Still overdue for pictures, but that will have to wait. At least now I can start talking about the only city anyone in America knows about in Japan: Tokyo.
*For this post and some future ones I'll be using anonymous abbreviations for some people's names. This is to protect them from some of the hilarious things they've said while drinking.
Getting out of Sapporo sucks. If you know me, you know I'm great at almost-missing flights. I'm great at almost-missing everything, so it's a good thing my head is 100% attached. I actually did follow instructions properly, leaving before 4 (more than 2 hours before my flight), getting on the closest stop down the line to the airport train, etc etc, and then, bam, I took a local train instead of the airport express without checking the signs. Oops. I just barely managed to make two proper transfers that took me to the right place. One messup at all, and I would have been going in the wrong direction. And I'm not joking when I say that boarding started like 2 minutes after I cleared security check. And Japanese planes don't board 30 minutes in advance. They board more like 5 minutes in advance, and get the hell out. So yes, near miss entirely. Scary shit.
When I arrived, K was there to pick me up. K is everything but Japanese. First of all, she picked me up in a car. No one drives in Japan, much less in Tokyo of all places. She's actually been to New Orleans several times, which has forever corrupted her from acting like a normal Japanese person. As a result, she teases me, chastises me openly for not following Japanese etiquette to a t, and talks extremely loudly in public. Fortunately she knows good Japanese hospitality. On the first night she took me out to an izekaya (traditional-style sit-in restaurant and pub) in Saitama. She mocked me for ordering fried chicken regardless of what else I ate, and then she mocked me for ordering chick drinks. Whenever I do something American, she kills herself laughing. But if I do something very Japanese, she also laughs her ass off. She's basically insane, and she thinks I'm quite the character. Then again, I am quite the character, so I guess it's fortunate for her that she met the one New Orleanian passing through her city. I don't know how to put up with such a person, but she is hilarious and extremely cute. Of course the obvious stupid question people ask me here is "why didn't you get on it" etc etc. The answer is ridiculous.
She's in love with a jazz musician in New Orleans who's more than twice her age and married with children. I could not make this shit up if I tried.
You see, K is also quite the drinker, as in she can meet me almost drink for drink, and I'm no lightweight. She very much enjoys the Japanese art of nommunication (Jp: nomi, drinking + communication), a style of being very honest excused by the magic of alcohol. At this same time I also found out that she's friends with a bro of mine back at home. Small world indeed, what of these 7000 miles separating us. After we drank, I realized that we had driven there, and then she introduced me to the magic of call-in driving escorts. I was enchanted.
The hostel I stayed at the first night is extremely cheap, like 15 a night cheap, but it's horribly off the beaten path in Saitama, maybe 30+ minutes away from most wards by train. And aside from the narrow walkways everywhere, and having to leave the place and go to another part of the complex through another door, the actual bedrooms are set up like capsule hotels, complete with coffins. I'm a traveler, so this doesn't bother me all that much, but comfort is at a premium here.
My second day I woke up late, shrugged off the hangover, and went exploring in Ginza. Before I had only really seen parts of Shibuya, Shinjuku, Harajuku, and Akihabara, all very common and well known parts of the prefecture. This time I wanted to see a little bit different stuff. Ginza is cool, and it's covered in towering buildings, but all of the shops are impossibly expensive. It's actually an established upscale fashion district, location of the first Japanese McDonald's. There's a real logic to this, by the way.
I met up with K in Asakusa, where she lives. She treated me to shabu-shabu, which she is fortunate enough to actually eat pretty frequently. It's my favorite Japanese food, a kind of thin cut meat you quickly dip into boiling water and then mix with sauces. We paid for a 90 minute buffet of the stuff, and threw in a drinking buffet for good measure. My ordering of a mango sour cracked her up. So sue me, I love mango. She also watched in wander as I put down half a kilo of meat easy. I had to explain to her my athletic background. It actually stuck, but then she called me "kawaii." She calls me that a lot. Most people know it to just mean "cute" but it also has kind of a sarcastic meaning of "precious" mixed with "funny," making it kinda like the description of most children. She told me I'd have to make it up to her, all the shit she's treated me to, by treating her when she got to New Orleans. No problem there, I said, I can afford to cook and all. It's not like I'd have to pay a hundred bucks a night to take care of her.
