The first sight off the subway was a large colonial style building with a beautiful gold and iron gate. It was apparently the museum of armaments of Argentina. Turning around, we noticed the plaza of San Martin, the liberator of Argentina. The plaza features a massive statue of San Martin ahorse and charging and 2 inch square tiles covering all of it’s walkways and open areas. There were English speaking “guides” asking for donations to fight diseases who were at least helpful enough to point us toward the American Express building.
After briefly looking over the park and spying an old bell tower from a vista looking toward the ocean, we headed inside. It was a clean modern building with very heavy security and lines everywhere for everything. Lorna was directed downstairs for traveler’s checks and I was instantly worried this would become an all day affair. A long, slow moving line zigged back and forth between barriers along the width of the room, 4 or 5 layers deep. Everyone looked like they had been there a while. Luckily, there was a separate line for traveler’s checks with much fewer people but moving just as little.
I set off to find the bathroom and was directed to the front reception desk. I asked for the bathroom in my horrible Spanish and was asked for my passport. The woman checked it over and looked at me, before instructing me to take off my sunglasses so that I could be documented with a photograph. Then I was directed through a security gate and was finally let into the bathroom. This occurred simply because the bathroom had been placed behind the security gate which I believe was intended to keep people from reaching the rest of the offices in the building. The security was far over the top and reminded me of the day during the Occupy Wall Street protests when police simply blocked off the blocks of the banking offices and demanded proof that you worked there to enter. In this scenario, the part of the subway station within those blocks was played by the bathroom, which was no special lavatory.
Lorna had moved up a few feet when I returned. There were still 3 people ahead of us and the line was stopped at a corner. Customers were called behind a tinted glass wall, presumably for the privacy of their transactions, but it gave the line an ominous feel. A slow and unmoving ominous feel. Looking over at the longer line for regular banking, I thought back to Carrefour and all the other customer service lines we’d encountered so far. I decided that Argentina either did not view the people in line as having their time wasted or simply had no culture of respect for such. If you have banking to do, it must be important, right?
When we reached the counter, Lorna filled out her forms and handed over her checks. We found out part of the reason that the line took so long was that the forms needed to be cross checked by someone in another room, leaving us to wait by ourselves for several minutes. There was also a lengthy period where the man at the desk looked irritated at his screen for about 10 minutes and eventually said: “okay” and handed us our stack of bills. I don’t know if it was a computer delay, but if everything checks out so slow, my previous theories on wait times is probably that processes here are simply inefficient.
Free of the bank, we set out for lunch. My first attempt at navigation took us to a shopping area that was more like a street turned into a mall. It reminded me a bit of 3rd Street Promenade in Santa Monica, but with taller buildings and less open air. We picked up a map from the tourist information booth and set ourselves on the right path to a pizza place mentioned in the guide book.
On our way there, we crossed the busiest intersection in the country, possibly in the world. There are 18 lanes of traffic in one street and another 6 or 8 in the cross street. To get across, you have to wait for 3 walk signals. We arrived at our lunch destination and had a very tasty Italian style pizza (thin crust, less focused on the sauce and toppings cover the entire top) of arugula and Parmesan cheese.
Having taken our passports and a sizable sum of cash with us, I had not wanted to walk around the rest of the afternoon. We took the subway home for a relatively quiet evening of leftovers and rest. It is nice to have a comfortable home base on a long trip like this.
]]>In our modern world, kids are more interested in using the computer to watch videos and play games than they are in the TV. This has made sharing the computer for checking email difficult. I had brought my wireless router with me to South America but was worried about it being destroyed by the 220V power. Previously, I’d tested my power strip in the socket and knocked out the power to the house while ruining the power strip instantly. One of my goals for Monday was to buy a wireless router for Sarah’s house, which would accomplish the goals of sharing the internet and removing the need for multiple outlets.
Sarah took us out to Avenida San Juan, the largest commercial street near her house in Boedo. We ended up back at the electronics division of Carrefour and I bought a wireless router for $299. That price may shock you, but only because of the way they denote currency in Argentina. Pesos, the local currency are shown with a $ sign, just like US dollars. The exchange rate is approximately 4.25 Pesos to 1 US Dollar. So the router was around US$70. That’s slightly expensive but it turned out to be a pretty nice router.
Maybe it’s just Carrefour, but it seems like getting checked out at any larger store takes far too long here. Waiting to pay for the router was probably a 15 minute affair which included calling a special employee to handle my debit card. It didn’t help that afterward, we decided to pick up a few groceries at the previously mentioned grocery store. Lorna got in line as soon as we entered the store and it proved to be a smart move. Except that when we arrived with our cart, the women behind Lorna in line got angry and said we were cutting. Sarah opted to give up our place in line rather than explain to them. It’s possible that it’s something no one does in this culture, though I’ve seen it many times in the US.
That afternoon, Lorna and I went to the park with Sarah’s daughters Juana and Eva, Eva’s boyfriend Juanci, and the two dogs Perla and Peri. The dogs are extremely hyper and are often confined to the roof so they do not race through the house destroying things. They could benefit from a few weeks of training to calm them down to house living and more trips to the park where they’re allowed to run free with the other dogs.
