no sleep 'til beijing (part 1)

As I noted at the end of my previous entry, since last Tuesday night Maya and I (joined by Eveline and Fish) have been on a rather sleepless mini-voyage to Xi'an (home of the Terracotta Warriors) and Pingyao (the best preserved ancient Chinese city in the whole country), and extended internet access has been hard to come by which is why I haven't posted anything new for the past week. Now Maya and I are back in Beijing, staying at a fancy-ass Marriott Courtyard hotel (we return to the budget lodgings of the 7 Days Inn tomorrow), trying to recuperate from said mini-voyage, and there's a nice little "Business Center," where, for the excessive fee of 30 yuan per half hour (approx. $5) I can type away happily.

Before I get into our Xi'an/Pingyao adventures and misadventures, first a quick plug: I've got my first cover story (on Phil Anselmo and his band Down) in the new issue of Revolver. If you have a chance, check it out - and make sure and check out the Editor's Letter, as well.

Now the good, the bad, and the ugly of our trip to Xi'an and Pingyao:

Good: Unloading about 1/3 of our shit out of our backbreakingly heavy backpacks and dropping it off at Eveline's place Tuesday afternoon so we wouldn't have to lug it all around with us through Xi'an and Pingyao. Eveline's freelance writer roommate, Jen, let us in while Eveline was at work.

Bad: The drug raid incident that went down on our second day in China, which Jen wrote this article about while we were away.

Good (or at least better than we expected): The 11-hour "hard sleeper" overnight train ride from Beijing to Xi'an. First, a few words of explanation for all of you 1st-worlders who don't have to experience such things: The way you get from Beijing to Xi'an (assuming you don't want to shell out for the plane flight, which is what Fish, being a wealthy fucker, likely would have done, if it had not been for us) is to take an "express" (see 11-hour) overnight train. Said trains are divided into a number of different sections, each being more or less expensive and correspondingly more or less uncomfortable. There're the soft seats (padded benches where you sit for 11 hours) and hard seats (wooden or metal benches where you try to do the same - and, if you're a dude, likely blow your prostate up to basketball proportions in the process); then there are the soft sleepers (a cabin fitting four people via two bunk beds) and the hard sleepers (a whole bunch of stacked bunk beds where the proletariat masses get to snore and fart together through the night). When, a few weeks ago, Maya and I were talking to Eveline about going to Xi'an, she had volunteered to take care of the travel arrangements, and since Fish also really wanted to see the Terracotta Warriors, we asked her to include him in our plans. Since we now had 4 people total, we assumed, not unreasonably, I think, that she would opt for a soft sleeper cabin. But as they say, when you assume, you make and ass out of U and me, and yeah, Eveline emailed us back a few days before we were set to arrive in China to say that she had bought 4 hard sleeper tickets from Beijing to Xi'an. Maya was nervous, to say the least - when she was growing up in the Ukraine, she had ridden on similar overnight trains with her family, but as far as she could remember, never in the hard sleeper section. When she called her mom to confirm this, her mom responded, "Of course not. I would never do that to you." Now Maya was super-psyched. As for why our so-called friend Eveline had booked these hard sleepers, she explained that they were the hardest tickets to get (pun intended) since most Chinese don't want to shell out for a soft sleeper and can't afford a plane ticket, and that she had ridden that way before and loved the experience "because," as she told us via email, "you get to hang with the common folk this way... often times have random conversations (which will no doubt involve everyone asking me, 'Where are your friends from? How come your English is so good? Which do you like better, China or America?') Plus train culture is such an interesting experience. Like before they turn off the lights for bed, everyone sits in the aisles chowing down on the TONS of food they brought with them, as if they've been hording food all month specifically for the purpose of getting to pig out on the train ride." This was sounding better and better. But actually the ride wasn't bad at all - the train was clean, relatively smooth, and no Chinese common folk really bothered us (perhaps to Eveline's disappointment), though they did stare at us a lot as we were just about the only whities on the train; the bunks were not jumbled in a big open space, dorm-room-style, but rather in soft-sleeper-style cabins - the only difference was that they were stacked 6 to a cabin rather than 4. While this did make the bunks rather claustropobically coffin-like, the matresses were actually softer, I think, than those in most of the Asian hotels we've stayed at so far. Plus the plushy comforters were to die for. I didn't get a much sleep, since I couldn't shift around or spread out at all, plus I had a bag full of our few valuables (passports, iPods, camera, that's about it) under my pillow. But Maya remembered that as a kid, she had always wanted to ride in the top bunk, and that's just where we got to ride to Xi'an - so in some ways, you could even say that the ride was a dream come true. Here's Maya enjoying her top bunk (while an old Chinese dude stares vacantly at what kind of looks like a laptop in the photo but was actually a metal plate for garbage).

Depressing (and a little odd): the view from the Beijing-to-Xi'an train. Crumbling ancient-looking shanty towns, filthy coal mines, filthy factories pumping black smoke into the already smog-filled skies, new-ish-looking building prematurely reduced to rubble though people apparently still live and work in them, lonely gravestones along the train tracks, and, uh, miles of corn fields! (Corn, according to Eveline, is "huge" in China, and yeah, over the course of our trip, we'll see lots of locals chomping down on corn-on-the-cob. Who knew? And in a grocery store, we'll see corn-flavored yogurt! Yum.)

Good: Crashing at Fish's fancy-as-fuck luxury hotel in Xi'an and blowing off our own hotel reservation. Though his place was just outside the city walls, and our place was in the city center, central Xi'an turned out to basically be a big fucking mall...in what we decided was essentially the Iowa of China.

Not so good but funny: Discovering that Eveline, who we were all kind of relying on to order food and get us to the right places, etc., only speaks and understands just enough Chinese to get by and is basically illiterate. Half the time she would have a long exchange with a local, a hotel staff member, a waiter and waitress, and then we would all be like, "So what did they say?" and she'd smile, shrug, and answer, "Oh, I don't know. All I got was something about spinach." As she herself admits, she really only understands about 40 to 50% of what's going on, but since that's 30 to 40% more than we understand, we're still very, very thankful to have her.

Underwhelming: the Terracotta Warriors. First of all, you really can only observe them from fairly far away (Maya, for some reason, actually thought that we might be able to walk among them; I didn't expect that, but was still hoping we'd be a little closer). Secondly, the Warrriors are divided among 3 pits, and only Pit 1 really has a good number of the clay dudes standing together in formation (in a bizarrely stripped-down hangar-like building). A shocking amount of the site has yet to be excavated or restored, which meant that Pits 2 and 3 were mostly just piles of dirt which some holes dug into them. Here I am, underwhelmed.



Overwhelming: The apocalyptic weather in Xi'an. Due to otherwordly smog levels, the sky over the city looked a crazy yellow and visibility was something looking through wonton soup; Fish's already hacking cough (which had been steadily worsening since he arrived in Shanghai a week-and-a-half ago) got to the point where you almost expected him to cough up blood (which wouldn't have been far from local custom: Chinese regularly hack up and spit out phlegm on the streets - it's not considered impolite or anything - due to the pollution levels in the country). By the afternoon of our first day there, it started to rain, though our cab driver (more on him in a bit) explained that it usually never rains. The bartendress at Fish's hotel said that the increasing pollution has been making the weather all crazy, and she predicted even worse rain our second day there; we were all skeptical of her meteorological prowess, but good for her, and bad for us, her prediction proved all too accurate, and it pissed (probably, acid) rain all over us all day.

Good: hiring a cab driver for the day for around 400 yuan (approx. $55); the dude even waited around for us for hours while we explored various sites at no extra charge.

Disconcerting and strange: As Eveline pointed out to us, the Chinese word for
Um" sounds exactly like "niggah," which, as we quickly found out as she and our cab driver talked, means that listening in on the average Chinese conversation can be a peculiar and uncomfortable experience - if you're sensitive to racial slurs (which Maya, the kike, and me, the half chink, are not, so we found it pretty fucking funny). I joked with Maya that this would probably be the only Chinese world she would come away from our trip remembering.

Creepy as hell: the tomb of some emperor and empress (for some reason we absolutely cannot find their names anywhere right now) that were filled with thousands of doll-sized recreations of soldiers, musicians, enuchs, concubines (mostly armless, since their arms were made of wood and had rotted away), and all kinds of farm animals. Eveline had joked at the Terracotta Warriors site that it was strange that no one had made a horror movie there yet, but as soon as we walked into this site (whatever the hell it was called), we realized that this was the place for a horror flick. Dolls are just scary.