Afterward she dragged me down a few blocks to some undefined place. She told me to trust her. She could have been bringing me to the gates of hell, but even hell is a new place to discover, so I went with my gut. She brought me to her grandma's restaurant, where I was immediately made to feel at home. You see, her grandma has been to New Orleans 20 or so times, has invited a collective of them to come to Tokyo every year, and is a self-proclaimed "honorary citizen" of the Crescent. Oh, and she told me to call her Big Mama.
When K told her I was staying in Saitama, she said that was no good and insisted that I be moved to a hostel in Asakusa. She gave me about 150 bucks to do so. I literally could not refuse, between my sense of etiquette and my poor Japanese. When Big Mama offers you a favor, you don't say no. She also pulled out pear and plum flavored sake and told me I could have as much as I wanted any time I visited. She also gave me a bunch of soup packets to eat when I move into Kansai Gaidai. There is some power to being a New Orleanian, some bond that sticks to you no matter where in the world you travel and brings like-minded souls close. I was speechless. Of course, I told her I'd take great care of her granddaughter the next time she came to visit.
The next place we went was a neighborhood dive bar. It was exceptionally tacky and thus reminded me completely of Snake and Jake's. The bartender was dressed as a musician. K ordered a hot wine (Fab, that one's for you) and then we dove into bottles of sake, the Japanese peace pipe. The guys at the table next to us wanted to meet us, so they introduced themselves and treated us to a couple bottles as well. I don't remember their names completely, but I believe one was named Yousuke and the other Toshi. Toshi was actually only 19 years old, despite looking several years older than myself. That didn't stop him from drinking freely, because that's how we roll out East. Neither of the two could speak beyond broken words of English, but I did my damndest to try to communicate with them, cell phone dictionary in hand. K's friend also stopped by, and she was with a traveler from France. I shot the shit with him, and of course he had been to New Orleans and all. He gave me India as a travel recommendation. I'll take it to note.
Afterwards we checked me into the hostel, and K asked if I wanted to keep drinking. That was a terrible question for her to ask, as far as her wallet is concerned. We went to a dart bar where we broke into two teams and K and Toshi proceeded to humiliate us. We also played drunken Jenga. I'm a master of physics. So is K apparently. They also introduced me to some kind of stacking puzzle where you place these little naked dolls with an eyeball for heads in suggestive positions. I demanded an explanation, but Japanese don't play that. Toshi and Yousuke discovered that the rare moment I can form a grammatically perfect sentence, it's pretty hilarious. They got on their bicycles after we had left and accompanied me home, and K went ahead and jumped on the back of one of them. I shouted after them "oi, kanojo wa omoi, jan" (hey, isn't she heavy?). Toshi laughed his ass off and said "goodu taimingu!"
To say the least, Asakusa is becoming one of my new favorite cities. Most people just know it as that one ward of Tokyo with nothing but shrines everywhere. In actuality, it's got a bit of the spice of home. I'll be glad to stay here.
Friday, January 27, 2012
Thursday, January 26, 2012
Sayonara Sapporo
So I've been slow about updating this blog. Sorry folks. It's not that I haven't had enough time, or maybe I did have enough time, but I didn't have enough worth updating at that moment. I'm in Tokyo now, so I want to hurry up and close up on this chapter so I can talk about the crazy shit that's happened here. I owe you guys like two more posts, including one with pictures, and they'll probably just keep stacking up until I get to Osaka and have a little down time. I should be out and about now, but unfortunately my knee is in heavy pain. I might have to go to the doctor if it doesn't chill in the next few days, because it might actually be getting worse, and that means I may not return to the gym for a good while. Anyway, onto the post.