Residential areas in Buenos Aires have sidewalks that are often riddled with dog shit. The city has given up enforcing that owners pick up the droppings as they fall and simply send by cleaners about once a week. I’ve never been more thankful that people in the US [mostly] clean up after their dogs. The park, where dogs mostly run free with each other, is even worse than the sidewalks. It requires vigilance to avoid stepping in what we have begun to jokingly refer to as landmines.
As an outsider, the idea of the so-called landmines has a few problems. The first is obviously that no one likes stepping in dog doo. There’s also the smell. But the one that’s troubled me the most is I spend so much time looking at the ground, I can’t appreciate the environment as much. I have also found it more difficult to memorize or notice streets.
Dogs in Buenos Aires, or at least in Boedo are rarely spayed or neutered. Though they are allowed to play freely in the park and run without leashes or supervision, you must be careful that your dogs aren’t engaging in any potential puppy production. Perla, the most energetic of dogs, is also fond of running up to picnicking families and checking to see what they’ve got. Peri, on the other hand, took a nap in a warm pool of oily mud.
Among all of this Juana played and danced in the park while Eva and Juanci played guitar and sang in English and Spanish. Eva is looking to begin school at a music conservatory and plays the guitar and piano quite skillfully. Juanci, though not attending school for music, can also play well. His real talent is his voice which I was very impressed with. I played a little of my harmonica, but having no real musical education, felt like I was ruining the songs rather than helping in any way.
The weather and the park were beautiful and we sat beneath large shady trees in the grass. There were some ruins of an old wall which played a role in a previous revolution or war. The general dirtiness of the park was problematic for true relaxation, though. Coupled with the constant danger of a mud-footed Perla crashing through us, it was not what you’d expect from a warm breezy afternoon in a public park.
When we returned home, Sarah had made stuffed peppers, canalones (sp?), beets, fruit salad, tomato sauce from whole tomatoes, and more. She’d cooked up enough food to last the family (and us) for some time before Christmas. That night we all gathered for a family dinner of giant bell peppers stuffed with rice, beef, and garlic topped with cheese and baked in the oven. They were a delicious end to the evening.
]]>The subway in Buenos Aires is excellent. The stations are cleaner than New York and the trains appear newer. Though they are covered in graffiti on the outside, the windows are unscratched and the seats are clean. The tunnels have no particular odor and are not piled with garbage. The stations are an older style and the one closest to Sarah’s house even has a wooden escalator.
Exiting Bolivar station, I saw a very interesting park with statues and surrounding buildings of the beautiful colonial architecture we usually expect from Europe. I wanted to explore, but we were also on our way to the market. A few blocks down we turned onto a small street that I thought only housed a few tables and carts of tourist merchandise. Instead, I realized the market stretched on for almost 20 blocks, seemingly never ending as I looked up for the end of it.
I resolved immediately not to buy anything right away to avoid impulse buys and carrying armloads of stuff. It turned out to be a good idea because I’d already seen 15 things I wanted in the first three blocks.
We stopped near a cathedral that I wanted to take some pictures of and first noticed a museum of toys across the street from it. The entry was 1 peso or about 23 cents. There were lots of interesting off-beat toys from bygone eras but the most interesting part was that the museum used to be a private residence circa 1910. A three story townhouse with twice the square footage of our apartment on each floor overlooking a gorgeous cathedral in downtown Buenos Aires seems like a pretty awesome pad, if you ask me.
After leaving the toy museum I discovered that we could look inside the cathedral as well. I have no background in catholic history and the signs were all in Spanish, but there were some really beautiful artifacts. There was also a room of self flagellation items and some pretty gruesome carvings of a dying Jesus.
We began searching for food when we left the cathedral, which took my attention away from the market. We walked past many places but nothing that particularly caught my eye. The street performers began to make their appearance, including one famous man who dresses like he is caught in a gale force wind storm.
It was a long walk to the restaurant that Sarah had in mind but worthwhile. I had a cold banana milkshake and part of Lorna’s ham & cheese sandwich. The walls of the cafe were carved up with decades worth of names of lovers and hooligans who’d sat there before us. Our waiters wore tuxedo vests and seemed quite confident in the quality of their establishment. Sarah said she thought they were all drunk on the job when someone broke a third glass behind us near the kitchen.
Making our way out of the market we were going to head to Boca, famous for Tango dancing in the street and at the restaurants. Sarah originally wanted to take a taxi but Lorna noticed that they were very close on the map and we decided to walk because of the weather.
We walked a long time and it started to seem like we were lost. To take a bus we would need coins to pay the fare but no kiosks were willing to give coins as change. We stopped in a hostel and got a map which showed we were quite close so we continued walking. On our way we found a very beautiful park with terrace steps and a view of the city. A band was playing Pink Floyd with a backdrop of political graffiti on a war memorial statue.
We still had not reached Boca and continued walking. We were lost again. We stopped for directions two more times, continuing to walk through quiet neighborhoods and along roads of rubble filled empty lots. I saw lots of amazing graffiti murals and two burned out cars. There were bums and packs of teenagers and pleasant retirees around each corner. Stray dogs and their ever-present droppings were the sign we were not in a tourist district. After more directions from a helpful man at a stop-light, we reached the waterfront. The smell of rotting fish or garbage came on with a force. As we began to walk along the water, some police blocked our way and told us it was too dangerous to walk that way, pointing us back and toward the Boca district we had been searching for for hours.