Very cool: Xi'an's Muslim quarter. Bustling alleys full of vendors hawking everything from Mao lighters and knockoff Obituary T-shirts(?!) to elaborate paper cut-outs and exotic streetfood - and doing so, amazingly, without harassing us, grabbing us, shouting at us, etc. like we've experienced basically everywhere else in China. Many of the locals - mostly Chinese Muslims - barely looked Asian, in their white hats and with their curly hair and light-colored eyes. We walked through the gorgeous Great Mosque, which, in contrast with the people, looked very Asian and barely looked like any Mosque we'd ever seen, displaying as it did almost no Middle-Eastern influence, other than some weird, ornate Arabic-in-Chinese-font script. The night of our second (and final) day in Xi'an we ate at this crazy and rather sketchy-looking restaurant in the quarter, where all the food was grilled up outside on the wet, rain-splattered streets and brought into us at our table. The wait staff was all rough-and-tumble prepubescent boys and girls in blue shirts and white pants, except our waiter who had no uniform, a gimp leg, and spoke a Northern dialect that Eveline couldn't understand, which made ordering particularly fun. We drank beer and ate delicous spicy fish, some noodles, crispy flatbread, and over 50 skewers of lamb and some mystery cow meat that we theorized later was probably the most savory of the cow's 4 stomachs. Fish was particularly happy to be gorging so much animal flesh, while Maya was nervous that her own (presumably not-so-savory) stomach would not be able to handle all the street meat through that night's imminent 9-hour hard-sleeper ride to Pingyao. Fish would not be accompanying us there, as he had one more day scheduled in "beautiful" Xi'an before flying home to NYC. Having sampled most of the city's so-called wonders, enjoyed its gorgeous weather, and inhaled its aromatic smog, we were particularly sorry to leave him behind - but at least, we knew that he would be able to find plenty of meat-on-a-stick. (To be continued)

a better tomorrow

Not there was really any other direction in which things could go, but since our first day in China, shit has gotten way better, in fact, you might say that in general, shit has gotten kind of awesome.

In hindsight, Japan might have been the worst place to come here from - as Maya and I have said a few times over the last few days, our culture shock probably would have been a lot less if we'd come straight to Beijing from NYC. Where Japan is ultra polite, clean, orderly, modern, China is brusque, crusty, and chaotic, existing in some bizarre neverland between the 1st and 3rd worlds, between western freedom and old-regime oppression. While we've gotten more comfortable in this liminal state, there's always an underlying sense of danger, which, as the American doctor who gave me my 3rd Japanese Enchephalitis vaccination shot this morning (in a ridiculously sleek and sanitary western-style clinic) pointed out, is kind of what you want if you're going to travel as Maya and I are. Kind of.

Fortunately, that sense of danger is now just a little bit more in check. Regarding our living situation, we spent our first two nights crashing with Fish in his luxurious executive suite (on the second day we swung by the good ol' Fangyuan to check out a day early, and miraculously, they not only gave us cash back for the night we weren't staying but didn't mention or charge us for the shattered bathroom shelf). Then on Friday, we moved to the 7 Days Inn that Eveline had booked for us. That has turned out to be pretty much all you could hope for out of a budget hotel - think Motel 6 but in technicolor, with really hard beds, barely anyone who speaks English, and water that stops running periodically for a few hours so they can refill the tanks.

As for the city at large, here are just a few of the awesome, crazy, and/or disturbing experiences we've had in the last few days:

Revisiting Tiennamen Square in the daylight.

Exploring the gorgeous, disarmingly sprawling Forbidden City...

the highlight for me being the Imperial Garden in the City's north end, which is full of amazing craggy stone scuptures and structures, intentionally carved over long periods of time with dripping water. Here Maya stands in front of the stunning Duixiushan, (Gathering Beauty Hill) a small artificial mountain of twisting rock, complete with caves, fountains, and on its peak, Yujingyuan, the Pavilion of Imperial View, to which the Emperor and Empress would ascend every year (but unfortunately no tourists were allowed).

Discovering even more insane animals-on-a-stick at roadside stands. Here are some scorpion and seahorse kabobs (the latter of which Fish sampled - "Tastes salty and crunchy," he reported after the little thing was deep-fried to a blackened crisp), and behind them, a vendor who took obvious pleasure in grossing out tourists - in the back of the stand were rows and rows of live scorpions impaled on skewers; whenever he had an audience of already aghast whities assembled, this sadistic little fucker would blow on the poor critters and have them (and quite a few tourists) all squirming madly.


Passing Hooters Beijing in our cab one night, which was a strange enough sight in itself, but then we noticed the large billboard advertising the place, which featured three Chinese Hooters girl in the restaurant chains' signature tube-tops and orange shorts, each one of the fine young ladies more flat-chested than the last.

Walking around the Temple of Heaven, where, for some reason, they had enormous speakers blasting out classical music everywhere (though not as loudly as this photo would suggest).


Discovering the George Orwell novel Animal Farm for sale right out in the open in a big bookstore in the Waifujing mall.

Climbing the Great Wall of China at Mutianyu. (That's Fish there on the far right, stepping into the fucking photo - way to go, man.) Words and pictures really cannot capture the absolute majesty and scope of the structure and its misty mountain setting.

Hurtling down the, believe it or not, toboggan/flume-ride that takes you over 3,000-feet from the Great Wall to the foot of the moutain! You really have to experience it to even begin to understand - but here's how the Chinese pamphlet that Fish picked up described it (in fall-on-the-floor hilarious broken English: "Toboggan mixed sports and entertainment and became a new amusement project. Tt is also called 'Nanirrigated farmland sled'. Toboggan uses the theory of acceleration of gravity and makes coasters dive along the mountain path in low-latitude flying or high-speed driwing, Thrilling,amazing,safe and comfortable,it also has an auto device make speed easily controoled by both old and young.Weigang Company in German made this toboggan of stainless steel.It is 1580 meters in total length and ,in a form fo snake , it takes adwantage of different situations to accordance with the mountain path,so safely send tourists Muzhihaolou to the foot of Great Wall." ...This video that Eveline shot in February might give you a (slightly) better idea of what the ride actually is like...



Exploring the totally nuts neighborhood around our 7 Days Inn, where snazzy bars, sleek boutique-like shops, and tourist-friendly trinket stands sit side-by-side with tiny housing complexes that are basically just piles of rubble and inside you can see mothers sleeping with their babies, both clad in rags, on rickety beds.

Renting a slow motor boat (for 60 yuan - less than $10 - per hour) at around 10pm and driving it around the gorgeous lake in said hood while drinking Heinekens purchased from the same folks who rented us the boat. Red-lantern- and neon-lit nightclubs crowd the banks; a mix of traditional wooden boats, swan-shaped pedal-boats, and other motor boats share the water; and strange mini hot-air balloons with open flames rise in the sky around us, set off by locals on the shore; all make for a truly surreal scene. Maybe best of all, the disclaimers/warning sign by the boat-rental booth commands (again, in sublimely broken English): "Do not bubilosity, and do not engage in nonstandard behavior. Please do not stand and fight while in the boat..."

Eating in a hot-pot restaurant in said hood. The menu included "Braised dog," "Braised pig large intestine," "Braised bullfrog (live and fresh)," and "Braised bull penis, marrow, and testicles." We passed on all those culinary gems, but opted for the "Braised shrimp (live and fresh)," obviously expecting a nice steaming plate of cooked crustaceans to be delivered to our table. Instead, we got, along with our hot pot of boiling broth, a glass bowl full of very live shrimp, all kicking, spitting, and, I swear, sneezing. Our waiters gestured for us to stand and back away from the table, whereupon they dumped the wriggling shrimp into the boiling pot. The poor little animals danced and lept as soon as they hit the bubbling liquid, and two actually popped back out - one onto the floor, the other onto the tabletop - before the waiters could slap down the hot pot's lid. Maya, Fish, and I all stood around, watching this, completely amazed. The waiters frantically recaptured the escaped crustaceans and hurried back into the kitchen with them, only to return seconds later with the same shrimp, presumably washed, and began to put them back into the pot. Fish protested: "No, no, they've been on the floor," he said (and I have to agree - the 5 second rule should not apply in China), but the waiters were so obviously offended and incredulous, that we eventually relented, against our better judgement. The shrimp ended up being delicious - though we did half expect them to still struggle a little as we picked them, all pink and smoking, from the pot with our chopsticks. Hopefully, Maya and I prove to have as much fight in us as these poor critters - in fact, just a little more, since they're dead right now - over the rest of our mad trip.

