Saved Scribbles

Beirut

2007-10-03T13:32:00.000-07:00

Spectacular song, spectacular video. Beirut. Check em out.

SavedScribbles has a new baby brother...

2007-09-26T15:48:00.000-07:00

His name is Teacherontwowheels. I'm still going to post to SavedScribbles, but lots of my energy lately has been devoted to the other site.

Check it out, bookmark it, tell your grandmother:

www.teacherontwowheels.com

cheers!

A

My Baby!!!

2007-08-30T14:31:00.000-07:00

Here she is folks! This is the bike set-up I'm going to use for my ride. The bike is a Novara Safari. I bought the bike used for $425 at an REI garage sale. She's outfitted with Avid BB7 disc brakes and Sun Rhyno Lite 26 inch rims. I'll be swapping out the seat and changing the tires before I leave, but the rest of the bike will remain as you see her here. The trailer is a BOB Yak and has a 70 lb. weight capacity. I'm hoping to fit 99% of my gear in the yellow bag pictured. The trailer attached to the rear axle of the bike (not hooked up in the picture to the left.)

First two pictures--click to enlarge.

Portland Wedding

2007-08-30T13:50:00.000-07:00

left: View that the audience had at the ceremony. Couple is in the lower right. (Click to enlarge)

My friends Gregg and Amy got married in Hood River on August 11th. It was, hands down, the most beautiful wedding I've ever been to. When they said their vows, Mt. Hood loomed off in the distance directly behind them. The food was spectacular and was all locally grown. Thanks for a great time Gregg and Amy!! Best of luck in the future!!

left: Not from the wedding, but the sunset as seen from Gregg and Amy's porch one night.

Portland and Hostel Company

2007-08-25T07:34:00.000-07:00

left: Pics in this entry were taken in downtown Portland and the Hawthorne area.

I flew out to Portland two weeks ago for my friend Gregg's wedding. I had never visited Portland before, so I tried to skate/bike around as much of the city as possible to get a feel for it.

If Sean Penn, Woody Harrelson, Tom Waits, Noam Chomsky, and a bum ever got together, pooled their assets, and designed a city, they'd come up with something like Portland. It's progressive, it's bike-friendly, it's peppered with dozens of brew-pubs filled to their rafters with fabulous beer, it's home to hordes of bums who love its year-round temperate climate, and it's a sanctuary for roaming packs of bespectacled intellectuals who hold the latest literary releases in their clutches just as soldiers hold their shields. If you're interested in being interested, a lover of beer and beer-related things, and into being active, Portland is your Mecca.

I checked into a hostel on Hawthorne Street, a place made famous by its single-story storefront buildings that sell everything from veggie burritos to leather bondage suits. Looking for pedestrians without tattoos on Hawthorne is like trying to catch a glimpse of a spotted owl in Manhattan. Cafes and brew-pubs with outdoor seating spill their guts onto the sidewalks and snag unsuspecting passerbys with menu hooks. The street is the main artery of a funky residential area populated with people who paint their houses bright greens and purples and grow corn in their front yards. Surburbia beware: Hawthorne will eat you.

The hostel I stayed at on Hawthorne had a style of its own that both welcomed guests of all walks of life while also preserving the funky vibe of its host street. Out back, where I stayed, sits a quaint "tent yard", an area filled with hostel-owned tents that guests can rent for about $15 a night. The communal kitchen is connected to a communal dining room where guests can sit on long wooden benches around a single table to eat and shoot the shit. An "eco-roof" made of live mosses and grasses covers the first story of the hostel and makes everyone under it feel like some sort of garden gnome. The place is cool and it attracts just the type of folks you'd expect to be interested in tent yards, communal eating, and eco-building: travelers.

Melvin and Bean (names changed to protect the funny) were sitting on plastic chairs on the hostel porch and staring bleary-eyed out into the street when I sat next to them with my breakfast. Like drunken lizards, they lounged in the sun on plastic lawn chairs and tried to rub their eyes clean of the bloodshot capillaries that made them look hungover. Their efforts were futile. They both wore faded thrift shop T-shirts that advertised someone else's corporate picnic, someone else's local basketball championship team. They looked as if they were skinny not by choice but by circumstance and wore their patchy facial hair with pubescent awkwardness. After a few moments, Bean spoke up.

"Hey, can't beat this weather, huh?" He pointed up at a spot in the sky as if all the day's weather was seeping from a hole above us.

"Yeah, it's as good as it gets. The past few days have been great," I said.

"I'm from Alaska and I'm just happy to be in a place where the sun sets when she's supposed ta' and the sky gets black when she's supposed ta'! You know what I mean? Where you from?"

And so it went. We introduced ourselves, talked about Greyhound buses and what it's like to sit next to someone with "40 lb. arms" when they get sleepy, and we eventually decided to meet at a bar across the street later that afternoon for happy hour. "They got $1.50 Buds and the place has bar stools shaped like thrones--we figure it can't be that bad!" Melvin explained. We shook hands and parted ways for the day.

left: Hawthorne Street

At 4:30 p.m., I pushed open a heavy, vinyl-covered door and stepped into a dank, bare-bones bar that draws in some of Hawthorne's weirder, more pot-bellied visitors. Sure enough, the bar stools were teal, throne-like seats complete with pillows and arm rests. Every "stool" was filled with a red-faced guy with dirt under his fingertips. A tired bartender with saggy breasts in a tank top watched the football game on the overhead TV. Dusty neon beer signs lined the walls; some were lit up, some were not. Circular pool hall lights hung like discarded halos in the smokey air and lit up the faces of clusters of seated men below. The few female customers that were scattered amongst the groups of men had hearty laughs, smoked, and wore too much make-up. I spotted my two new friends and made my way over to their table.

"Jesus, you guys sure picked a dive!" I whispered. "I like it, but christ, we're the only ones in here who aren't drunks, over 50, and/or divorced."

Bean smiled and looked over at Melvin. "You might want to speak for yourself on that one, buddy!" He elbowed Melvin.

"What--you're drunks? Well, you know what I mean, I---"

"Not drunks. The whole divorced thing, ask Melvin about it, right Mel?" Bean laughed and blew a cloud of cigarette smoke up into the skirt of the light above us.

"You guys are only 21. Mel, you've been married and divorced already? Are you serious?"

"Well, not really. Well, kinda. You see this?" Melvin held out his right hand so I could see the thin, black band of ink tattooed around his ring finger, a tattoo I hadn't noticed until that moment.

"Yeah."

"Well, this is the result of a drunken night in Vegas. I went there six months ago for my 21st birthday party. To make a long story short, I met a chick, a friend of a friend, and we got wasted and decided to get married at three in the morning. We went to a chapel, paid our $45, got married, and headed straight for a tattoo shop to get these. I wasn't even attracted to the girl, I just figured it would be a fun thing to do."

"No way. Did you regret the tattoo thing the next day?"

"Oh yeah, I regretted all of it the next day. But, listen to this," Mel leaned in close. "So, I waited to get the divorce started because I had to save up the $200 I needed to get all the paperwork done. A month ago, as I start getting all the divorce stuff in order, I get a call from this chick's mom. Don't ask me how she found my number; I guess she looked me up on the internet or something. She says that her daughter has gone missing and that she's filed a police report. She wants to know if I've seen her, if I've seen my 'wife'. When she said the word 'wife', I got scared."

"Holy shit."

"Yeah, all the sudden it hit me: My wife has disappeared and I could easily be a suspect. Honestly, I don't want to date any girls or even hook-up with any girls until they find this chick. Some eager rookie cop somewhere would love to close a case like this by spinning some young-love-triangle-gone-wrong story."

"Holy shit, man. What are you going to do?"

"Keep prayin' she turns up somewhere. Alive."

Bean started laughing and put his hands together, closed his eyes, and started praying to the dusty light above us. After he ended his prayer, he picked up his glass, and with a smile on his face stretched taut from ear to ear, he declared, "Cheers to Melvin's missing wife! May she be found alive! May he never be contacted about her whereabouts again!!"

The pitchers of beer flowed the way they always do when served up with good conversation: fast and cold. The guys smoked hand-rolled cigarettes and shared each and every one they lit up. "We only smoke when we travel together, and even then, we smoke maybe 10 a day." Bean explained as he exhaled and passed a roach-sized butt to Mel.

Mel corrected him. "No, not even 10 most days. And, actually we each only smoke four or five at the most because we share each cigarette." Mel's cigarette went out and when he noticed the cherry had lost its glow, Bean reached up and relit it for him.

They had a friendship that could deflect the fallout of even the strongest of arguments. They quipped like everything they said had been rehearsed ahead of time. Had they been a gay couple, they would have stayed happy and grown old together and made other couples, straight or gay, jealous.

We got drunk, closed our tab, and wobbled back across the street to the hostel.

"Later tonight, after I take a serious nap, we should go see a band at a bar somewhere," Bean suggested.

"Yeah, I'm up for it. A nap sounds good. Wake me up," I said.

"Cool."

They climbed into their narrow two-person tent that was pitched next to mine, and within moments, snoring filled the tent yard.

Later that night, we took the bus into downtown Portland to see a band we read about in the local paper. After the show, after learning we had missed the last bus back to Hawthorne, we started walking a few miles uphill to the hostel. As we walked, as two guys I just met earlier in the day cracked jokes and talked about their plans for the coming year, I couldn't help but smile. I thought about how many other nights like this might be in my future, how many other people I'd meet before I died. How learning the stories that illuminated other peoples' lives helped illuminate mine. How stories were these recycled bundles of energy that people drew from and passed on so other people could absorb them.

I said goodnight to Mel and Bean and laid down in my tent. With my face flushed from the middle-of-the-night uphill walk and the beer I drank, I stared up through the screen window in my tent at a cloud of insects circling the street light above. Moths and beetles and flies of all sorts cut through the chill of the night without a peep and waved me into a deep, dreamless sleep that seemed to end just moments after it started. I opened my eyes to bright sunshine.

Good-Bye Japan

2007-08-25T07:26:00.000-07:00

It's a little late, but here are some pics from good-bye parties I had before I left Japan.

I tutored these 4 guys while out in Japan. All in their 30's, all hoping to visit America and use their hard-earned English skills.

left: All my co-workers from the high school.

Home. Busy.

2007-08-01T19:13:00.000-07:00

I've been really busy the last few weeks--too busy to think about adding posts to the ol' blog. Here's what's been up:

My parents came out to Japan for 2 weeks in mid-July. We hit up Kyoto, Obuse, Karuizawa, Tokyo (they went there on their own), and my adopted hometown of Ueda. I think they dug Japan: my dad loves ramen more than he loves me, my mom spent over $100 on cell phone charms throughout the trip, and both folks think Japanese people are "cute".

It was awesome having them out here so they could finally see the country/school/friends that have cradled me for the past two years.

After the folks left, I spent three stressful days cleaning up my apartment and packing my bags. Do you know what it's like trying to clean out an apartment and throw things away in a country that expects you to remove labels and bottle caps from plastic bottles before you throw them away? I do, and let me tell you something: you NEVER want to leave an apartment in Japan...ever. It's horrible and requires impressive amounts of ingenuity when dealing with garbage disposal.

My friend Rich called me a few days before my flight and asked me to take his little dog Brooklyn back to Jersey for him because his airline sucks and wouldn't let him take it. I agreed. It took me 24 hours of traveling and about 3 quarts of sweat, but somehow I made it back to Jersey with a dog carrier, a 50 pound snowboard bag, a 50 pound suitcase, and a big backpack.

Since being back in Jersey, I've done the following stuff:

(Disclaimer: Some of what you'll see below are notes to myself to help me keep track of what I still must do to prepare for the bike trip. If you hate notes or hate lists, turn away now.)

1. Purchased 80% of the camping gear I'll need for the trip. This has been going on over the past few months, but I've picked up a bunch of stuff since coming home.

2. Purchased a bike. I ended up buying a Novara Safari and I'm having a bike mechanic outfit it with 36 spoke Sun rims and disc brakes.

3. Sorted out my banking bidness and found an on-line savings/checking account that will pay me 4.5% interest on my savings while I'm away. ING Direct--check it out, it seems pretty awesome.

4. Visited friends and family in north and south Jersey.

5. Mailed off my passport to get 48 extra pages added.

6. Made an appointment to get vaccinations for the trip.

7. Ordered tires from Schwalbe, the tire company that's sponsoring me for the trip.

8. Unpacked and re-organized all of my shit at my parents house. It's really not that much, but it took me a good two hours to unpack the five or six boxes I have stored in my parent's basement so I could squeeze in some Japan things.

9. Consumed vast amounts of spectacular food and dark beer. This has taken a while to do and I'm still not finished with it.

10. Sorted out my travel insurance for while I'm away on the trip.

Stuff I still need to do in the next two months:

1. Meet the Delaying the Real World crew to talk about my blog writing obligations while away and pick up my check. Wooohooo!

2. Ride the bike allllllllllll over the damn place to brake in the saddle and work out any kinks in the bike set-up.

3. Take the bike maintenance class at REI in September.

4. Visit the schools in Jersey I'll be working with while on the trip. I still need to meet classes, brainstorm with teachers on possible project ideas, and create a Powerpoint presentation to accompany my speech (to be used when speaking to both American and non-American students.)

5. Get maps. Outline route to at least the U.S. border.

6. Buy the rest of the stuff I need for the trip.

7. Talk to Landon about camera/film stuff.

8. Talk to Bill about website stuff. Set-up website.

9. Read more. Write more.

10. Ride more.

11. Keep convincing myself that this is in fact a good idea and something worth spending my life savings on.

OK, so that's it. I've been busy. I'll be busy for the next two months. I'm going to try to keep posting on here regularly, but keep your eyes peeled for news of the start of a new website/blog that I will use to document the trip.

If I haven't seen you in a while and you think I might not have your contact info, send it to me.

peace through cheese,

Sending Kids to War

2007-07-04T20:31:00.000-07:00

I just talked to a co-worker of mine about the current teacher's union in Japan.

After World War II, the country was so traumatized by the poverty and despair that had gripped the nation that the forced propagandizing of students by teachers, one of the main catalysts that brought about violent Japanese nationalism, was banned. The current motto of the teacher's union today translates to, "Never again will we teach our children to go off to war."

Has America not lost enough of its citizens yet to assume this mentality? Granted, we don't promote the same type of nationalism in schools, but why haven't our politicians stepped up and started preaching this message? What is the death/pain threshold that must be crossed before a country changes its course of action in regards to its foreign policy?

If, as history suggests, a country's future survival is partly related to its ability to reflect on its behavior, its ability to change when its current methods of operation fail, America is facing a dismal future.

Fresh to Death

2007-07-04T20:19:00.000-07:00

left: Street art, Kyoto

Sorry, I haven't posted in a while. I've been busy.

Today I had my kiddies write on the following prompt:

Imagine you are writing a letter that will be sent into outer space. Your letter must introduce Earth to aliens (aliens speak English, of course). What will you say?

As we walked to class, I asked my Japanese co-worker how to say "creative writing" in Japanese. She said, "Uhhhh, I don't know. I don't think there is a word for that."

After I explained to the class what creative writing is, I took a survey. I said, "Raise your hand if you have ever done any creative writing for school before."

Not a single hand went up. 30 kids. No hands.

Until we ask them to write to aliens, to dream about frog conversations ribbited during downpours, to flesh out the words creaked and ground out during the marital break-up of an iceberg and an ice sheet, to write conversations they'll have with their future selves, and to flirt with Shakespeare in a love note that will never be read by the master himself, we can't expect them to do anything other than what's already been done. We can't expect them to be fresh, to cut a path from the towering elephant grass. We can't hope as much.

left: Kids and Wonder in Kyoto

Making your kids fresh to death. That should be the motto of every school.

I'd love to slaughter the motherfucker who invented standardized testing. Those tests have soiled the soil. Our plants are reaching not toward the sun and sky, but toward the nearest bank, safe job, or car dealership. We've managed to fuck up education to a point in which kids worry about points and acceptance instead of their true intellectual worth. Passing smoothly, ripple-free, through the educational seas as a fool is valued over making waves and nearly drowning as a creative individual.

I think I know why creativity is down-played in schools here and everywhere else:

If you're creative, you're harder to grade.

If you're creative, you're more likely to ask "Why" questions, as creativity is intrinsically linked to curiosity.

If you're a creative kid, you don't buy as much shit as an adult, and you don't buy the Buy-shit-or-else life cycle pitch made by societies far and wide. It's all too silly and simple if you're creative because buying lots of useless shit requires a deficiency in critical thinking, that stubborn type of questioning stabilized by the buttresses of creative problem solving, curious doubting.

Creative people are dangerous in their ability to find boredom and blahhhness in the things non-creative people love and find interesting.

Creative people smell bullshit the second it leaves the asshole of government.

Creative people are the cowlicks of society that refuse to be greased down by the hand of banality.

If we ain't fresh to death, we ain't.

Random Pics

2007-06-25T18:42:00.001-07:00

left: Me with the two kids I tutor at my b-day dinner.

left: Hakuba area, 1.5 hours away from my apt.

left: Hakuba

left: Sunset in Himi (click to enlarge)

left: Start of sunset

Let's Enjoy Hiking Time!

2007-06-17T00:09:00.000-07:00

left: Me at the top of Unomaru, about 2,000 meters. Thanks Patti! Click to make BIG!

I went on two awesome hikes this weekend as the weather was absolutely perfect. On Saturday, I went up to Unomaru with Mike, Patti, and Kaden. On Sunday, I hiked up the mountain that is a hop, skip, and a jump from my apartment, Taroyama. Here are some pics (if you want to see more pictures and in larger sizes, go here.)

left: These three kids played video games on the summit of Unomaru. Look at the view they're neglecting!!

left: Japanese hiking fashion for older people. Same hats, same gloves, same packs, same pants, same everything.

left: View looking west toward the Japanese Alps.

left: Mike, Patti, and the little man

left: Start of the trail up Taroyama

left: Japanese Alps off in the distance

left: Ueda, where I live

left: Some fool

I'm Officially Delaying the Real World

2007-06-10T18:25:00.000-07:00

After a few stressful days of answering questions via email about my bicycle trip and one 30-minute phone interview, I just found out that I won the 2007 Delaying the Real World Fellowship. The award pays $3,500 and is provided by Perseus Books, a publishing group that publishes a book called Delaying the Real World. The book is a manual for 20-somethings that describes how to delay (or completely avoid) getting some mundane cubicle job by following their passions.

Yeeehaw! I'm stoked!

Make Your Own Media

2007-06-10T18:01:00.000-07:00

left: Saddam post-hanging

Whether you realize it or not, everything you see on TV and read about in national newspapers concerning Iraq and Afghanistan is strictly filtered by governments and media executives. The bleached images we see, images devoid of bloody details, don't accurately represent the horrific realities of war. The articles we read from journalists embedded with troops are censored and sterilized before they are authorized for print.

This website hopes to fill in some of the gaps. Soldiers post videos of what they see on the ground. Insurgents post videos of tanks and vehicles being attacked with IEDs and rockets. Check it out now while you still can--it will only be a matter of time before soldiers and insurgents alike will be prohibited from posting graphic video like this onto the Internet.

4 Hour Workweek?

2007-06-04T21:41:00.000-07:00

Rolf Potts recently interviewed author Tim Ferriss about his new book, The 4-Hour Workweek. In the book, Ferriss gives case studies of people he's met throughout his travels who have managed to break away from the standard 35 or 40-hour work week. He explains that some of the wealthiest people monetarily are some of the most time poor people on the planet. By controlling how you use your time and how mobile you are, you can do anything you set out to do. Check out the interview here.

Wooohooo! 100!!

2007-05-31T18:39:00.000-07:00

left: Mike and Patti's little man, Kaden. He really has nothing to do with this post. I'm exploiting his image here to draw people into the blog. I'm fishing for readers. When people hit that "Next Blog" button on the navigation bar at the top of a blog, if they see this cute slobbery face staring back at them, they're bound to stop and investigate. Actually, no, now that I think about it, he has a good reason to be included here: he has his own email account now! He's a member of cyberspace! And he can't even control his own shits yet!! He typed me a one-paragraph-long email yesterday. He's the smartest baby I know, for sure. Congrats Kaden!

That's right folks, I've done it!

This is my 100th post on Savedscribbles, a true cause for celebration. I've managed to do what only 1,343,951,843 other people have managed to do, and let me tell you something: it feels damn good.

The excitement that a 100th post generates inside one's gut is unparalleled. It feels like I reached the summit of Everest without the aid of oxygen, like I completed an unsupported paddle board trip around all of Hawaii's main islands, like I created the first human clone under the cover of secrecy and raised it until it could speak and thank me for creating it.

This day will go down in the history books one day. Yes, mark my words. One day, when society drastically lowers its standards for what constitutes as "history," June 1st, 2007 will be regarded as The Day Savedscribbles Turned Magnificent.

People all over the world will celebrate by scribbling on their faces with permanent markers, and they will recite my previous posts aloud during every waking moment of their lives until the marker wears off of their faces. There will be fasting from sunrise to sunset. Flogging on bare backsides. Donations of money and first-born children. Huge, ornate buildings of solid gold and marble will be constructed and shaped like pens and notebooks. Evil Headscribblers will guide the vulnerable masses of Smallscribblers in the proper ways to scribble and make monetary donations to Headscribblers. Medical virginity examinations will be administered for any woman who, on her wedding night, claims to have never scribbled with a man before.

OK, enough nonsense. Onto the meat...or tofu, rather, of this post.

Every Wednesday, I drive 20 kms to my visit school, Tateshina High School. The school sits up in the mountains outside of Ueda and is surrounded by rice fields and old, traditional Japanese houses. Apple orchards blanket the hillsides and most people I see along the road in the morning wear muddied boots and garden gloves. As I start the drive, I pass a strip of car dealerships on the main road that cuts through Ueda. This past Wednesday (and every other day I have ever driven to Tateshina in the morning), at each dealership, this is what I saw:

Car salesmen, with shirts so white and starched they looked like blocks of soap, bending down to pluck weeds peeking up through cracks in the sidewalk outside their dealerships, dealership receptionists picking up trash that had blown up against the curb of the street, salesmen sweeping the sidewalk in short, jabbing, firm strokes. All wore new cloud-white gloves.

This past Wed., I’m not joking, I saw two car salesmen waist-deep in one of the water drainage ditches that runs alongside their dealership. They were using long metal tongs to pick up some sort of green sludge from the bottom of the ditch and putting it in plastic bags. Why? I don't know. To send off to the lab for testing? To eat as a seaweed substitute? One can't be sure.

I’m fascinated by this.

I wonder,

Is this some throwback to times when religion more strongly influenced Japanese people?

Has Buddhist belief in order and simplicity inspired the cleanliness that the dealerships maintain?

Can car salesmen be devout Buddhists?

I don’t know, but either way, I always get a laugh out of seeing this every Wednesday because I imagine what American car salesmen would say if their bosses ever tried to get them to shed their suit jackets to go pick up bubblegum and pull weeds from the sidewalk. I imagine a big ol' "FUCK NO!" would be their unanimous response.

I'd like to think the cleaning that the car salesmen (and I do mean men, I've never seen a woman behind a salesperson's desk in any of the dealerships) is a type of repentance. These people sell new cars to customers who could very easily buy used cars. They help populate the earth with metal and plastic that will undoubtedly turn to junk in 30 or 40 years. Also, the product they sell farts pollution and fucks up the world for the very kids that play in the Kid's Zone! of the dealership while their parents sign lease papers. They're some of the most prolific slayers of our environmental future. Some real bastards. They deserve to pick up soda cans and candy wrappers from the road each morning.