Sayonara Sapporo
It's weird what happens when you really engage yourself in a distant country like I have. Even though I only spent five days there, I feel like I was there for months and that I have a huge amount of my life there for some reason. I had some pretty incredible times that aren't being written about on this blog (sorry folks, some of you might get the closure but I won't guarantee it). Maybe a few months or years down the road I'll dig up what happened here and drop a post on it, after everything surrounding what happened here has completely blown over in the minds of anyone involved. Until then, you'll just have to deal with a shortage of information. It's not that I'm becoming an adult for the first time, I think that's already really started to happen when I faced my earlier challenges in college and made it through, but I've really had a true brush with adulthood, where I had to consider where I was and where I was going and be mature and reasonable and do my damndest to consider the feelings of others. And somehow, I did okay. With no one to tell me how I should be living my life, I think I did a good job in figuring it out myself. I'm a little proud, and a little melancholy, because adulthood is just not the easiest thing for anyone.
I can only imagine how tough it might be to leave this country altogether in 6 months.
So, most of the last few days was casual sightseeing. And adventuring, as I always do. I kinda missed the feeling of wandering around almost aimlessly by myself hoping to find landmarks and expecting to get lost along the way. On the third day I was by myself until night time, so I decided to go to Moerunuma Park, which is described as entirely filled with sculptures. Unfortunately, its beauty is less remarkable during the winter, where you can't walk anywhere and everything is closed. I walked past the car entrance and missed the walk-in entrance, assuming I was supposed to go around the side or such. I ended up treading through a mile of snow, and trying fruitlessly to climb up packed hills of it, before I turned back around ready to give up. My god was I freezing. As it turns out, the walk-in entrance (marked only in kanji of course) was blocked off by a foot or so of snow. I had to take the car entrance in, and finally made it to the glass pyramid, the only structure which was accessible in winter. I'll be sure to post pictures later. It was cool, but not worth the snowy suffering. The experience though is what counts. I should always be challenging myself.
The rest of the day I couldn't find my way to the beer museum and Ario shopping center. They're only accessible by buses, which I'm too inept to use properly, so I had to put that off for another day. The following day I tried to go to the museum of modern art, only to find it closed until February. I was getting extremely good at not seeing landmarks. I did manage to make it to the "White Lovers" chocolate factory park that day though. It was very victorian, and willy wonkaish, and had a lot of cool Western or early-late-modern Japanese relics, which is cool for a Meiji/Taisho history buff like myself. It was kind of a cheesy place though, but fun for its architectural design.
My second to last day Ryoko was off work again, so we first went to the Akarenga (red brick) governmental building. It was filled with cool archives of Sapporo and Hokkaido history. Ryoko isn't too much into that, but I kinda like that shit. Just for the update, Sapporo was a new and almost artificial city established in about 1863, during which it was a village of 7 people. With the assistance of Western planners, it was soon developed to have something like 40 blocks within the next 3 years, and quickly developed into the newest and most modern single Japanese city. So for anyone interested in late modern Japanese history, it's a fantastic place to set foot.
We followed up with the beer tour, the museum which had a very cool showing of the making and history of Sapporo beer, a major simple of the growing Westernization of the country. There was a tasting option, but it was like 5 dollars for three full glasses, and it was too early for me to have a significant amount of alcohol in my system, so we passed. Plus Ryoko is a lightweight. The museum was connected to Ario, a sizeable shopping mall with all kinds of cool stuff, none of which I could afford. Ryoko found some Western teas she wanted though (twice the price it costs back at home, of course). She couldn't find sour cream, which she said is one of the things she misses the most about America. I kinda can't blame her, sour cream is the shit.
The bus line continued to the Sapporo Factory, which is an even bigger mall with incredible design all over. This is like Mall of America kinda huge. Being in Sapporo kinda made me wish I had a lot more money, because it's not hard to find things to buy anywhere. It actually amazes me how much stuff there is to buy there, since no one in the city seems particularly wealthy. We found a cheap buffet to eat at, which is a rarity in itself. Finding enough food for a poor American is a challenge. The food was Western style, and not great, but it got the job done. I swear there was no pork in my pork chops though.