P.S. Tomorrow night (Tuesday) we're off on a 12-hour train ride to Xi'ian (to see the motherfucking Terracotta Warriors) and to visit the trapped-in-time city of Pinyang. Most likely we won't be able to access the internet much in said locales, but stay cool: We'll be back and posting soon enough.

one world, one dream (part 2)

So we head out into the Beijing streets, which are deluged with torrents of not just pedestrians but every sort of wheeled vehicle imaginable - cars, buses, rickshaws, bicycles, tricycles, cycles with strange little cabins attached to their backs for holding passengers and/or massive piles of recyclables, motorcycles, motorcycles with strange little cabins for the same purposes, etc., etc. Think Road Warrior set in a crumbling urban wasteland. We dodge the traffic somehow, with our guidebook in hand, looking for a highly recommended vegetarian restaurant that should be just a block away. We can't find it. We walk back and forth along the block, and though we find the exact street number, the restaurant is nowhere to be seen. Finally we ask an official-looking dude standing by the door, and show him the Chinese characters for the eatery's name in the book. He shakes his head, refers us to the English-speaking receptionist inside the building; she explains that the restaurant closed down. We go off to find another recommended restaurant, which apparently suffered the same fate, judging from the lot of dirt and rubble at the corner where it should have been.

Around that corner, we see a long line of lantern-lit food stalls (we later learn it is the Night Market), and are drawn to take a look, hoping to find some sustenance. What we find instead are shouting salesmen hawking pretty much every sort anything on a stick you could possibly imagine: from marinated beef to shrimp to whole squids to, uh, scorpions, seahorses, cicadas, silkworms, centipedes, and snake! Maya and I walk the seemingly endless line of insane kabobs, jaws on the ground, as the vendors scream "Snake! You like!" "Worm, very good!" and grin at us invitingly/ominously. We (wisely I think) duck into an actual restaurant (where we see the turtle soup mentioned in my last post) and order some not-completely-ridiculous (though not particularly good) food.

Bellies full, we head off to look for an internet cafe, where we can hopefully get in touch with our friend Fish. Our guidebook, which so far has not served us well, claims that there's one at the southeast corner of Tiennamen Square. So we make a long but rather amazing walk along the moat around the Forbidden City...at night...in near total darkness...with the pagoda towers silhouetted against the moonlight.

When we finally make it to the north end of the Square, we find massive crowds of tourists and very aggressive locals who seem to pop randomly out of the throng, trying to get us to buy everything from postcards to enormous kites. We are also accosted by a very cute couple of Chinese girls who ask us if we are tourists and where we are from. They claim to also be tourists, and we are unwittingly sucked into a seemingly very innocent conversation about our and their travels. However, Maya notices some shady dudes lurking behind the girls, eyeing us, and we talk politely while she clutches her bag. After a few minutes, one of the girls asks what we are doing right now and if we'd have any interest in going to teahouse and continuing our conversation there; a subtle look of amazement registers on Maya's face and we quickly extract ourselves: "Sorry, but we really have to find this internet cafe and find our friend," we say - which is totally true. As we walk away, Maya explains to me that she had read about a scam exactly like this, where random Chinese young people come up to you and ask you if you are a tourist and if they can practice their English with you; they invite you to a teahouse, where after a few drinks, an exorbitant bill arrives; when you protest, some strongmen appear and basically force you into paying. We are stupified - and oddly thrilled - that we have actually come across the set-up (and fortunately eluded the payoff) of this very scam.

So we walk across the Square, a strange, otherwordly experience considering recent history, and arrive at the corner where the internet cafe should be. It's closed. What the fuck? Our guidebook is from 2005, and we knew Beijing was a fast-developing city, but this was getting ridiculous. On our book's map, I located another internet place that should be along the way back to the dreaded Fangyuan hotel, but again, it was nowhere to be found.

Finally, around 10pm, we retreat to the hotel and discover that there have been, all along, a few computers right in the lobby with internet access that we can use; Maya logs into her email while I go to our room to call Eveline again - she had told me to call her around 9:45 when she would finally be done with work. Turns out she has a cellphone that we can use while we're in the country; I just need to get it from her and she lives a cab-ride away. Maya meanwhile comes back to the room with good news: She's received an email from Fish, he's fine and in Beijing in a swanky-ass luxury hotel, the Waifujing Grand, where we are totally welcome to crash. And once we look on the map, we discover that the place is literally right around the corner.

So we throw all our shit back into our backpacks and trudge to his hotel (which is massive and gorgeous, with doormen and bellhops, a bar in the lobby complete with classical pianist), where Maya meets up with him in his executive suite (the dude is a fucking VP, and, more importantly tonight, a fucking lifesaver), which, rather absurdly, has the room-number 1234, while I catch a cab to Eveline's place. I hand the driver a printout of the address and directions in Chinese that Eveline had emailed to me, and after a few U-turns and confused stops along the side of the street to re-read the directions, he deposits me in front of a practically unlit skyrise apartment complex (the Chinese don't seem to believe in streetlamps). I stumble around between buildings for a while, trying to locate Eveline's, finally take the evevator of what I think is the right structure. When I step out, the hall is basically pitch-black and I have to almost literally put my nose on each door to read the numbers (I find later that there's a Clapper of sorts connected to the lights, and I just wasn't stomping around enough). Finally I get to what I think is hers, and I knock, praying that she - and not some grumpy old martial arts master pissed to find a white stranger outside - will open the door. Praise Buddha, it is her and I stumble in, give her a hug, and flop onto the nearest chair. We quickly catch up, I take the cellphone from her (which should make life a hell of a lot easier over the next month), exchanging it for the cute "Little Boney" plushy skeleton doll we picked up for her in Japan.

We're both completely beat and it's getting late, so after a little while, I bid her goodnight and somehow manage to hail a cab outside of the strange, dark apartment complex; as soon as I step out of the car in front of Fish's luxury hotel, I get propositioned by some snappily dressed Chinese pimp for massages and "sexing women." I thank him for his generous offer but that's about the last thing I need right now - sleep on a clean bed in a room without worms being at the very top of the agenda - and make my exhausted way to Fish's suite. There Maya and I catch up with the rich bastard (who we love - even more so now) - turns out he was basically unharmed by the typhoon, though it did ruin some of his sightseeing plans. We have a few beers, a few laughs, get a cot for Fish to sleep on (we don't love him enough to snuggle up with him through the night), and Maya and I finally pass the fuck out at in what felt like the softest bed in the world (but actually wasn't, because Chinese seem to hate soft beds even more than streetlamps) around 1:30 in the morning.

It was a long, grueling day - maybe the most insane 13 hours Maya and I have ever gotten through together - but all's well that ends well, and thank god (or Buddha) for good friends far from home.

one world, one dream (part 1)

As Maya and I agreed over dinner on Thursday, as we looked at the menu of the restaurant we had stumbled into and eyed the photo of the turtle soup - which looked exactly like a turtle just cracked out of its shell and tossed whole into a bowl of broth - China was kicking our asses. It was just our first day in in the country, but we already felt like we had been there for a harrowing month (which is how long we are scheduled to be here on this insane trip of ours). And to think, it all started out so benignly. Maya and I had been nervous as our plane from Tokyo came into Beijing airport that early afternoon about going through the Chinese passport control, customs, and "quarantine" - China makes you fill out a form declaring that you don't have a whole range of ailments from HIV to psychosis to sneezing - but when we finally actually disembarked, the procedures proved to be as blase and perfunctory as in any other airport we'd ever been through. Call it the calm before the storm...

Two days before we were set to arrive in Beijing we had gotten an email from the hotel, Li Shi, which we had booked for our first week telling us that "the government is having a meeting" and had booked all the rooms, which meant that our reservations had to be bumped to the hotel's sister hotel, a place called Fangyuan. We frantically looked up online reviews of this sister hotel and shit didn't look so good, so we asked my friend Eveline (who has been living in Beijing for over a year now) to see if she could book us a room at the 7 Days Inn in her neighborhood, which she has heard from a friend is not a bad at all for a budget place in China. Unfortunately, said 7 Days Inn didn't have any rooms available for our first two days in town, so we decided we'd just have to brave Fangyuan. And it would end up taking every ounce of our courage.

