So long Japan, Hello Communism (...Again)

I hop a boat for China tomorrow morning. Just one in a persistent string of departures and short goodbyes, leaving Japan is different because, for the first time so far, I'm not ready to move on.

In my previous blog posts, I've really focused on the negative parts of travel here and I think I figured out why. In a place with so few negative aspects, it's really easy to focus on the ones that are there. In all fairness, Japan is an amazing place to experience.

The people here are so nice... Just looking completely lost will usually be enough for someone to walk over and help. I arrived in Matsumoto way too late without reservations and while I just aimlessly walked around that city at night looking for a cheap place to stay, this man just walked over and asked if he could give me a hand. He helped me get my bearings and pointed me in the right direction. Even more surprising was when I was walking around Fushimi Inari and it began to rain. I didn't particularly mind at all so I just kept exploring. At some point, this woman bursts out of a house and frantically runs over to give me an umbrella. I did my best to describe to her that I didn't mind getting wet but she wouldn't take no for an answer. I thanked her in the only way I knew how (arrigato gozaimasu). It poured the rest of that day and I was extremely glad to have that umbrella.

The cities here are just awe inspiring. I've just lost myself for hours among rows of izakayas and brightly lit store fronts. The neon lights and noise from pachinko parlors fill many streets creating endless options for interesting walks. These cities definitely get more interesting by night and every late night stroll has been rewarding in some way. While I was in Hiroshima for example, I heard some music off in the distance and decided to hunt it down. I stumbled upon a group of friends jamming out under a bridge. They were really good so I just sat down and watched for an hour or so. That was a great night.


And I cant forget the food. There are so many varieties of food unique to Japan and they are mostly awesome. For the first week I was here, I looked forward to every meal and that feeling only subsided as I started cooking for myself to cut costs. One of my favorite specialties is called Okonomiyaki. You sit down at a table with a hot grittle set in the middle called a tepan. After greasing the surface, you put a mixture of meat, cabbage, egg and sometimes noodles in the middle and then flip it once it's crispy on one side. Finally, once it's done, you douse the whole thing in mayonnaise and a dark bbqish soy sauce and then eat. It's cheap and just uncontrollably delicious. This is just one of many amazing food items that I had never heard of but was glad I got the opportunity to try.

I still feel as though the culture is very hard to understand but my feelings have moved from desperation to intense curiosity. This is the first place that I can definitely say I need to come back too and it will have to be for a long time if want to figure things out. And I really do, the culture here is just so dense and rather than scaring me away, it just fosters a greater will to learn. I'll be leaving with more questions than answers so, I totally need to come back (hopefully with more money next time).

So this is my last night in Japan and I'm truly sad to leave. I have two days on a boat to rest (which I desperately need) before landing in Shanghai and beginning my exploration of the intimidating behemoth that China is. I started my night with a 38th floor view of vast cityscapes of Osaka and Kobe. After that, like so many nights before, I walked in what ever direction looked interesting among pachinko parlors, restaurants, izakayas and arcades bathed in neon light. And finally, it ended like many Japanese people end their night over a hot bowl of soba noodles in a humble roadside shop. A fitting climax, I would say, to an awesome couple weeks.

A message from my past self

I just got this email a couple days ago and figured I would share it with everyone. I totally forgot that I wrote this. There is this website that lets you write emails to yourself to be delivered at a future date of your choosing. One day at work I figured it would be fun to write a few... So here's the first one:

The following is an e-mail from the past, composed on Wednesday, October 24, 2007, and sent via FutureMe.org
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Dear FutureMe,

As I'm writing this I'm really hoping that you are somewhere in the world that isnt the states and having a hell of a time.

You should be half way through your trip by now! Don't forget to stop and enjoy your sourroundings if things are frantic or conversley, dont forget that there is much more to see out there if you are taking it too slow! You have 6 months (maybe) left, make the most of them.

Your past self is writing this from his desk in DC... I just hope you (and by you, I mean me) recieve this email somewhere exotic or at the very least much more exciting than your desk at KHHTEF.

When you wrote this you were supposed to be finding Global NAPs Network's federal USF filings, if that doesnt put things in perspective... I dont know what will!

Anyways that is about all I have to say, why dont you make this email into a blogpost or something.

-Your Past Self
P.S. Sorry I went out and spent all that money at the bar last night... I'm sure it would have been nice to have now.