I’m going to miss Japan when I leave in July. It's a cool country. I dig it. If you speak English here, life is good. You get to walk down weeded sidewalks that are free of trash at the expense of the sweat and toil of white-gloved-car salesmen who are willing to pull sludge from ditches to keep their country purrrty.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot---I want to dedicate this post to my four or five fans. Without your silence and lack of comments or emails about the content on this site, I'd never be able to write with such reckless abandon, such brutal honesty. So thank you!

When a man screams in cyberspace and no one is there to hear it, does he even make a sound? I don't know, but I just got an email this past week from a nice gal named Rinda (who is also a JET in Japan) and she told me that she's been reading this blog for about a year. I was shocked---I thought I was the only one who has been reading this thing for that long!

So, cheers to Rinda and my other secret readers. It helps knowing--or not knowing--you're out there.

A

Udo's Birthday

2007-05-24T17:17:00.000-07:00

left: View from the top of Udo's property overlooking his garden, the BBQ, and the small cluster of houses in his neighborhood.

My friend Udo had a small birthday BBQ at the house he and his wife are restoring. Here are a few pictures. The house used to be an old silk worm farm. More pics can be found on my Flickr page.

left: Inside one of the bedrooms in the house

left: Mike and Kaden

left: Udo, working during his own birthday party!

Inspired by the Inspired

2007-05-22T00:12:00.000-07:00

left: Small street in Kyoto

**Note--The names of the people mentioned below have been changed. I thought I'd give the whole privacy thing a try on this blog for once!**

When Aaron walked in, we were all sitting around the communal dinner table and mid-laugh with our faces flushed pink from alcohol. He tip-toed when he walked into the room and said hello without making much eye contact. When he sat, he rested his arms on his lap as if he were handcuffed and leaned his frail frame over the edge of the table. For a moment, the atmosphere was infused with his sobriety and awkwardness and in danger of being overrun with civility.

First, us at the table:

Marcus—a jovial Brit and veritable story machine always in the mood for a knee-slapping, eye-squinting laugh.

Lua—a gal with a laugh and smile combination that is so continuous it nearly suffocates her most of the time.

A Japanese couple—recent college grads with a shaky command of the English language but a fascination with it and the jokes its speakers told, nonetheless.

Me—later in the night, I was described as a “Yank who was actually cool.”

The table was peppered with empty beer and chu-hi cans and cups of sake that were either filled or empty. The vibe that hung above our heads and seeped out of the screen of the room’s open window was so merry that our small tatami room seemed impenetrable and sealed off from any pressure or situation that existed beyond the guesthouse walls. We were in a bubble of laughter and frozen time, and Aaron, at first, entered the room like a needle.

He had a mat of wavy, orange hair atop his head that was so bright it distracted new acquaintances to such a degree that conversing without staring was near impossible. His eyebrows and the stubble of a lazy, young goatee on his chin were also electric orange. The paleness of his freckled, white skin seemed a result of his hair demanding so much of his body’s finite supply of pigment. His eyes were small and beady, and he was as skinny as a streetlight. He wore a snug-fitting white tank top that revealed spindly arms that hung from his torso like wet fettuccine.

Realizing he wouldn’t say much more to us than a “Hey” unless he was prompted, I spoke up. “How’s it going? Andrew, nice to meet you.” I reached across the table to shake his hand. Our hands were equally small and our grips were equally strong; it felt as if my right hand was shaking my own left hand.

“Aaron. Nice to meet you. Where are you from?”

“America.”

“Ok, I thought so…from the accent. America or Canada, couldn’t tell which. I’m from Australia. Brisbane.”

We went through the usual questions foreigners ask one another when meeting in Japan: You’re teaching English, right?
Which company?
When did you arrive?
How much longer do you think you’ll stay?
How’s your Japanese coming along?
How do you like it so far?
Is everything as you expected it to be?

As the sounds of the beer and chu-hi cans hitting the table kept getting more tinny and empty-sounding, as the carton of sake kept getting lighter and easier to lift, Aaron opened up, cracked jokes, and talked to every person seated at the table.

I learned that he came to Japan 10 months ago to teach English in Tokyo. His girlfriend came out to Japan two months before he did and teaches English three-and-a-half hours away from him in Nagano City. It was her urging and assurance that gave him the confidence to come to Japan--he comes from a family and circle of friends in which traveling is a non-subject, a distraction in the post-high school path to domesticity.

When he left Australia to come to Japan, as he was about to fly on a plane for the first time and shatter his previous distance and duration records for a single trip (he admitted he had never been beyond three hours of Brisbane, and even then his longest trip lasted only four or five days), his family and friends laughed at him and told him he was crazy. The fact that he has survived in Japan for 10 months is something he is wildly ecstatic about; he has managed to silence the laughter back home.

left: Arashiyama in Kyoto

People in the room slowly and quietly fell away from the conversation to their rooms like petals of a dying flower. Only Aaron and I were left as 2:00 a.m. came and went. We were sitting at opposite sides of the table like a boss and his employee at a quarterly review. I tried to prevent the conversation from taking on the feel of an interrogation, but it was difficult because I was so curious about Aaron’s take on traveling, on life. How often do you meet someone who, thanks to a new traveling experience, is now perched on the edge of an abyss of new perceptions of the world and is deciding whether or not to jump? I couldn’t resist grilling him.

“So, what do you think—do you feel like you might want to go and live somewhere else after Japan, somewhere other than Australia?”

“Oh definitely! Definitely. I feel almost overwhelmed by how many places there are in the world now. There are too many I want to visit, too many places I want to live.”

“Hahaha, you say 'now' like those places were not there before!?”

“Well in a way they weren’t, kinda. You know something—I had no interest in maps before I came to Japan. In Australia, a map of the world was something I was forced to look at in school in geography class. Other than that, I never looked at a world map. There was no point. I mean I would never visit all of those places anyway, right, so I didn’t give a rat’s ass about them. Now…whoah! When I look at a world map, I think about so many things.”

“Yeah I know. I feel the same way. I have a world map on my shower curtain in my apartment. When I sit on the toilet, the world map hangs to my right and I just get lost staring at the thing, dreaming. Pissing and dreaming at the same time! The ultimate release! Where do you think you’ll go after Japan? More sake?”

“Yeah, sure. Well, when we finish our contracts, we want to spend four months traveling from Beijing to Singapore. Maybe once we reach Singapore, we will fly back to Australia. But who knows. Maybe we’ll live in Singapore! Ha! Oh man, it sounds so crazy to say—'Beijing to Singapore.' Me!? Beijing to Singapore!”

“Shhhhh! Shhhh! You’ll wake up Lua, her room is next to this one. Have you felt yourself change since you came here? I mean, obviously, your dreams have changed and what you think is possible in terms of traveling has changed. But have you felt your thoughts about other people change? What you think about people from other countries?”

“Well, kinda. At first, I was amazed by Japanese people and I thought everyone was so kind and polite and clean…and…uh, what’s the word……ahhh it's on the tip of my tongue.... oh, exotic! Yeah, everyone looked different and exotic. But, all that wore off after a few months! Ha! No, seriously, I still think that about a lot of Japanese people—the kindness and politeness and all—but I see now that they are just people, just people rushing to get to work, to feed their kids, to get married. They do all the same things we do in Australia, and in a way, I had hoped they’d be completely different from Australians. But they’re not. You know, I can get annoyed by them sometimes just like I get annoyed by Australians. So, in that sense, I feel a little let down. I thought I’d come to Japan and become so tolerant and meet people who were so different from myself, you know?”

“You honestly don’t think you’ve become more tolerant? Like, for example, if you meet a Japanese person in Singapore on the train, don’t you think you’d be more likely to try to talk to that person and learn about him or her after having lived in Japan?”

“Yeah, that’s true. But I’m also afraid I’ll look at them and think, ‘Uggh, you probably don’t think men and women are truly equal and you are probably sadly materialistic.’ I know that’s horrible, but honestly…wouldn’t you think that after living here?”

“I hear you, but regardless of what sort of stereotype you carry with you about the Japanese after you leave here, you’ll still have something to talk about, some point of connection.”

“Yeah. Hey, look, I don’t want you to think I hate Japanese people or anything. I just wasn’t plowed over with tolerance the way I thought I would be before I came. But, I mean, coming here has also allowed me to meet people like you. I mean, Jesus, if I told my buddies back home I met a Yank who was actually cool and who was planning on riding his bicycle all over the goddamn place for a year and a half or so, man they’d call me crazy. They would say, first of all, that all Yanks are bloody Bush-lovers! And then they’d say it’s impossible to ride a bicycle for that long!”

“Hahahaa. Well, it sounds like those are the types of people you need to get out here to Japan for a visit. They need to meet some cool Yanks! They need to see other countries. You could be the catalyst they need to get them out of Brisbane.”

“Yeah.” Aaron thought about just how hard it would be to get his friends out here, to entice people who are scared to travel to actually pay money to do it. He looked down at his sake cup and saw he hadn’t touched it since I filled it. He slugged the liquid back in one swig, and, because it was late and he was fueling a buzz that had already taken about all the fuel it was willing to tolerate, he cringed and shook his head as he returned the cup to the table.

I continued with the whole catalyst thing, “You know, before I came out to Japan, I told all of my friends, ‘You have to come out for a visit! You’re welcome anytime.’ When I told them that, I didn’t think many would actually come. But between my ex-girlfriend and I, we had four groups of people come out to Japan last year. I know for a fact that each group of visitors left feeling differently about Japan, feeling like they had learned a lot about a country that previously was a mystery to them. Really, try to get those guys out here, man. It would be such an awesome gift to them if you showed them around.”

“Yeah, you’re right. It would be good for them to see all this stuff I’ve been seein’…hmm…well, I’ll mention it to them, see what they say.” The shot of sake he had taken a moment before slowly rippled through his body and convinced his brain it was time for sleep. “Well man, it was good talking to you. I have to hit the sack, I’m spent.”

“Yeah, I hear you, me too. It was good talking to you.”

“Hey, you know something—even if you don’t finish your trip—hell, even if you never start it for some reason—you had the idea for it, the courage to try it. That’s so awesome. For someone like me, it’s awesome to meet people with ideas like that.” The intimacy in his words let some of the awkwardness he carried at the start of the night creep back into his posture. He slumped a bit and waved his hand back and forth as if he was buffing a car. “OK, that’s it man, I’m done for tonight. Must…get…sleep…now! Later”

“Yeah, later.”

Aaron left and I finished my sake. I felt good. I felt like I had spent the night saying meaningful things, connecting with a stranger in a positive way. Although I’m sure he never would have guessed it, Aaron, despite the fact that he had never left Australia before, inspired me to keep traveling, keep meeting new people.

Sure, he didn’t share firsthand accounts of some wild place I have never been to. He didn’t tell exciting stories about his past trips. He didn’t even ask me much about where I had been before. But he did do one thing: he reminded me that excitement, whether it be about model trains or your kids or going to the moon, is the basis of dreams. Of feeling alive. Aaron had discovered his own fresh batch of excitement and he was feeding it. Feeding it each time he opted to go out and explore Tokyo instead of stay in his apartment and loaf around, each time he researched on the Internet for his Singapore-Beijing trip, and each time he ventured into seemingly-exclusive guesthouse dinner conversations with hopes of meeting new people. He had the courage to embrace new-ness in his life, and thankfully, that courage is contagious.

Matchmaker

2007-05-19T18:59:00.000-07:00

left: A bride dressed in traditional Japanese wedding attire. Many women rent three or four gowns for their wedding day. Rental cost: around $10,000!!! For one day!!!

A co-worker recently told me that she sought out the services of a "matchmaker" in town to help her find a husband. My co-worker is smart, fluent in English, and sociable. She was 33-years-old when she first spoke to the matchmaker to explain that her time for marriage was running out--she needed to find a husband soon or she would forever be single and childless, a fate no Japanese woman would wish upon her cruelest childhood bully.

Why would a smart and sociable woman need the help of a town matchmaker you ask? Because she is an only child. She MUST carry on her father's name and therefore must find a husband who is a second son (ie. more likely to take on her name because his brother, the first son, will have already carried on the family name).

When I asked a Japanese mother in Ueda, "How would you feel if your two sons married women who refused to take your family name?" she frowned before giving her answer--

"Oh no, my husband wouldn't like that at all."

In my mind, I thought, No, I didn't ask how your husband would feel--I asked how you would feel.
A name is a name. To kid yourself and stress about your family name continuing forever and ever until the end of time is just plain silly.

I pray and hope that I will never be so afflicted with hubris that I'd try to influence my child's love life for the sake of my family name.

Graduate, Then Baby-Make!

2007-05-18T22:55:00.000-07:00

I teach a class of 40 girls three times a week. The class is comprised of the "international" track students of the sophomore class: the 40 best English speakers out of a class of 350. These girls are hyperintelligent, witty, energetic, and motivated when it comes to learning.

Last week I asked them to cover their eyes and gave them the following prompt:

"Raise your hand if you think that in the future, if you have children, you will have both children and a career. Raise your hand if you plan on working after your children are born."

Out of a class of 40 students, 15 hands went up. Only 15.

To me, this seemed frighteningly low. But I must admit, I expected some similar response. After all, in Japan, marriage and childbirth are seen as hurdles that must be jumped if one ever expects to be taken seriously by family and peers, if one ever hopes to find contentment.

Now more than ever, having children is important for the Japanese because the nation is facing a declining birthrate, one dropping so quickly that an atrophied economy in the next century is now an expectation rather than a possibility. The government is turning the act of having children into a gesture of nationalism: The country needs your children if we ever hope to survive well into the future!

Most of the girls in my school will go on to good universities. Many of them will work after college...but only for a short time. In Japan, when a woman gets a job, she often will work only until she gets married and/or pregnant. At that point, she'll quit. Employers expect this marriage-induced attrition and treat woman accordingly--it's harder for women to rise to positions of power in companies and it's harder for women to earn the wages of their male counterparts. The irony of all this is that these departures from the workforce, departures arranged so that women may have children, are the exact things that will end up hurting Japan in the future as the overall population declines--the women will be sorely missed in an economny that needs every able-bodied worker punching in each and every day.

I can't help but feel frustrated by the fact that students I try to educate are openly admitting they won't work for society in the future. There are serious (but fix-able) problems in Japan and the rest of the world, problems that require the minds of intelligent people. When intelligent people say that they want to sacrifice careers for the sake of family, is it wrong to feel as though they are being selfish? Sure, some of them (as do some members of my own family) feel as though raising a good, intelligent child is their way of giving back to the world. But where does the buck stop? This mentality helps populate the planet sure enough, but how much of our potential can we realistically hope to achieve if large portions of our species are focusing only on child rearing?

I don't know--maybe humankind needs half of the parental unit to stay at home and raise a child in order to achieve anything at all. Maybe we've found an equillibrium over the centuries and are currently running smoothly at high gear, creating at the speed at which we can most effectively create. As tempting to believe and as calming as this idea is, I find it hard to believe.

Male-dominated, religion-fueled, oppression-hungry governmental structures have been ruling the planet for too long with no reprieve for me to believe that anything we've done in the past and continue to do is tapping into the full power of the human race. If the roles we fill have any resemblance to those assigned during times of opression and blatant discrimination in centuries past, we're not there yet.

My female students have no qualms about fulfilling such antiquated roles at a point in history when humans have known more than ever before. Something about this scenario seems strange.

Rumsfeld Sighting on New York City Street Yesterday

2007-05-12T22:42:00.000-07:00

Drop Your Pants. Now Hold Your Knees.

2007-05-07T23:38:00.000-07:00

left: The vile parasite that I think I'm harboring in my gut, the one that causes Giardia.

For four weeks, ever since I returned from Vietnam, I had been feeling as if there was some sort of rambunctious creature rolling and swelling in my stomach. Some days it would sleep, on others it would convulse. I had been waiting with hopes that the creature would die after a few weeks of wallowing in my duodenal darkness, but it only seemed to thrive inside of me. This past Monday, I had had enough. I told my supervisor about my gastric drama while we were walking to class.

“Uh, Namiki-sensei, I think I’m still sick from Vietnam. My stomach,” I said as I patted my stomach for effect. Her eyebrows shot up and she stepped to the side, away from me, ever so slightly.

“Really?” she asked. “But Vietnam was a long time ago.”

“Yeah, I know, that’s why I think maybe I should go to a doctor.”

“OK, I will take you to the school nurse after class.”

The nurse asked about my symptoms. Does he have stomach pains at night? Does he hurt now? Does he want some tea? Does he have ‘normal bathrooms’? Determining some sort of prescription medication was in my future, she phoned a few local clinics that only treat teachers and students. We found one with an open slot in the afternoon and Namiki-sensei and I cut out of school early to go to a clinic.

The receptionist at the clinic asked me to fill out a new patient form. I left the box for “Cell phone number” blank because…get ready…I don’t have a cell phone. I know—it’s shocking. When I returned the form, the receptionist turned to my supervisor and said, “Oh, tell him he forgot to write his cell phone number.”

“You forgot to write your cell phone number.”

“I don’t have a cell phone,” I said. Namiki-sensei’s eyes flashed open like blooming fireworks.

“He doesn’t have a cell phone,” she told the receptionist in Japanese. I watched as the receptionist internalized this startling fact. I instantly went from Strange-white-guy-from-America to Threatening-weirdo-from-Saturn’s-coldest-moon. She scribbled something on the form and waved us back to the doctor’s office.

After a short interrogation about my eating and drinking habits while in Vietnam, the doctor told my supervisor I would need two types of tests to determine the root of my ailments. Namiki-sensei blushed as she started speaking to me.

“She wants to test your bloods and your…uh…your stools,” Namiki-sensei said.

“My stools? More than one? Isn’t one enough?” I asked, laughing. Pause. “When do I have to get the two tests done?” I figured she’d say something like, “Oh, you can come back by yourself next week on your lunch break and give them bloods and stools.”

Japanese question for the doctor. Japanese answer for the teacher.

“Now is OK for both,” said Namiki-sensei.

I felt blood rush up into my cheeks like mercury in a thermometer thrust into a primed oven. Hearing the word “stools” spill from the tiny, blushed face of my tiny, overly-polite supervisor supplied me with my week’s worth of awkwardness. I wasn’t up for shitting in cup and having to ask her, “What next?”

There are some people in the world who are so ever-put together, so well-packaged and meticulous in their grooming, so polite and dainty each and every morning when they smile and say hello that you assume they never shit. Ever. You assume they walk into secret, darkened closets in their homes each night so they can feed hidden incinerators with the contents of their tiny shit resevoirs that they keep hidden in lint-free pouches in their pants. My supervisor is one of those people.

“Now you can go to the next room for two tests. I will wait outside the curtain to help.”

My mind started racing—Oh dear Gods! Why me? Not only will she have to translate the nurse’s directions, she’s going to stand right outside some flimsy curtain and hear me shit as well?! What egregious error have I committed in my past to warrant such embarrassment?! Was it that time when I was nine when I cut off the older Dowdy boy as we raced bikes around the court and I made him fall and break his wrist? I’m sorry! I’ll break my own wrist to neutralize the sin! Please, I’ll do it right now! There must be a hammer I could use or at least one of those knee reflex hammers around here somewhere…

The nurse, an old, stocky woman in pink scrubs with an overturned-canoe-shaped pink hat teetering on her sea of curly gray hair, waved me over.

First the blood test. An arm stand and a lonely stool (the kind you sit on as opposed to depart with) were prepared in the middle of the room next door. Without hearing instructions, I knew what I had to do for this part. I sat and rolled up my sleeve. The nurse tied up my arm and flicked a bulging vein. She slipped in the needle and drew what seemed to be far more blood than necessary, completely filling one large syringe. Bandaged, I stood up. The nurse waved me to a bed behind, just as I had feared, a very flimsy curtain. As I stepped behind the curtain to face my doom, I glanced back at my supervisor—she was standing three feet from the curtain’s edge.

“Good luck,” she said.

I tried to smile.

The nurse closed the curtain and motioned for me to drop my pants. I did so. Then she made a sleeping gesture by closing her eyes and holding her hands to her face like a pillow. She pointed to the bed--I was supposed to lay down. I became confused. Where’s the cup or plate for me to shit on? Actually, come to think of it, I don’t see any toilet paper either. What kind of backwoods shit test was this going to be? Am I supposed to lay down and shit in her hand??

I laid down on the bed. She motioned for me to lay sideways. I did. Then she said something I couldn’t understand. She said it again. She wasn’t giving me gestures and I was clueless as to what she wanted me to do. Does she want me to try to shit…right now? On the bed? Will they roll up the blankets and send the whole mess to the lab? Surely there must be a more efficient way to check one’s stool.

She repeated her request. I still couldn’t understand. Then, the nurse trotted out through the curtain and spoke to my supervisor.

Namiki-sensei laughed. “She wants you to pull your knees up to your chest. Hold your knees very tight,” she said.

At this point I had no idea was going on. How in the world am I going to shit like that? I thought.

The nurse came back through the curtain. I pulled my knees up, and, feeling more vulnerable than I think I’ve ever felt before in my life, I fearfully looked over my shoulder at the nurse. She reached into her pink jacket pocket and pulled out a single long-handled cotton swab sheathed in a bulbous, plastic test-tube.

She paused for just a moment and smiled at me. “Gomen, gomen,” [Sorry, sorry] she said.

With seemingly instinctual precision, she removed the cotton swab, grabbed my left ass cheek, and pierced me with her very dry and un-lubed cotton spear. I flinched.

Whooooah, for a cotton swab, that sure hurt! Jesus! How in the world do people have anal sex? I thought.

Swirling it gently like someone fishing for ear wax, she probed for three or four seconds and removed her soiled lance. Bada bing, bada boom, she sheathed the swab, took off her gloves, and apologized once more. She laughed and motioned for me to pull up my pants. We were finished. She had just explored a straight man’s most guarded orifice and seemed happier than a lark. A true medical professional.

In the car driving back to school, Namiki-sensei looked over at me with nothing but concern in her eyes and sincerity in her voice and said, “I hope your stools are OK.”

“Thanks. Me too.”

Baby Questions

2007-05-07T22:16:00.000-07:00

On Sunday, I helped a Japanese woman who works for the local government translate pediatric medical forms from Japanese into English. The government wants the forms translated so English-speaking foreigners will be less intimidated about having babies in Japan. I spent seven hours smoothing out her initial translations of check-up forms for 10-month, 18-month, and two-year-old children.

Below are some interesting questions pulled directly from some of the forms (questions are meant to be asked of the child’s main caretaker):

--Who is the main caretaker of the child? (Please circle) Mother / Grandmother / Other

--Do the child’s grandparents live close to you? If yes, how close?

--Are the child’s grandparents still married?

--Do you like to eat sweets?

--When you breastfeed, is the TV on in the background?

The following two questions are development questions:

--Circle the type of rice your baby is now eating: Mashed rice in water / Mashed rice paste / Very soft rice / Normal rice / Firm rice

--Does your child say “Let’s eat!” before he/she eats? [In Japan, people say itadekimasu before they start eating; roughly, it translates as ‘Let’s eat’.]

Few More Pics...

2007-05-06T01:40:00.000-07:00

I stole these pics from Rich's camera. They're from our trip to Kyoto / Osaka over Golden Week. The pictures are of Osaka at night, me riding, and Rich with a guy we met at the guesthouse.