First, our taxi driver could barely find the place, and when he finally did, the neighborhood looked sketchy at best - down nearby alleys we saw residential areas that were basically little shanty towns constructed from scraps. Then, the young, very bored, and very disinterested girl at the check-in counter turned out to have no record of our booking or any idea what we were talking about when we recounted the story of our original reservation, the email we received, etc. But she did give us an economy room for two nights (for around 238 yuan, approx $30, each night). Then she gave us our key and directed us to the basement; words can hardly capture the horror of the subterranean hallways that awaited us when we walked down the stairs - the ceiling sagged heavily in places, had gaping holes in others; the carpeting on the floor had huge black stains all over it; the wallpaper was peeling, the walls had holes in them; the door of one room appeared to have had its entire doorknob and lock torn right out, leaving a splintery maw in their place; and the whole place stunk. As I said to Maya, "It looks like the hotel in The Shining - except that hotel was nice." When we got to what was to be our room, the bedroom smelled thickly of cigarettes, while the bathroom smelled like shit, and the walls, floor, and ceiling were hardly in any better shape than those of the hallway outside, plus they were covered in mold. We decided quickly that we needed to see a different room.

So we returned to the visibly annoyed girl at check-in, who suggested the number of another available room. She called down to the housekeeper - a different but equally young girl, whom we had seen sitting with a slight, inscrutable smile on her face, at a desk in the middle of the basement hallway; she, the check-in girl said, would show the room to us. Meeting up with the housekeeper, who spoke no English as far we could tell, we followed her deep down the left end of the labyrinthine hallway to the very last room there - which, at first glance, actually looked endurable compared to the first. Then, as we began to unpack our shit, Maya discovered that the mattress of the bed was made of some mysteriously crunchy, painfully-hard styrofoam-liked material and had a large gully on the right side of it, while one of the pillowcases bore a suspiciously bloodstain-like blotch and some strands of hair. I was on the phone with Eveline, seeing when we could meet up and describing our hotel travails so far, when Maya said, "Is that a worm crawling on the bathroom floor?" I snatched up my eyeglasses and peered ahead - sure enough, a skinny, very energetic earthworm was wriggling along the dirty tiles, arching its head up like a Mini-Me cobra, apparently checking out its new home with much more enthusiasm than we were. A chill ran down my spine - as I've mentioned before, I really don't like legless slithering things like snakes and worms, and I definitely don't like them hanging out in my bathroom.

I slapped a teacup over the worm so that I could show it, alive and wriggling, to the hotel staff, and we returned to the frontdesk, finding there a new, even less friendly, and less English-language-savvy young woman. We complained about the mattress and I tried to explain about the worm; "A what?" she said. "A worm," I answered, inching my finger along the desk in an absurd pantomime. "A worm." Nope, no comprende. "Need see 'nother room?" she asked; exasperated, we nodded our heads. She called down to the housekeeper, who, with the same inscrutable look on her face, showed us to yet a new chamber. This one looked far superior to both the previous ones, though it was still far less hospitable/sanitary than anywhere Maya and I had ever stayed before: As in everywhere else in the hotel, the wallpaper was peeling off, there were holes and mold everywhere, and we were still totally sketched out. We gave her a beleaguered "Xie xie," ("Thank you"), the housekeeper returned to her desk, and we flopped down on one of the beds together - only after putting down our own sheets, which we'd wisely brought with us - utterly exhausted (we'd been up since 5am to catch our morning flight from Japan and were feeling worn out before any of this even went down).

After a little while, having failed to get any rest, we decided to try and find some food and an internet cafe - Maya's friend Fish was supposed to meet us in Beijing (he had timed his own, much shorter vacation to China with our first week and a half here) but he'd gone to Shanghai first and that city had been hit by a major typhoon leading to an evacuation of half the city and we hadn't been able to get in touch since; Maya was hoping for an email from him, or at least, to get the number of his hotel in Beijing so we could call and see if he'd made here.

As we redistributed some of our shit to our daypacks, Maya pulled a pair of underwear from her bag that were still wet from doing laundry in Japan, and since we didn't want to hang it on any of the existing surfaces in the room, which all appeared to be filthy, I decided to improvise a hanging line. We had some cord, which I strung from the lip of this glass shelf above our sink to the towel rack a few feet away. Mind you, the line was slack and the panties weighed next to nothing, but as soon as I stepped back from my setup, the shelf instantly pulled away from the wall, hit the floor, and shattered! The ceramic mugs on the shelf also shattered. I stared at the scene in total disbelief, as did Maya (who had run over, having heard the sound).

We called over the ever inscrutable housekeeper, who impassively swept up the wreckage, while we looked on and exchanged glances of "What the fuck?" Once she cleaned the scene of the crime, we quickly stuffed our daypacks with everything we had with us of any real value (very little, actually), and headed out into Beijing, eager to, at least temporarily, escape this Fangyuan hellhole, get some food, find Fish, and hopefully clear our heads... (to be continued)

a long sigh

Our last real day in Japan (Wednesday; we fly out tomorrow for China at 9am or so), and needless to say, there were many loose ends to wrap up, souvenirs to buy and mail (dealing with the Japanese post office literally gave Maya and I both headaches), huge and yet somehow not-quite-big-enough backpacks to pack, and, oh, tons of shit I'm probably forgetting and maybe we forgot to do.

But this afternoon, instead of dealing with all the above, we 1) learned that the story oft-repeated in the States - or at least in the Revolver office - that in Japan you can buy girls' used panties from vending machines is partly an urban legend (you can't buy them from vending machines) and partly true (you definitely can buy them from the many sex shops scattered around Tokyo). In the back of the sex shop Maya and I decided to peruse while sourvenir shopping, we found a back corner covered in little baggies, each stuffed with a pair of folded panties alongside small polaroids of a Japanese girl wearing said undergarment. Shit was expensive - like, 3,500 yen (approx. $35) each - or else I would have bought a pair for every member of the Revolver staff. Then again, as Maya pointed out, if you're the kind of person who has to go to a store to pay money for a female's used undies, 35 bucks probably sounds like a bargain.

After making this discovery, we 2) hung out with vocalist-keyboardist-songwriter Mirai and vocalist-saxophonist Mika (a.k.a. Mikannibal) of the awesome Japanese metal band Sigh. I had met Mirai briefly in the States a little while ago - he came into the Revolver office to write and record an original short song on the spot for the magazine's now-defunct "Unit" page (click here to hear the creepy little ditty), and when I knew I was going to Tokyo, I got in touch. As for Mika, see below what she looks like onstage - needless to say, I would never have worked up the balls to get in touch with her. And that's before Maya talked to her and discovered that she's a 3rd-year PHD student in physics!


Mirai and I had arranged to meet outside the Hard Rock Cafe in Oeno station - because that seemed like really the cheesiest place we could possibly meet - and from there, Maya and I followed Mirai and Mika on the subway and along a maze of streets on a personal tour of Tokyo's metal record stores. Most were Disk Union shops, while one (located in the Shinjuku district) was excllently named No Remorse Tokyo and it had an amazing variety of metal T-shirts, including a Gallhammer tee that I almost bought, except that it was gray-on-gray and I had seen a kid wearing a black-on-black one of the same design at the Mono/Envy show and that looked so much cooler that I just couldn't shell out the 2,100 yen (approx. $21) for the lesser gray version. (I did, however, buy a CD by Gallhammer frontwoman Vivian Slaughter's other band, Congenital Hell.)

I had actually been working on a Gallhammer story for Revolver before I left for this trip, and had even sent email questions to Vivian Slaughter almost a month before Maya and my date of departure, but she had never responded with answers and I had had to kill the piece. Mika, who is friends with Vivian, explained that Vivian really barely knows any English at all, and that she has had to resort to using Yahoo translator when trying to answer English-language interview questions. Plus, according to both Mika and Mirai, Vivian is really crazy, like she-should-be-taking-her-meds- but-isn't-and-she-gets-benefits-from-the-government crazy. Which only makes her cooler in my book.

In between record stores, Mirai and Mika took Maya and I to this insane noodle shop down some alleys by this almost dried-up canal. It was basically just a bar with space for many 20 people around it, and two greasy-looking cooks/servers scrambling over huge steaming vats of broth and ramen in the center. Mika ordered for all of us with a very mischievious look on her face, and when Maya's and my late lunches/early dinners arrived, we knew why. The meal consisted of a normal sized bowl of broth with strips of pork and bamboo shoots and pieces of scallion - and then an absolutely ginormous, I mean Godzilla-sized bowl of noodles that would easily feed a family of 5 in any of the other countries we are about to visit. While Maya and I looked at each other nervously, Mirai proceeded to noisily slurp up his entire portion (in Japan you're supposed to consume your noodles while producing maximum slurping noise - it's only polite) in about, oh, 5 or 6 gulps. Mika wasn't far beyond (though she had ordered a smaller bowl of noodle for herself - because, even though she's already enviably slendor, she says she's dieting. Ultimately, Mirai and Mika left the premises and waited outside for us - in order to make room at the bar for the steady stream of customers coming in - while Maya and I tried not to humiliate ourselves completely with our meager noodle-eating skills. Eventually we gave up and staggered out, bellies engorged. "You have to eat fast before your stomach knows that you're already full," Mirai explained his power-noodle-pounding technique later.