We said our goodbyes that night and I headed back to the hostel for my last night. The hostel owner is seriously the sweetest woman ever. She asked how I was doing and where I was going and helped me book my flight out to Tokyo and even let me keep my bags at the hostel after check out until I was ready to catch my train out. By this point I had already pretty much seen everything in the city visible in January, so I just killed time in game centers until it was time to go.
There's a lot about Sapporo I feel I haven't seen. I'm not sure how and when exactly to get to the bottom of the city, but I feel obligated to return when it's warm to finish my tour. I can't help but feel like there are some secrets buried within the city that I need to unearth. Plus, I failed to do a proper pub crawl, which is the staple of any traveler's experience. Returning there is definitely on my agenda, somehow I feel like a piece of my heart has been buried there. I just don't know how to dig it up, or what I might do with it if I can reclaim it. Traveling can surprise and amaze you, and while doing it you know you always need to keep going, but sometimes you want to just stop. Like literally stop, and not go forward, as if I could just toss out my visa and start working right there and start a new life or something. It's a very complicated feeling, impossible to describe, but I know I did the right thing in my life by coming in the first place. Sayonara, Sapporo.
End of the first chapter
Sayonara Sapporo
It's weird what happens when you really engage yourself in a distant country like I have. Even though I only spent five days there, I feel like I was there for months and that I have a huge amount of my life there for some reason. I had some pretty incredible times that aren't being written about on this blog (sorry folks, some of you might get the closure but I won't guarantee it). Maybe a few months or years down the road I'll dig up what happened here and drop a post on it, after everything surrounding what happened here has completely blown over in the minds of anyone involved. Until then, you'll just have to deal with a shortage of information. It's not that I'm becoming an adult for the first time, I think that's already really started to happen when I faced my earlier challenges in college and made it through, but I've really had a true brush with adulthood, where I had to consider where I was and where I was going and be mature and reasonable and do my damndest to consider the feelings of others. And somehow, I did okay. With no one to tell me how I should be living my life, I think I did a good job in figuring it out myself. I'm a little proud, and a little melancholy, because adulthood is just not the easiest thing for anyone.
I can only imagine how tough it might be to leave this country altogether in 6 months.
So, most of the last few days was casual sightseeing. And adventuring, as I always do. I kinda missed the feeling of wandering around almost aimlessly by myself hoping to find landmarks and expecting to get lost along the way. On the third day I was by myself until night time, so I decided to go to Moerunuma Park, which is described as entirely filled with sculptures. Unfortunately, its beauty is less remarkable during the winter, where you can't walk anywhere and everything is closed. I walked past the car entrance and missed the walk-in entrance, assuming I was supposed to go around the side or such. I ended up treading through a mile of snow, and trying fruitlessly to climb up packed hills of it, before I turned back around ready to give up. My god was I freezing. As it turns out, the walk-in entrance (marked only in kanji of course) was blocked off by a foot or so of snow. I had to take the car entrance in, and finally made it to the glass pyramid, the only structure which was accessible in winter. I'll be sure to post pictures later. It was cool, but not worth the snowy suffering. The experience though is what counts. I should always be challenging myself.
The rest of the day I couldn't find my way to the beer museum and Ario shopping center. They're only accessible by buses, which I'm too inept to use properly, so I had to put that off for another day. The following day I tried to go to the museum of modern art, only to find it closed until February. I was getting extremely good at not seeing landmarks. I did manage to make it to the "White Lovers" chocolate factory park that day though. It was very victorian, and willy wonkaish, and had a lot of cool Western or early-late-modern Japanese relics, which is cool for a Meiji/Taisho history buff like myself. It was kind of a cheesy place though, but fun for its architectural design.