The streets of Tango dancers and restaurants was actually less impressive than I expected. Or maybe I was too tired from walking all afternoon. We made two passes by but soon wanted to go home. We’d tried to get coins for the bus again only to have an argument with the booth owner about their availability. I relented and suggested we take a taxi home.
Later, Sarah took her housekeeper, Olga, out for dinner in farewell before her vacation. Sarah ordered empanadas to be delivered for us and Juana before leaving. Lorna and I helped Jauana get dinner and put her to bed before watching Ghost in the Shell on Lorna’s laptop and retiring for some much needed sleep.
]]>Later in the day, Eva and Juanci woke up and talked with us a bit. Eva did some translating for us and Juanci spoke Spanish until he decided music would be better. Though the both of them were talented musicians, I didn’t really understand what was going on. We got directions to the nearest ATM and to the nearby market from them. Sarah had left with her youngest daughter Juana for a school play and taken the keys to the house. The only way to leave the house was to open the garage door and leave it unlocked for our return. We didn’t want to be responsible for the house getting robbed, so we opted to wait for her return.
We sat and read. We ate lunch. We read more. Sarah finally returned around 4:30pm and told us of how the school event had featured over 100 kids and took 5 hours to complete. We took the keys and hit the ATM and grocery store before returning home with our supplies.
We decided not to try to force anything else major into the day and focus on errands needed to settle ourselves. Later in the evening we went shopping again at another grocery store and to search for a power converter.
The grocery store was fairly normal. It resembled an Argentinian Target featuring wilted vegetables and overpriced wines. We gathered up meat for Milanesas and a few other supplies and headed for checkout. The lines were … well, I sat here for 3 minutes trying to think of an adjective.. They were long. Very long. We got in line and didn’t move. I went to get a bath mat and came back, then thought better of it and returned it to the shelf. Lorna and the cart hadn’t moved a step. I checked out the ice cream section and we had moved up one person. The other lines weren’t moving either.
After about 30 minutes we were no longer standing among the shopping aisles and had only 5 or 6 people waiting ahead of us. I could see that the cashiers were chatting with customers and each other, looking over the items being purchased and lazily scanning them or looking up prices. I started timing the total time per customer. The range was between 4 and 12 minutes and had no direct relationship to the number of items purchased. Just before 10pm, we were finally free of Carrefour market and on our way back home.
Milanesas are a simple Argentinian dish of thin tenderized beef soaked in egg and garlic and then breaded and fried in oil. They are quite delicious and something I definitely plan to make for us when we return home. We’d bought some wine and beer at the store and opened a bottle of wine with dinner. We wanted to try the second wine and so that was opened as well. This drinking then lead to the first bottle of beer being opened. I had planned to save the beer for a hot day by the pool, but somehow the second bottle was opened as well. Then, amidst protests, the third bottle was opened as well and it was all gone. Drunkenly, we headed to bed in the wee hours of the morning.
]]>We waited in line for about 40 minutes to pass through security for international connections. Our connection time was supposed to be an hour and fifteen minutes, so this wait became a bit stressful. It was not helped that the flight staff could not speak English and apparently could not read the times printed on our tickets. There was no need to worry as we made it through with plenty of time before our flight changed gates and was delayed a half hour. Ah, The joys of air travel…
We took a smaller half filled plane across the Chilean Andes into Argentina. I loved the greenery of the small and perhaps impoverished farms that were all around the runway in Santiago. We saw small clusters of towns between miles and miles of farmland in Argentina. I needed to use the bathroom urgently, but the flight attendant’s seat was blocking the aisle and she insisted in a rapid string of Spanish that it would be only a minute longer. Twenty minutes later, as I was on the verge of pleading to get through, the fasten seat belt sign finally turned off.
We landed at the domestic airport Jorge Newbery in Buenos Aires and watched through our window as Lorna’s distinct purple luggage was loaded onto the cart. We waited 30 minutes in the line for immigration only to find out that we needed to pay the US$140 reciprocal fee before getting our visas stamped. This fee grants us 10 years of access to the country without paying again. From the name and reading about other countries, I am guessing that the US charges Argentinians a similar fee to enter and this is just turnabout. Hopefully, we love the country enough to want to get our money’s worth from it.
We went to baggage claim inside the international arrivals area. There were bags laid out all over, and a poorly operating belt that kept jamming and needing intervention. There were also people waiting around to talk to the baggage agent about missing bags. That would soon be us, as Lorna’s bag was nowhere to be seen. I watched the arriving luggage while she talked with the agent. Eventually, he told us to try to go to the other baggage claim past customs.
I readied my forms and walked up to customs where a friendly looking older man smiled and thanked me as I loaded my backpack onto the conveyor. And that was it. No one even took my forms or asked any questions. Our bags were x-rayed and we picked them back up and we were free to enter the country. They didn’t even look at my passport again.