But while Maya and I feel like we've had to consume Japan very quickly over the last 2 weeks, I can definitely say that we have not had our fill. And when we bid Mirai and Mika farewell later that evening - knowing that we would have to bid Japan itself sayonara soon the next morning - we did so with full intention of returning sometime not too faraway.

fat wrestlers, even fattier tuna

Coming back to Tokyo from Kyoto on Monday has been cool because it's been like coming back to a city that we know, and that kind of seems to know us , too. As Maya says, it feels like we're just getting started in a way - so, too bad, that just as we're becoming comfortable in and with Japan, we have to leave (the day after tomorrow).

After our 2-and-a-half-hour ride on the Shinkansen bullet train - which was smooth and restful considering the damn thing to hurtling along at 160 MPH - we chilled most of the afternoon at the good ol' Oak Hotel - small as ever, but compared to the Ryokan we had spent the last 5 sleepless nights in, it seemed especially comfortable.

That night we took a walking tour of Kabuki-cho, the Shinkjuku redlight district, which is notorious the world over and supposedly inspired some of the street scenes in the movie Bladerunner. While I'm sure there was all sorts of depravity taking place behind closed doors, from the pedestrian eye-view, the thing was pretty anticlimatic. Sprawling and hyperkenetic, yes, but what was striking was not its brazen perverted-ness but rather it's outward coyness: stripclubs, for instance, advertised without a shred of nudity, but with billboards of girls' headshots, each more innocent and angelic looking than the last. What was also striking were the number of male host bars, which also advertised via boards of headshot, this time of pretty Japanese boys with big spiky hair and all-American smiles. Having been to Amsterdam's much more in-your-face redlight district - narrow alley upon alley full of prostitutes in lingerie behind glass walls - Kabuki-cho seemed unexpectedly tame.

The next day (Tusday), however, did not disappoint - though it didn't necessarily start out looking so good. After a long, lazy morning hanging out in the Oak Hotel, we returned by subway to Asakusa - site of Senso-Ji shrine - to try and buy souvenirs for a shitload of folks back home in the States. And we failed miserably at finding anything - or rather, there were way too many options and we just couldn't decide. Plus the teeming throngs of trinket-hungry tourists were driving us (actually, mostly me) nuts - "Oh, the manatee," as Maya and I like to say.

But we did have one strange little interaction with a local which boded well for the rest of the day. As we walked along the gauntlet of shops, an old Japanese man - he looked maybe 70 or 80, but was probably 150 - tugged at my right shirt sleeve, finally getting my attention. He pointed at the tattoo on my arm, said something I couldn't understand. I lifted my sleeve to show him the whole piece - my koi fish on black water with cherry blossoms - and he nodded approvingly, then pointed to my chest as if asking whether the tattoo continued into breastplates as the traditional Japanese-style body art often does. I shook my head but lifted my left sleeve to show him my other half-sleeve. He again nodded approvingly, said something, then pointed at himself (his nose to be precise) and then at...his butt(!) It took us a second to figure out what he was getting at. "You have a tattoo?" we asked...on your butt, we thought but didn't ask (not that he could have understood us anyway). He nodded, and interlinked his hands to make the shape of a flapping bird. We smiled and Maya gave him a thumbs-up sign (before bidding him farewell)...I mean, what else do you do when an old Japanese stranger tells you he has a tattoo of a bird on his ass?

After our failed shopping excursion, we took a couple subways to Kokugikan, the sumo stadium. It just so happened that our visit to Japan was timed perfectly to coincide with the September basho, one of the six big sumo tournaments that take place in Japan every year, and one of only three that take place in Tokyo. From the outside, the stadium looked pretty much like any western stadium, until we noticed three sumo wrestlers in kimonos (one was also wearing a respiratory mask, as quite a few Japanese tend to do, in a heartening sign about the air quality) walking outside.



Inside, the place was crazy, bustling with employees all dressed in traditional garb and eager Japanese fans, old and young, most of whom had boxes on the floor level of the stadium, where the seating was literally on the floor, on mats and pillows. Our seats were on the balcony and were actual chairs (and plushy ones at that). The concession stands were out of this world, especially compared to those at U.S. sports arenas - bento boxes, bean buns, hot green tea, fruit juices, fish chips, and awesome little disposable cups of sake, of which Maya and I had to partake.


As for the action itself, it took place on this awesome clay platform - the dohyo, or sumo ring - with a huge Shinto shrine-like rooftop suspended over it, and was a weird mix of solemn ritual - elaborately attired referees posing with their fans and making dramatic announcements, attendants sweeping the fighting space with big straw brooms, and the competitors slapping themselves, throwing salt, and stretching and squatting pre-fight - and then sudden spurts of blubber-shifting violence.

We watched at least 5 caucasian wrestlers competing - and they all were (as best we could tell from the booklets we had and little radio with English commentary we had rented) from Eastern Europe, most from Russia, one from Bulgaria. This, of course, meant that Maya was particularly involved in their matches and was naturally pulling for them; I, being half Asian, felt obligated to play the contrarian and pull for my slanty-eyed brethen in their efforts to beat whitey at what is, after all, their/our game. Here's a snippit of the action (both the wrestlers', and Maya's and mine). (Oh yeah, and I'm responsible for the, let's call it, impressionistic camera work.)



After the sumo competition, we went back down to the Tsukiji Fish Market area and went to a restaurant called Sushizanmai (we didn't know anything about it beforehand, but it looked good, was relatively inexpensive, and had some English explanations in its menu), which turned out to be fucking awesome. We gorged on the most buttery, melt-in-your-mouth pieces of fatty tuna, medium fatty tuna, broiled fatty tuna, eel, salmon, etc., and it was, Maya and I both agree, one of the best meals we've ever had. What added to experience was that the restaurant wasn't nearly as oppressively over-the-top polite as many of the other eateries we've been to; the staff was friendly and helpful - our waitress complimented Maya's Japanese pronunciation - but in a completely genuine way. They didn't overwhelm us with endless "Thank you"s or, even more importantly, embarass us with endless bowing. We left with our bellies warm with fresh fish and our hearts warm with a newly realized appreciation for Japan. Too bad we have to leave so soon.

motivational words

Sunday (our last day in Kyoto) was a pretty lazy day. We were worn out from too much walking, sightseeing, sweating, panting, trying to communicate/navigate in a language we don't know, itching (from our ever mounting mosquito bites), and barely being able to sleep (on the comfortable-as-concrete Ryokan matresses). We spent the better part of the day at Yu Kuhan, the 24-hour internet cafe/"neo synthetic culture space" that I keep raving about. All the shrines and shit were nice, but that really is my favorite place in Kyoto.

Another of my other favorites places? The hotel along the way from Ryokan Yuhara to Yu Kuhan, inspirationally/absurdly named ExcelHuman. Here it is at day and at night.

Every time we pass it, I look up at the sign and say, "I'll try, hotel, I'll try."

gold, vodka, and japanese schoolkids

Saturday we took an uptown subway, a crosstown bus, then hiked uphill through savage heat and humidity (the weather the whole time we were in Kyoto was truly miserable - ranging between blistering sunshine and dreary drizzling, with the oppressive stickiness of the air never letting up under either condition) to visit Kinkaku-ji, or the "Golden Pavilion." The two top stories of the structure are covered in actual gold leaf!

Needless to say, the thing was fucking stunning, even in the light trickle of rain that started as soon as we got there, and which failed to break the heat or humidity one bit. We asked a random Japanese schoolgirl to take a photo of us in front of the pavilion, and the next thing we knew, we were posing along with five of her classmates for six photos (each kid wanted one)! When Japanese young people pose for photos, they unfailingly flash the two-fingered peace sign - we don't know why, but we figured we should play along - while the person snapping the shot, in this case their teacher (we think), counts to 3 in English and then exclaims, "Cheese-zu!" The result?


Absolutely sweat-soaked and heat-exhausted from all the walking (and posing), I demanded that we stop for a flavored ice at the stand outside the pavilion grounds. What I got was a true culinary atrocity - a massive softball-sized mound of shaved ice drenched in the most digustingly artificial-tasting red food-coloring, then dribbled with some mysterious white cream, and topped off with three tapioca balls. Here I am licking one of said pale, slimy balls.