Kyotosaka

2007-05-04T21:17:00.000-07:00

left: Silly goon in Daitokuji moss garden

I just spent one week skating through the tangled mess of temples, apartment buildings, gardens, pachinko parlors, and ramen shops that is Kyoto and Osaka. These two cities have fused together to create a wide expanse of urban sprawl that has made Quiet run for its dear life. Inside some of the inner innards of a few select Kyoto temples, visitors can experience near-complete silence. Beyond temple walls, however, Kyoto and Osaka honk, grind, clunk, and hiccup just like any other metropolis.

Rich, another JET in Ueda, and I drove down to Kyoto together. I spent three days skateboarding around Kyoto and getting lost. Lost in a good a way, in an exploratory way. I love how Kyoto is a place where you can wander around aimlessly all day and stumble into temple after temple that is four or five times older than any building standing in America. Sure, many of the temple structures have been re-built in past centuries, but the temple grounds have largely remained unchanged.

left: Coolest bike I saw on the trip. Skateboard is there for scale!

This was my fourth trip down to Kyoto since I came to Japan and it's now official: Kyoto is one of my top three FAVORITE cities on Earth! (The other two are New York City and Barcelona.) I always used to say, "A city is a city no matter where you go." But now I don't say that anymore. Because it's not true. Because Kyoto is so different from any other city I've ever visited. It has a tangible energy to it that is born from its security, quaintness, natural beauty, really really old stuff, small buildings, and its river that cuts through the eastern part of the city. If you've never visited, do so.

left: Temple I wandered into while skating

I stayed with Kazuo again. Just like every other time I've stayed at Kazuo's guesthouse, I had an awesome time on this visit. It's amazingly cheap, the food is spectacular, Kazuo is the nicest dude this side of the Mississip, and the place has a great communal vibe. I'm excited for him because his fledgling business is expanding (he is almost done renovating the house next door to make the guesthouse twice as big) and he is now married with a baby on the way.

left: Osaka Castle

After Kyoto, Rich and I took trains to Osaka to visit Marisa and Adam, my two friends from university (I can hear Adam correcting me now, "It's college!" I know, but university has come to sound so...right!) Marisa and Adam just moved to an apartment right outside Tennoji Park, an area that is a few minutes by bike from Namba, the epicenter of Osaka's night life. Their new place is dangerously close to $1 sushi joints, ramen and udon shops, and good bars. In two days, I ate a lot, drank a lot, threw a Frisbee around a lot, stayed up so late the sun scared me to sleep one night, and did a little sightseeing. It was good to catch up with people from Jersey, to be around my own kind!

left: Beautiful roof tiles

I don't want to talk about the seven hours I spent driving what should have been a five hour ride coming back to Ueda. It's done, over with, finished! Let's never speak of it again.

Pics from the trip can be found here.

cheers,

A

Student Surveys

2007-04-26T21:53:00.000-07:00

I just had a class in which I taught about media influence. At the end of class I asked seven groups of students (four students in each group) to answer the following questions:

(below I've provided the questions along with the answers from each group separated by " / ")

1. How many hours of TV does your group watch each day? 2 / 10 / 3 / 5 / 6 / 15 / 30 (keep in mind, all of these numbers are split in four ways)

2. How many people in your group read the newspaper each day? 0 / 0 / 1 / 0 / 0 / 0 / 2

3. How many hours of radio does your group listen to each day? 0 / 1 / 0 / 0 / 2 / 0 / 0

4. What type of TV shows does your group watch most often? Variety [Var.] / Drama / Var. / -- /Var. / Var. / Var.

5. How many hours does your group spend on the Internet each day? 11 / 12 / 0.5 / 5.5 / 6 / 9 / 4

*********

Last week, I taught a lesson on volunteering. I asked a class of 42 students, "Who knows a friend or family member who has ever volunteered for anything? It could have been for one day or one week. Any amount of time. Raise your hand if you know someone."

One student raised his hand.

I thought there was some mistake: did they understand my question? Only one student?! The Japanese teacher translated my question into Japanese.

Again, the same student raised his hand.

A $400 Haircut? Seriously?

2007-04-26T21:11:00.000-07:00

left: Complete twat checking for cracks in his mask

John Edwards used money earned through his campaign fundraising to pay for two separate $400 haircuts.

Think about that.

This man is not like us. He's a creature from a planet devoid of hearts, souls, brains, and real problems.

Fit to be president? Well, based on past presidents and how he stacks up on the I'm-Richer-Than-All-The-People-I-Represent Scale, he's A-OK. Fit to be fiscally responsible? Not in a million years.

If he was the only candidate for 2008 who is best suited for a comic strip rather than the White House, I'd laugh all this off. That's the problem: He's simply the next guy in a long line of idiotic candidates and presidents that stretches far back into our history and will stretch, without some sort of country-wide resistance to vacuous leaders, far into our future.

I'm 24-years-old and already so much of what I read about when it comes to elections (not just in America, but all over the world) reeks of silliness and superficiality. I'm so sick of shells of men rising to the top of the heap and ending up as candidates. How is it that we've created a system that allows fools to get rich AND get votes? Shouldn't our smartest, most compassionate citizens with the cleanest records and most humble budgets be our candidates?! Doesn't this make common sense?

A country is truly fucked up when it keeps making the same mistakes over and over again, when it keeps putting cookie-cutter rich guys on election pedestals. Why isn't the whole country repulsed yet? Honestly, why not? How do 70-year-olds and 80-year-olds even drag themselves to the polling stations anymore?

When you know the next 15 steps in the dance and the next 5 minutes of notes in the song, why even lace up your shoes? At what point do you say, "Fuck dancing, I'm going for a swim"?

Read all about how candidates are spending the money Americans are giving them here.

Prison Guards and the People with Different Brains

2007-04-25T18:54:00.000-07:00

left: My room at the hotel mentioned in this post. At $10 a night, it was the swankiest place I stayed in and came complete with a pool, A/C in the rooms, and balconies.

When I was debating whether or not to get a room at the hotel, the man at the front desk said, “We have pool, you see?”

He motioned over his left shoulder. Behind him, through dusty glass windows, I could see a pool in the hotel courtyard complete with a 10 foot long, whiskered wooden dragon perched atop a large stone pillar rising from the middle of the pool. I wiped sweat from my upper lip with the back of my hand. I looked back at the man. He was smiling with his eyebrows raised in a “Nice, huh?” fashion.

“OK, I’ll take a room.”

“Great! Here is key.”

*******

Two white men were floating on their backs in the pool like stripped eucalyptus logs when I flip-flopped around the poolside tiles to a chair. They righted themselves and stood waist deep in the water when they saw me.

One man was baby-tooth-white, short, strong, freckled, and pudgy with a shaved head and an orange-haired, trimmed goatee.

The other was tanned, ogre-like with ambiguous body mass—whether he was strong but also a food lover or once fat but now slightly toned was indiscernible. His eyes looked so tired and weary that if new acquaintances were unaware of his profession (more on this later), they would assume he was stoned.

“Hey, how’s it goin?” the short one asked.

“Good, good. How’s the water?”

“Oh it’s lovely, just perfect really,” the ogre-ish man said with a grin.

I dipped my foot in. The water was Vermont-winter-night cold. The men laughed. I sat down on a beach chair by the edge of the pool and prayed for a thermal vent to rip open under the pool's bottom and spill its warmth.

“We been talkin' about it. I think they might refrigerate the water at night. Or put ice in it or something. They must do something to it,” the pudgy man said with authority.

I looked up at the six-floor, L-shaped hotel that surrounded the pool and shaded it from the hot, Vietnamese sun. Ice or refrigeration on a pool-wide-scale in a land where lucky folks make $10 a day seemed plain silly, but I kept my mouth shut.

“So where are you guys from. England?” I asked, hoping to peg their accents.

“Watch it mate! Watch it! England?! Christ, a question like that is bound to get a man killed where we’re from!” The short man laughed only long enough to show me he was both amused and offended.

“Tasmania,” the tired ogre said.

“Tasmania, huh. I’ve never been there but I once met a logger in Australia who said they have some of the oldest, tallest trees in the world in Tasmania. And some of the roughest seas, too.”

The ogre spoke up, “Well actually Tasmania is Australia, it’s one of the territories. Not many people know that. No different than Queensland.”

“Huh, yeah I didn’t know that.” Pause. “What do you do in Tasmania?”

“We’re both prison guards. I’m at a max prison,” the pudgy one said before turning and pointing toward the ogre, "He's at a minimum security prison." He said it in a My-dick-is-bigger-than-his sort of way.

“Wow, prison guards. I have to say, you might be the first prison guards I’ve ever met while traveling.”

The shorter man raised his eyebrows. “Really, I’m surprised—prison guards have tons of vacation time, I don’t know why you haven’t met more of them. Well, at least in Tasmania that’s the case. We get eight weeks off a year plus national holidays. One month off every five months.”

“Holy shit, that’s amazing! Most people are happy to get two or three weeks in America. Teachers get about eight weeks off, but no one else is so lucky I guess," I said.

The ogre laughed and his eyes lit up a bit, “Oh no. We wouldn’t allow that in Tasmania. If the government ever tried to enforce two or three week vacations, the unions would go crazy. That’s your problem: you Yanks have weak unions.”

“Maybe, I don’t know, that's just the way it’s been. No one knows any different.” Pause. “So do you guys enjoy your jobs? Do you ever form friendships with inmates?”

“Ohhh no. Mate, I’m surrounded by the worst rapists and murderers Tasmania churns out,” the pudgy one answered. “We never establish friendships. We establish what’s called rapport.” He said ‘rapport’ slowly, assuming I had never heard the word before. “Inmates know my role and I know their role. We interact within those restrictions. If you do your job, friendship is impossible really.”

“Huh, interesting. What ethnic groups do you see most in the prisons?”

The tall one answered, “Eh, it depends really. Mostly whites, some Asians. Some Aborigines. I see a lot of guys on ice-related charges. Ice is taking over Tasmania, it’s crazy.”

“Yeah I see all sorts of guys, but mostly whites. Lots of ice users, lots of drunks.”

“Huh. Actually, I’m curious to hear what you guys think about this: I visited Australia a few years ago and hitched around and talked to a bunch of people. Most people I met didn’t really like Aborigines. They thought most of them were drunks who didn’t capitalize on the opportunities the government gives them. How do you guys feel about Aborigines? Am I totally off on that? That’s the impression I got from the people who picked me and talked with me.”

“Hey, you said it right there mate,” the pudgy one said. “I hate to say it, but most Aborigines are drunks and they waste what the government gives them. It ain’t all their fault, though, you know. Scientists have proven that their brains are different from ours. They are uh, what’s the word, pre-dis…predispensed…”

“Predispositioned,” the tall one said.

“Yeah, they are predispositioned to be alcoholics. Their brains are wired up to make ‘em drink. It’s a shame really. But I don’t feel bad for them—I know white alcoholics that hold steady jobs.”

“Yeah, and we have given them so much. They got back all the land they wanted back. The government gives every person who is at least 1/16th Aborigine a free university education. They get tons of benefits, and they still drink and do nothing with their lives,” the ogre added. He said 'we' like the word included him personally.

“Wow, yeah I never heard that before about the brain. Well, what do you think they did before white people arrived and brought the alcohol?” I asked.

For a second, their faces went blank. Then, something flashed in the pudgy one’s mind.

“No no no! They were brewing their own crazy shit before white people got there—you can be sure of that! White people stole land in the beginning, but now we’re trying to help them and they don’t want to be helped. It’s sad honestly.”

Both men were starting to shiver at this point—whether or not from the cold water or the racism pulsing through their bodies I can’t be sure. They got out of the pool, dried off, and we said our good-byes.

I stared at the dragon glaring down at me from the middle of the pool atop his perch. His whiskers had a three foot wingspan. His wooden belly came complete with ribs; he was hungry. I jumped in the water and swam circles around him, teasing him, tempting him to try and strike.

I thought about the dragons of men I had just met: I imagined them in their lookout posts, still and quiet like crocodiles, waiting for the men with dark skins, shackles, and unfortunate brain-wiring to do something reckless, something that would allow the guards to act, to move. I dipped underwater and the cold shocked my mind blank.

Cherry-Blossom-Crazy

2007-04-22T19:42:00.000-07:00

left: All of these pictures were taken in the last week during hanami, the cherry blossom season in Japan. The first picture is from a camping party we had up on a mountain that looks out over Ueda. You can see a few blossoms starting to open on the trees behind the statue.

Most are from Ueda Castle. My friends and I had a picnic there. During the day, groups of men and women from every district of Ueda carried a large shrine around the castle. Each group wears a different jacket and the men wear sumo-style underwear. At dusk, a bunch of bands and dance groups performed.

The wooden shrine pictured costs $100,000!!!

(larger versions of these photos can been viewed by clicking my Flickr link to the right of this post)

Motorbike? Marijuana? Boom-boom? Opium?

2007-04-19T23:25:00.000-07:00

Typical dialogue between motorbike taxi drivers and I at night in Hanoi (note: the conversation below would usually take 10 seconds from start to finish and would occur as I walked past motorbike drivers propped up against their bikes on street corners, waiting for customers like lazy lions lounging in an open field)

Motorbike driver upon seeing me: "Hey! Motorbike?"

Me: "No thanks, I'm walking." (At this point, I usually made a little walking motion with my index and ring fingers just to make my intentions clear. This often had no effect on the ensuing conversation.)

"No motorbike? OK, marijuana? You want? Very good, strong."

"No thanks."

"OK, boom-boom? Girlfriend? Beautiful." (This is when the motorbike driver would usually drive his fist into his palm over and over again to show me what it would be like if I were to have sex with his acquaintance... I guess? It would be like a fist hitting a palm?)

"No thanks."

"OK. Opium. Verrrrry good." (Usually delivered in a faint whisper.)

"No thanks."

I later found out that most motorbike drivers one finds at night in certain parts of the city are simply drug dealers and pimps who use the motorbike gig as a front for their more lucrative pursuits.

My questions for you guys and gals reading this are:

What's with the order of offers?

What makes a man who turns down a motorbike ride more likely to buy some pot?

Is a man who doesn't want pot obviously looking for a little love?

And is a man who turns down sex clearly a junkie with a dehydrated libido just looking to score his next fix?

I can only assume there is some logic behind the standard motorbike pitch because, regardless of the driver, I seemed to get offers in the same order: motorbike, pot, sex, opium.

Why didn't I ever hear--motorbike, sex, pot, opium? Or motorbike, opium, sex, pot? Huh? Huh?

Prostitute Deju Vu

2007-04-19T20:12:00.000-07:00

left: This picture is awesome!! I wish I had taken myself. Mommies out there: if your daughter is caught with (or caught by rather!) a guy like this, be scared. Be very, very scared. No one with jeans tucked into his high-tops can be trusted.

I had an hour before my train was scheduled to leave Saigon. It was hot. Cold beers are cheaper than water in most of Vietnam. Choosing what to do in this situation was easy.

I sat down at a bar with a few empty tables on the sidewalk. As I sat, a man with a chubby neck and sunglasses on a stool at the back of the bar waved one of three scantily clad girls clustered at a table to bring me a menu. When she stood, I realized my mistake: I had decided to sit at a bar with a pimp for an owner and prostitutes for waitresses.

A girl in a tank-top 10 sizes too small and a skirt that looked like a child's tube sock with the toe cut off sauntered up to my table. She smiled and dropped the menu on my table. She caught a glimpse of the tattoo on my arm.

"Oooooooo! Wow!" She reached out and lifted my sleeve up to rub the tattoo. As she touched my skin, she raised her eyebrows at me as if saying, Do you like this, do you like my hand on your arm? Her lips were doused in shiny lip gloss and looked like the polished fenders of a restored car at a sunny outdoor car show.

"Where you from?" she asked, smiling.

left: Still frame from the classic. The times have changed, but Vietnamese prostitute fashion has not.

"America. How about you?" The question threw her off guard for some reason.

"Me? Saigon. How long you stay in Saigon?" She smiled again. I looked at her mouth. How many sweaty white penises has that mouth enveloped, I wondered.

"I will leave Saigon in one hour to catch a train to Nha Trang," I said in my slow, English teacher voice to avoid any confusion. My answer hit her like a punch to her exposed, pierced belly button.

"Really? Only one hour?" She hoped that I'd ditch my beer and go for a quick romp in the back with her before I caught my train.

"Yes, only one hour," I said apologetically.

Now, fast forward to two days later. I'm in Nha Trang at some bar by the beach. The sun is doing a swan dive into the ocean and I'm drinking a beer while writing in my journal. I'm writing about the scene described above. Just as I write the line, "Really? Only one hour?" a woman approaches me and smiles.

Her high heels dig deep into the sand and she's wearing a mini skirt and snug baby-tee. She sees my tattoo on my arm from a few feet away.

"Ooooooo! Beautiful! Very nice!" she says as she reaches out and lifts up my t-shirt sleeve. "Where you from?"

I was shocked.

What are the odds of being interrupted by a prostitute who reaches out to touch my tattoo just as I'm writing about a prostitute who interrupted me two days before by reaching to touch my tattoo?!?!?

Only in Vietnam. Or Thailand.

The repetition of an event like this is only testament to the sheer volume of foreign semen discharged (for a price) in this country.

Mao

2007-04-19T19:10:00.000-07:00

Night.

As I watched pairs of Vietnamese friends kick shuttlecocks back and forth over chalk lines drawn on the sidewalk in the park, a man emerged from the darkness, pointed to the empty space on the bench next to me, and asked, "Can I sit?"

"Sure," I said.

Immediately I pulled back from my complete absorption in the scene before me and shifted into on-guard mode. Just as any traveler would do after meeting a new person in a dark park at night, I looked the man over and tried to, in an instant, evaluate if he posed any threat to me. He had nothing in his hands. He wasn't drunk. He looked clean. He didn't look emaciated or desperate.

He was slight of build and wore typical Vietnamese urban garb: light dress pants, flip-flops, a faded, untucked button up dress shirt with rolled sleeves. His hair, black as onyx, blended into the night behind him.

"Where are you from?" he asked.

"America. Where are you from?"

He laughed. "Vietnam! Of course Vietnam. I live in Saigon my whole life."

"My name is Andrew. Nice to meet you." We shook. His hand felt small but strong in my grasp.

"I am Mao. Nice to meet you."

I talked to Mao for an hour and a half that night. I knew he wanted to practice his English, but I didn't feel that I'm-being-exploited-for-a-free-English-lesson feeling that I sometimes feel speaking with eager Japanese people in Japan. We were very open with each other and talked about our opinions on current events and our dreams for the future.

Mao is 31. He is a tailor who makes vests, but he also sells suitcases part-time in his parent's luggage shop. He earns $200 a month--two times as much as the average Vietnamese person working in Saigon. He studied English only in high school because he had no opportunity to study it earlier, although, he explained, children today in Vietnam start studying English in elementary school. Mao tries to speak to foreigners to practice his English so that one day he might be able to expand his parent's business by opening a store an area that sees foreign foot traffic.

After we had told each other about our families and our jobs, Mao turned to face me on the bench.

"What do you think of George Bush?" he asked.

"Good question, what do you think of George Bush?" I asked, laughing.

"Hmmm. Well many people don't like him. But I think he has difficult job. Very difficult. He make mistakes. But President of America--very difficult job. He must think about many things--America, Iraq, money, other countries. It is difficult," he said. "You agree?"

"Yeah, it's a difficult job, but he has many smart advisers, many helpers, to help him make good decisions. He shouldn't make such big mistakes. His job is too important for him to be making such big mistakes all the time. "

Mao smiled. "Maybe," he said. We agreed to disagree and stared out at the games of shuttlecock.

"It's easy. You should try!" Mao said as he motioned toward the games.

"Ehh maybe tomorrow, it's too hot tonight!"

A moment passed.

"Mao, I have a question for you. Today I visited one of the war museums in Saigon. I felt so strange in the museum because there were many Vietnamese people there and I felt horrible about the pictures I saw. I felt guilty because my government caused the death I saw in the pictures. Do you think older Vietnamese people see me in Vietnam and still feel angry about the war? Do you think older Vietnamese people meet Americans and feel angry with them?"

Mao tilted his head a bit to the side while he thought like a dog looking at a fly fluttering across a window pane. "I don't think it's problem. Maybe some old people feel sad, but many people see you and feel happy. Because when we see tourists we think Vietnam is safe now. Tourists make Vietnamese people think the economy is good."

"Do you feel the economy is getting better? For example, do you feel like it's easier to get a job in Saigon now than it was 10 years ago?"

"Yes. I can feel it. There are many jobs now. Many new buildings. I think the economy is getting strong, but too fast I think."

"Too fast?"

"Yes. It's not good. It's too strong now. It can't be this way for a long time. Some time the strong will stop. It must."

Journal Excerpt: March 21, 2007--Saigon Sighting!

2007-04-19T18:30:00.000-07:00

After two days, after seeing hundreds of people pass me on the street, I saw my first fat person today.

Outside of America and a few of her industrialized counterparts, gluttony lurks only in the darkest of corners.

(Just to clarify, the guy in the pic is not the person mentioned above! The pic is just a random pic of a store front in Saigon. And yeah, I've also seen fat kids in Japan--see comment--but I would also consider Japan one of America's 'industrialized counterparts.')

Artists Who Make Lunches

2007-04-16T19:13:00.000-07:00

I just walked down the hall and saw this headline on an article taped to the hallway wall:

Japanese Mother's Turn Lunch Making Into High Art.

In Japan, mother's make bento boxes (the equivalent of American lunch boxes minus the chips, cookies, sodas, and pre-packaged stuff) for their children and husbands each day. The bentos are filled with bite-sized portions of many different kinds of Japanese food. According to my students, some mothers spend 15-20 minutes preparing a single bento box.

I once asked a student, "Does your dad ever make your bento?"

The student just looked at his friend and burst into laughter, "Eghhhhhhh?" (Japanese sound for surprise)

The thought of a married man in Japan cooking anything is silly. In Japan, gender equality is nothing but a hazy idea that is rumored to exist in other countries. This is the country in which an elected government minister recently called women "baby making machines" and wasn't forced to step down because of his remark.

Japan may be a rich country monetarily, but it is broke poor when it comes to giving both men and women equal opportunities and respect.

Scared + Excited = Scarited?

2007-04-16T05:32:00.000-07:00

In reading the blog of a guy I really respect, a man named Conor who spent a year traveling around the world and then opened up an orphanage in Nepal, I came across this passage in the linked post:

"There was only one overwhelming rule about life in general that I discovered on this trip – everything is much scarier before you do it than when you actually do it. It is uncanny. That may be pretty useless advice, perhaps, but for me personally, if I can remember that – really remember it, I mean – I think I’ll be a lot more adventurous in my life."

I hope this proves to be true, because right now I'm scared. Really scared. And it's not a Oh-Shit-Is-That-A-Ghost 'scared'. It's a 'scared' born from a long, drawn-out, faint pulse of fear that jumps alive whenever I think about this trip. When you couple this fear pulse with excitement, you're left with a lightheaded feeling not unlike the feeling you get before you meet students and teach the first class of a new school year. But this doesn't go away. I would say it's cool--the buzz-ness of it--but seriously, it doesn't go away.

With each passing day and each blog or book related to bike touring I come across, the following thought seeps further and further into my consciousness:

I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing when it comes to bike touring or bike maintenance.

Some of the backwoods repairs people have had to do while touring scare the shit out of me. I have never once changed a flat tire on my own bike! Ever! And I'm going to ride to Cairo!!! !!!

I'll learn. I'll learn. I'll learn. The whole point of this trip is to learn. Learn everything I can wrap my brain around. Including bike maintenance.

