have a good English vocabulary, which he would employ occasionally for emphasis. I was tired and feeling somewhat uncommunicative, but I did my best to carry my end of the conversation and Ida for his part was determined to impart his thoughts to me.
The conversation went something like this:
"You must understand, I am a very foolish old man. My IQ is probably somewhere around 85 points- a genuine idiot. You seem very smart. Your IQ is probably around 130, right?"
I didn't know how to take that, at all. "I don't know."
"Well, I may be stupid, you know, but I'm also old. I understand how things work. That's a result of experience. You may not think it's fair, since you're so young, but I've come to realize that wisdom can only result from experience." He paused to adjust his glasses. "When I was your age, I hated being told that I would only understand things 'when I got older.' But now, at 65, I have experienced a great deal of things; learned a great deal of things. Really, I think I only started understanding things clearly a week or two ago."
"Well, I always try to be open to experience. So what did you understand?"
"Well, when I was in school, we learned about something called 'The English Disease.'"
"'The English Disease?'"
"Yes- that was used during the decline of the British Empire. The English Disease was a manifestation of a sick society and it ultimately lead to the collapse of the Empire. The same thing is taking place in Japanese society. Japanese society is sick. It's a chronic illness. I think it started during the economic bubble of the 60's. The Japanese started to lose their way- to lose their identity. You know what I mean?"
"What's a 'chronic illness?'"
"It's the opposite of 'acute illness.' You understand 'acute illness'?"
"Yes."
"Well, the Japanese seized onto this idea of an ideal capitalist society, but they forgot their old nationalism. People began acting selfishly."
"I see."
"I'm not saying this is a problem in itself. But what we wound up with is a world steeped in hypocrisy and deception."
"'Hypocrisy?'"
He pulled out a dictionary, looked it up, and handed it to me.
"Ah," I said, "But hypocrisy is almost a given in any society. What did you mean earlier when you were talking about a chronic illness?"
"Well, take the building of a house for example. Forty years ago you could get a house built in two weeks for $20,000. Now it would cost ten times as much and take three times as long. People are acting entirely in their own interest. No care for others."
"Isn't some of that a result of inflation?
"Well, that's true. But the real problem is the natural naivety of human beings. Here I am talking about naivety! My daughter doesn't respect me- and it's because I'm a foolish old man with an IQ of 85. But I think you've heard of Murakami Haruki."
"Of course."
"Well, you know how he won that literary award recently?"
"Oh, no, I hadn't heard."
"Well, he won the Jerusalem Award for literature, and he wasn't keen to accept it, at first. But he figured that the award ceremony in Israel would give him a platform, and he had something to say."
"So what did he say?"
"He said that human beings are like eggs, right? And these eggs are pressed every day against a wall of hypocrisy and lies and they break one by one and that's no way for society to be. You understand what I'm saying?"
"Yes, I think so."
There is a girl asleep on the train, in a corner seat in the opposite row, balled up with her knees to her chest.
"There is a fundamental conflict between the fragility and natural naivety of human beings and the deceptive, evil world in which they live. We live in wonderfully democratic society, but we've focused too much on the individual and forgotten the big picture."
The train switched tracks then, swaying slightly. The girl's suitcase- a grey hardcase- began to roll down the isle toward the back of the train. A man got up, caught the suitcase, and wheeled it back to her. She was still asleep.
"That's what I mean," he said. "Take your dental work, for instance. You shouldn't have to go to Thailand for that! They should do it here, for five or six hundred dollars. There are people who can't afford to go abroad."
"Speaking of which, where are you going?"
"I'm going to the Philippines. I can't stand the winter here! I'm an old man, remember. But I've heard that the dentists in the Philippines are cheap- maybe I'll get some work done there myself," he laughed.