Near the ice stand, we spotted this awesome Cup of Noodle vending machine, complete with boiling water tap on the left side. We didn't see a single Japanese person partaking, however, despite their love of ramen. Maybe it was just too fucking hot. Or maybe it was because these cups of noodles, judging from the bottom of the machine, were of extraterrestrial origin...


That night we got dinner at what turned out to be an overpriced-considering-it's-not-so-good-food restaurant along the bank of the Kamo River, which bisects Kyoto from north to south. The evening didn't prove to be a total bust, however, since on the way back to our Ryokan, we stumbled on this seemingly very-out-of-place vodka bar which had its name displayed in large Russian letters and the Russian stacking dolls (Matryoshki) in the window. There was a write-up by the door from a Russian newspaper about the bar and how the owner speaks Russian, having learned it while working for a Russian restaurant in Kyoto called "Kiev." For those of you who don't know, Maya hails from the Ukraine, from Kiev, in fact, (she immigrated to the States when she was 11), so obviously we had to go inside.

As soon as we entered, Maya greeted the owner in Russian and asked if he spoke Russian, to which his reply was a shy gesture indicating "just a little." The walls were covered in an unbelievable array of vodka from all over the world, including one called Red Army in a bottle shaped like a missile (I wanted to sample that, but unfortunately it wasn't for sale). We took some time choosing and finally settled on a Russian lemon-flavored vodka called Limonovka. Then Maya noticed a platter containing "piroshki", little pastry puffs filled with meat that she had been eating since she was kid, and ordered two. When we bit into them, they tasted, according to Maya, very authentic, but when we examined them closer, we found all kinds of very Japanese ingredients like glass noodles and tofu inside. Still, she told the owner they were delicious and asked him, in Russian, where he got them and who made them, to which he replied, "Ya zdelal" ("I did"). Here's Maya enjoying a taste of home (her first home, that is).

When we were about to leave, Maya asked the owner (who was a rather solemn dude with awesome gray hair tied back in a ponytail) if she could take a picture with him, and he obliged, very seriously. Sorry for the blurry pic, it was dark, and the vodka was taking effect.

Maya bid him farewell ("do svedanya"), and he said, "Prihoditye eshcho" ("Come again"). And if we ever do make it back to Kyoto, we definitely will.

white castle

On Friday we took a day trip to Himeji Castle, which is an hour-and-a-half train ride outside of Kyoto. Known also as "the castle of the white egret" because of its color and grace, the castle has appeared in two of the great Japanese director Akira Kurosawa's films, Kagemusha and Ran, the latter being one of the most soul-crushing, heavy-as-hell movies ever made - and that's a recommendation.

But first, on the way to the train that morning, we stopped into a western-style diner that we had stumbled across for some breakfast (you can only eat so much sushi, soba, and tempura). Maya got buttered toast, fruit, and yogurt, while I got waffles with ice cream and fruit. It was pretty great, but the best part to me was my ice tea - which, instead of coming with a shaker of sugar grains, came with a separate little cup full of sugar water. Amazing! Anyone who's had to sweeten their own ice tea knows how virtually impossible it is to get sugar to dissolve in the cold liquid; the Japanese, brilliant minds that they are, solved that by providing the sugar already dissolved.

Now Himeji. Really the pictures speak for themselves. Though what doesn't quite come across is just what a shitty little tourist town Himeji is, and how strange it is to see this majestic and yet serene structure looming over the main street/mall as you walk toward the castle from the train station...

What also doesn't come across is how fucking hot and humid it was. Which meant it totally ruled when we finally reached the castle entrance and were able to step inside the invigoratingly chilly halls. It also didn't hurt that there were cool artifacts from the fortress' history inside, including these two awesome sets of samurai armor.

We climbed up way too many steep-as-fuck stairwells to get to the top of the castle - though the view was worth it (maybe).

On the train ride back to Kyoto, we had a classic "Maya moment": We were sitting near the entrance of our car, which was filled to capacity. A young blind man came onto the train at one of the stops, guided by a woman. I whispered to Maya, "I guess we should offer our seats to the blind man, huh?" and she responded with the sort of no-bullshit attitude that everyone who knows and loves her has come to appreciate and expect. "Why?" she said with genuine incredulity. "His legs aren't fucked up."

loss and gain

Thursday something momentous happened: I accidentally deleted a whole day's worth of photos. That night we had just discovered Yu Kuhan, the rad 24-hour internet cafe (located in the Wao Cube building, a self-described "Neo Synthetic Culture Space," and my new favorite place in Japan), and I had been trying to upload pictures to flickr.com. First of all, I should tell you that all the computers we have been using so far in Japan are in Japanese, which makes all the programs just a little harder to use. Plus, the computers have all been PCs, and Maya and I are both Mac people. So, apparently in Windows OS, or at least Japanese Windows, or at the least the Japanese Windows I was using that night, there's a button in the software where you view pics on your digital camera that deletes all the photos on the camera. And it does so without the little "Are you sure you really want to do this?" warning box that usually pops up when you're about doing something major, like, oh, say, delete all the fucking photos on your camera. Nope, one click, and everything's - poof! - gone. So, yeah, I accidentally clicked this button, and watched as the thumbnails of the whole day's photos instantly vanished.

"I think I just deleted all our photos," I said, half to Maya, half in shock to myself, and then explained to her/myself what had just happened. And amazingly, bless her soul, Maya, instead of instantly ripping my head off (which is pretty much what I felt like doing to myself, if not commiting Harikiri then and there with my swiss-army knife's corkscrew), stared at the screen for a second, stared at me (and perhaps seeing the utter horror and remorse on my face), said calmly, "That's alright, babe. They're just photos. Just because we don't have the pictures doesn't mean we didn't have the experiences, which is the most important thing." She explained that one of the books we had gotten about taking around-the-world trips had even suggested that you try to take less pictures and go out sometimes to explore without your camera, since the camera can become such a barrier between you and the native population and authentic experiences. She also pointed out that we hadn't even been allowed to shoot most of the truly awesome things we had done that day anway.

It was true. That day we had gone to the Sanjusangen-do Temple which contains 1,000 golden lifesize statues of the so-called Thousand Armed Kannon. It was a jaw-dropping sight - literally an army of figures, which had been handmade over a 100 year period, lined up down an endless hallway, each statue subtly different from the last. And photography inside the shrine was strictly forbidden. Here, however, is an official photo that gives you a sense of how insane the sight was:



Then we had made the long climb up to Kiyomizu-dera Temple, a sprawling complex of many different shrines and pagodas. But perhaps the highlight of that visit had also been uncapturable by photography. Under one of the main shrines, we walked down these stairs into a winding basement path of complete darkness - you couldn't see your own hand in front of you - guided only by a handrail of large prayer beads along the lefthand wall. This led you eventually around a bend to a dimly and magically lit spherical stone that seemed to be floating in mid-air; you were supposed to touch this, make a wish, and then spin the stone slowly clockwise. Then, as legend has it, your prayers will come true, and you could follow the beads back out into the sunlight. In the words of Maya, it was "fucking awesome."

While there, we also visited the nearby Jishu-jinja Shrine, the "love shrine." There we saw the "love stones," two sacred rocks placed 18 meters apart - you're supposed to walk from one stone to the other with your eyes closed, and then your romantic wishes will be granted. This might sound like a daunting task already, but what amazed us was that the courtyard between the stones was full of other tourists, which made the challenge all the greater. Still, after observing a number of giggling Japanese high-school girls completing the blind walk, Maya stepped up to the plate, and with a little guidance from me ("Left! Left! Right!"), completed the trek. Among the many other rituals that you could partake in at Jishu shrine, Maya also took part in one involving pieces of rice paper cut into basic Gingerbread Man-like shapes - you write your troubles on one of the paper pieces and then drop it into a sacred vat of water - once the paper dissolves, your troubles are supposed to go away.