My second to last day Ryoko was off work again, so we first went to the Akarenga (red brick) governmental building. It was filled with cool archives of Sapporo and Hokkaido history. Ryoko isn't too much into that, but I kinda like that shit. Just for the update, Sapporo was a new and almost artificial city established in about 1863, during which it was a village of 7 people. With the assistance of Western planners, it was soon developed to have something like 40 blocks within the next 3 years, and quickly developed into the newest and most modern single Japanese city. So for anyone interested in late modern Japanese history, it's a fantastic place to set foot.
We followed up with the beer tour, the museum which had a very cool showing of the making and history of Sapporo beer, a major simple of the growing Westernization of the country. There was a tasting option, but it was like 5 dollars for three full glasses, and it was too early for me to have a significant amount of alcohol in my system, so we passed. Plus Ryoko is a lightweight. The museum was connected to Ario, a sizeable shopping mall with all kinds of cool stuff, none of which I could afford. Ryoko found some Western teas she wanted though (twice the price it costs back at home, of course). She couldn't find sour cream, which she said is one of the things she misses the most about America. I kinda can't blame her, sour cream is the shit.
The bus line continued to the Sapporo Factory, which is an even bigger mall with incredible design all over. This is like Mall of America kinda huge. Being in Sapporo kinda made me wish I had a lot more money, because it's not hard to find things to buy anywhere. It actually amazes me how much stuff there is to buy there, since no one in the city seems particularly wealthy. We found a cheap buffet to eat at, which is a rarity in itself. Finding enough food for a poor American is a challenge. The food was Western style, and not great, but it got the job done. I swear there was no pork in my pork chops though.
We said our goodbyes that night and I headed back to the hostel for my last night. The hostel owner is seriously the sweetest woman ever. She asked how I was doing and where I was going and helped me book my flight out to Tokyo and even let me keep my bags at the hostel after check out until I was ready to catch my train out. By this point I had already pretty much seen everything in the city visible in January, so I just killed time in game centers until it was time to go.
There's a lot about Sapporo I feel I haven't seen. I'm not sure how and when exactly to get to the bottom of the city, but I feel obligated to return when it's warm to finish my tour. I can't help but feel like there are some secrets buried within the city that I need to unearth. Plus, I failed to do a proper pub crawl, which is the staple of any traveler's experience. Returning there is definitely on my agenda, somehow I feel like a piece of my heart has been buried there. I just don't know how to dig it up, or what I might do with it if I can reclaim it. Traveling can surprise and amaze you, and while doing it you know you always need to keep going, but sometimes you want to just stop. Like literally stop, and not go forward, as if I could just toss out my visa and start working right there and start a new life or something. It's a very complicated feeling, impossible to describe, but I know I did the right thing in my life by coming in the first place. Sayonara, Sapporo.
End of the first chapter
Sunday, January 22, 2012
Time for Pictures
This was halfway to Sapporo from the airport. There was a whole lot of nothing, but I love to take pics of snowy cityscapes.
I think this is Odori Park, dead center of the city. The construction behind the tree is for snowboarding, for when the sports festival starts later this season.
420 SMOKE WEED NEVER BECAUSE DRACONIAN DRUG LAWS
I'm not sure if you all can get this vibe, but this design struck me as incredible Manhattanesque
Wanna get drunk and swing at shit? Sure thing! I think we have something like this in America.
This is a well known tourist site, the clock tower at the center of the city.
And this would be Ryoko and myself.
I think this is Odori Park, dead center of the city. The construction behind the tree is for snowboarding, for when the sports festival starts later this season.
420 SMOKE WEED NEVER BECAUSE DRACONIAN DRUG LAWS
I'm not sure if you all can get this vibe, but this design struck me as incredible Manhattanesque
Wanna get drunk and swing at shit? Sure thing! I think we have something like this in America.
This is a well known tourist site, the clock tower at the center of the city.
And this would be Ryoko and myself.Hokkaido Sidewalks Suck
Jet lag is still biting at me, it seems. I can't bring myself to stay awake past midnight, but then I can't sleep past 8. I don't feel very tired though, so I guess I'm in a good enough spot.