I have to keep telling myself: Everything is scarier before it begins. If I wasn't scared, this wouldn't be exciting and rewarding.

scared (in a healthy way) in front of my computer,

Andrew

Journal Excerpt: March 25, 2007, Hoi An

2007-04-12T20:17:00.000-07:00

All the pretty girls here have boyfriends. I have not seen a single single, beautiful girl walk down this street. Why is that?

Her: Eyes Like Bullets. Him: Hands of a Boxer

2007-04-12T18:48:00.000-07:00

left: My Son ruins

There were no more seats inside the My Son rest area cafe so I sat outside on a bench under an umbrella. My shirt clung to my back with sweat and I stared blankly at the lug nuts on the front wheel of the bus. Although hotter than the seats under the fan inside, my seat spared me from stress: the owner of the rest area was circulating among a cluster of bedraggled tourists inside and saying things like, “You look hot, let me get you a cold drink?” and “Who wants a cold drink? Very cheap!” and to the man looking with slight interest at the ice cream fridge in the corner, “Oh sir, here—look here. We have many ice cream. Very cheap for you.” I wanted to be as far away from the owner as possible; it was too hot to deal with anyone so aggressive. Since arriving in Vietnam, I had grown an allergy to these types of pushy vendors who blabber fractured English a mile a minute.

“Excuse me sir, you need to buy something if you want to sit there. Or...you could come inside and buy something?”

Exhausted, ready to throw a punch, I turned toward the voice. I squinted and held my hand to my brow to block the sun and looked up. A lanky white guy smiled and sat down on the next bench.

“I’m joking,” he said. It was so hot, it took me a few seconds to realize he was not working for the cafe owner.

I laughed. “Yeah, that’s why I’m sitting out here. I’m afraid I’d kill him if he tried to sell me something. I can’t take any more today. It gets to be too much sometimes.”

left: Amazing moth at My Son

“Yeah, it’s amazing though: they never quit. I can’t believe they don’t understand Westerners don’t buy things like that—by being prodded by someone bouncing around them begging them to buy. If people want a cold drink, they’ll walk up to him and ask him for one.”

“Yeah, I know," I said. "I think the Vietnamese would sell much more of everything if they just let customers come to them. The second I see someone doing what that guy is doing, I want to get as far away from him as possible. I guess if you’re thirsty, though, it doesn’t matter what he says—you’re going to buy something.”

“Yeah.” Pause. “My name’s Ezra.” He reached out his hand. We shared a clammy shake and I looked down at the beads of sweat on our forearms. For some reason, a sweaty shake is always a more intimate one.

“Andrew, nice to meet you.”

The tour guide returned and waved us over to the bus. Time to go. We stood and walked.

“Where are you from?” Ezra asked.

“Outside Philadelphia, a town called Cherry Hill.” Before I could regret wasting time by being so specific—what are the chances anyone outside of Jersey has heard of Cherry Hill?—Ezra bounced.

left: My Son

“No shit! I’m from the Main Line! Wow, you definitely win the closest-to-home award for us so far on this trip. We’ve met people from—my girlfriend and I—” Ezra looked over his right shoulder toward the rest area and stood on his tip toes (even though he was taller than everyone in line waiting to board the bus). A woman tapped him on the shoulder and for a moment I couldn’t see her because Ezra was between us. She leaned forward around Ezra to introduce herself.

“Molly,” she said. “Nice to meet you.”

My brain fizzed and short wired. Thankfully, I had shaken a few hands before in my lifetime and past experience sparked a reflex. I extended my hand. We shook. Her hand wasn’t sweaty, but unfortunately, mine was.

“Andrew. Nice to meet you.”

I saw her from afar when we were walking around the ruins, but hadn’t been close to her, hadn’t been flattened and melted and immobilized by a direct look into her eyes. She was so stunningly beautiful up close I immediately became self-conscious and worried that my attraction to her was scrawled across my face for all to see like a line of blue polka dots. I looked down at the ground and boarded the bus to escape.

With an aisle between us, I started talking with Ezra and Molly. As each word we shared dissipated into the dry, weakly air-conditioned air of the bus, I felt less intimidated by Molly’s beauty and slowly loosened up.

The three of us had one of those conversations that we rarely have in life in which we can’t spill the words from ourselves fast enough. We bounced ideas, names, advice, and laughter back and forth between us for an hour. It felt as if we had been waiting for years to meet each other, as if we had finally made contact but weren’t sure how long our time together would last.

Although I felt more and more comfortable speaking with Molly as the moments slipped away, every once in a while I would make eye-contact with her and loose my train of thought. I can’t remember the last time I was so frequently derailed by the eyes of a new acquaintance.

The gem-ness of Molly’s green eyes was magnified by the fact that they were set in a smooth, tanned, symmetrical face. Her hair was held up in a tangled bun at the back of her head and large, circular mother-of-pearl earrings dangled from her ears. She wore a bark colored ankle-length skirt and a grape Popsicle colored tank top. She wore no make-up, and I noticed, unlike the three bleached-blond sorority gals sitting in front of me, she didn’t pluck her eyebrows. Her look was very organic and completely aligned with the way she carried herself and the radiance in her eyes. She was the type of girl who makes beautiful-but-painstakingly-done-up girls jealous. (You will find no pictures of Molly here because I didn't take any of her. A picture of her face would be a dangerous thing--flashing it to passing cars would surely cause an accident and, no doubt, it would drive me--and anyone else unfortunate enough to get a glimpse of it--insane with desire.)

Ezra was wiry but had strong, mature hands. He wore a loose fitting tombstone colored t-shirt and weathered sandals. His fuzzy turf of sandy hair bespoke of an old crew cut left to grow to death. He had a smile that he unleashed only when a grin would not suffice. His speak was slow and deliberate; he was a good listener.

At first, when I saw that Ezra was Molly’s boyfriend, I was shocked—how could a woman whose intense beauty attests to the fact that a master creator must exist somewhere in the universe date such a…well…normal looking guy? Where was her Adonis? And more, didn’t she drive herself crazy knowing that she could easily date the personification of Michelangelo’s David but instead ended up dating Ezra? As we spoke, the shock lifted and I realized neither of them ended up dating the other. Neither settled for the other. They both were very much in-tune with each other and were so perfectly synchronized in temperament and life philosophy that on paper their identities could fuse into a single cognitive fingerprint. It seemed like they had the type of connection drawn into Disney fairy tales.

left: Cool colors in Hoi An

During our short bus ride, I learned that Ezra was a stonemason with some experience in carpentry and furniture building. Molly was a newly-licensed Pilates instructor with hopes of one day opening up her own yoga studio. Ezra’s parents had recently purchased land in Virginia by the side of a river and Ezra was going to build five or six houses on the land over the next 10 years: one for him and Molly, one for his parents to retire to, and three or four for a few other families who share their views on environment, education, health, and community. They both would move to Virginia when they returned to the states to live in a trailer on the plot and start construction. The four months they were traveling through Southeast Asia was the intermission in their life’s play.

When we arrived back in town late that afternoon, after realizing we happened to be staying in the same hotel, Ezra, Molly, and I agreed to meet up later that night in the hotel lobby to go out for dinner and drinks. I went to my room and showered. In the foreign comfort of A/C, I lounged in bed in my boxer shorts, my back propped up with pillows, and watched some of The Last of the Mohicans in Vietnamese. Even without English, Daniel Day-Lewis was still the baddest motherfucker ever to walk the earth.

left: Hoi An riverfront where we ate

In the lobby we greeted the way hungry people do: briefly. Hi! OK! Let’s eat! We walked a few blocks to the river and found a restaurant that I had visited the day before, one that served $0.20 draft beers. The place was empty (the town is fully saturated with restaurants and we were visiting during the off season for tourists) and the waitress showed us to a table upstairs that looked out over the river. The sun was sinking in a candy colored spread of cloudy quicksand and the road that tracked the bank of the river was peppered with couples holding hands, tourists with blistered feet being pulled by ambitious tour guides, and dogs trotting like they had places to go.

We were happy to be alive in this place, with this view, with each other for company. We had our whole lives ahead of us at that moment and were thankful for it.

“Drinks? Beers? Fruit shakes?” I asked.

“Hmm, I definitely want a beer. She doesn’t drink beer,” Ezra said, not looking up from his menu. He turned to Molly, “What do you want, babe? Fruit shake?”

“Yeah, hmm. What do they have? Ooo! Mango with no sugar. Yummy.”

We ordered. The drinks came.

“So, tell me about your trip so far! Four months away from home and work, you must be loving it!” I assumed.

“Well, yeah, it’s been awesome. We’ve been away for two months so far. We’ve had some bumps in the road, you know. Nothing too serious. Molly was bit by a dog in northern Thailand. That was one little bump.”

“Really? Holy shit.”

left: Dog with awesome teeth in Hoi An

“Yeah it came out of the blue. I didn’t see the dog until it bit me because it ran at me from behind. It laid into my leg in one bite and then released and ran away. It broke the skin, and at first, I wasn’t planning on getting rabies shots. Well, let me rephrase that: I didn’t want to, but I knew I had to, but…I was kinda playing it by ear and waiting to talk to other travelers and to see what they thought. In the end, I went to a hospital about a week later and got my first shot.”

“Yeah it’s been crazy—she’s needed—how many Mol—like nine shots so far? You have to get the shots every four or five days or so. When you’re traveling, obviously, it’s kind of difficult to find hospitals that can give rabies shots and it’s even harder to find hospitals during the times when you need the shots.”

“It’s definitely affected the itinerary for our trip. But I’m glad I’m getting the shots; rabies can be deadly.”

“Wow. You’re the first person I’ve met who’s been bitten by a dog.”

“I know! It seems like people are rarely bit while traveling—I guess because so many people are on the lookout for it when they go to developing countries. It was weird though: I felt this strange connection to the dog. Like, I don’t think that dog bit me just because I happened to be walking by—I think it bit because it wanted to connect with me. There was this strange energy between us for a split second. I feel like he was trying to tell me something through the bite.”

“Huh. What do you think he was trying to communicate?”

“I don’t know really, but I felt connected to him some how. It was like we shared some sort of energy and his bite was drawing my attention to that.”

Ezra looked toward the stairs hoping the waitress would walk up them so we could order some food. He had heard all of this before.

I was curious—Molly seemed to share my viewpoint on the cyclical nature of energy, on the possibility that the historical footprints of energy could connect creatures now living on or in distant continents or galaxies. I wanted to hear more.

“Explain! Explain!” I said. I was excited and it seemed as if Molly and I were talking now and Ezra was only there because he had to be. The waitress popped her head up into view on the stairs like a mole in those those smash-em whack-em games in the arcade. Ezra waved her over.

“Well, I think we all share a type of energy. I don’t know, energy is not the word for it but I guess it’s the best word that we both know—”

left: Cau Lau at a street vendor stall.

“What do you want Mol? I’m getting the Cau Lau. You want to share that and something else?”

“Yeah, uhh. Spring rolls?”

“Yeah cool. Uhh OK, can we have one Cau Lau and one order of spring rolls? Pork? Yeah, pork spring rolls please.”

“OK, and you?”

“Uhh, can I have…where is it here…ahh…one order of vegetable fried rice. But can you add pineapple to that?” Pause. Nod. “Oh, cool, OK I’ll have that. Thanks.”

“So…you were saying: energy is not the best word for it…”

“Oh yeah, not energy. Maybe, uh, maybe life force or something like that. There is a certain life force that is present in all living things, and to some degree, all inanimate things as well. Anyway, I think that this life force can be recycled. Kind of. When a creature dies, the earth absorbs that energy, that life force, and eventually that energy is drawn up by a plant and used to feed another creature, or used to convert spent oxygen to new oxygen. This life force circulates, and has been circulating, through all things walking the earth today and all things that have died and gone back into the earth. So even the soil contains it. I think it’s even the root of compassion or respect, you know. Um, for example—there’s no way you can smack the shit out of a parakeet if there is a chance that you and that parakeet are connected by strands of the same life force, if there is some of you in the parakeet and some of the parakeet in you! It would be like smacking yourself because you are connected to each other!” She laughed. I laughed. Even Ezra flashed a smile.

I was convinced I had fallen in love. I felt guilty. Colleen and I had broken up only three months before. Should I still be upset and grieving the death of our relationship? I still was and did at times, but tonight my heart was ready to dance, ready to love hunt. I also felt guilty because this girl’s boyfriend sat right across from me. I knew it was only a fantasy and all in my head, but for a few moments at least, I felt a love for this creature pulsing with recycled energy before my very eyes.

“I feel that same way, I agree with you on the whole idea of recycled energy. And I always think, How different would this world be if that concept was a tenet of global thought, if somehow it was infused into every culture across the planet and applied to the creation of laws, foreign policy, every big decision made? Hmm, well it might be difficult for everyone to have faith in the idea: there isn’t a single idea that every culture embraces, but I’d settle for 99% of all cultures taking it up! Just like I think it’s safe to say 99% of all people would be against throwing a newborn baby into a starved lion’s cage. There are certain things most of us can agree upon. I wish this was one of them.”

left: The market in Hoi An

The food came. Energy talk ended. Ezra and Molly asked if they could sing a short song before we ate, something similar to Grace for Christians. We held hands and they sang a short little ditty about being thankful for the food we were about to eat and how the food came from Momma Nature. They finished and we started to eat.

“That was great, where did you learn that?” I asked.

“Ez and I both went to Waldorf schools when we were younger. Ezra went for his whole life basically, but I just went my senior year in high school. Waldorf teaches you all nature-based stuff like that.”

“Ah-ha. So is it a private school or a charter—”

“Yeah, private,” Ezra replied. “Basically, they are schools that were founded by this guy Steiner in the late 1800s, early 1900s. The schools stress the importance of creativity in child development and try to teach students to be well-rounded critical thinkers. They also integrate anthroposophy into—”

“Anthroposophy?”

“It’s uh…how can I explain this easily.” Ezra looked at Molly. “Well it’s this whole set of ideas created by Steiner. Without turning this into a night-long discussion, it’s hard to explain kind of.”

left: Yum. Hoi An market

They went on to describe their experiences at Waldorf schools, how Ezra learned to read and write when he was in the second grade, how students learn one letter at a time and learn to read and write when "they’re ready", how all students are encouraged to eat organic food, how Ezra’s parents own a small health food store franchise in Pennsylvania that acts as a meeting place for Waldorf families, how if Ezra and Molly ever had kids “it’s either home schooling or Waldorf. No way public school,” how they never buy anything unless they absolutely need it and hence don’t understand American consumerism, how they cook organic food every night and go out “maybe once a month,” how they live simply and don’t own a computer or watch TV.

In talking, it became clear they lived a cloistered life, but also one focused on thought and respect for the environmet, family, and health.

At one point, after talking about politics, the conversation shifted to talk of the future. Ezra spelled out their dream for me:

“You know, that’s why I’m so psyched about the land in Virginia. The world is so fucked up. I think Mol and I will be most happy with our little spread, our family, our house by the river, our vegetable plot. That’s all we’re working for. My folks will be down there and maybe some other Waldorf families in the other homes on the land. That’s it, really.”

left: Fish vendor in Hoi An

I couldn’t help feel like they were throwing in the towel and running for the woods, literally. They’re so smart, so awakened, that hearing this sort of thing from them saddened me. People need to learn from them, I thought. They have to spread their views through educating others. This is how Americans should be thinking about food, the environment, and love.

I understand why people like Ezra and Molly want to isolate themselves: the world around them doesn’t embrace their ideals and I’m sure it makes them feel like they are constantly swimming upstream. Still, running from it all while their fingers are on the pulse of compassionate living, after they have figured out a way to leave behind the consumption/production-based model of existence that American society has prescribed for them, for everyone in America (and more increasingly people around the world), seems unfair to the rest of the world, unfair to the kids who haven’t yet charted their life courses and who still have a chance to stroll down that grassy, overgrown path less traveled.

Talking with Ezra and Molly made me think about my own life. I have been tempted to toss it all in and move into an intentional community (ie. commune) somewhere deep in the woods or out on an island in the sea or at the top of a mountain or in the middle of the desert, to find someplace that would fit me like a glove where I’d be surrounded by people who value the same things I value, someplace away from blue-light specials, SUVs, Republicans, and car washes. But I think that even if I left behind all the shit that’s piling up in the industrialized world with each passing day, it would still stink to high heaven. And that would irk me.

I don’t know why, but I feel an obligation to help right things that are silly and ass-backward in the world. I feel like I have to stick around and find some way to pick up a shovel and DO something. Whether it be through teaching, working for a non-profit that likes to get dirty, volunteering, or some combination of the three, I feel like I must do something to help someone, something.

left: Pretty paint, Hoi An

I don’t know what makes some people feel this obligation while others don’t. Some folks are perfectly content busting their asses their whole lives to make a buck and buy shiny things. Sometimes I wish I could do that—life would be so much easier, the mountain on my shoulders so much lighter. Where does this sense of responsibility come from?

I would say it came from my schooling, but that can’t be it: most of my peers from school now want to buy shiny things and climb career ladders. I would say from my parents, but that can’t be it either: my sister, who came from the same house and was subjected to the same parental speeches and dinnertime talk, doesn’t feel the same drive to bring about change in the world. I think no one source can be credited (or blamed!) for instilling this sense of urgency, of obligation to make change, in me.

I do know that it was only after I started dating Colleen, after I had some fantastic, conscious professors who forced me to read some left-of-center texts, after I met and befriended artists and other thinkers while in university, after I dropped out of my university’s business school and took up English, after I allowed my noggin to mature a bit that I started feeling this sense of obligation. I’d also like to think it was the seeds my parents sewed long ago in my ethics and values that sprouted into the sapling fruiting a sense of duty now thickening in my conscience.

Nothing is forever…ever! Maybe.

A man I respect immensely who has devoted his entire life to study and introspection through the analysis of myth, Joseph Campbell, believes that the chaos we see in the world today is all part of the life cycle of man. The war, corruption, violence—it’s all an extension of us. Despite the fact that these things will always exist as long as humans are alive, Campbell claims, we can’t stop trying to help those in need, trying to fix what needs fixing. Our willingness to help (even though a long-lasting solution to many world problems is not even in the cards for man) determines who we are as humans. In the face of endless news headlines that beg us to embrace hopelessness, this message is easy to forget.

Will I one day find my own patch of land at the edge of a river in the middle of nowhere? Who knows. I love rivers and I love the middle of nowhere! But I can’t predict the future (nor do I want to). What I do know is how I feel now: I can’t laugh and shop and sleep and live like everything in the world is fine and dandy. Because it isn’t. I’m not selfish enough to block it all out. For this, I’m grateful. After all, shiny things fade.

Death of a Pimple

2007-04-08T00:17:00.000-07:00

left: We rock the bicycle helmets.

Huy has this way of knowing when I’ve had enough on the motorbike. Just as I am feeling like my ass couldn’t take another stone or pothole, he veers off the dirt road into a gas station. We hop off the bike and, as he tells the attendant to fill up our tank, Huy reaches for a bamboo water pipe leaning up against one of the pumps. He packs a wad of dry, stringy Vietnamese tobacco into the chamber, lights a match, and waits for it to catch good and well before gingerly letting the flame kiss the tobacco. He pulls; the pipe bubbles to life.

“You can sit there,” he says between tokes and motions to a cluster of plastic chairs and tables at the roadside café across the street. I waddle over as he pays the gas attendant and take a seat.

The dusty bandanna around my neck makes me look tougher than I feel. My ass is so sore I sit forward in my seat to put some weight on my legs. I have blisters on the same spots on both hands from gripping the back handlebar on the motorbike. My back aches and makes me think of my father. My eyes are pink and itchy from the ever present cloud of dust that hangs lazily above all rural roads in Vietnam. The insects drone on hypnotically and, despite my damaged posterior, I become comfortable the second I sit down. Fatigue catches me, finally. I stare at a stain on the plastic tablecloth to give my eyes a rest.

left: The monster. 100 cc's. Purrs like a kitten. Our backpacks are resting on the center console and Huy had to straddle them with his legs whenever we rode.

Huy strolls up to the table with that bounce of his. He never seems to tire. I’m amazed that he’s done the 900 km. roundtrip from Hanoi to Sapa over 50 times. The ride is 11 hours one way and is filled with hundreds of hair pin turns on bumpy, dirt roads through the mountains. How he manages to stay energized and unaffected by such an endurance test is beyond me. Well, he’s not totally unaffected: the whites of his eyes are blood red from dust and flies and small pieces of tree bark and leaves kicked up by the trucks. He’s used to it, he explains, and knows it always goes away after a day or two back home in the city.

“You thirsty? Maybe you thirsty.” He plops into a chair, throwing his arms up a bit as he sits.

“Nah, I’m OK,” I say. He’s always looking after me and it’s comforting during times like this, when I’m too tired to try to communicate with the café owner staring at me from the corner.

“Shit it’s hot today!” Every time Huy says ‘shit’ he looks at me to see my reaction, see if the curse words tourists have taught him actually work in his sentences. I laugh.

“Yeah it is. Hottest day so far in the four days we’ve been riding,” I say. Pause. “Actually, I don’t want a drink but I would like a watermelon,” I motion to the stack of bubbly football shaped watermelons on a table in the shade by the road.

“No problem.” Huy orders a watermelon for me and a Number 1 energy drink for himself.

A slight spindly women slinks from the corner and smiles at me as she passes. Her shirt is stained on the sides where she dries her hands and her thin forearms are strong with all the tendons visible. She inspects the watermelons and acts like she’s trying to pick the best one for me. She tries to cut the melon into eight pieces at our table and I stop her; four is fine.

I hear the bubble of another water pipe. Huy draws in on the two foot long bamboo pipe and then slaps the top of it. A small, damp lump of tobacco shoots from the chamber of the pipe like a tiny brown cannon ball and lands on the floor a few feet away. He leans in and clears the tube of its smoke. He cracks open his drink.

“I love Number 1. Many times, I drink Number 1 when I drive. It makes me awake. Like a Redbull but stronger. And cheaper!” he laughs and takes a swig.

“I don’t like caffeine, but I can understand why you need it on a ride like this. You want a piece?”

“No thank you, too sweet for me.”

“Where should I spit the seeds?”

Huy laughs. “On the ground! Always on the ground in Vietnam!”

I look around. There are yellow, pink, and light blue plastic bags scattered around and weighted to the ground with the small pools of liquid they hold. Cigarette butts and bottle caps circle a sleeping mutt with her tongue unrolled onto the pavement. Her nipples are swollen and look like brown thimbles extended from deflated, stretched breasts. I spit a few seeds at my feet.

Huy sparks a cigarette and I get the impression he doesn’t even know he’s just done it. He smokes two packs a day most days, but yesterday he admitted smoking three. His justification: my job is boring sometimes. By that logic, there should be a thick stale cloud above most of the planet.

I look up and he’s patting the back of his hand against a pimple on his chin that’s been swelling and gaining strength for days like a summer hurricane. He’s just noticed it. He catches me looking at him.

“I hate this man. I really really hate this thing. I always have a problem like this.”

He reaches to the table and picks up a square of ripped napkin. Like a kid picking up a bug in the bathroom with a piece of toilet paper, he covers the pimple. I think at first he’s going to clean his face with the napkin somehow. All of the sudden, he squeezes his thumb and forefinger together and his eyes squint with a flash of pain. I flinch and hope he doesn’t see me. He pulls the napkin away and looks at its contents. I stop chewing the watermelon in my mouth.

“Why is our skin different?”

At first his question seems heavier than it actually is because I forget he’s talking about his pimple. I start thinking, Yeah, why is our skin different?
“Why don’t you ever get these on your face? Why me?”

“I get those too sometimes,” I say. “If I’m really sweaty for a while or my face is dirty I’ll get those too. In English we call them ‘pimples’. It’s not just you. Everyone hates them!”