But what has made my trouble, my guilt, my sadness over deleting all our pictures from Sanjusangen-do,Kiyomizu-dera, and Jishu slowly dissolve (though I'm still occasionally haunted by the flashing mental image of a photo that was lost) are Maya's rather disarming words of wisdom. Deep into Thursday night we talked about why we are taking this trip and it's not about collecting pictures, or being the typical tourist and hiding behind a camera; it's about the life-changing, priority-shifting experiences we hope to have, and the lessons we hope to learn - and maybe this accident is meant to be one of those lessons. I had been getting too wrapped up in trying to take pictures of everything, trying to capture for posterity the ultimately uncapturable instead of focusing on the here and the now, and, in particular, soaking up the Buddhist go-with-the-flow spirit that Maya apparently had absorbed far more than I, considering her superior ability to let go of those photos. I thought about the main character in Fight Club and how in the beginning of the book/movie, his apartment and just about everything he owns are blown up, it turns out, by his own alterego, Tyler Durden, in order to free him/himself from his own possessions. It makes me think that maybe my Tyler Durden deleted all those photographs.

kicking it in kyoto

So we've been in Kyoto for the last four days, and it's been, I think Maya and I can both agree, pretty amazing (in some good and not so good ways). People often describe Japan as a country of contradictions and contrasts, where the very old and the ultra modern sit side by side in sometime harmony, sometime conflict. This seems to be particularly true in Kyoto.

Much of the city isn't so different from the bustling megalopolis of Tokyo - garish, neon-lit Pachinko/video-game arcades, wstern-style fast food joints, big flashy hotels and nightclubs all abound - but then sandwiched right between such establishments, like strange powerful living dinosaurs, sit some of the most stunning ancient Japanese shrines you can imagine. And then there is Gion or "Old Town": blocks upon blocks of what looks like a samurai-movie set full of traditional wood-and-rice-paper buildings with sliding doors and laterns out front, except that the buildings are all in full use, and cars and mopeds rumble by them, through the claustrophobically narrow streets and alleys. On our first night in Kyoto, walking through Gion, entranced and amazed, we saw 5 Geishas - two separate pairs in full makeup and head-dresses, gorgeously intricate kimonos, and teetering platform shoes being escorted into cabs by solemn older women that we could only assume were their "trainers," heading off to who knows where to do who knows what; another Geisha was simply strolling down the street. We were too in awe - and unsure of the etiquette - to ask if we could take a picture of her.

We're staying at this crazy Ryokan, which is a traditional-style Japanese inn, called Ryokan Yuhara - think of it as a Bed & Breakfast, just in our case, with no breakfast and no beds. The place is super cool-looking, as you can see below...

But as excited as we were when we first arrived at the Ryokan and saw how quaint and cute it looked, we soon discovered that every apparent Pro comes with a hidden Con:

Pro: Beautiful, authentic traditional accomodations with screen doors, scrolls on the walls, traditional seating right on the tatami floor, as well as traditional sleeping arrangements - futon matresses right on the floor.
Con: Maya and I have hardly been able to sleep a wink on these hard so-called matresses, the even harder bean-bag "pillows" (we've had to swap them with the much softer pillows from the traditional floor chairs), and the ridiculously small comforters (which literally are only big enough to cover half of my body).

Pro: Friendly, familial attention from the Ryokan staff, in this case just the owner, Mrs. Yuhara, and her grown son.
Con: Friendly, familial attention from the son, who is one of the freakiest dudes Maya and I have ever met. Maya says he reminds her of a scene in Pulp Fiction, when the young Butch is watching some strange old cartoon on TV and there's this creepy little Eskimo dude with a bizarre accent - that's the son. See what we mean below:

Pro: A traditional Japanese bath.
Con: A traditional Japanese bath is basically a small tub of scalding hot water that doesn't get changed all day, meaning that every guest in the Ryokan gets to enjoy whoever came before them's sloppy seconds. (You're supposed to soap up and rinse off before getting in the bath, so I guess theoretically it's sanitary, but, well, let's just say that Maya and I have yet to try the thing.)

Pro: Tranquil location along a small creek, with crickets chirping.
Con: Damn crickets get so loud at night Maya has had to sleep with earplugs, and the creek seems to be a breeding ground for mosquitoes because the two of us have awoken every morning covered in excruciatingly itching bites. I have no less than 8 bites on my left foot (the right foot has been myteriously spared), 3 bites forming a perfect straight line on my right forearm, and a bite on my right ear; Maya has 2 bites on her right foot, 2 on her right ankle, tons on both legs, and a huge swollen one on her left temple!

My left foot (heh).



Maya's temple.



This, needlessly to say, does not bode well for when we get to Southeast Asia where a lone mosquito bite can mean contracting any number of horrible, debilitating diseases. As I think I've said before, say a prayer for us, you heathens.

bad day, happy endings

Sorry I haven't posted anything new up here for a while - we've been in Kyoto for the last few days and Internet access has been much harder to come by here than it was in Tokyo (where there were three free computers right downstairs in our hotel lobby). But now we finally have located a good place to log-on - a totally awesome 24-hour internet cafe called Yu Kuhan where you can also rent little cubicles with televisions and sofa loveseats in them, and where there are free drinks (mostly coffee - the Japanese love coffee) and a library of anime, manga, and games - I thought I'd first fill everyone in on our last day (Tuesday) in Tokyo before coming to Kyoto (we're actually heading back to Tokyo for a few days in a bit), which really sucked. Everything had been going (relatively) smoothly with our trip so far and maybe we were getting overconfident - then came Tuesday and the proverbial shit hit the fan...

1) We both tossed and turned all Monday night - maybe it was residual jetlag, maybe the seemingly increasing hardness of our bed, who knows. But we both woke up groggy and grouchy.

2) The weather sucked - gray, overcast, humid, not quite raining but clearly about to bring the fucking fury.

3) Our stomachs were all out of whack - Maya kept ducking into the bathroom; I had the opposite problem, plus nonstop burping. Maybe it was the all-too-fresh raw fish from the night before. Or the bento box we had had for lunch. Only the gods of digestion know.

4) Had to do laundry (when you've only packed two or three changes of clothes, and it's typhoon season, that's what happens)...in a tiny washer and drier tucked into a tiny corner in out hotel's kitchenette where you can't even open door of either machine all the way...and where someone had left their wet laundry in the washer so we had to move it all to the dryer to do our wash, then when we had done our wash, said dickhead still hadn't shown up and we had to move his/her clothes back to the washer to dry our shit...and where said drier took about three cycles before it achieved anything even approaching dryness. (My jeans were still damp the next day.)

5) Went to buy Shinkansen (bullet train) tickets to Kyoto for the next day - Maya went to try and figure out the ticket machine, I got in the long-ass line to a teller. She thought she had figured shit out, called me out of line, only for us to discover we were still plenty confused, so we got back in line, finally got to the teller...who didn't speak English, but we somehow communicated to him what we needed, upon which he took my credit card to charge the fare, then a second later handed the card back and crossed his index fingers in an "X" sign - card denied. So I gave him my ATM card - again, card denied. We don't have enough cash on us for the tickets, so we're fucked.

6) Return to the machines, thinking maybe the teller dude just didn't know what he was doing. Nope, cards still denied, which was extra mysterious since I had used the credit card just this morning as well as the night before.

7) Fearful that my bank had shut down my card(s) suspecting identity theft due to all my recent charges in Japan - even though I had called them a month before our trip, telling them I'd be in Asia for the next few months in order to avoid just this sort of thing - we looked in our guidebook for a Citibank in Tokyo. Then proceeded to take the train to Shinjuku (where the nearest one was supposedly located), got out, and, again, the problem encountered the night before with the sushi restaurant - no street addresses! After walking around pretty much aimlessly, we finally spot a Citibank sign, run over, and try the ATM. My card works fine! What the hell? Take out enough money for the Shinkansen tickets, plus plenty more in case of god knows what.

8) Now we go to Ikebukuro (home of the Sunshine City mall) to return this camera that we had bought a few days ago from this electronic equipment superstore called Big Camera. Long story, but basically the camera we had brought with us has been kind of bugging out since we got here, and while we were on the way to Harajuku the other day, it really started bugging out and since the sky was looking like rain and since we didn't want to miss out on snapping shots of the Harajuku kids in full regalia, we bought this new camera very hastily. Turns out the camera sucks, and the next day our original camera started working again fine... So we get to the camera store, manage to track down an employee who speaks English, tell him we want to return the camera, whereupon he consults with his manager for a disturbingly long time, then comes back apologetically: Sorry, no return (cue long, barely intelligible explanation in broken English). Uhhh... Maya tries to convince him otherwise, but her efforts are clearly going nowhere fast, so we try another route: Can we at least exchange it? He consults with the manager again for a suspensefully long time. Finally, yes, manager says we can exchange. So we're set to swap the camera for this Canon Powershot, which we had looked up online the night before and discovered was much better than the camera we had gotten. We go to the checkout counter, hand the cashier my credit card, on which the original purchase had been made. Shit doesn't work! The poor barely-English-speaking employee has to call my credit card company, sort out some shit about how they were just processing the original charge so they couldn't cancel it or I don't know what beauraucratic absurdity. Eventually, after much ado about nothing, we work out a way around it all: The cashier will give us cash back for the original purchase, which we will then give right back to the store to pay for the new camera. Ye gods.