We walked out and I saw Sarah immediately. She greeted us and we told her about the missing bag. From there we went on a hunt to the airline desks and they eventually pointed us toward the domestic arrivals area. A security guard happily took Lorna back through security to their baggage claim and she emerged 10 minutes later having found her luggage. It was a huge relief to us. I changed $50 to Argentinian pesos at a horrible rate to have some spending cash and we left for a restaurant that Sarah had been craving.
We walked out of the airport and promptly jay walked, or jay ran as I should say, across four lanes of traffic which had no concern for our safety. There was a vast body of brown water ahead of us which I thought was the Atlantic. Sarah informed us that it was in fact a river and Uraguay was on the other side. I tried for a minute and eventually made out some land on the far shore, but could have easily been convinced that it was the sea.
As we came to the restaurant, I saw a storm pouring rain somewhere in the middle of the river. We took some seats inside and Sarah ordered us some delicious sausage sandwiches and a gigantic cerveza. Soon after we began eating the storm across the river reached us with a fury. People outside scattered, some making their way inside. For about 15 minutes, the rain splashed as hard as it could against the plastic walls of the patio structure. Then it stopped. The sky cleared, and except for the puddles, it was like nothing had happened. As we were leaving, a kind looking older man shook my hand and smiled, telling me good luck in Spanish.
Sarah warned us that the traffic in Buenos Aires was likely to kill us if we were not careful. We immediately jaywalked across 5 lanes, me running with the 47 pound suitcase over my head, to hail a taxi. The taxi ride took us by what seemed like empty lots strewn with piles of shipping containers. We went through a government district with beautiful buildings interspersed with concrete box apartments. The taxi straddled the lines of the road and shared lanes with other cars through an endless traffic jam. We broke free for a block only to stop again.
We finally arrived at Sarah’s house and unloaded our bags. We met her daughter Juana, saw our room, then met her daughter Eva and Juanci, Eva’s boyfriend. The house seemed to reach back much further than I thought possible. It mixed open air patio with living room and all the doors could have barred prison-style doors closed over them at night. Eventually, it was decided we would go out for dinner and we grabbed another taxi into the city.
We had a mountain of steak and beef organs at a supposedly famous restaurant that I did not catch the name of. The steak was absolutely wonderful. The thyroid gland and intestines had tolerable tastes but chalky textures I didn’t care for. The kidney I didn’t try. We had three bottles of wine between us and paid for our dinner in US dollars. On the way out Sarah wanted to stop again for wine, expensive stuff, but I begged off because we would not have cab fare home. Around 1:30 AM we collapsed for sleep.
]]>One ray of sunshine in all of this was that our flight left Raleigh at 5 PM. This meant that even though I’d slacked on packing, the day of our trip I was able to get everything done with plenty of time to spare for playing with our cat, Moose. I stuffed my backpack full of clothes and miscellaneous traveling supplies like a compass, socket splitter, headphone splitter, flashlight, USB cables and chargers, and more. Still, I actually packed less overall than my original trip to Japan. I also had to load up on ebooks, mp3s, and movies because I can’t go long without digital entertainment!
We treat our cat like she’s our own daughter sometimes, and most especially in respect to her comfort. Lorna’s mother’s cat Georgie hates Moose and attacks her relentlessly. Moose hasn’t been exposed to cat on cat violence and so she doesn’t know to fight back. Leaving Moose there, even separated by doors, has been one of my biggest worries. It’s better for her to have people around even in the presence of a mean cat beyond a door than it is to leave her alone for 23+ hours every day for a month.
Finally, we were off to the airport. Once you begin a trip and there’s no more opportunity to make changes to your plan, the stress starts to wane a bit. I wasn’t quite back to feeling like a travel pro, but I was ready to accept the hand I’d dealt us with my lack of preparation.
I have a strong objection to the corrosion of privacy for citizens in our country. Because of this, I have a moral objection to the full body scanners and also the “safety” grope that you can opt for instead. I’ve made a decision not to fly unless it’s necessary from now on but unfortunately even a month trip is not enough time for Lorna and I to ride to Argentina on a motorcycle. We opted out of our dose of high radiation and passed through the x-ray scanner only to find no one on staff to perform the pat-down. I was pretty happy to skip that point of contention.
With that, we were on our way. We had a layover in Atlanta where I ate some mediocre fast food and then a 10 hour flight to Santiago Chile. My seat-back entertainment system had crashed and the flight attendants kept forgetting to reset it when I asked. I had brought new sneakers which were too tight to wear after my feet swelled a little at altitude. I tried to sleep several times but never managed more than 40 minutes and a sore neck. Ah, the joys of air travel!
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My rules were pretty simple, 25 stories (the amount taken from Facebook’s recent viral outbreak) written on my twitter account. Each would be numbered, which cut my space to 137 characters. They would all be posted within a single day too, which gave me a deadline. I completed my task with time to spare, much to the confusion of several people on Facebook, which receives my Twitter feed.
Here is the collection of stories, with links to the original Twitter posts:
#1) Empty desert for miles in all directions. The car rolled to a stop, it’s driver murdered. Who done it?
#2) Success! The world’s heroes & governments fell easily to Baron Plague’s weapons. Now where had those clone templates gone?