Huy blots his face and gives the napkin red polka dots. The pimple, quite angry now, is generous with its blood and drips like a pricked fingertip.

“Yes, but you don’t have them like me. I have them on my face always. And my back too. I hate them. I went to doctor to fix them, but he said he can’t fix. He said my skin is bad.”

I really feel sorry for him. He pushes the napkin hard up against his face while talking like he’s done it a few times before. He takes a drag from his cigarette.

“Hey, how tall are you?”

“One hundred eighty five centimeters,” I say clearly so he can pick up the big number. It takes a second or two to register.

“Wow! You’re big! Wow. No one in Vietnam is 185. You are 20 more than me. I’m 165. Too short I think.”

“Why do you think so?”

“I want to be 170, I want five more. Then I will be happy. 165 is not enough. In Vietnam, many men are 170 or more. 170 is good. But no one is 185!” he laughs.

Huy takes a drag on his cigarette and it triggers a coughing fit. I put a watermelon peel on the plate and take another piece, trying not to look at him because, for some reason, I feel embarrassed. After about thirty seconds, he stops coughing and regains his composure.

“Wooh! Crazy man, I need to stop cigarettes. Only smoke the water pipe! I’m killing myself!”

I think about this for a moment.

“Why don’t you? Why not just smoke the water pipe? It has to be better than cigarettes because the smoke passes through the water before it goes into your body.”

“Ehhh, water pipes are not everywhere. Cigarettes are everywhere because I always have them.” I look across the street at the pipe leaning up against the pumps. Next to the gas station, I spot the familiar bamboo pipe leaning up against the leg of a table at an outdoor rest area. Squinting, I see another pipe at the next restaurant.

“Everywhere we go you find a pipe to use! They’re everywhere! I think that if you wanted, you could easily find enough water pipes to get you through a day of driving.”

All this talk of pipes starts him craving and he puts his cigarette down and loads up a wad of tobacco into the pipe at his feet.

“You know,” he exhales, “I was in hospital for three months once. A doctor said I almost died. Lung problems. It was like cancer but not the real cancer.”

“And you didn’t stop after that?”

“I tried but I couldn’t. I will die young, I know it. Hey, you know I once lost $500 US because I couldn’t quit?”

My jaw hits the ground as I raise my eyebrows—that’s two to three months of pay for Huy.

“Are you serious? How?”

“My girlfriend from Holland, she bet me that I couldn’t quit. I only said OK because if I quit, she pay me $800. After one month, I lost. I didn’t pay her $500, but for a long time I took her out to dinner and I took her on a motorbike trip to Saigon for a few weeks. So maybe I pay almost $500, but I don’t know. It was a lot. I should have quit.”

The dog wakes and tries desperately to eat a fly circling its head. His jaws keep clapping shut with such force I’m sure he’s piercing his gums with his teeth.

“Crazy dog,” Huy says. “A dog can’t catch a fly.” He says this like it’s a known fact or some mystical Vietnamese proverb. I believe him.

Clap…clap clap…clap……clap clap clap.

Black seed constellations are clustered at my feet and attracting fly astronauts.

“Well, maybe we go now?” He rises before waiting for an answer and flicks his butt towards the dog.

“Maybe,” I say smiling.

I leave bills on the table and push myself up out of my chair with my arms. My ass sends pain to my brain and begs me to stay off the motorbike. I walk back across the street with legs spread and ease myself onto the back of the bike. A soft landing. I put my shades on, buckle my helmet, and pull my bandana up over my nose. The bike whines to life and pulls us out into the dust and sun.

You're either WITH US, AGAINST US, OR...A BYSTANDER

2007-04-08T00:03:00.000-07:00

CLICK ON THESE TO SEE ENLARGED IMAGES. TAKE A GOOD, LONG LOOK.

Gulf of Tonkin confusion combined with rich white guys who were allowed to wage war without being required to suit up and pull the triggers themselves spawned this...

Effects of Agent Orange.

Its inventors should have been prosecuted. Or at least made to bury / treat these people.

Pictures of pictures from The American War Remnants Museum, Saigon. The photo below shows a man whose mother had come in contact with the chemical.

Where Chaos Goes to Party

2007-04-07T23:35:00.001-07:00

left: Saigon at dusk. Check out the cop--loungin'

Saigon is where chaos goes to party. The city is a pressure cooker roasting three million buzzing motorbikes that ricochet between stop lights like dull metallic comets, old shortened hunch-backed women in conical hats selling fruit and bouncing as they walk under the pain and weight of their ripping baskets of mango and banana and pineapple, motorbike repair shops on every corner spilling their oil and greased tools and sweaty mechanics onto the sidewalk like gray urban cornucopias, little blue and red plastic stools surrounding noodle vendors like toadstools, pot-bellied white men with recent hair cuts and tucked in pastel polo shirts ordering bottles of gin for the table that cost more than their waiter makes in three days. It all meshes together in the cauldron that is Saigon and at night, the mess bubbles.

If we could bottle Saigon and ship it all over the world, TVs and movie theaters would be run out of town. You can sit at an outdoor table at any cheap Saigon bar or restaurant and, before your very eyes, under your nose, through the fuzz on the backs of your hands, you can see and smell and feel a show that TVs and theaters try but fail to catch. It’s all too grimy and too loud to package for an audience. It’s a place you end up in and can’t leave because leaving requires an emergence from hypnosis, a sitting up when the world is heavy on your chest taking a shit and honking its horn. To sit at an outdoor table and watch it all go buy is to touch the electric fence of life and wriggle out in spastic frenzy from the point where your finger makes contact with the wire, unable to pull away or close your eyes.

left: Not the safest powerline set-up

And right now, I’m wriggling and loaded with current. The undersides of my forearms are sticking to the plastic tablecloth as I write. Afraid I’ll miss a 25-bike-pile-up or kid peeing on a dead bird or a whore giving a blowjob to a backpacker in broad daylight, I lower my eyes to the pages of my notebook in quick little glances. It’s late afternoon and the whole city is sweating and leaking.

Large bottles of beer are a dollar at this place and they taste better the hotter it gets and the more I drink. I call the waitress over and ask her to take away the two empty bottles next to a half-full cold one—a couple just sat two tables away and I don’t want them pitying me. Not for my sake really—for theirs. Their clothes are crisp and clean and I can tell they’re on a short vacation. There’s no time for pity on short vacations.

Rich, I feel so bad for that guy. He’s all alone and drinking his sorrows away. Maybe we should invite him to sit with us? Or send over an order of ice cream or something?

I know, babe, it’s so sad that people come on vacation and can’t leave their devils back home. Let’s leave him be though—I’m really hungry and we said we would just eat-and-run, remember? The bus is picking us up at five.

left: View from my table as I wrote this piece.

Plus there’s no need to pity me. None at all. I am happier than a pig in a sea of shit just sitting here taking in the honking horns and the shoe shine boys and the café owners flinging dishwater into the street like fishermen casting nets. A man alone at a restaurant table is assumed to be a man desperate for something, for everything. Just a sad, lonely man. I used to wait tables and all the waiters hated waiting on lone diners. It was too depressing. They would tip just like any other customers, but there’s something saddening and crushing about unscrewing a mini bottle of wine for an old man on a Saturday afternoon before the dinner rush. How could such a man be happy? Waiters want no part of it.

Now I am the old man at the table. And I like it. I think what I want, stay as long as I want, and have delicate, paced, well-preserved conversations with my notebook that never last longer than I want them to.

There is a boulder of silence squashing the couple a few tables away. The man looks up at the restaurant awning and for a second, I swear he’s begging God to speed up his food order. The woman has her elbow on the table and is turned half-way around to look at the play with no end and no beginning that is ever-spinning out in every Saigon street. Their silence swells and envelops tables on either side of it. I can feel it start to nudge the pinkie toe on my right foot, the foot closest to the couple, and I take a swig of beer. I look out to the street and the tension recedes to look for some other victim.

The alcohol is pulsing through my system now to the beat of my heart and wants nothing more than to run its course. I feel sewn into the scene around me and am at home and calm. Feeling so at home in such a foreign place knocks my socks off and I smile. I suddenly feel as if I’ve never been more comfortable in any other place on earth, a type of Christmas-morning-comfort.

I’ve still got my wits about me and am far from drunk, but I’m aware of my breathing and aware of the miracle of man whirling around in front of me. I see: All of these people need each other. They have established routines and lives that depend on the routines and lives of others around them. The ice vendor needs the restaurants. The tourists need the restaurants. The restaurants need the tourists. The landlords need to collect rent from the shop owners. The shop owners can’t afford to buy shop space and must rent from the landlords. Everyone needs everyone, and although this is true for any group of people sustained by commerce, although it applies to every place I have ever lived, I notice it more here. The connections between people are more direct, almost tangible, like red yarn stringing together a necklace of people dependent on one another.

left: Fruits and flowers

I feel like I’m a part of this strange web of connection and it makes the world seem smaller somehow. This is our ant farm. Our bee hive. We accept anyone anywhere as long as they can move dirt, buy honey, or both. Sure, busy bees keep the queen fat and warm, but the queen seems so far removed from this moment. I know all this commerce brings in taxes and keeps powerful people powerful, but they’re not here with sweaty forearms stuck to the tablecloths. They don’t walk among the men and women in the conical hats pushing and pulling and lifting and dragging all day to make a buck. This scene is far too genuine and devoid of superficiality to attract a puppet master or a stage director. I forget we’re actors and puppets and worker bees here—it all seems real and driven by necessity and honest. Everyone is sweating here. Everyone.

Saigon Touchdown

2007-04-07T23:24:00.000-07:00

It was 1:00 a.m. I was exhausted from almost a full day of travel and I had no hotel reservation. Spending a night under the chairs in the airport lobby seemed tempting. I passed hired drivers in wrinkled suits holding up name placards for their newest round of customers, wives standing on their tip toes looking for their husbands, kids with flowers for mommy. No one was waiting for me, but I scanned the crowd anyway hoping to see my name on a sign. No luck.

The sliding doors swooshed open and I found some people who actually were waiting for me: a pack of tired, hopeful, sweaty taxi drivers. When they saw me, all 15 of them erupted with propositions—“You want taxi?” “Hey you! Cheap taxi, I’ll take you many places!” “Hey hotel! Come with me!” “This way, you! This way, very cheap!” “You want taxi, very cheap!” I walked through all of them and left a wake of Vietnamese curses floating in the air behind me. Two men followed me, convinced their offers were different enough from the others to gain my business. From past trips I’ve realized the best place to hire a taxi from the airport is not directly in front of the exit doors.

I walked for about five minutes and approached three men leaning up against their motorbikes. Each man was sipping soda from a clear plastic bag. They sprang to life when they saw me.

“Motorbike?”

“Where to?”

“Moto moto?”

“I want to go here,” I said and pointed to my map. “How much?”

One man spoke up before giving the question second thought.

“Five dollars U.S.”

I had never been to Vietnam before, but I knew that the ride was about 10 minutes by motorbike—far too short to warrant such a fare.

“Two.” I said.

The man laughed. “No, no, no. Impossible. Only five. Very far.”

I started walking away. I was tired, but I need to be near death with exhaustion and injured in some way to tolerate being ripped off. I walked for five minutes before I heard the high whine of a motorbike start up behind me. The man I spoke with earlier pulled up at my side.

“OK. Two, OK. Let’s go.”

He dropped me off in an area that, during the day, is described as a quaint neighborhood with narrow streets and lots of guesthouses. At night, however, with the help of booze, the cover of darkness, and the perceived freedom that cloaks Westerners on short stays to far off places, the neighborhood seemed seedy and intimidating. Prostitutes smoked cigarettes in small groups by guesthouse doorways. Motorbike drivers sat in the dark on small plastic stools surrounding a noodle vendor and drank beer. Squat dogs with sagging breasts scratched through debris in the alleys. Bars blasted music into the night sky as their young, white patrons chatted with prostitutes in tank tops. The night was still young, but the beginnings of later were well under way.

I was dropped off on a street that seemed to harbor a bit of safety in its liveliness and its few streetlights. As I walked, guesthouse owners spied my backpack and called out at me from their stoops.

“Hey, you want a cheap room?”

“You want a room tonight? Girls OK!”

“Place to stay sir?”

I walked up to a group of young men eating and drinking at small tables below a well-lit guesthouse. One man with slicked back black hair wearing an unbuttoned dress shirt sprang to his feet.

“Hello, how are you sir. Do you need a room tonight?”

“Maybe, can I see a room first?”

“Sure, follow me.” The man walked up four flights of crooked stairs. The hallway was dark and seemed to have an attitude all its own. We walked into a basic room—one bed, Spongebob Squarepants pillows, a tilting fan in the corner, a desk with Vietnamese words carved into its surface, a simple bathroom with bare light switches and bulbs. I dropped my pack.

“How much?” I asked.

The man looked me up and down and calculated.

“Eight dollars U.S.”

The price seemed steep based on information I got from a buddy who visited Vietnam a few months ago, but I was too tired to argue over a dollar or two at that point.

“OK.”

“Good. You relax and bring me your passport info soon. Here’s the key. Have a good night!”

left: Not my room that first night, but same idea. $5

I locked the door. The shower had hot water but I was so sweaty and tired I ran it cold. I leaned my back up against the tiles of the shower and was surprised by how cool they were. I closed my eyes. The trip has started, I thought. Another trip. Tomorrow new sidewalks under my feet, new smells for my nose. New-ness everywhere. This was the feeling I’d been waiting for, the feeling I’m always waiting for. Just then, a thought flashed through my mind—you’re no different from any junkie exhaling after he gets his fix. I opened my eyes.

What is it that has pulled me here? How do I keep ending up tired and sweaty in the middle of the night in $8, $6, $4 hotel rooms in rattled cities far from home?

I don’t really like being tired and sweaty. I end up that way though.

I don’t like laying my head on stained Spongebob Squarepants pillowcases. Yet I do. I pay to do it.

Why does this shower feel so damn interesting while my shower back home is nothing more than a means to finish a hygienic chore?

Why am I here alone, again?

Again.

I turned the water off. There were no windows in the room so I slept in my boxers and sweat into the sheets. I didn’t dream.

Graduation

2007-03-17T01:59:00.005-07:00

Various graduation pics.

Match the caption to the pic!! (This is an actual English activity we do with our students.)

The gym before the graduates arrived. Every student in the school is required to attend graduation.

Students holding diplomas. All are wearing rented kimonos.

Moemi, Natalie, and I. Moemi's holding up the box that contains her diploma. The diplomas are given out as scrolls.

Getting ready for a homeroom class picture (in Japan, all students are organized by homerooms and they remain with their homerooms throughout their high school careers)

Students at my school are scolded if they dye their hair during the school year. Graduation has traditionally been the day when students show off the hair they wished they had been allowed to sport over the past three years. No more school = no more school rules.

Natalie and I were invited to stand in on the classroom photo for a class that we frequently taught----3-K. One reason I love kimonos so much is because they are so colorful. If this were a picture of graduating high school students in America, it would be monotone due to all of the caps and gowns saturated with school color.

Some of the more popular dudes in the graduating class.

*Note*--- Most of the kimonos you see are rented.

Rental cost: $1,000 for one day!! Why do the girls rent? Because a new kimono set-up can cost up to $10,000. My school tried to ban kimonos a few years ago to protect parent bank accounts, but the girls wouldn't have it. Many girls wear dress suits because they can't afford to pay the astronomical rental fee.

Enkai Season

2007-03-12T22:46:00.000-07:00

left: Start of the party

In March and early April, there are many enkais, or parties, thrown for teachers throughout Japan. English teachers at Someya have an enkai when teachers leave our English department for maternity leave, retirement, or a new school placement (teachers switch schools every seven years in Japan). My school throws school-wide enkai after right graduation to celebrate the end of the school year. There is another school-wide enkai for all the teachers leaving Someya in the coming year. In April, we have an enkai to welcome new teachers into the English office and celebrate the start of a new school year.

left: Raw and cooked fish--2 of the 10 courses.

Often the more intimate parties (like the smaller parties for our English department) are held at nice restaurants in traditional Japanese tatami rooms. The average cost is about 5,000 yen (about $45) per person for the night. This includes some sort of gourmet set meal and as much alcohol, tea, or sake as one can consume. The parties usually last 2.5--3 hours. In my department of 12 or 13 teachers, I'd say about 7 or 8 teachers drink alcohol at each party while only a few drink tea. Because there is a zero tolerance policy for drinking and driving in Japan--a single beer can land you a DWI--most teachers ride their bikes to the enkais or arrange to be picked up by their spouses.

The pictures below are from a farewell enkai we had last night. Two English teachers, one Spanish teacher, and one Korean teacher are leaving our department.

At the start of the enkai, at about 5:30 p.m., each teacher gave a short speech before we had a toast. One of the teachers apologized profusely for crying and bowed 4 or 5 times while muttering, "I'm sorry. Excuse me. Excuse me," after her speech. I couldn't help but imitate the other teachers sitting around me and stare down at the table during her speech. She felt ashamed for showing emotion. We felt ashamed for witnessing it.

Each teacher was given "Goodbye Money" in an envelope. I have no idea where this money comes from or what it is meant to be used for. I've heard it's about $200 worth of yen.

left: My pregnant supervisor (who also will be leaving Someya at the end of the year for maternity leave) making the rounds and pouring drinks.

During the party, the alcohol drinkers are given very small glasses (they hold about three shots worth of liquid). Throughout the night, teachers pour each other beer when they notice the slightest decrease of beer in one's glass. This constant pouring and the use of small glasses prohibits one from ever truly knowing how much alcohol one has consumed. This distances drinkers a bit from any responsibility they might normally claim over their drunken behavior (like when one married teacher last night kept telling another married teacher that she was beautiful and "cutie"----Because he had no idea how much alcohol he consumed and because he got drunk at the hand of others, he can paint himself as the victim in the situation were it ever to come up afterwards at school. The female teacher just blushed, smiled, and looked down at her plate during the whole ordeal--like it's happened before.)
left: Spanish teacher Jose and my co-worker Natalie

left: Natalie, Jose, me.

left: In true Japanese fashion, no party is over until there is some closing action/saying. In this case, a picture followed a single group clap (after the clap, the party is "officially" over).

I spoke to another teacher about these types of social cues. He explained that Japanese people need meaningless words and actions in their lives to help guide their actions in social situations. He said that, for example, when he says, "Itadekimasu" (literally "Now I will eat") before he eats with friends, he never thinks about the meaning. He says it, as does everyone else at the table, so that they can be sure that they're about to eat at the right time. Without words like this, a group clap at the end of a party, a farewell picture, he said that he would feel awkward and would fear embarassing himself at a party or a dinner. I said that in America, most people often start eating when the plate touches the table. He thought this was crazy. "What if you start before the right time?" he asked. "There is no 'right time' so I usually don't worry about it. I'll wait until everyone has food, but after that, it's time to eat!" "Strange," he said.

left: Nagashima-sensei, Akai-sensei, myself, Natalie, Koyama-sensei. All three of these Japanese teachers will leave Someya in a few weeks.

left: Nagashima-sensei and I. I'm sad to see her leaving as she is one of the teachers in our department who is truly progressive in her approach to teaching. She's a good listener and she is always, always, always trying to make herself a better teacher.

One of those people who is inspiring to be around simply because she managed to snag the job that her brain, personality, and spirit are best suited for.

left: The coolest soba shop west of the Mississip.

After the enkai, usually one teacher in our office will propose a nijikai, or second round. This second round usually involves going to a local soba, or wheat noodle, shop and more eating and drinking. I've been to the soba shop pictured at left many times and it is everything every foreigner ever dreams of when he/she thinks of Japan---it's quaint, family-run, the waitresses wear yukata (light kimono) and you have to take your shoes off to sit down. The soba is made in the shop and the decor hasn't changed in decades.
left: Our little room in the soba shop

left: Jose with a box of soba in the foreground

left: The bathroom of the soba shop. A smoke and a piss, anyone?

left: The onigiri bar

Last night, after the nijikai, the same teacher who proposed we have a second round also proposed that we have a sanjikai, or third round. I reluctantly tagged along (our group seemed to thin out with each additional round) and four of us walked a few blocks to an onigiri bar. Onigiri is one of the greatest Japanese foods---it's simple, tasty, and pretty cheap (picture below). This bar, one I had never been to, was even more quaint than the impossibly-quaint soba shop. Its owner, a strong yet delicate woman in either her 50's or 80's (I can never tell with Japanese people sometimes) greeted us with a deep bow and a wide grin. She explained that she has owned the shop for over 40 years and that her best years were during the Japanese economic bubble of the 1980's. She said that every night of the week during the bubble her bar was packed with businessmen running up bloated bar tabs. When we went last night, there was one other customer in the joint. She made us a few types of onigiri and gave us beer and fried tofu. When I asked for some soy sauce for the onigiri, she laughed and refused to give it to me because she said her onigiri never need soy sauce!

left: The owner / chef making onigiri

left: Five types of onigiri---each one is rice wrapped in seaweed. On top are things like salmon meat, salmon eggs, cod eggs, chives, or fish flakes. I traded away my egg onigiri--can't stand the fish egg stuff.

At 11:30 p.m., after fending off drunkenness and its parasitic hangover by eating unspeakable amounts of Japanese food for hours, I rode / waddled my bike 2 km. up the large hill that leads from downtown to my apartment.

Handshake, Hand Job, Mouth Job, Blow Job---Dr. Seuss Visits Japan

2007-03-01T05:11:00.000-08:00

I tutor a group of men in their late 30's once a week. Last week, however, I was the one who received the lesson.

When I arrived for the lesson, I pulled back the clear plastic sheeting that hangs over the entrance to the garage, entered, and bowed. I took a seat on my plastic white lawn chair in the small arc of chairs around the kerosene heater. I said my hellos.

To my left sat a man who once pursued a professional boxing career as a middleweight, a man with glasses, strong teeth, and a cockiness born not only from his size but his decent command of the English language in a country that idolizes everything English. To my right sat a jovial, bespectacled, family man with eyes that disappear into his smiles and a modesty that reigns over his wardrobe, his questions in class, and his gentle handshakes. Across from me, slouched back in his chair, sat a man who actually enjoys winter surfing, a man who speaks while sporting a perpetual grin on his face like The Joker from Batman.

We started our small talk--How was your week? Any plans for the weekend? We usually chat for 30--40 minutes before making our way upstairs to start the "formal" lesson. Often, the conversation pings from us like pin balls from the flippers and time flies. This night was no different.

Before what I swore was no more than an instant, the ex-boxer was talking about love hotels, the fascinating, neon-pulsing establishments that let Japanese couples escape their domestic digs for an hour (or a full night) of lusty lovey-dovey. Usually, these hotels have mirrored walls, vibrating beds, TVs with a single channel that always moans, and enough prophylactics and lubricants to allow a baby calf to re-enter its mother's mommy cave should he choose to hide from a veal farmer.

"I love love hotels," he declared.

I love the way that sentence sounds, I thought.

"Why do you like them so much?" I asked.

"They are cheap!! Ice and Cream off Rt. 18 only costs 5,000 yen (about $45) for one room per night! Also, they are fun." He said this matter-of-factly and then unrolled a big grin. The winter surfer laughed. The ex-boxer leaned in closer to the heater and the rest of us. He continued.

"And, they are good for many girlfriends!" He leaned back, and, satisfied, he folded his arms across his chest like he just pulled a difficult block from a Jenga tower without collapse. I became more interested in the conversation--the air of relaxation in the room, around the heater, was now palpable and I could tell the men wanted to open up and talk, wanted spill beans that rarely, if ever, get to be spilled.