That night I descended into the jaws of the Eurasian Continent. The plane shuddered on landing and swung broadly from side to side before straightening out. Ground temperature and time of day were announced prior to deplaning, but I was completely unprepared for the humidity that enveloped me as soon as I stepped from the cabin doors. I had been swallowed, and pressing in on me from all sides were the steaming viscera of a living city.
As I shuffled towards customs and immigration with my fellow passengers I took in the surroundings. BKK is a modern marvel- a gleaming, palatial structure of soaring steel beams and cables and glass panels, all highlighted with electric blue lighting. After immigration, I walked through the exit to the car-park and immediately started sweating in the humid air. I stripped off my outer shirt and hailed a taxi. After making sure the meter was running, I asked the driver when we would arrive at the hostel.
"Oh. Sorry," he laughed. "Only English little bit."
"That's OK. I was told it would be about 200 baht."
"Yes... 200. About."
Pulling out onto the expressway, we gathered speed as we passed under an enormous gilded portrait of the King of Thailand, Bhumibol Adulyadej (Rama IX) labeled "Long Live the King. 1946-2010" in Thai and English.

In forty minutes we had arrived, and I stepped out of the cab into the heat and spotted the blue Christmas lights which I had been told would mark the entrance to the Wanderlust Hostel. I paid the driver, opened the gate, and walked through. The Wanderlust is two side-streets removed from the major Ekkamai Road, which is itself a branch, or "soi" of the central Sukhumvit highway. The address system in Thailand is horrendously confusing. Major roads are named for the areas they pass through, meaning that the name of a long road might change several times as it passes through different towns. Side streets branching off of the major roads are called soi. Soi are numbered in either ascending or descending order, with odd numbers on one side and even numbers on the other. The even and odd soi don't necessarily advance evenly, so soi 49 for a given road might be directly across from soi 18. If a new road is constructed between two existing soi, it is designated with a compound number (for instance 7/1 if it is between soi 7 and soi 9). Major soi might have their own name in addition to their number designation, as well as their own soi (e.g., Ekkamai is Sukhumvit's 63rd soi). House numbers on a given soi might not follow any order at all. Also, streets do not obey any sort of North-South grid so it's all but useless to try to navigate with the cardinal directions. Instead, directions might be given in terms of Bangkok's major landmark, the Chao Phraya river. The river, however, is so tortuous that at some points in the city one may be north, south, and east of the river simultaneously. To make matters worse, representations of street and place names in the Latin alphabet are not consistent, making research beforehand very tricky.

The hostel struck me immediately as clean and friendly. The owner, Alvi, is honest, self-possessed, and fun. When I checked in, the hostel was so full of young travelers like myself that two people were sleeping on the floor for lack of beds. Alvi handed me a bundle of sheets, and gave me a little tour.
"This is the refrigerator. It's full of cold beer and bottled water. Feel free to take what you like but make sure I know so I can add it to your tab." There was a definite Australian tint to her speech.
I took a glance at the sink next to the refrigerator, where a hand-written sign hung: "Unless you brought your mother with you, do your own dishes!"
She lead me upstairs to the air-conditioned second floor. "This is the bathroom. I can only promise you warm showers, not hot. But you may get lucky."
The rest of the second floor was taken up by bunk-beds. I took a shower, made my bed, and set an alarm for 8 am.

The next day would see me in Cambodia, under less than auspicious circumstances.

"Spring" Break: The First Ten Days [Part 2]

Chinatown in Yokohama.
Nihei Haruto-san, with the biggest catch of the day down at the Honmoku Sea Fishing Park on Sunday.

An amusement park in Minatomirai, Yokohama. The ferris wheel puts on a great light show at night.
A group of about 300 protesters demonstrating against a proposal for local suffrage for permanent foreign residents in Shibuya. Many of the signs read "No Voting Rights for Foreigners" or "Suffrage for Foreigners Violates the Constitution." The blue sign on the right says "We Will Stop It! No Local Voting Rights for Foreigners."


Hey all... updates from my trip to Thailand-Cambodia are forthcoming, but I wanted to post pt. II first for... chronological reasons.

The evening of the 30th of January, I was not in the best of spirits. Still feeling a little hungover, and grappling with the fresh necessity of expensive major dental surgery, I began walking slowly towards Fabien's apartment in Gotanda. He was throwing his 21st birthday party later that evening, and I was having a hard time deciding whether or not I should actually show up and contaminate the party atmosphere with my new snaggletoothed melancholy.