#3) From mountain to rubble to sand to sediment. Then mined then sculpted. The nose of the Sphinx. Destroyed and forgotten, back to sand.
#4) Lifetime limits be damned. Technology cannot be contained. I’ll save my mother by giving birth to her.
#5) “Rid us of the goblins!” said the king. Zor the Magician now wished he’d picked bow tie & top hat over beard & staff for his act.
#6) Jack worried about his future a lot these days. Jobs were scarce. Former child actors have it hard. Especially because Jack was a dog.
#7) “Doctor, there’s trouble.” “What is it?” “The machines can time travel.” “That’s concering.” “And Shakespeare was a computer.”
#8) He told them all his name was Reggie to avoid the beatings. His real name was Adolf. He’d show them. He would save the world.
#9) They called Mark Jenkins the “Banker with a Heart of Gold”. But he’d really been smuggling precious metals in his intestines.
#10) T’lor, from a family of necromancers, wished to be a dancer. He had quite the following, mostly from performing in graveyards.
#11) I’ve built the world’s most advanced AI using data from human interaction on the internet. Now I need to hire PR because it’s a jerk!
#12) Now that my sister is marrying the Prince. I wonder how he’d feel if he knew his brother in law leads the resistance.
#13) On my deathbed I must come up with an answer. How do I tell the city about the mole men beneath their streets? -Plumber General Roth
#14) Jane had a new problem. The faulty door lock systems released the tracking wolves. And they hadn’t been fed since she’d hurt her leg.
#15) Of the 3 dragon brothers, Jorn thought he might be adopted, not for his grey scales or ice breath, because he didn’t like to eat knights.
#16) Snowfall made it dangerous. Footprints. Blood in stark contrast. Still air. Why’d she always get the best paying gigs in winter?
#17) Bill had long suspected his bank was run by zombies. He couldn’t be sure though. Until the loan agent bit him.
#18) Ivan Invincible’s only weakness was gamma rays. And his alcoholism. And gambling. And hookers. The media really latched on that one.
#19) A cigar & whiskey day until she walked in. Hired him to find her brother. After 2 weeks he confessed: “I’m only a dick to get dames.”
#20) Rickey hefted his sledge to demolish the last wall of the square room. Smashing through, he saw someone had written: “Hello Twitter”.
#21) Frank stopped, his future self before him. “Immortality sucks.” he said “Don’t have kids. Your, my, no good son won’t let me die.”
#22) Solarcorp wouldn’t take fault for the red giant. It was for profitability. The planet burst into flame during the press conference.
#23) Herman had always resented his very ordinary life. He felt better about it after the Aliens had culled the stand-outs, though.
#24) “If I’d never released that virus, I’d never have met you.” he said via quarantine intercom. “The most beautiful woman left on Earth.”
#25) It was the happiest day of my life when the network became sentient. I never thought it would ask: “Dad, where do babies come from?”
It was a fun project, which I think was successful. My personal favorites were #5 and #7. Post your favorites in the comments.
My last month in Japan had stopped being tourism and became more about spending time with the special people I’d met there, specifically Lorna. Halfway through January, I learned that Silvia’s living situation in Korea had become unstable. I decided that since staying in Japan was so appealing already, I would opt to not further complicate her life with my visit. Then, with the US Economy still nosediving, I began to worry about money. I decided that a $1500 ticket to France for a week of spending Euros and another $1200 ticket to New York wasn’t the best idea. My globe trotting trip had stopped at Japan. I pushed my departure date back to the 4th of February. Of course some of these cuts were simply to accommodate my desire to stay in Japan.
There were some notable highlights to my last month in Japan. On the 8th of February, Lorna’s mother Kris and I headed to Osaka’s World’s Fair Park and it’s Museum of Ethnology. The museum contained works of art from countries of the world (excluding North America) and information on how they coordinated to the cultures that created them. I particularly enjoyed demon masks from Southeast Asia and the examples of many of the written languages of the world. There was a machine in Japan’s section which gave an example of all the local dialects of Japanese. Even with my rudimentary Japanese I heard how different the language could be throughout even this small country. The World’s Fair has created a lot of interesting attractions around the world. Most famous is the Eiffel Tower, which is one of the main tourist destinations in Paris. In Osaka, they created the Tower of the Sun. Nowhere near as famous as Eiffel’s tower, but distinctly Japanese in its oddity, it is deceptively tall.
Above all, I realized just how close Osaka and Kyoto are. There are several trains between the two cities, each taking just under an hour. The trip costs less than 500 yen and isn’t an ordeal of any kind.
The day after the Museum in Osaka, I decided to head out on my own in Kyoto. I planned out a trip to some temples on the East side of the city, taking a new subway line I’d never ridden before. I wandered and found a Buddhist garden which cost 400 yen to enter. I felt slightly ripped off as I realized it was extremely small. I ate my lunch on the temple’s step then headed out to wander some more. I next found a much larger temple. This one was much more impressive and also free. While exploring I found a large red brick aqueduct running through the temple. Even more exciting than this, there was a path along the top of it. I walked the path that ran on the edge of the hillside forest without another person in sight. After about 15 minutes, I found the end at the water pumping station and turned back around. I was supposed to meet Will in an hour, but chose to skip the subway back and walked. I realized during the walk that I was recognizing more Kanji characters simply by immersion. Though that immersion was mostly memorizing train stop names.