"Go on!" I urged. "You can't just say something like that and stop!"

"Well, I live with my family so I never have girlfriend to my house. But...even if I live alone, I still will go to love hotels! Because if I have a girlfriend to my house, I can only have one girlfriend. I don't like this. With a hotel, I can meet different girls when I want."

"Four? Five? Seven?" The winter surfer practiced his counting and contributed to the conversation at the same time--moments like this inspired him to keep coming to English class each week. The family man chuckled.

"Well, a few. Four now, I think. Sometimes, I change girlfriend. I like different types of girlfriend. For example, young girlfriend, old girlfriend, and sometimes married girlfriend!"

We all started howling.

I felt a little guilty laughing and I couldn't help but think of the husbands, out there somewhere, who kiss their wives and detect faint scents of another man, of this man sat before me, on the clothes of their spouses, on the headrests of their cars, on their pillow cases.

"Last year, for example, I had two girlfriend in Toyoshina. One girl was a high school student, 18-years-old, and one girl was a woman, 47-years-old."

At this point, my jaw was on the ground seeing as I teach high school students and couldn't possibly imagine any of my students peeling their little faces away from their textbooks long enough to utter a single "Konnichiwa" to the stocky ex-boxer. I also wondered if this man had just confessed to committing some sort of crime. Again, the man leaned in close to the heater and started speaking with a whisper as if the walls have ears.

"Oh, Andrew, I have a question. The 47-years-old woman, she used to meet me in a parking lot in Saku. She used to...uhhh...I don't know in English." He starts gesturing with his hand near his crotch. "She gives a...uhhh... handshake?"

We all laughed--I because I knew he made a mistake with his English, the other two men because he gestured with his hand near his crotch.

"No no no!! Not handshake! This is handshake!" We shook hands. "In English we call this," I imitated his gestures, "We call this a 'hand job'." Before I could finish digesting this thought--I am, at this moment, getting paid to teach the difference between a hand job and a handshake to three grown men sitting around a heater in a cold garage in Japan--the ex-boxer continued.

"And what do you call a mouth...a kind of mouthshake?" He gestured with his hand, opened his mouth like he was going to scream, and bobbed his head back and forth. The other two men erupted with laughter. "A mouth job?"

"Hahaha. No, not really. We call that a 'blow job' in English. 'Blow. Job'."

"Ah ha! Blow, like a wind blow? Ah ha! Blow job, hand job! Blow job, hand job." The two other men repeated after him and practiced their pronunciation like new converts learning from a proselytizing adult film star.

An Amazing Guy

2007-02-25T02:04:00.002-08:00

Need some inspiration? Counting dustballs on your desk at work? Here you go, inspiration free of charge!

The amazing guy (in a nutshell): His name is Conor. He traveled around the world on a 2 year trip. During the trip, he volunteered at an orphanage in Nepal and connected with the children. After he finished the trip, he returned to Nepal to open up an orphanage of his own that now protects about 20 children who were once trafficked. He's in his early-thirties and has no monetary income. He had no previous experience with working in/setting up an orphanage---he simply saw a thing that needed fixing and leaped.

This link will take you to a page with pictures of Conor, the orphanage, and the kiddies.

http://blogs.bootsnall.com/conor/?p=369#more-369

You can also donate to his orphanage via the blog.

Leap.

cheers,

A

"I Prefer Not To"

2007-02-25T01:17:00.001-08:00

left: This picture has absolutely nothing to do with this post---I was trying to see if I could figure out how to post larger pictures because my snowboarding pictures (previous post) came out small. Ignore this picture...ignore it now!

Every year, there is a prefectural English camp held in Nagano prefecture. Two hundred students attend along with 60 JETs and Japanese English teachers. In a country in which people visit the dentist four or five times in a two week period for a collective hour or two of dental work simply because “it’s the Japanese way,” a place wear senseless paperwork and long, suicide-inducing work hours have swelled to mythical proportions, planning such a camp would require countless hours of cutting through administrative red tape, submitting expense reports, emailing JETs, emailing more JETs when JETs you had been counting on decide to cancel, etc. Keep this in mind as you read on.

Today, a teacher in my office, a man with over 35 years teaching experience and an educational bag-of-tricks the size of a flea turd (OK class, I hope you're ready to dream and drool because it's lecture time...again), a man who, as unfortunate as it is predictable, sits on the prefectural board of English teachers, tip-toed up to my desk and smiled and laughed instead of saying, “Excuse me.”

Smile. Laugh. I turn to face him. “Uh Andrew, the English board had a meeting recently about the prefectural English camp." Smile. Laughing. "So…we were wondering if you and Natalie would like to plan the camp this year.”

I laugh at the silliness of his request. He fails to remember that we have already planned two camps this year for our school, we planned one last year, and the previous Assistant English Teacher (AET)planned the prefectural camp two years ago, making our school next to last in line for the responsibility.

“Hmmm. I really, really don’t want to plan that camp. When I first arrived in Japan, everyone warned me about getting coerced into planning it and said it was a paperwork nightmare. Plus, we already planned two camps for our students this year. Yeah, if possible, I’d prefer not to.” I love using that classic Bartleby line in situations like this.

He laughed. I tried to explain myself some more. He tried flattery (“Well we just thought you and Natalie had so much practice with the camps at this point and you are such strong AETs that it wouldn’t be too difficult for you”) and, after making me feel guilty for refusing—or “preferring not to” to do the camp—he eventually agreed to ask an AET husband-and-wife team who have helped with prefectural stuff in the past.

Later that day, I asked my supervisor if she thought my refusal was inappropriate or not.

“Oh no no no. It’s fine if you guys don’t want to do it. You have already done a few camps and another AET who doesn’t have to organize any camps can do the prefectural camp. But I think many teachers on the English board have heard great things about you and so they have high expectations of you. You don’t have to live up to those expectations if you don’t want to.”

Huh? This is a classic example of Japanese doublespeak! Basically, it’s OK if I don’t want to do the camp, but I will not live up to the expectations of senior teachers (most of whom I’ve never even met). It’s common for a Japanese person to avoid saying “No” by saying something like “ "Hmmm, maybe that will be difficult.” I feel like I’m accustomed to this sort of hide-your-true-opinion communication, but her comment caught me off guard.

This little episode reminded me of a time I went out to eat at a cheap casino in Reno with my extended family. We only decided to go out to eat because my uncle raved about some $2-3 dinner special the casino served (they try to lure in gamblers by offering cheap food and putting restaurants in the back of the casino so you have to walk past gaming tables to eat). When we arrived, all of the kids started drooling over various expensive dishes on the menu. With wide eyes, I blurted out, "I want the steak!" My uncle said, "You can get whatever you want, but we came for the special."

It's the same idea----do what you want but...also follow expectations.

Pride and Spirit! Pride and Spirit!

2007-02-25T01:07:00.000-08:00

Last night, sweaty and flushed after a soak in the onsen, I met a man in the lobby of my gym. He stared at me as I passed and then blurted, “Hello. English?”

I stopped with my arms full of shoes, a sweatshirt, and my gym bag.

“Hello,” I said.

My answer was all he needed to hear.

“Just a minute,” the man said in Japanese.

He pulled out a small notebook and started frantically flipping through the pages. Sitting to the left of us, two old women with beet-red faces cooled down from their dips in the onsen and looked on, amused that a Japanese person was attempting to make contact with the tall, white, silly creature they often see but never dare address. The man finally found the page he was looking for.

“This,” he pointed to the top of the page. “In English? Uhh…you say? In English?”

The words “Pride and Spirit” were written in shaky script above many lines of Japanese. I looked at the man and smiled. This sort of thing happens on occasion in Japan, a country bloated with foreign English instructors. People see white skin and assume it belongs to an English speaker.

I pointed at the words and used my ESL teacher voice—something that sounds like the voice a parent uses with a toddler (minus all the cooing and pet names.)

“This says ‘Pride and Spirit,’ ” I said clearly. Before he asked me to, I repeated it two more times, “Pride and spirit. Pride and spirit.”

The man repeated after me and used gestures to explain that he was a singer and ‘Pride and Spirit’ was the title of a song he wrote. He pointed to the lines of Japanese verse below the title and I could see that the words ‘Pride and Spirit’ were written in as a chorus throughout the song.

“Sing? Pride and Spirit? Like this,” the man said. He started singing “Pride and Spirit! Pride and Spirit!” off-key and heavily accented in the gym lobby. The two old women laughed and the receptionist acted like nothing was out of the ordinary, like the lobby doubled as a concert hall a few times a day without notice.

“No, no,” I said, laughing, “I’m a bad singer. Very bad.”

The man insisted. “Please, you sing. Pride and spirit.” He jabbed his finger at the phrase in his notebook over and over again like a preacher with his bible. His request turned into an order, “You sing. You sing this.”

I looked around. People were coming and going. The old ladies were staring as if they were observing some strange social experiment that could explode in flames or morph into a foreign dance or display of culture at any moment. The receptionist pretended to be interested in her sign-in sheet but I could tell she was listening, waiting.

Tired and ready to go home and eat, I said frankly, “I’m sorry. No. I’m a bad singer.”

The man stared at me with a flat, unshaken expression on his face. My answer was not received or even understood.

“Please, you sing.” He smiled.

Sing or not sing. Sing or not sing. Hmmmm.

Oh fuck it, I thought. Singing the damn thing will be easier than getting my point across to this man—the path of least resistance.

“Priiiiide and spirrrrrit. Priiiiide and spirrrrit,” I sang, feeling faint from the immediate rush of blood to my blushed cheeks and forehead.

The man clapped and said, “Amazing! Amazing!” in Japanese and then tried to imitate my pronunciation and pitch.

“Nice to meet you,” I said and we shook hands.

I walked away and left him singing to his small audience.

A Day at Hakuba 47

2007-02-17T20:35:00.000-08:00

We've had an amazingly mild winter so far this year. I haven't been riding every Sat. and Sun. like last year because the snow hasn't been as good and the temperature in my apartment during the day is actually pleasant (last year, it was warmer/safer to go riding and work up a sweat than stay in my apartment sucking in carbon monoxide fumes all day).

These are some pictures from a day of back country riding up at Hakuba 47. In a full 8 a.m--5 p.m. day of riding, we managed to get 4 runs in. It was awesome, but exhausting because of all the hiking.

left: Mike and I

left: Greg, Tim, and I

left: Greg in the trees

left: Stu, Tim, Mike, Rich, and Greg

left: Tim

left: Tim and Greg at the top of the south face of 47

left: After a 40 minute hike from the top lift, this was the view from the ridge before we went down the north face.

left: Tim scouting out a scary, wind-blown cornice type thing

left: After we made it down the north face, we ended up in a valley and had to ride along a river /cross a bunch of dams for an hour and a half to get back to our cars. This shot is of me climbing to get to my board after throwing it down to the snow from atop the dam.

News!

2007-02-17T20:28:00.000-08:00

left: A monkey and I last year

This blog is long overdue for a post and I apologize. After finally securing an internet connection in my apartment, my hard drive died and I had to have it replaced. Now, finally, I have a functioning computer AND an internet connection.

News:

1. The trip: I don’t think I’ve sent out a mass email to all of my readers (“mass” might not be the best word to describe an email that is directed to all three of you) about my plans post-Japan. As of now, I am planning on going on a long bicycle trip that will start in early October of this year. I will ride south from New Jersey, down to the Gulf states, through Texas and into Mexico, down into Central America. From Panama I will either sail or fly past the Darien Gap, an impenetrable tangle of rainforest, toucans, and magic, on to Colombia. South from Colombia along the western coast of South America. I will eventually cross (possibly in Bolivia) over some high and chilly mountain passes and work my way down to the eastern plains. I’m hoping to eventually end up in Rio in Brazil or Buenos Aires in Argentina. From either of these large port cities, I would like to find a job on a trans-Atlantic freighter headed for South Africa. From South Africa, I’ll ride up the Eastern coast of Africa and head towards Cairo.

This is the rough plan as of now. I expect and hope for changes along the way. I am guessing this ride will take 1.5---2 years. Based on blogs that I’ve been reading, through a combination of camp spots and hotels, self-made meals and restaurant feasts, frequent deprivation and rare indulgence, I should be able to complete a trip like this on a budget of $15,000---20,000. Some riders have traveled for the same length of time on larger budgets, some have spent next to nothing.

2. Goal of the trip: The goal of this trip is multi-faceted and revealing itself to me in thin layers, like a rainbow in a ball flashing open its trench coat to a waiting voyeur. As of now, I hope to (as cliché as it sounds—I can think of no other simple way to say it) use the trip to restore my faith in humanity, find the goodness in all people that I know must exist but have been conditioned to doubt. Traveling alone propels one into the open sail of hospitality that far too often hovers just above the chop and spray of routine. I have confidence that I will be invited into people’s homes for the night, asked to join in meals with strangers, helped when stranded on the side of the road. The interest that a loaded bike generates in places where no loaded bikes are typically seen is hot enough to spark the flame of conversation. I also hope to use this trip as a teaching tool. I’m still trying to hash out the details, but I would like to document the trip in some way (via video, writing, photo combination) so I that I might show future students in America and students along the way how people in the world are superficially different while essentially the same. I think the best way to do this would be to do what I have been planning on doing all along: 1. Accept invitations to eat with, stay with, chat with strangers I meet along the way (in my head I can hear my first grade teacher, using a dolphin puppet and a squeaky voice, saying “Never ever talk to strangers!” This logic is fine for first graders, but we also need to preach the reverse message for our high school and university students to combat ignorance and ethnocentrism and say, “Always, always talk to strangers!!”) 2. Volunteer along the way. I would like to volunteer a few times throughout the trip to kill two birds with one stone—help other people and feed knowledge into my brain’s engine at the same time. I’m not sure where I will volunteer yet, but I’ve already found some amazing opportunities at 2 orphanages and 1 outdoor education/eco-tourism outfit in Central America. I also have another goal for the trip that I think will be easy to achieve simply by seeing the trip to fruition: I want to inspire people I now know and people I meet in the future to travel, inspire people to chase goals and dreams no matter how silly or unattainable they seem, and to encourage others to find constructive ways to shatter the universal government-prescribed life cycle, one that is stifling in its inflexibility and insulting to the brilliance of life in its blandness—

Go to school, get married, get a job, produce, have kids, produce, go to church/temple/mosque/synagogue/football stadium one day a week, pay taxes, produce, pay taxes, produce, die.

3. I’m going to Vietnam over March break for two weeks. I’m excited because I will fly into Ho Chi Minh City and leave from Hanoi, thus allowing me to avoid annoying backtracking to get to my arrival airport. I have no set plans for the trip as of now (and I hope to keep it that way!) I do know that I would like to spend a few days on the beach and a few days touring the Vietcong tunnel system and visiting a good museum in Hanoi that focuses on “The American War” (as my old professor once said, Position Determines Perspective!!)

4. Since I’ve had my new and improved computer, I’ve watched a few documentaries/shows that have set my brain spinning. Two have been about religion/Christianity because I’m reading an amazing book by Mark Twain, Letters From the Earth, at the moment (in the book, Twain unrolls any shred of validity that may have once wrapped round the bible and uses it to wipe his backside.)

a. Jesus Camp—About an Evangelical “camp” for kids in Missouri. The camp is used as a training ground for up and coming belligerent, Republican lunatics and a Petri dish for intolerance, hatred, ignorance, and fear. It will make you queasy, beware! Some of these kids “feel yucky” when they are around non-Christians, the leader of the camp hopes that the children will fight for Christianity with the same intensity that fundamentalist Muslims use to fight for the “advancement” of Islam (laying down their lives if necessary), the children (some only seven and eight-years-old) are encouraged to try to convert non-Christians, one child became “born-again” at five-years-old when he felt “there was something missing in his life”, one night of the camp is devoted to anti-abortion lectures, the children (most are home-schooled) supplement their science texts with Christian texts that teach them to “trade their belief in science for their faith.” The whole thing is simply disgusting and fascinating at the same time, like a car wreck in slow motion.

b. The Virus of Faith by Richard Dawkins—A documentary about how faith resembles a virus that is passed from parent to child and fueled by fear. Dawkins asserts that the quest for truth via science is threatened by the blanket of faith that stifles curiosity and concern for the environment. There’s a great section of the film where he interviews a woman who was forced into Christianity as a child by her parents. The woman describes childhood religious indoctrination as a form of child abuse because children are forced into believing in an ideology because of different fears-----fear of things like hell, fear of disappointing their parents, and if they live in a very religious society, fear of being a social outcast.

I wonder: Why can’t children be educated about the religions of the world so that they can choose their own religion when they are adults, when they are old enough to fully understand the implications of their belief in faith??? To decide for your child that he/she will be a Muslim or a Christian is to make a decision that no human is qualified to make for another. Dawkins is articulate and the questions he poses are immense and thought-provoking. I first heard of him because I read that Douglas Adams was influenced by Dawkins and impressed with the simplicity and strength of his logic regarding faith and evolution.

c. The Power of Myth—Interview of Joseph Campbell by Bill Moyers before Campbell’s death at 82. Campbell spent his life studying world mythology and, over a 6 part series, tells Moyers about all he’s learned in a lifetime of study. AMAZING! Covers many religions, countless countries and cultures, dozens of myths and their implications, and how to “follow your bliss.”. Moyers said Campbell was “one of the most spiritual men” he knew and I think it shows in this series. Campbell knows. So many people say they know, but he glows it. You have to see it to believe it; it’s spectacular.

d. Burning Man: Beyond Black Rock—A documentary about the Burning Man art festival held in the Black Rock Desert in Nevada every year. If you want to learn how a group of people are able to build a city for 35,000 people in the middle of the desert, hold a week-long festival, and break it down without leaving a trace (largest “Leave No Trace” project in the entire world) only to do it again the next year, check out the video. In terms of organization, it makes my trip seem like a walk to the toilet.

5. In the past month, out of necessity, I’ve been writing by hand a lot. I usually don’t write by hand because I’m left-handed and I always smudge my writing across the page. Also, on those rare occasions when the writing rushes from me like a mouse from a house fire, I feel as if I can’t write fast enough by hand. I like to type because I can type quickly and can edit as I type (some might argue that this weakens and thins the filter of the mind and prevents thoughtful censorship. Kerouac would say the filter can’t be destroyed soon enough). I can also keep a certain visual format throughout a poem as I type (sometimes this itself helps me think of material by just seeing how long the next line should physically be) and when I write by hand, I often cross out lines and scribble over the text and distort the shape of my writing. I also think that a page covered in scribbled lines and cross-outs is one that is less inviting for the writer to re-visit. I’m intimidated by a messy page and find it harder to sit down and finish something when mistakes are screaming out at me from under a pile of crossed out words. I think I’ll continue to prefer the computer for a long while, but I’m fascinated by how simple format/process changes can affect writing. I’m sure this information is interesting to no one except me, and after re-reading this paragraph, I’m annoyed that I just wasted time writing it.

More to come as life unfolds,

Andrew

Update

2006-11-27T21:01:00.000-08:00

Howdy all,

So I haven`t been posting to the blog recently because I no longer have the internet in my apartment! I will get the internet up and running again when I return from my Christmas trip on July 7th. Long and frustrating story involving truckloads of Japanese red tape and foolishness. Until then, I have no way of contacting the outside world (no phone or internet) from within my apartment. I`m writing this post from a computer at school and trying to decipher all of the Japanese characters that are taking the place of the usual English words on the blog-post-template. I might post this blog or delete the whole damn thing when I push...this....Japanese button.....cross your fingers........ *

The New Apartment

2006-09-29T19:58:00.000-07:00

At the end of July, I moved into an apartment building that the local government owns. Someya teachers, if they choose, can live in this apartment building in either a studio apartment (like mine) or a "family apartment" (one with two bedrooms and a living room). The rent is highly subsidized and all studio apartments cost about$60 a month in rent! It's quiet on the weekends because many teachers, although they live in studio apartments during the week, return home to their families on the weekends.
I can't figure out how to arrange pictures within this post or add captions because I'm using such an old computer now and it won't let me cut and past photos, so....the shot of the city is the view from the balcony. Everything else is easy to figure out! For one person, it is the absolute perfect apartment--not too big, not too small. Perfect size.

The man detests Bush`s hypocrisy AND helps poor Americans! Can we elect him?

2006-09-24T18:58:00.000-07:00

(copied from Democracynow.org)

Venezuela Doubles Discount Heating Oil Shipments to US
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez announced Thursday his government is doubling the amount of discounted heating oil it provides to poor Americans. The state-owned company, Citgo, will provide up to one hundred million gallons to low-income communities in eighteen states this winter. Chavez made the announcement at a Church ceremony in Harlem. He was introduced by actor and activist Danny Glover." During his remarks, Chavez also called President Bush an “alcoholic” and a “sick man.” His comments come one day after he referred to President Bush as “the devil” while addressing the UN General Assembly.

Cambodia--the pictures

2006-09-02T22:59:00.000-07:00

For beautiful images of our trip to Cambodia, check out Colleen's pictures on Flickr, they're awesome!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/colleengutwein/sets/72157594257504047/

I would post my photos, but I'm working on a dinosaur computer now and it would take forever to post a bunch (plus Colleen's are way better!)

enjoy,

A

Cambodia--the text

2006-09-02T22:55:00.000-07:00

Cambodia is a beautiful country. Rice fields radiate under the summer sun and shine in every imaginable shade of green. The temples of Angkor Wat and the surrounding areas are magical and seem like structures that have fallen to Earth from another world. Its people are some of the nicest I have ever met. But, Cambodia, like every other country haunted with the ghosts of its innocent people killed by war, is weighted with a heavy past.

A war waged by the Khmer Rouge that lasted almost 30 years and recently ended in 1998 devastated a country that could have otherwise thrived in the last half of the twentieth century. Instead of enjoying the tourism-driven prosperity from which neighboring country Thailand flourishes, Cambodia is now struggling to lure tourists to its temples and its countryside, trying desperately to convince the world that the country is finally safe and free from the stranglehold of war.

Because Vietnamese and Khmer Rouge soldiers frequently used land mines to protect themselves at night, and because these same soldiers often moved on in the morning without removing their buried walls of defense, huge swaths of the Cambodian countryside are loaded with slumbering land mines, weapons ready to burst to life with the slightest nudge or tap. When a historically agrarian society can’t utilize huge areas of its own farmland for fear of tilling over land mines, when a country holds one of the most mystical temple complexes on Earth but has difficulty convincing nervous travelers to come and visit, when the evil senior leaders of a corrupt regime that is guilty of committing genocide have never been brought to justice, when a war in which intellectuals were killed first subsequently robs a country of its most valuable thinkers and activists, a country like modern-day Cambodia emerges from the wreckage of chaos.

After a long train ride from Bangkok and an even longer taxi ride in a crowded Toyota Camry over some of the worst dirt roads I’ve ever seen (and felt), we arrived in Cambodia’s second largest city, Battambang. With a population of about one million people and not a single traffic light to its name, Battambang is a city that promises an exciting ride on one of the many motorbike taxis that line its roads. Because of its proximity to some of the Khmer Rouge strongholds and mass grave sites in northwestern Cambodia and its numerous temples that have yet to attract the smothering crowds that flock to Angkor Wat like moths to a flame, Battambang is slowly emerging onto the previously short tourist circuit in Cambodia.

Tourists first started noticeably visiting Battambang in 2000, and since then, Internet cafes, travel agencies, hotels, restaurants with English menus that serve “Western” breakfasts, and motorbike drivers that specialize in providing day long tours of the surrounding area complete with English narration have helped turned Battambang’s downtown streets into a traveler-friendly dusty oasis for weary tourists.