There's less douchery on the road less traveled

Been traveling around Japan now for 2 weeks and it has really been crazy. With such a short amount of time, I've had to move fast.. and move I did. I've spent 4 nights in Tokyo, 1 night in Matsumoto, 1 night in Nikko, 2 nights in Hiroshima, 5 nights in Kyoto and now I'm off to Osaka tomorrow before catching a boat to China on Tuesday. The Japan Rail Pass makes travel insanely easy and fast (a subject which I'll post a video about soon) and getting to your next destination is as easy as just showing up at the train station. So far there have been a few rough nights (one must plan ahead religiously here because spontaneous travel is rewarded with nothing more than homeless nights or expensive hotel rooms) and many long days but that is not what I want to talk about right now.

One of the first things I noticed when I got to Japan was the sheer lack of backpackers. This is an expensive destination so, of course, it does not attract the amount of budget travelers that SE Asia does but there are hardly any here at all. As a result, all of the "Backpacker's Hostels" are mostly filled with people who are on quick 2 week vacations and travel on a budget that is orders of magnitude larger than mine.

Just to be clear, I'm not saying that whatever I'm doing is objectively better than that but it definitely changes the type of people that I run into on a daily basis. I like backpacker folk... This type of travel definitely attracts similar people and through my experience they are almost (and that is a big almost) all pretty cool. They're open minded at the very least. And what is most convenient is that everyone's primary goal is having the best time possible on the least amount of money.

Money really seems to be the most divisive factor. While I'm extolling the virtues of living frugally and going farther, someone is making fun of me for being too cheap to drop $15 on dinner. No big deal though, everyone travels differently and there really isn't a right way to experience a foreign country. Doesn't really bother me too much and I'm quite proud of my ability to live on next to nothing.

For instance: Though food is astonishingly expensive here, I've gotten my dinners down to $1.50 (from >$8) and lunches (the only meal I eat out anymore) are running below $5. Most hostels here have kitchens which are amazing for making cheap dinners. I boil some cheap soba noodles and combine that with a $1 boil-in-the-bag curry sauce and there ya go. It's not the best thing I've ever eaten but it is filling. It's stuff like this that really brings me back to my life in DC.

So, long story short, Japan is expensive and filled with people who love to spend money but with a little determination and no shame, one can really make it reasonable. And plus, it is a lot of fun being somewhat of an oddity in all these "backpacker's hostels."

I've uploaded tons of pictures to my flickr account so that is the best place to go too get a better idea of where I've been and what I've been doing. Plenty more good stuff on the way as well. It's getting late here and I haven't had a night earlier than 2am in weeks... I'm gonna get to China and just sleep more than anything else probably.

Domo Arigato: Not only for thanking robots

Well I’ve been in Japan for a few days now and although I’ve managed to get my bearings, the place still ceases to amaze me. It hasn’t been long but I could already fill pages about my observations and feelings towards this place so I’ll try to start somewhere logical and break it up over the course of multiple posts.

I’ve been quite fascinated with the culture and country for awhile now. Follow video game or tech news for long enough and you get enough glimpses into what goes on here to spark curiosity. So now I’m here trying to figure it all out but more so than anywhere else, I get 10 new questions for every 1 answered. The culture here is a tough nut to crack as a casual observer but all one can do is just try.

The language barrier is the single biggest roadblock to my understanding of Japan. It is actually a very easy language to speak. I’ve already picked up a lot of Japanese and with just a couple weeks, a phrasebook and some determination, I could get conversational. On the other hand, Japanese is one of the hardest languages in the world to read. And there in lies the problem. There is so little English here that really exploring the culture becomes very difficult.

Food is the prime example. Japanese cuisine is some of the best and most varied in the world. There are so many styles of food and dishes that do not exist in other places and from what I’ve had so far, they are awesome! But, there are hardly any menus in English and I searched for days trying to find an okonomiyaki place without luck. I probably passed 10’s of them and I eventually learned there was one NEXT DOOR to my hostel the whole time but since the words are all in Japanese, there was no way for me to know. In Southeast Asia, trying new things was unavoidable but here you really have to try because otherwise you’ll just go eat at Mc Donalds or somewhere else familiar.

Ok, ok, enough of the bitching… In all honesty, determination is rewarded with new experiences and discovering an awesome and cheap soba noodle shop down a back alley is a real treat. Japan is awesome! The food is delicious, people immensely helpful, sights intriguing and bullet trains fast as all hell. I’m really enjoying myself here and could easily spend months if I wasn’t just hemorrhaging money.

Like I said before, there is so much to write about this place so I’ll try to get more posts up soon. Also, pictures and descriptions are getting added to my flickr account all the time and don’t forget that viewing them by set is better than just scrolling through the photostream. I’ve only got a 2 week rail pass here and any day wasted means I’m losing big money but I’ll try to catch up on the writing soon. Additionally, this being the land of technology, I've decided to jump mediums a bit and start taking more video. I finally got a video editing program up and running on my tiny little computer so there should be more of this hitting the net as well.

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