I met up with Will and everyone else at the Kaikan. Daniel, Will’s friend on a Buddhism study in Japan, was in attendance for his last few days in Kyoto. We all hung around playing video games and drinking combini beers. I missed the last train and headed to the apartment with Will and Daniel, where we cleverly unlocked Will’s old roommate’s room and gained access to a second bed.
The very next day, I revisited my realization of just how close Osaka was. I met with Lorna and Kris to visit Kris’ friend Ronnie in Osaka. We four had lunch, where Lorna and I read her children’s book on the concept of Peace. Afterwards, we met up with some Ronnie’s friends for a Peace demonstration against the Israel/Gaza situation. It was frighteningly cold but many people showed up to support it. I mainly observed, feeling fraudulent due to my lack of reading on the situation. The Japanese police force was there to observe and keep the crowd in line. However, because of the nature of the crowd and the police in Japan, it seemed more like they were a detachment of crossing guards than bracing for trouble.
On the 13th of January, I met up with the Kaikan Krew again to have a goodbye party for Daniel. Daniel had spent 5 months in Japan on his Buddhism study and was scheduled to leave on the 15th. Everyone hung out drinking combini beer and playing video games as usual. Yuya showed up eventually, wine in hand as usual. By the end of the night, another last train had been missed and Daniel was carrying Yuya through the streets as we all walked to our various destinations. It was below freezing for the first time in Japan, and Will slipped on an iced bridge, falling flat on his ass. We continued the long trip back to Shichijo using every other sentence to curse the cold.
Two days later, Daniel and Kris left Japan and I moved from Yodo to Lorna’s apartment. I was sad to leave Hisa and Isamu. Over hot chocolate, Hisa asked if Lorna’s apartment was warmer and I said yes with a grin. She congratulated me on finding a warm room and a warm heart in Japan.
That weekend, on the 18th of January, Lorna and the exchange student association at her university put on a talent show. Lorna performed a traditional Japanese dance in her kimono and was very popular at the reception. I enjoyed it a lot, though my favorite was the Japanese drumming. The performance reminded me of the opening ceremonies of the Olympics in China. Drums were brought out on stage and a troupe of middle aged Japanese women (and one American boy) marched out on stage. Two shouts from the troupe leader seemed to transform the sedate women into cheering jumping drummers. They shouted and danced around on the beats, banging out several very energetic songs.
Immediately after the talent show, we headed to a joint going away party for myself, Aki, Momoko, and a few others who were going away in February. To begin the evening we ate and drank at an all-you-can-eat-and-drink restaurant. I talked with Kyle, Aki, Momoko, and Yuya and met some new people among their friends. After dinner, half of the group of about 25 people headed to Karaoke. I’d wanted to try it out, so Lorna and I joined them.
Karaoke in Japan is different from America. Each group of friends orders food and drinks, then heads to a private room. There is no stage, and the microphones are passed around. I liked this setup better, as it prevents you from having to embarrass yourself in front of strangers. Watered down “whiskeys” are available for free, but substantial drinks cost more. Most of the time, Japanese kids bring a bottle of whiskey in with them if they want to get drunk. I was surprised how well most of them sang, especially Yuya. Hiroki (who was leaving for South Africa and has a scholarship for rugby) danced and sang his song, giving Dylan a lap dance in the process. I yelled, rather than sang, Cult of Personality. Lorna and I tried to get pictures with each person in the room, missing only a three.
&nsbp;
Things started to settle down after that night. Lorna and I went out for drinks with her friends and with the Kaikan Krew. I made pizza for the family in Yodo. We met up with her friend Haruko in Osaka. We cooked dinner for each other back and forth.
The cold started to let up a little toward the end of January. On the 29th, it was the warmest it had been since early December. I decided to take a walk and headed out for the river. I walked from Demachiyanagi station to Gojo street, which is 5 train stops and took over three hours. Along the way I saw a crane standing like a statue in the water’s current. I saw a young man trying to walk down the side of the river embankment and then fall flat on his face in the weeds at the bottom. He got up pretending like nothing had happened and I may have been the only one to see it. I saw a hobo camp that seemed to be set up to automatically fish in the river. I saw lots of people relaxing on the river’s edge enjoying the warm weather. There are lots of hobo homes built under the bridges along the river, stacked like miniature apartments. It’s so accepted and safe that they leave their chairs and tables out in the open, some even with stereos on them.
At this point it was getting very close to the end of my trip. I wanted to stay longer, but my visa was actually going to expire this time, so I had to go somewhere else. I booked tickets back to America, to New York via Beijing (no, I don’t know) and Los Angeles. I tried to pack in as much time with Lorna as possible.
On February 1st, Lorna and I took a trip to one of the places I hadn’t been able to visit yet; The Arashiyama Monkey Park! The trip turned out to be one of the best things I did in all my time in Japan. The park, or Monkey Mountain as I call it, is essentially just that. You pay 550 yen admission and then start walking up the mountain. You can hear monkeys in the woods and trees above you on the mountain but there are no fences, only signs warning you not to feed the monkeys or look them in the eyes. Close to the top, we began to see the monkeys clearly. Then, we started to see them sitting in the path. It was slightly scary, wild monkeys are not to be trifled with.