When we arrived in Battambang, we checked into a dingy hotel that offered windowless rooms for $3 a night called the Golden Parrot. The hotel balcony overlooked the central market, a seething mass of vendors, dirty umbrellas, piles of vegetables, trays of raw meat, and racks of clothes. From sunrise until well after sunset, vendors sit in the shade and haggle with the ever-flowing stream of customers that stop to inspect their wares throughout the day.

Tired and hungry after setting down our bags, we set off to find something to eat. Walking through downtown, we passed dozens of dusty storefronts, a few automobiles, a string of motorcycle repairmen racing with the setting sun to finish their work for the day, and piles of trash that had staked out large sections of sidewalk and hunkered down for the night. Within minutes of sitting down at a small family restaurant called The White Rose and ordering some food from an outdoor table, a skinny, barefoot girl with a dirty face and tattered clothes approached us. She held out her hands like she was waiting to catch a raindrop and looked hopefully into our eyes. Her pupils looked like big black nickels; she seemed drunk or stoned. We shook our heads and quietly mouthed things like “Sorry” and “No” and waited for her to leave as an uncomfortable veil of awkwardness settled in over our table. After two or three long minutes of staring at us, the girl left and moved onto the next table. Moments later, just after my pineapple fruit smoothie arrived, an elderly woman approached us and the same scene unfolded again. As I was halfway through my fried rice with vegetables, the young girl that we had met moments earlier returned carrying a dirty newborn baby. She approached us and hoped that seeing an unhealthy baby in her arms would move us to give her some money. Again, I looked into her wide, fixed pupils and got the impression that she was stoned. Again, I shook my head and refused to give her money.

Later that night, I saw the same girl stumbling past our hotel. This time, however, she was not holding a baby but pinching the top of a small, blue plastic bag; at seven or eight years old, the girl was one of Cambodia’s many glue addicts.

Children and adults sniff glue in Cambodia and other developing countries for any number of reasons—it’s cheap, it’s easy to get, it blocks hunger and makes users too stoned to worry about food, and, most importantly, it makes a life plagued by poverty and malnutrition seem more manageable. In Battambang, we saw small packs of homeless, barefoot children roaming the streets while laughing and horsing around with each other. Each child carried a small plastic bag that contained a line of industrial strength glue. Children openly huffed the glue in front adults, putting the bags to their mouths and inhaling and exhaling before pulling the bag away so as not to waste any of the glue’s fumes. Adults, usually fellow addicts, buy the children glue from motorcycle repair shops, and drink vendors, as we witnessed in shock, sell the children plastic bags in packs of 15 or 20 (drinks are sold in bags in Cambodia because bags are cheaper than cups or bottles). The children beg for change and sleep on the street. Other Cambodians generally ignore them, and the children rarely bother begging from their fellow Cambodians, unless of course the children spot one of the province’s many politicians emerging from an obnoxiously-out-of-place Lexus SUV. Their reluctance to beg from local people might be rooted in feelings of guilt and shame—other able-bodied people work hard to survive in Cambodia, hard enough to justify despising those who simply choose handouts over wages. Buddhism does require its followers to give to the less fortunate, and the children and adults who beg survive in part from this obligation, but, as our host and guide in Battambang, a man with two jobs, would later describe, many people are annoyed by those children and adults who can work but choose not to.

On our second day in Battambang, we met a man named Sambeth who drove us to his uncle’s house 15 kilometers outside of the city. Sambeth had just started a guesthouse and we contacted him after meeting one of his friends in Thailand in March. We drove beyond the city limits and sped along a narrow dirt road that bisected miles and miles of rice patties. People hunched over in the fields and tended rice in different stages, water buffalo silently pulled plows through the mud. As we rode, Sambeth explained that most people were too poor to afford “cow machines,” or tractors, so they tilled with water buffalo and cattle just as their ancestors have done for centuries.

When the road pierced a stand of trees about 45 minutes outside of the city, a line of raised shacks sprung up into view and Sambeth said, “Welcome to Tapon village.”

Tapon is home to 100 families who survive from farming rice, pineapple, and banana. The village received its first school in 1990 from the help of international NGOs. Prior to that, the only classrooms the children visited were the kitchens and rice fields of their parents; their only teachers were the villagers who had come before them. The U.N. provides pregnant women with pamphlets that visually explain different ways to ensure a safe and healthy pregnancy (among the recommended foods displayed on one pamphlet was a picture of a large frog, a common—and apparently healthy—snack in rural Cambodia). Organizations like Children’s International sponsor children in Tapon and some of the children lucky enough to be sponsored receive $6 a year for educational fees and expenses. School summer holidays in the village last almost four months and align with the rainy season so children can help their parents with the fall harvests. If ever a place existed that was different from every place I’ve ever visited in Japan, this was it.

Sambeth, a 36-year-old man with clean eyes, a nose flat and wide like the head of an old shovel, and dark, copper skin that, according to him, “never burns,” is a full time “moto driver.” He gives motorcycle rides to tourists in the form of full day tours through the countryside. When he was younger, he managed to convince the principal of a high school that both his family was too poor to pay for high school and he was too smart to skip out on a high school education. He was granted a free ride to high school, one that allowed him to study English for a single year. This year of English instruction saved him from a life of rice farming as it enabled him to start giving short rides to English-speaking tourists, rides that slowly morphed over the years into full day excursions laced with expertly told anecdotes, historical explanations of temples and landscapes, and relaxed small talk—all in English.

At $10 a day, Sambeth’s tours don’t earn him massive amounts of money, but he does earn enough to provide a reasonably comfortable life for himself, his wife, and his two children (he owns a small two room house in the middle of Battambang, two motorcycles—one purchased over 15 years ago for $300 and a new bike that cost over $1,000, and each time we saw his wife and kids, they were wearing unstained clothing and new flip-flops. His children eat regularly, go to school every day, and his son has a realistic shot at becoming the lawyer he hopes to be. By Cambodian standards, he seems to be doing alright for himself.) He gives tours three to four times a week from his base of operations, a hotel downtown that caters to tourists. He frequently gets calls on his cell phone from the hotel asking whether or not he wants to give a tour to a new hotel guest—he’s good at what he does and people know it.

Last year, at the urging of an American friend, one who had traveled around the world and seen how lucrative guesthouses can be when set up in the right location and well oiled with the right charm, Sambeth converted one of the two rooms in his uncle’s house into a guest room. Despite finding it hard to believe that any tourist in his right mind would want to spend time in a quiet village with no electricity or running water (and pay Sambeth for the opportunity nonetheless), he listened to his friend’s advice and started working on turning part of his uncle’s property into a cozy guesthouse. He bought a nice bed, a mosquito net, and a fan. He built a separate outhouse for guests, one that contained a Western toilet. He printed fliers describing his prices and his friend made him an English website. Despite never having accommodated guests before at his uncle’s house (Colleen and I were his first paying customers) Sambeth ensured that we had an amazing time during our stay. The food was fabulous, the people were incredibly hospitable, and the tours he provided were filled with stories and interesting information.

Many of the younger children in the village have never seen foreigners before. Whenever these children spied Colleen and I walking around, Colleen with her pointy, white nose and I with my lanky build, they would immediately start crying and running for their mothers! I felt quite strange being able to so easily thrust another human being into such an emotional frenzy; watching a child’s eyes fill with fear while that child is making eye contact with you is unsettling.

The older children and the teenagers in the village loved practicing English with us and ran to the edges of their yards to scream “Hello! Hello!” whenever we passed. Never before have I felt so foreign, so freakish. I’ve lived in one of the most homogeneous societies in the world for a year, a society in which I am not a member of the majority, and I still felt shockingly other in Cambodia. As we walked around, the youthful whispers of Barang! Barang! (Foreigner! Foreigner!) followed our every move, rippled through the grasses, and bounced down the narrow, dirt walkways in the village like the sounds of baby ghosts.

Some of my favorite moments in the village include:

--Watching children eagerly suck up every English word Colleen and I uttered over the course of three hours during one of the most exciting English lessons I’ve ever given. Three hours, no break, nothing but excited smiles and wide eyes from my pupils.

--Rising at sunrise each morning to walk to the village’s outdoor, daily market.

--Team-teaching at the village temple with a young, English speaking monk. Each afternoon during summer vacation, the children in the village come to the temple to study English. Again, all of the students seemed incredibly excited during the lesson and listened intently while I spoke.

--Watching a six or seven-year-old boy proudly walk his family’s few cows out to pasture. This job, watching after cows and making sure they graze throughout the day, is a popular one for young boys in the countryside, and each boy that tends cows carries a small whip with authority. (I know child labor is often thought of as a practice that robs children of the innocence that adults cherish and miss, and it often is, but when a child’s job is one that earns him respect from his family and peers, one that helps his family, connects him to centuries of culture, and allows him to play throughout the day at the same time, I can’t help but think that some forms of child labor can’t be categorized as either right or wrong, that sometimes foreign perspectives paint certain cultural traditions in dark, devilish hues. Of course, certain jobs in which children are forced to work in horrendous conditions, jobs that infringe on their basic rights, can raise alarm when viewed from any perspective. But some jobs are delicately sown into the aged cultural fabric of a people and blend seamlessly with a group’s daily life.)

We took a six-hour boat ride from Battambang up to Siem Reap, the home of Cambodia’s famous Angkor Wat complex. We passed through protected wetlands, seemingly endless fields of hemp, and floating villages of brightly colored one-room houses. When the boat docked at the small port in Siem Reap, a horde of motorbike drivers scanned the boat for white skin, and seeing as Colleen and I were the only white folks on the boat, a small gaggle of drivers swarmed around us the second we stepped onto the dock. Each driver carried an old, faded, laminated poster advertising a specific hotel in town, one that, if we chose to visit, would pay a commission to the moto driver. For $0.25, a man named Ti drove us to a hotel and agreed to drive us around the Angkor Wat temples the following day.

Siem Reap is a city that is being overrun with development. There are so many massive, gaudy hotels that have either just been built or are in the process of being built that the city has a Vegas-type feel to it (in a dusty, southeast Asian kind of way). One wonders how enough tourists could possibly be visiting the area to keep all of them in business considering how bad the roads are in northwestern Cambodia. Thankfully, this round-the-clock development is providing countless jobs for Cambodians who work in the construction field.

Angkor Wat is absolutely stunning. Before we got our first early morning glimpse of the temple that has been immortalized by post cards sent round the world, we had to pay $40 each for our three-day passes (just to put things into perspective: to visit the art museum in the capital city for a day costs $1, to visit Angkor Wat for a day costs $20). This amount of money is a small fortune in Cambodia, and as one would expect with something that is so exorbitantly priced in an impoverished country, a private company is responsible for the absurd pricing. Raping tourists at the cultural expense of the Cambodian people turns a remarkable profit. A private company (somehow) has managed to secure the right to run the admission counters at Angkor Wat. Rumor has it that 70% of the entrance fees go to lining the pockets of the top bastards at this company while 30% goes to park security, trash pick-up, and road maintenance. It’s no wonder that many of Angkor’s sculptures have been literally chiseled off of the walls over the years—a private company, one with little long-term stake in guarding the temples, has been left to protect a national treasure.

We visited the main temple (the complex is home to dozens of temples, each with its own unique feel to it) at sunrise and, as we expected, found ourselves in the company of about 150 camera-toting tourists. We quickly walked past the main gate as most of the tourists, like lizards waiting for midday warmth, were sitting in this area to catch the sun coming up over the temple, and we walked around to the side of the temple.

In the early morning dawn, the temple itself was practically deserted. The architecture looks similar to Mayan temple architecture—steep steps, pyramidal shapes. Looking for a designated pathway up the side of the temple but unable to find one, we started climbing. As we reached the highest tier, the sun was cautiously peeking over the horizon, seeming to check with the temple to see if the coast was clear. It was a quiet, serene sunrise. The reliefs started warming up, the light started sliding into impossibly small cracks, lighting up walls that had been carved almost 1,000 years ago. I can’t begin to describe how mystical the temple is in the early morning (nor do I feel like I should); it is something you have to see for yourself.

We spent three days visiting around 15 temples. My three favorites were Angkor Wat’s main temple, Bayon, and Ta Phrom. Bayon is a temple with dozens of massive stone faces carved into the temple walls and pillars. Ta Phrom is the famous temple in which Tomb Raider was filmed, a temple known for its towering trees, some hundreds and hundreds of years old, that seem to grow on top of the temple itself. The roots of these trees reminded me of Dali’s famous clock painting because it seems as if someone heated the roots up to some sort of melting point and let them drip over the edges of the temple walls and roof. The fact that the roots support such massive, towering trees perched atop crumbling ruins makes it look like nature is engaged in a centuries-long battle with man and his creations. Nature is clearly winning in Ta Phrom; the trees look like they are not only surviving but enjoying themselves, too.

Because this post is getting long, because it seems silly to be sitting here with a laptop and food in my belly in a modern apartment while writing about such a poor country, and because Cambodia is a place that needs to be felt in order to be understood, I’m going to avoid writing about spending time in a beachside town notorious for its adult and child sex industries, visiting Tuol Sleng Prison (an old high school that was turned into a torture compound during the Khmer Rouge crusade), and nearly missing our flight after being wrapped up in an elaborate transportation scam. Next time I see you, ask me about it.

Cheers,

A

One of the most shocking things I saw in Cambodia..

2006-09-02T22:50:00.000-07:00

Our bus stopped for a short break at a roadside market. Women and children carrying roasted spiders piled high in shiny, black mounds on oval trays, bags of fresh pineapple, and plates of donuts were making their rounds among the tourists fresh off the busses. Flies hovered over the open, steaming pots of curried vegetables and fried rice that restaurant owners put on display to attract customers (food is food in Cambodia--it sells itself even if the flies lay claim to it before humans do because...well...food keeps people alive). All the white people stretched their sore muscles and tried to kindly say ``No`` to the children, mothers with infants in their arms, and land mine victims who begged for change (change in any form--be it money, miraculous re-growth of lost limbs, a hot shower, a bus ticket to anywhere else--anything). Another bus that opened its doors and spilled out its passengers, another ray of hope smuggled across the border (against the odds, in spite of Poverty`s love affair with Despair) in the bloated wallets of foreigners.

Amidst this heartbreak, as I was surrounded by people with barely enough energy to color their distant dreams, I saw something shocking, something that I had never, ever seen before:
Twenty feet from the open door of our bus, six backpackers in their early 20`s stood in a circle. With bloodshot eyes and silly grins painted across their faces like cheap masks, they smoked a bowl of pot and chatted away.

At first, I was surprised to see foreigners acting so...at home, so comfortable in such an emotionally draining environment. I wondered what sort of impression they were making on the local people. Did these immature travelers not wallow sluggishly in an air of ambivalence? Were they not preaching a vicious intolerance with each laugh, each pass of the bowl? As I walked forward a few paces to get a look at them from a different angle to check and make sure I wasn`t seeing something that wasn`t in fact happening, to make sure I wasn`t prematurely writing off these travelers as arrogant, ignorant twats, I saw something that made my draw drop.

In the middle of their circle stood a young, dirty child who looked as if he was five or six-years-old. The child was begging for change, looking up at the backpackers with his hands pushed together as if he were praying and his eyes wide and glossed over with sincere desperation. The backpackers neither gave him money or walked to a more private place. Instead, they chose to simply stare down into his eyes and continue smoking. The child watched the bowl go around the circle and eventually stopped asking for money. He continued to stand in the circle and he just stared at the six heartless fools encircling him.

I watched the child age in a flash before my very eyes. He went from being five-years-old to 15 before the first backpacker in the circle could exhale his first puff of smoke into the rancid air of a Cambodian rest stop clinging to dear life.

I also watched six young people hit rock bottom...at the same time.

Car

2006-07-25T19:23:00.000-07:00

I'm posting a few pictures of my car so that when I want to sell it when I leave Japan, I can refer people to this page to check it out. (I'm not sure if I'll be able to post pictures on my older PC after Col leaves with the new Mac).

1996 Suzuki Wagon R

Tree Frog on My Crotch

2006-07-15T03:00:00.000-07:00

I went to go tutor the other night and when I got home, I saw this tree frog on my windshield.

left: Climbing our closet door.

The Highest Open-Air Museum in Japan: Utsukushi-Ga-Hara

2006-07-15T02:47:00.000-07:00

Garden

2006-07-15T02:42:00.000-07:00

The garden is going crazy. There are now weeds and grasses everywhere, I can't get rid of them anymore. The veggies are still growing though.

School Festival!!

2006-07-15T02:07:00.000-07:00

It's school festival season in Japan! Most high schools are having their school festivals at this point in the year and you can feel the excitement in the air. For months in advance, schools prepare different dances, events, choral concerts, fashion shows, food stalls, and other attractions in preparation for their festivals. The festivals last all weekend and are open to the public. Parents come and watch their kids sing and dance with their homeroom classes, eat food that the students prepare, listen to student bands, and soak in all of the good ol' fashioned innocence that is ever-present at a Japanese school festival.

left: Students get rowdy the night of the homeroom dance competition. Each homeroom learns a dance, practices for a month or two, and then performs the dance in front of the whole school (I was a judge).

left: Guitar and Mandolin Club concert. Only girls.

left: Three of my students in summer yukatas.

left: Slipper ping pong, of course!

left: A student performing tea ceremony. Preparing tea is an art form in Japan. All high schools have tea ceremony clubs in which students meet 3-5 times a week after school to learn how to make tea properly.

left: The design classes had an amazing fashion show. I wasn't surprised in the least when the wedding gowns started coming out. Many of my female students see marriage as something that will validate their lives. I've asked them if they think they could be happy and single when they're older. Answer: A laugh and a quiet, "No." The girls walked down the runway with pauses in between their steps--just like real brides. They tossed flowers into the crowd when they reached the end of the runway.

left: Most of the steps in school were covered with this type of artwork.

left: Black hair! Student choral competition. Again, each homeroom practiced for this competition. Three and a half hours long in a sweltering gymnasium. Not a single disruption. Amazing.

left: Bonfire in the main sports area on the last day.

left: Students doing the bonfire dance.

left: At the end of the bonfire ceremony, two popular seniors called boys up to the stage. Once a boy got on stage, he professed his love for a girl in the audience (the entire school was in attendance). The girl screamed; her friends pushed her up on stage. In front of the entire school, the boy asked the girl if she would be his girlfriend. Each girl said no. Each boy covered his face in shame. I was shocked. I couldn't believe boys would willingly subject themselves to this sort of torture. When I asked my students about it, they said that it's too difficult for a boy to talk to a girl individually. It's easier for a boy to tell a girl how he feels when there are many people watching and pressuring him to speak. Whoa.

Matsushiro

2006-07-15T01:59:00.000-07:00

During WWII, the Japanese government built caves in the hearts of mountains all around Japan to protect the royal family in case of emergency. One of these massive caves is located in Matsushiro, about 45 minutes from Ueda. The government kidnapped more than 6,000 Koreans (Korea was under Japanese control at the time) to build the caves. At Matsushiro alone, an estimated 1,000 Koreans died from natural causes or suicide during the construction process.

The caves are laid out in a massive grid like the streets of a city. The air is cold and damp. Water drips from the ceiling of the caves. The ghosts of the Koreans are supposed to roam the caves at night.

Adults Descend on Ninja Village!

2006-06-26T06:07:00.000-07:00

Col and I visited the Ninja Village in Togakushi on Saturday. Basically, the Ninja Village is a small, rustic amusement park in the middle of the woods and the mountains. It's an amusement park for kids and it's supposed to allow them to feel what it's like to be a "ninja" and experience "ninja training." You can rent ninja clothes, throw sharp, metal ninja stars at targets, climb the sides of buildings, walk across rope bridges, and explore "ninja houses" that are filled with trap doors and dark mazes.

The Ninja Village was incredibly dangerous and I almost fell from rope bridges and rooftops many times. The whole time I kept saying, "Sweet mother of God, this is soooo dangerous! If this were in America, this place would be sued by long lines of angry parents!" There are no railings anywhere, kids can climb up onto the rooftops of many buildings, and children are generally encouraged to swing plastic ninja swords with reckless abandon at any passerby who dares to even blink the wrong way at a young ninja-in-training. Needless to say, this place is a lot of fun if you are 24 years-old and jealous of 4 year-olds with ninja costumes and swords.

left: Me defying gravity in the Ninja House

left: Col being smacked by a Ninja Gorilla while riding a Ninja Horse. This thing jiggles back and forth when you push a button. When I sat on it, it made a grinding noise and just stopped.

We were the only ones who sat on this silly contraption and exploited it for its seemingly obvious sexual suggestiveness. Everyone else stared at us while we laughed our asses off posing for absurd pictures.

left: Death at the hands of the Blue Ninja.

left: Summer dusk in Nagano after ninja fun.

left: We passed a temple on the way home and got out to take some pictures. If you look closely, you can see the mountains peeking up through the mist in the background.

Alice's Goodbye Party

2006-06-26T05:59:00.000-07:00

left: The woman of the hour

Our friend Alice is ditching us for Tokyo. These photos are from her farewell party.

left: The ever-gracious host Patti

left: The crazed lunatic

Rice

2006-06-26T05:48:00.000-07:00

One of the coolest things about living in Japan is watching the different stages of rice production as the seasons change. A few weeks ago, everyone was planting small rice seedlings into flooded rice fields. Now, the rice is about six inches tall and has thickened considerably so that all of the fields look as though they are covered in lush grass.

I've heard that most Japanese families consume so much rice throughout any given year that they prefer to grow their own rice so that they can avoid buying rice all year from the supermarket (5kg of rice $20--$30. Col and I go through this amount in about 3 weeks and, unlike many Japanese, we don't eat rice for breakfast. Supporting a family's rice habit requires one to grow rice or go bankrupt. Many families share a field with 2 or 3 other extended families.)

The Garden is Growing!

2006-06-26T05:37:00.000-07:00

left: This plant has since been eaten alive by annoying green inch worms.

left: baby tomatoes

left: The purple lettuce is now up to my hip! I'm going to let it grow and see if it touches the moon.

left: baby corn

Wasabi! Wasabi! Wasabi!

2006-06-18T02:50:00.000-07:00

left: These pictures (not sure if they will come up blurry on the blog) are from a wasabi farm in Matsumoto. Wasabi is a difficult crop to grow as it requires massive amounts of flowing water to stay alive. Because of this, it is grown in river beds (if you look at the photos closely, you can see the bends in the river--the wasabi covers the entire river). It's an amazing sight to see. At the farm, one can buy wasabi beer, wasabi ice cream, wasabi bread, wasabi (of course), and wasabi spreads of every imaginable variety.

Slam Poetry in Matsumoto, Nagano

2006-06-18T02:41:00.000-07:00

left: I performed a piece called "Stone Skimming" at a talent show for the JETs in Nagano. There were about 150 people in attendance and I was able to sell about 20 CDs at intermission after my performance. Two Japanese people bought CDs so they could practice their English at home by reading the lyrics and listening along to the tracks! God only knows what words will sink into their linguistic reservoirs from listening to that CD!

I worked out lighting cues with the stage crew before the performance so the lights would go red during the creepy parts of the piece and green during the tranquil parts.

left: "The limp boy rose to his feet and kept rising three, four, five feet off the ground. Plus an extra two, dangling shoeless, with cuts and bruises, from rocks on the kitchen floor."

Interesting Little Things

2006-06-18T01:34:00.000-07:00

1. A student dropped her cell phone in the hall at school. Upon hitting the floor, the phone exploded into four pieces that shot out in all directions like a technological firework. The girl shrieked and pushed her open hands to her face Home-Alone-style. She bent down and reached for the phone fragments while muttering "No! No! No!" in Japanese over and over again. Cell phones are like babies here. Shatter one and you're no better than a heartless murderer.