9) Having completed the whole insane transaction, we practically run for the store exit before any new complication springs up, and discover that it's fucking pouring out - "it's like a typhoon or something," as we've been kidding everytime the weather has gotten shitty (which is often). We're starving at this point, so we make a mad dash for a restaurant at a moment when the rain seems to be letting up. Shit starts right back up again, of course, and we're drenched. The streets are basically flooding, and we see the manhole cover bouncing up and down as water gushes up from around it.

10) The storm finally subsides, we duck into the Sunshine City mall and go to this soba noodle place, where there's no English menu and no one speaks English and we accidentally order a whole extra meal.

11) At least with some food in our bellies, we decide to try and find the arcade where we had first seen those medical gauze-wrapped, blood-dripping "Gloomy Bear" dolls which everyone reading our blog seems to be crazy about. We were set on trying to win one, particularly for Maya's niece, Anna, who is subletting our apartment right now. Wandering in circles, we finally realize we're in the altogether wrong neighborhood. The arcade was in Shibuya (not Ikebukuro where we still are)!

12) On the way back to the train, we run into someone in an awesome ultra-cute teddy bear outfit bobbing side to side in front of an arcade - we need a picture! So we grab our (original) camera (which had been working fine again) - the thing goes totally bonkers. So then we scramble to get out and set up the new camera, give it to this young girl who works for the arcade and ask her to shoot a picture of us with said teddy bear, but the new camera also refuses to cooperate! Finally, after much desperate button-pushing and mode-changing, we get the fucking thing working and the girl snaps the hardearned pic below (see the exhaustion and exasperation on our faces?).



13) So we go to Shibuya, somehow find the arcade with the Gloomy Bears, and end up wasting 2,000 yen (approx. $20) trying to win this totally rigged, impossible, bullshit game - you know, one of those deals with the machanical arm that you have to control and try to pick up stuffed toys with. Has anyone ever actually won a toy with one of those hell-spawned contraptions? (So anyway, sorry Anna, we tried.) I'm pissed, pissed, pissed - I had decided (a stupid idea, I admit) that if I at least could win a goddamn Gloomy Bear that this godawful day would have been salvaged, but no, the day was officially fucked.

14) Maybe it was inevitable considering the endless horrors we'd been enduring since we woke up, but Maya and I end up getting into a monster of a fight. Tears are shed, I think, though it's hard to tell, because, of course, it has started raining again and we're getting sopped.

Somehow, under an awning of a big bookstore, we made up just enough to decide that since we're in the neightborhood and since we don't really have that much more time in Tokyo, we should try to find "Love Hotel Hill," which is in Shibuya. If you don't know, Love Hotels are these distinctly Japanese things that evolved because of the tight living quarters that most Japanese people not only habitate in themselves but share with their extended families. This has meant that many people, particularly young people, need a place outside the home to, uh, get it on, so to speak. Enter Love Hotels, little getaways that you can rent out for a few hours - a period referred to as "Rest" - or for the whole night - "Stay." For extra discreetness, you rent out your room by machine. Many of these rooms have themes - S&M, hot tub, bumper cars(?) - and you can often buy lingerie and sex toys on the premises; most of the rooms, however, are just basic walls-and-a-bed setups. Love Hotel Hill features the largest concentration of these hotels in one area in all of Japan - and all of the world. Unfortunately, Maya and I were in no mood to put a Love Hotel to use - any Hate Hotels available where a pissed-off couple can whale on each other for a few hours? - but we did want to see them and it ended up being pretty nuts. And you know what, the strange, rather cheesy, a little sketchy, but somehow still endearing sight of them all (and of all the couples stepping in and out of them, basking in their pre- or post-coital glows) kind of cheered us up and even brought back some of our own love.

something fishy

Monday night, after our Senso-ji excursion, we went down to the Tsukiji fish market area (basically where sushi lovers die and go to heaven, the area probably has the best, freshest sushi in the whole world) to try and find this highly recommended restaurant, Edo-Gin. But believe it or not, buildings in Toyko do not have street numbers as such - an address (say, the one for this restaurant) will read something like 4-5-1 (which is how this one did). So we went in search of this 4-5-1 (supposedly there is some method to this apparent madness - the first digit represents a neighborhood, the next a sector within that, and the final number a couple of blocks within the sector - sounds easy, right?), and ended up asking some cops for directions, then got lost, asked a random dude smoking on the corner for directions, he looked scared and bowed apologetically, asked some random young salaryman-type for directions, he couldn't figure out where the damn place was even after doing some crazy shit on his cellphone... We walked around in circles for a while, finally gave up, and just threw ourselves at the mercy of the best looking sushi place in sight.

Once inside, after discovering the establishment we'd chosen didn't have an English menu (which this mythical Edo-Gin place supposedly did), we ordered one Omakase-style multi-course sampler dinner to share from our young kimono-clad waitress. It was a fateful decision...

First course, a tiny piece of tofu (we think) with a slice of turnip and various creamy shit on top.

Second course (presented with a sprig of ivy), a sweet shrimp, a whole little fish on top of some seaweed-wrapped roe, three edamame pods, and best of all, a little glass cup full of a lotus root in some wet, slimy seaweed that very nearly set off my gag reflex as I tried to get it down.


Third course, sashimi. This ranged from the orgasmically amazing (the medium fatty tuna pieces) to the what-the-fuck-am-I-eating-and-will-I-survive? (the white pieces of unnamed fish, which Maya and I agree, seemed to expand as we chewed it and suck the walls of our mouths right in, till we had wash it all down with water for fear of spontaneous implosion.)


Fourth course, a mystery teapot that turned out to contain a delicate broth with mushrooms and shrimp, beautifully topped off with a squeeze of lime juice (see the slice sitting up there?). To partake, you had to remove the slice of lime, take the upended cup from the top of the pot, pour the broth into that and sip it while dipping in for the shrooms and crustaceans. Yummy yum yum. No, seriously.

Fifth course, grilled fish of some sort sitting on a bed of salt (Maya: "mmmmmm, salt.") with lotus root, tiny sweet potato chunks, a pickled something or other (delicious, whatever it was), and what looked the stump of like a bonzai tree. And some pine needles on top (presumably not for eating). This (pine needles excluded) was scrumptious.

Sixth course, tempura lotus root (see a theme here?), mushroom, pepper, and some kind of fish. Also, very good.

Seventh course, sushi. Besides the sweet shrimp (which did that weird mouth-sucking implosion thing) and the sea urchin roe (see the handroll topped with orange gunk, second from the right? Slimy and disgusting - imagine, uh, sea urchin roe), it was, to quote Maya, "fucking amazing." When you go to a sushi place in the States and order "fatty tuna" or "toro," you're not even getting close to the real thing (not even in name, since in Japan it's called "o-toro."

Eighth course, miso soup. Sounds familiar, but it was still different than in the U.S., namely way more flavorful and with lots more stuff (veggies) floating around in it.

Ninth course, desert: some kind of green tea-flavored cake with what we guess were slices of asian pear and what definitely was a ginormous grape - the latter, as Maya pointed out in amazement, tasted naturally like artificial grape flavor(?)


As insane as the food was, maybe even more insane was 1) the bathroom in this place, which featured one of those legendary hi-tech Japanese toilets complete with control panel that could make the seat and cover go up and down by internal motor and set off a bidet, butt drier, seat heater, and who knows what else; then 2) there was the farewell that we received from the restaurant staff. As we headed for the stairs (to go up just one small flight to the exit), our waitress directed us to the elevator, which she had called, and once we got in, she started bowing so deeply that if the average American tried to follow suit, they'd likely end up at the chiropractor. "Arigato gozaimas," ("Thank you") she said over and over again. Unfortunately, the elevator door wasn't closing, and I was getting very uncomfortable watching her bow and thank us repeatedly, so I frantically hit the "close door" button, and we made our escape - or so we thought. But then after paying our bill upstairs, we headed for the exit, and the entire staff of the establishment suddenly turned, loudly yelled something unintelligible at us (probably "stupid gaijin, nobody actually eats sea urchin roe!" No, I kid - it was almost certainly some combination of "Thank you," "Goodnight," and more "Thank you"s), and bowed over and over. We practically ran out the door - and promptly got lost all over again.