At the top of the path is a shack with wired windows. We were welcomed in by the Monkey Park staff. Inside you can buy bits of apple or bags of nuts and other pieces of food. You then walk to the caged windows and hand them out to the monkeys climbing all along the outside of the building. I took close to 100 pictures and several minutes of video. Lorna and I got our picture taken outside with one of the more social monkeys and watched a few monkey fights. Somber looking Japanese people would trudge up to the top while we were there, enter the shack, and instantly fill with joy. Many young girls and children squealed with delight after handing out apples and nuts. It started to get dark, so we headed back down the mountain content with the trip.
After Monkey Mountain, we went to the Kaikan for the last time. Lorna went home a little early to get rest for work the next day. I stayed for a few hours later having combini beers with everyone and engaging in some mischief. I felt like I had made good friends there, simply because of how hard it was to believe I was actually leaving.
I was leaving though. The last few days in Japan were at the same time wonderful and very hard. I plan to go back again this year. I want to see Lorna and all my new friends again. I have spent more time in Japan than I have in any other place outside the US combined. I feel that I’ve learned more Japanese from immersion than I currently remember French from four years in high school. And I feel that my ability to be social and make friends has been rejuvenated. Japan was the best trip of my life.
Because I skipped so much, below is a time line for this entry:
01/08/2009 – Museum of Ethnology in Osaka with Lorna’s mother, dinner & slept at Lorna’s
01/09/2009 – Temples and Aqueduct, Drinking at Kaikan, stayed with Will & Daniel
01/10/2009 – Went with Lorna & Kris to Osaka for lunch & Protest. Stayed the night.
01/11/2009 – Bunraku in Osaka with Lorna & Kris, stayed again
01/12/2009 – Return to Yodo, Nothing more.
01/13/2009 – Searching for Cat5 leads to drinking at the kaikan, stayed with Will & Daniel
01/14/2009 – Woke up at 2, slow day with Will, Dinner with Lorna & Kris, stayed with Lorna
01/15/2009 – Back to Yodo, packed up my things, Cocoa with Will & Hisa, Move in with Lorna
01/16/2009 – Nothing for the day, dinner with Lorna at (place)
01/17/2009 – Relaxing around the house during the day, drinks with Rachel & Cara
01/18/2009 – Lorna’s dance, reception. nomi hodai with Kaikan Crew, Aki & Momoko, karaoke
01/19/2009 – relaxing day, errands, Lorna made me dinner
01/20/2009 – Sleep, Internet, Lorna made me dinner again
01/21/2009 – Nothing of note
01/22/2009 – Nothing of note
01/23/2009 – Walk in Imperial Palace, Flying Keg, Pig & Whistle with Ben, Ian, Ayumi, Rachel
01/24/2009 – Meeting Haruko in Osaka
01/25/2009 – Making Pizza in Yodo
01/26/2009 – Nothing of note
01/27/2009 – Nothing of note
01/28/2009 – Lunch w/Lorna during work, Afternoon snack with Will, Lorna meets up, Kaikan
01/29/2009 – Warm warm day, walked Demachiyanagi to Gojo along river
01/30/2009 – Nothing
01/31/2009 – Drinks at the beer bar with Will & Yuki & Lorna
02/01/2009 – Monkey Park, Kaikan, stayed late for goodbyes, mustaches on posters
02/02/2009 – Rainy half day with Lorna, food shopping
02/03/2009 – Last day with Lorna, Stomach trouble from Mos Burger, Sadness
I got back to the Hisa clan’s house in Yodo around 11 AM. The house was still except for Kenta, who was past his gate at the door. Everyone was still asleep from the previous night. Rickie was the first one to wake up, which told me I had definitely missed a strange night. As it turned out, everyone had gone to the temple before midnight and come home around 2 AM. Will and Rickie then went back into Kyoto for some parties. Rickie had gotten home at 7 AM. As the rest of the country began to wake up in it’s post-celebratory haze, I heard a few stories during everyone’s recovery. Hisa and Isamu were up sometime around noon, instantly snapping back into their normal roles.
I passed the day with little excitement. Unfortunately the next day was quite similar. Lorna and her mother set off for Tokyo on the 2nd, and Will arrived in Yodo to prepare for their trip to Hokkaido. 2009 was shaping up to be a very quiet year.
On the 3rd, I woke up alone in the house. Everyone had left for Hokkaido and it was just Kenta and I. My task for the day was to find something to do for my four days of solitude. I spent time on the internet and then headed to the Kaikan dorm to hang out with Bob, Kyle, and Daniel (Will’s neighbor). Kyle jailbroke my iphone and showed me a lot of the new applications I could download while we all watched movies and played Mario on the Wii virtual console. The evening ended a little before midnight with me taking the long walk back to Yodo.
The next morning I found myself in a similar position as the day before. It was cold, I was alone, and I needed something to do to keep me from having long conversations with Kenta. I headed back out to the Kaikan again, but this time with the plan of dinner and drink.