2. I have been tutoring two high school students (siblings) for one hour each Thursday night. We chat for an hour, and after the lesson I stay for another hour to have dessert and tea. The mother of the house always peeks her head into the study at the hour's end and asks "May I enter?" (the question seems so strange coming from the home's owner). I always say "Yes, of course!" and she then scurries into the kitchen to prepare the desserts. The desserts are always delicious, sometimes homemade, and always sweetened with good conversation as the mother used to teach English and is very outspoken and intelligent. Two weeks ago, she gave me an entire homemade cheesecake to take home. Needless to say, earning about $45 for each session seems criminal because of how easily and quickly the time flies by, but I continue to show up, week after week, for my evening "work" nonetheless.

3. Col and I went to watch her students at their annual brass band concert. The program said the show would start at 1:30 p.m. When the clock struck 1:30, a long, brain-rattling alarm sounded in the concert hall and was followed by the silent entrance of the band and the conductor. If you are not punctual, you're left behind in the land of the rising sun. It's a fact.
Band members took their places in their seats and rested their respective instruments on their laps with precision. Clarinets? Held in the right hand, bell on the right knee, left hand on left lap. Flutes held with both hands clasped together and rested across the lap. They performed as one would expect such a disciplined band to perform.

4. No one has a big grassy lawn here in Japan. Instead people have gardens. In the spring, summer, and fall, every space of residential land that is not covered with a house or garage is covered with some sort of garden. Unlike a yard covered in grass, gardens help sustain a family with healthy produce, cut back on the amount of fuels used to grow and import vegetables to a certain area/market, and help preserve the mental health of those who manage the garden (gardening is good for the noggin and is thought to help flush the faces of many Japanese with that beautiful octogenarian glow). Lawns serve no significant purpose. If and when I move back to and settle in America, corn will be my grass and tomato plants will be my shrubs. Fuck the neighbors.

Congratulations are in Order!

2006-06-12T07:07:00.001-07:00

Some of my friends here in Ueda and two friends back home deserve some congratulations for passing Go and collecting more than their $200...way more.

Alice: Congrats on getting the job in Tokyo! I'm psyched for you. Without your directions and advice over the past year, The City That Hides The Horizon would still seem too large to puncture. Ueda is losing a hospitable and warm-hearted JET. You're leaving big shoes to fill :(

Mike and Patti: Woohoo! Congrats on the baby news! It's comforting knowing that intelligent people who kick ass are multiplying and babymaking. I'm so excited! I know you'll make awesome parents because...well...good, genuine people who can lure huge plants into this world from the smallest of seeds often end up becoming contemplative, supportive parents who lure babies into this world from the smallest of seeds. Thanks for showing all of us unmarried, babyless folks how to do the get-married-have-a-baby thing in proper style. You're unsuspecting mentors (and that's the best kind!) After six or seven months, send the little one over to me for his/her first skateboarding lessons.

Gary and Diana: Six years in the making! Congrats on the engagement news! I'm happy for you! When you move to Gary, Indiana to live out a raunchy existence simply because your adopted city's name allows you to, let me know. Like Hale-Bopp, "The Great Comet of 1997" as it's been etched into the memories of astonomy lovers worldwide, we all knew this engagement was coming. Unlike Hale-Bopp, however, this engagement isn't cold and covered in ice.

Birthday Bliss

2006-06-12T06:55:00.000-07:00

left: This went in my belly on my birthday. It's homemade. It's an ice cream cake. It's covered in bananas. It has a peanut butter cookie crust. Chocolate is swirled into the layer of vanilla ice cream.

Note to self: Discover/create 20-30 holidays throughout the calendar year that require the consumption of this sort of edible orgasm.

Rent's due? Whip up The Cake again! Day to Honor Rice? Cake time! The-Sun-Rose-Again Day? Woohoo, Cake!

You Know You're in Japan When You See....

2006-06-12T06:47:00.000-07:00

This for sale at the market and...

A beer can so large that it comes with a handle and rests comfortably on the flat of one's shoulder and...

Jackets that are covered in English that justifies the inflated salaries of JET teachers in Japan.

There's an obvious English problem people! Don't fret, we're here to help!

Ueno in the Sun

2006-06-12T06:41:00.000-07:00

I spent my last day in Tokyo skating around Ueno, Harajuku, and Shibuya. Everyone stared. I didn't see another person on a skateboard the entire time I was in Tokyo.

left: Lanterns in Ueno Park

left: A glimpse of Big Brother looking down on his flock near Ueno Station. BUY OR DIE!

left: Woman walking in Ueno Park, more stone lanterns along the edge of the path.

left: Stone lantern and leaves

Shibuya at Night

2006-06-12T06:08:00.000-07:00

After staying for three days and two nights in downtown Shinjuku in Tokyo for a JET conference, I can finally begin to see why people are so attracted to The City that puts New York to shame in size, pace, and the way in which it can intimidate a visitor. Tokyo is beyond massive, but after a few open-ended, destination-less rides on some shockingly clean elevated subway cars, I feel like I am beginning to piece together the different sections of the city to make a vaguely cohesive mental map of the city's innards.

One of Tokyo's hearts, an electric organ called Shibuya that is fed with bento box, coffee, and sake sales revenue, sends out a 24 hour heartbeat that rattles the surrounding train tracks with an ever flowing stream of tourists and business men and women. Shibuya screams "Tokyo!!!" at the top its lungs seven days a week (it doesn't rest on Sundays as Japan's dominant religion is Capitalism).

left: Like most major intersections in cities and towns in Japan, Shibuya Crossing affords pedestrians a nice long opportunity to cross the street by giving red lights to car traffic on each street that feeds into the crossing. Watching people cross from the second story of a Starbuck's that overlooks the crossing (the busiest Starbucks in the world for all you junkies out there) is really entertaining. For over an hour, I sat captivated by the scene. Every two minutes or so, hundreds of people cross the street--it never stops...ever...day or night, it doesn't make a difference.

left: Two vending machine customers. Japan is filled with vending machines. From vending machines in Japan, you can buy the following things:
--cigarettes for about $2.30 a pack
--large bottles of whiskey
--small bottles of whiskey
--sake
--an array of different sized beer cans
--2 litre bottles of soda or water
--hot french fries
--hot and cold coffee or soft drinks
--chicken nuggets (this last one was a rare find)

left: One of the side streets in Shibuya. The street is lined with ramen shops, small bars, restaurants, and clothing stores.

left: You know you've made it big when your face flashes on three screens simultaneously over Shibuya Crossing. Creepy creepy creepy.

Beautiful Dolls

2006-06-12T05:55:00.000-07:00

When I went to Tokyo for a JET conference last week, I saw these dolls on display in a restaurant in my hotel. An artist created these dolls along with hundreds of small-scall figures and placed them around one of the restaurants in the Keio Plaza Hotel. The detail on their faces and their clothing was stunning.

Spring Garden

2006-05-21T04:49:00.000-07:00

left: Flower about to open

left: Our plot in the foreground

left: Baby broccoli

left: Almost done planting!

Sorry!

2006-05-19T07:07:00.000-07:00

If you are one of my one or two loyal readers, I must appologize: I have been a pathetic blogger as of late. One post a month for the past two months? Sweet Jesus! A dead, armless, once-blind, computer hater (you know, one of those "Email? Ughh!!! Only hand-written letters for me, they're more pure..." folks) could have blogged more than I have in the past few months. I truly am sorry. Sound the sirens, wake the junkies, close the schools, and tell the hermit crabs to peek out of their shells once again, the blogging drought has ended. Monsoon season has arrived!

I've been a busy man recently. We had two guests out from Hawaii last week, and I've also been spending a lot of time getting the garden planted and ready for the summer season. I put the blog on the back burner. But it's back cooking again, so pop up that popcorn, crack that Sierra open, put on your hideous Lazy Sunday Sweater and Day-After-Thanksgiving Sweatpants and enjoy the posts!

Where the Hell are the Photos? And a Great Read

2006-05-19T06:06:00.000-07:00

I know, I'm looking for them too. My camera's battery charger died a quick, sudden death last month so my camera has been out of commission. I'm in the process of getting a new charger. I'm hoping to steal a few pictures from the Photographer in Residence to put up on the blog. Coming soon, I promise.

Oh, by the way--I just finished reading A Million Little Pieces by James Frey. I don't care if he made a few parts up, the memoir is awesome. I couldn't put the thing down and read 200 pages one day at my desk at work. It's based on his experiences dealing with multiple addictions in a rehab center near Chicago. Literary critics have their panties in a bunch because he admitted that he fudged a few parts to make the story more "dramatic"--like the part about him going to jail for 3 months (he really went for 3 hours). And the part where he drives his car into a police officer (he never did that). Who gives a shit? The book is still great and he challenges readers and critics to debate the boundaries of autobiographical writing. I also dig how the book is paragraph-free and filled with tons of random capitalization. The writing flows naturally (even though parts of it are made up, ha!) and the story is...well...unbelievable! It's a great read, just take it with a grain of salt.

Fire Drills Ain't No Joke in Japan

2006-05-19T05:42:00.000-07:00

So I witnessed my first school fire drill the other day. It was scary. It was so real and the atmosphere so tense that I had to constantly look down to make sure I wasn't burning from the flames that I couldn't see but knew must have existed. There was fake smoke everywhere!! I don't know how they did it, but the blokes from the fire department (yes, they're on hand during the drill to oversee everything) made sure the first floor and courtyard were blanketed in thick, white smoke. The students, calm as cucumbers, walked in an orderly fashion into the gym (it was raining heavily outside) and quickly formed rows according to class. Very few students spoke, the lines were perfectly straight. When all students were accounted for by their homeroom teachers, the principal gave a speach. Then the chief of the fire department gave a speech. Then each homeroom teacher had his/her students form a small circle so they could discuss how to save fellow students and teachers in case of emergency during a fire. I found this part very Japanese--discussing how to preserve the strength of the group in case disaster strikes. No one is left behind, the classes leave as a unit, even if each kid has to drag out a body.

The Fourth Time's a Charm!

2006-05-19T05:34:00.000-07:00

I don't want to go on and on about it because I'll end up wanting to crucify someone, but after four failed attempts, I've finally passed my driving test and earned (read: bought) my Japanese Driver's License! I failed four times for ridiculous reasons, each time I paid over $20 to take the test again, each time I was informed about driving lessons that are offered by the Dream Driving School that is affiliated with the Japanese DMV, and each time I wanted to strangle the neck of the sad sad human being that failed me. I waited two hours and paid another $20 to pick up my license. I'm glad to be done with the whole scam. I'm convinced any politician could win any election in Japan if he/she promised to reform the corrupt DMV's policy and procedures. The Japanese DMV angers everyone, and anyone who wants to drive legally in Japan has to bow down to it and smooch its boil-covered ass. Burn in hell Japanese DMV!

Hiroshima and Kyoto!!

2006-05-19T05:32:00.000-07:00

Jenna and Matt, our two friends from Maui, came out to Japan to visit for two weeks. Luckily, we had off during the first week of their visit for Golden Week (a string of national holidays in a single week in May = Golden Week in Japan). Armed with a tiny, under-powered car, enough snacks to fatten up a horde of Japanese high school girls with Kate-Moss-crushes, and the confidence that comes from driving with a seasoned mechanic like Matt, we loaded the car so that not a single ray of sunlight could make it through the rear window and drove six hours down to Kyoto.

For three nights we stayed at our favorite guesthouse and wallowed in the hospitality that Kazuo, the owner of Guesthouse Bon, showers down upon each and every guest. We stuffed ourselves with sushi, vegetable tempura, miso soup, natto, and sake. By bike, we visited temples that Col and I have come to love and also explored new areas of Kyoto we have never seen before. The more I visit Kyoto, the more I fall in love with the city. Its coffers are filled with temples and artwork older than the hills yet its nightlife and fashion are saturated with the ever-changing energy and charisma that only a country’s youth can generate. Modern shopping districts scratch the backs of ancient temple gardens. Its darkest allies on the darkest nights are safer than New York’s most well lit thoroughfares on the sunniest days. People smile and bow if you make eye contact with them on the street. If the sun is out, the banks of its main river are lined with picnic blankets and street performers. It’s a city as a city should be.

As always, we left Kyoto with that empty feeling in our chests that kids get after they hastily finish eating an ice cream cone…topped with extra sprinkles and chocolate sauce…and about 20 cherries. Even though we didn’t say it as we drove away, we all were thinking, “Shit, what other place in Japan could possibly be cooler, what food could be better, what accommodation could be more comfortable?” The skies were overcast when we left, and spending another night at the guesthouse to wait for a sunny day to make leaving less depressing seemed like the most rational thing to do. But alas, the lure of visiting Hiroshima was too strong and Kazuo’s guesthouse too filled with other guests for us to stay another night in Kyoto, so we re-filled the car to the brim with stuff and headed off down the highway.

A long drive is most easily endured when one chooses to use a well-fortified castle as a rest stop. Or so I’ve heard. So we decided to stop at Himeji Castle on the way to Hiroshima. The castle, called the White Egret for the sweeping, curved stone walls of its foundation and its white color, is perched high atop a rocky bluff that looks out over the city. Upon first seeing the six-tiered fortress surrounded by a jagged maze of outer and inner walls, it became immediately clear to me that anyone throughout history who thought he could overtake this thing must have been a complete idiot and/or some distant, power-hungry relative of the Bush family. Logic begs would-be imposters to drop their weapons at the city borders and run for cover. The sheer number of weapons racks, reserve ration rooms, archery holes in the walls, trap doors, and look out points in and around the castle let contemporary visitors peek back in time (or stare teary-eyed at the present and into the future) to days when power could (can and will) be yanked out from under popular leaders like a greased rug by men with big armies, bigger wallets, and small regard for anyone other than themselves and their friends. The inside of the castle was set up like a museum, filled with old scrolls, weapons, paintings, and descriptions of the castle’s various inhabitants and the dramatic ways in which it was acquired by warring government officials in centuries past.

When we visited the castle, the winds were strong, and as we stood on one of the upper balconies, my hat blew off my head. When the nearest castle guard saw my green hat flipping through the air like a flapjack in a hurricane, he immediately used his walkie-talkie to contact the guard on ground level. The guard below fished my hat out of a tree while the top guard literally ran down a four flights of stairs to retrieve it for me. A guard in America would have laughed and said, “Ooooo, shit out of luck, kid! Serves you right, next time don’t wear your hat on a windy day!” It’s going to be very hard to leave this country when my contract ends…very, very hard.

When we arrived at Hiroshima at 10:30 p.m. with no hotel reservations, we did what any sensible traveler in a similar position would do: We searched high and low for the flashing fluorescent lights of the nearest love hotel. Love hotels, from all I’ve heard about their tacky inner sanctums and all I’ve seen of their gaudy exteriors, are truly awesome. Because many married Japanese couples live with their extended family in small living quarters, finding a time and a place in the house to knock boots and stink up the joint with hard-earned sweat requires skills that not even Sherlock Holmes possesses. The nights are quiet in Japanese neighborhoods because the walls are literally paper thin, often being nothing more than a sliding shoji screen door, and maternal and paternal in-laws, sleeping under the same roof in configurations cast and set by the selective hand of Alzheimer’s and other late-onset illnesses, could easily hear the moans of their offspring (a sound no parent, young or old, wants to hear). Romance digs more private playgrounds.

Love hotels offer couples privacy for a few hours or an entire night. If you’re traveling and looking for a cheap place to lay your head, love hotels are the perfect alternative to staying in an expensive Japanese ryokan.

Apparently no couples in Hiroshima have sex because we couldn’t find a single damn love hotel in the hour and a half that we drove around looking for one! I guess all of the babies that are born in the city’s hospitals come from parents who fornicated outside of Hiroshima’s city limits. All of the vibrating bed salesmen pass Hiroshima by. Neon lights burn out instantly if they are ever turned on in Hiroshima. Blood-red satin sheets loose their sheen if they are ever spread across a bed in Hiroshima. Heart-shaped Jacuzzis, when filled with hot water from a spigot in Hiroshima, break in half instantly.

Because there are no love hotels in this famous phoenix of a city, I’ve come to the conclusion that Hiroshima is allergic to loud, sweaty, destructive, heart-attack-tempting sex. The only sex that could possibly be had in a city with no love hotels is quiet, quick, dutiful, quota-filling, quickie-in-the-closet-while-the-kids-have-their-piano-lesson-downstairs sex. I could be totally wrong with this conclusion, but from all outward appearances, love is in dire straits in the City of Peace. Hmmm…City of Peace. Actually, yeah, wait a minute, shouldn’t Peace and Love always go hand and hand? Isn’t nothing more arousing from a biological perspective than a tranquil and peaceful environment? A creature can’t satisfy its primal urges if security and safety are not first…well, secured. Sex and Extreme Danger speak foreign tongues and can’t properly introduce themselves to one another at dinner parties. It’s been argued by evolutionary biologists that most males climax after less than two minutes of direct sexual stimulation because being in a state of heightened sexual arousal makes one vulnerable; all of the unlucky blokes that foolishly chased orgasms with crossed-eyes and mouths agape for 20-30 minutes in centuries past were killed off while in the act by other men or large predators. What we are left with today is the sexually efficient, the men who can do the job in a flash and get back to their senses before tragedy strikes. Consensual sex hides from war and violence. Very few people get turned on by smoke and mortar fire. A calm meadow, an apartment set aglow with afternoon sunlight, a quiet stroll by the park after dinner on a fall evening—these are the scenes that prime the pumps and set the stage for Arousal’s matinee and Climax’s encore. The City of Peace, one bisected in every which way with quaint, restaurant-lined alleys, canals, and stretches of grassy parkland, should be love’s amusement park, a place where couples can act on erotic impulse at the drop of a dime. Instead it’s love’s salt flat, love’s Antarctica on a winter night, love’s city dump.

In the middle of Hiroshima sits the Atomic Dome, a government building that refused to slide quietly into the radioactive ashes of a city brought to its knees by the nuclear sword of war. The concrete shell of the building, thanks to dozens of braces and metal crutches, has stood for decades and, according to the mayor who christened the Dome, “will stand forever” as a monument to the memories and lives destroyed or affected by the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. The structure stopped me in my tracks when I first laid eyes on it. Surrounded by modern buildings, taxis whizzing by with places to go, grass and flowers radiantly alive in the sunlight, the Dome seems alarmingly out of place. It looks as if it has been ripped from the pages of a graphic history textbook, one that details the history of some barbaric, lawless place somewhere far, far away. Any other place, but not here. Not this place that sweats prosperity and stability and vitality from every concrete pore and park bench. But the Dome is part of the Hiroshima that was lost, and its eerie presence reminds every visitor of the dangers of nuclear war.

The following thoughts streamed through my mind like electronic ticker tape when I first stood before the Dome with tears welling in the corners of my eyes:

Holy shit, how much force must have been exerted on this city to rip such large chunks of concrete and brick away from this building?

Those steel beams, the ones that the building was built around, are completely twisted and melted. How hot must it have been at this exact spot some 60 years ago?

Everything around this place has been built in the last 60 years. Wow. Wow!

Everything around this place was destroyed to this degree or completely flattened.

Everyone in that building died instantly.

Everyone in that building died instantly.

Everyone in that building died instantly.

I can’t believe my government did this to another group of people.

I can’t believe any government could do this to another group of people.

Has President Bush or any other dumb fuck wasting money on developing nuclear weapons arsenals ever been here to see first-hand the effects of nuclear war?

After we spent time at the Dome site, we walked across a bridge to the Peace Park to go to the Peace Memorial Museum. The museum, with a smartly priced admission of 50 yen (about 45 cents), was spectacular. It was filled with information about Japan’s military exploits leading up to the war, copies of letters and memos sent by U.S. government officials and officers before the bomb was dropped, huge photographs of Hiroshima after the bombing, and photographs and artifacts of and from people burned or killed by the bomb.

I was shocked by how gruesome the entire ordeal was for the people of Hiroshima. I know it seems that the effects of an atomic bomb blast would obviously be gruesome and horrific, but until you see the photos and see the wreckage, you have NO idea of the way in which humanity and science intertwine in a split second after an atomic blast, the other-worldness of it all. In the 1-2 kilometers surrounding the epicenter, there was no gray area, no pocket of hope or miracle—every living thing was immediately incinerated like a bale of hay being dropped onto the surface of the sun (at 7,200+ Fahrenheit, the ground temperature soared as if the whole of Hiroshima was being enveloped by a solar flare), every building destroyed, no questions asked. It’s a final weapon that gives no breaks or pardons.

The U.S. government censored newspapers and photographs for years after the bombing to try to prevent the world from knowing exactly how horrible the blast was. After the bombing, generals and government spokespeople wrote about the incident using strategic jargon and referred to the incinerated innocent civilians as “casualties” and Hiroshima as a “target” that had been “successfully affected” to make the mass homicide seem as clean as a daisy. The reality of what happened in Hiroshima is heavy and pock-marked with the moans of charred children, the bone-chilling images of Truman, Churchill, Stalin, and other rich men smiling and sitting through huge round table discussions in which the fate of 200,000 people was toyed with like a fucking yarn ball, and the fact that hundreds of thousands of families were sliced apart in a single second partly because the U.S. government needed to justify the massive expenditures it was pissing away on its nuclear development program—creating ends, dropping ends out of the sky on innocent people, to justify their means. The museum made me sick to my stomach. It made me furious. And it wasn’t seeing the pictures of bomb victims—many were children ordered to help prepare the city of Hiroshima for war by clearing fire lanes and preparing rations—that made me most nauseous. No, seeing images and reading letters that came from the other side of the Pacific forced my jaw to clench and my eyes to water with rage.

The letters sent between war generals and Truman’s administration made me irate. They were filled with language that was clearly designed to let Truman and the American people sleep at night, language that covered up their murderous actions with soft words and focused fantastically on the future instead of the present. Gone are the days when world leaders charge into battle at the front of the cavalry with raised swords and fiery eyes. Now, spineless, blue-blooded men in suits who have never thrown a punch (let alone fired a gun) can slyly sit behind closed doors and order up the destruction of a country like they’re ordering a fucking hamburger. And for what? To preserve the high standard of living they’ve been tricked into believing they require to survive?

Dropping bombs and engaging in war is clearly a game leaders play with generals and soldiers who are merely pawns lubed up for action with some strong doses of synthetic confidence and sense of purpose. Accomplish your mission! Fight with honor! Your country is counting on you! This type of thinking is both over simplified to the point of abstraction and is far from critical. After a while, the reality of war fades into the flames of the funeral pyres and no one remembers which far off world leader first spit on the shoe of some other world leader. To bomb is to admit diplomatic defeat, which makes a bombing country a cognitively pathetic member of the global community. Bombing is easier than talking and making compromises and it requires far less creativity and tolerance. The museum proves to visitors that war is a sham, nothing more than a tragic play with lead villains trained by dynastic mentors and a supporting cast comprised of the ignorant and/or easily-impressionable. The extras roped into performance against their will, the innocent civilians without speaking roles, are killed off beyond the edges of spotlight illumination and never named in the play’s credits. Ughh! Just thinking about Truman’s smile and those ice cold, hollow letters makes my stomach turn.

After leaving Hiroshima and driving for a few hours, we set up camp out behind a rest stop on the expressway (in Japan, you can set up a tent by the side of the highway and sleep soundly without fear of being slaughtered or raped, it’s wonderful), and made our way back to Ueda.