On the way there I passed by a stack of several dozen coffee cans next to a vending machine. On closer inspection, I realized they were all full and unexpired. Drugged up on pain-pills and full of venomous self-loathing, I slipped five or six of the cans into my backpack and walked away.

I did my best to be cheerful at the party, but my heart wasn't in it. Sorry, Fabien! The cheese was delicious, though, and there were more than a dozen people there more inclined to party than I was, so it was fun in the end.

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The next morning, Daniel texted me to say that he had become violently ill the night before, hadn't slept, and wouldn't be able to make it out fishing. And that was his last day in Tokyo! Alas!

After debating our options for a little while, Haruto and I decided to go fishing together anyway, despite not knowing one-another at all. He took the train to Sakuragi-cho station in Yokohama, and then a bus from there to the Honmoku sea-fishing park.

I rode my bike for 30 confusing, distracting, dangerous urban kilometers. I got lost five times, at one point passing through a long, desolate stretch of superhighway overpasses and coastal heavy industry. It was Sunday afternoon, so cawing seagulls were just about the only life evident in those vast industrial parks. It was the bleakest scenery I've ever seen in Japan- a sea of concrete slabs and factories and warehouses. And it was cold. Then at last, and nearly at the end of hope, I found the true eastern coast of Japan. I felt as if I had come to the end of the earth. The factories dropped away on either side of me and I was looking out over the Pacific Ocean.

The Honmoku Sea-Fishing Park is a series of latticed metal gangways stretching out into the Pacific Ocean. Evidence of shipping and industry is all around- the coast for miles in either direction is crammed with silos and factory stacks and shipping cranes. The water is peppered as far as the eye can see with ships of all sizes- fishing vessels, tugs, and gargantuan freighters plowing slowly through the distant whitecaps.

Haruto came to meet me in the lobby (where you can rent fishing equipment, get something to eat, or buy some bait prior to heading out to the breakwater). I was expecting things to be a bit awkward, but the inherent serenity of fishing seemed to absorb all of my tension. It helped that Haruto's girlfriend, Ayako, had come along at the last moment.

The piers were packed with people, and all of us, it seemed, were equally unsuccessful at fishing. Then around 3:30pm, as the sun was beginning to slant across the water, we started catching these little silver fish. Not edible of course, but it was fun to catch something. Someone nearby pulled in some sort of tasty-looking flatfish. In the end, I went home empty-handed, but I suppose don't mind. It was just nice to see the ocean.

On the way back I impulsively hooked up with a group of a dozen or so professional-looking bicyclists, and managed to keep pace with them for over ten kilometers, despite my woefully shabby equipment. I'm not sure what they made of the sudden addition to their team, but I kept with them until we hit the Tsurumi River, which I followed home through the deepening dusk.

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Monday, Misaki-sensei invited me out to a dinner with two of the students who weren't able to make it to the first farewell party. She said it would be "lonely" if it were just the three of them... hee hee. It was a relief to sit down at the table and get warm, since outside was all freezing rain and sleet. The menu was very traditional Japanese, written in cursive brush (and thus almost totally illegible to us foreigners). Thankfully, Misaki-sensei took care of all the ordering. I hadn't even heard of about half the dishes she ordered and I couldn't tell you what I ate, but it was beautifully prepared and expensive. I think one of the dishes included fish testicle gelatin. It was a tremendous learning experience.
Sensei made certain to ask us our sincere opinion of the course, and we had a good discussion about what worked and what didn't. She really cares about teaching well, and I respect that very much.
Misaki-sensei footed about half the bill this time, but made it very clear that we were to invite her out and treat her "next time."
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Tuesday was Maya's birthday! Honestly, I wasn't looking forward to yet another dinner out- but I couldn't help having fun. The venue was far less terrifying than Daniel's- an izakaya called Watami. Dishes were small, delicious, and reasonably priced. Fun was had by all, although my favorite part of the night was watching shows on my computer with Maya afterwards. I think next time we watch something together, though, we'll go to her place. After all, she has a TV now :3 .

I think I can post soon about my crazy adventures in Thailand and Cambodia, since I have an 11 hour layover in the Philippines tonight and nothing else to do!