We all went to a small noodle restaurant near the dorm. Bob and I had a beer with dinner then we all grabbed a few more at a convenience store on the way back. There’s something about being in college that takes the edge off of drinking like a hobo. Or it could just be that drinking at a bar is prohibitively expensive in Japan. Around 11:50 PM I had a small buzz but wasn’t really interested in returning to Yodo. I convinced Bob to let me stay on his floor and made another trip to the quickie mart on the corner for some Kirin Strong 7.
After midnight, I ended up discussing American politics in the Middle East with Hasan. Hasan is a Moroccan student who’s been in Japan for several years. Between some slurring and the language barriers in both English and Japanese, I’m not sure he understood my point. We both settled that we didn’t think what Israel was doing was right. Hasan said he didn’t care that it was a Jewish-Muslim conflict, he just didn’t want to see anyone dying. I couldn’t agree more. An hour or two later, Kyle had disappeared and Bob and I realized we were the last ones awake. I slept on the blankets from Bob’s kotatsu (heated table) in unexpected comfort.
In the morning I got up and made the trip to Yodo. It was cold and I was not feeling great. Kirin Strong 7 is not really a beer. It’s a beer flavored 7% alcohol drink. This feature had given it a particularly disgusting hangover effect. Kenta was beside himself with loneliness when I got back, practically backflipping with joy to see me.
Recovering from my hangover, I spent the day on the internet and sitting at the kotatsu. Feeling the inertia to remain lazy, I did the same thing the next day. I watched Jurassic Park on youtube, cleaned up some photos I’d taken, and whiled away the hours. In the late evening, Hisa, Isamu, Rickie, and Will returned from their ski trip in Hokkaido. Hisa made sure to make fun of the instant ramen containers I’d thrown away. I don’t care, they were delicious and cheap.
After two and a half days of nothing, I finally had something to do on Wednesday. Lorna and her mother had returned late the night before. She had a half day in the morning and I was headed out to meet up with her for lunch. We ate and caught up on her trip while her mother was out seeing some of her Kyoto friends. Though I’d seen her when she got back to Japan, the weekend had felt very long. When her mother returned we went for dinner at Cafe Independents near Shijo. Lorna and I had tried to go there before, finding it closed for a private party. It was worth the return trip in both food and atmosphere. It was getting late and very cold so I decided to stay with Lorna and her mother, rather than risk the weather on the long walk in Yodo.
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December 26th – The Crazy Crab Party
The day after Christmas was more lively than the day before by a long shot. Hisa and Isamu threw a party for their friends to consume massive amounts of Japanese crab. A total of 14 people came to consume crab and drink the night away. The first bit of crab I ate was not so bad, the second piece was pretty delicious, the third piece was not too great, and the fourth renewed my hatred for crab. Not speaking Japanese, I simply ate boiled pork and veggies for over an hour and a half. As the crab waned, I noticed that every single Japanese person in the room was vivaciously drunk.
December 27th – The Bread Lesson
The day after the Crazy Crab Party, Hisa’s neighbor arrived for a lesson in how to make bread. I was happy to teach her and happier still to make more bread. Unfortunately, she had bought Kraft Cheddar Cheese Food instead of real cheese. We spent over an hour breaking it into spongey pieces of yellow during the rising process. The lesson produced delicious bread, nonetheless. She learned to make bread, and I learned about measurements in Japanese and Metric. She wrote down what she learned and I did not.
December 28th & 29th – Cleaning
Amid two days of extreme boredom, I found myself doing housework to pass the time. In order to properly welcome the new year, Japanese households clean EVERYTHING. The first day I was employed to clean all the high places in the house that only I could reach. It was an easy job that I found entertaining, as my rag quickly became black in the places no one had been able to clean all year. The following day, there was yard work to be done. Trimming hedges and sweeping up. In the afternoon, Isamu and I drove to Yuki’s house to pick up a massive stone bowl. The bowl took three people to move even a short distance into the trunk of the car and I feared it would crush my foot rolling as we set it down.
December 30th – Mochi Day
One of the main reasons I had originally decided to stay in Japan for December was to make Mochi on this day. We made lots and lots of mochi for the family and friends in the neighborhood. It turned out to be a beautiful day as we sat watching. In the stone bowl we picked up, we took turns pounding saturated rice into a sticky dough. Afterwards it was rolled into balls and coated in flour. How can you not enjoy food that’s made by smashing things with a giant wooden hammer? After mochi, I met Lorna and her mother, who had returned the previous evening.
December 31st – Oshogatsu Eve
The big holiday here in December is New Year’s. In preparation for it, Buddhist monks will ring the temple bells 108 times before midnight. This represents cleansing the 108 sins of man. I was set to meet up with Lorna and her mother, Kris, for the temple-going. Unfortunately, during their flight layover in LA, they had gotten food poisoning and Lorna was bed-ridden. Kris and I planned to go to hear the bells for a short time without Lorna. After watching a movie in the early evening, though, Kris felt like going to sleep herself. Instead of going alone, I decided to spend the beginning of the New Year with Lorna. Definitely a better option than a crowded ceremony alone that I couldn’t understand.
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