So, I realize now that I forgot to describe and take pictures of my hotel. There was literally nothing impressive about it, it cost like 40 bucks a night and consisted of a small bed and a narrow tunnel from the door to the desk next to it where I could barely fit my suitcase sideways. The bathroom was of course tiny, with the sink connected to the shower with a hose. It was altogether clean and got the job done, but too many drunk idiots could not seem to figure out what their room number was.
Due to price constraints I changed to a hostel starting from yesterday. I had agreed to meet Ryoko at 2 and her android with GPS would have been very convenient, but unfortunately I had to check out at 10 and my luggage wasn't going anywhere, so I decided to make the trip on my own. This would lead into my first adventure. Anyone who knows me should know by now, my sense of navigation is amazingly bad. The first mistake I made was trusting google maps and copying down loose instructions instead of getting a full map and checking the hostel's website. The second was not trusting my own instructions fully. Basically, I made it to the station and took the JR (train) line to Shiroishi. The problem is, the map said to take the Tozai (subway) line. So that put me at the wrong station several blocks away, and I knew my luggage was too heavy to lug around in the pouring snow where I couldn't even see the sidewalks. I went to wait for the bus that goes from the train station to the subway station, which would have been fine until it occurred to me...I checked my pockets.
The good news is that my passport was still there. The bad news was that my wallet wasn't.
Of course I searched around frantically and checked inside and outside of the station. Eventually I became sure that my wallet did not make it with me across town. I couldn't go back to get it, because that would involve buying a ticket with the money that was no longer with me. I thought of calling Ryoko then and having her rush out to help my hopeless foreign self out, but that would have been too easy. If there's an easy way and a hard way to do things, rest assured, Jonah Matteo will take the stupid way. Not that what I did was too stupid though, most people would think to ask a station master for help. The problem is that my Japanese is far from fantastic. Still, I could make out basic questions, like how much money was in it, what color it was, etc. and respond properly. Besides that, I could barely understand him and I'm sure it must have been a little frustrating for him to deal with me, but he was exceptionally understanding and called back to Sapporo station and had them hold it and wave me through ticket check. In America, the second I dropped the wallet it would be gone, and I'd be lucky if anyone involved in public transit would want to take the time to help me out. I like Japanese service people.
Back at Sapporo station I winged it and figured that if I went to one subway I'd figure out where the Tozai line actually was (it wasn't listed as any line connecting to the station). Sure enough, it was a connecting line. So with that out of the way, I had my next task: finding my damn hostel. The hostel is about 4 blocks from Shiroishi subway station, which means that I was wandering around for an hour trying to find it. My own instructions were pretty bad considering how difficult it is to make out block differentiation and how heavy my bag was and how little I could look up at the street for how much snow was in my face. Eventually I got to a park, gave up, sat on my suitcase and pondered what to do. Across from the park looked like some kind of community center. I decided to have a smart moment and actually read the kanji, 東札幌図書館. Oh. A library. That would be helpful.
I went to the desk, and I could have read out the address to the circulation fellow and asked if he could draw me directions or such. That would have been the easy way. Again, Matteo, lateral thinking. I asked him if he could give me a map of the area. He rented out to me a thick, Japanese-only residential guidebook of the entire area. I soon learned that I was within about a block of the area where the hostel was listed, even though I couldn't find the hostel itself on the map. I still felt lost and it would have been a grand idea of me at this point to ask the guy at the desk to point out to me where on the map I might find the place I was looking for. Y'all ask too much of me. And before you ask, there was no wireless internet or public access computers. I checked. By the way, traversing through snow with a heavy suitcase sucks. Did I tell you guys that? The snow provides additional resistance, making errrrrrthing worse. It was also cold. I don't think I've mentioned this enough. I could make a fantastic drinking game out of how many times I heard "samui" the entire trip.
Somehow though, within 10 minutes I actually did manage to locate my destination. It's a pretty nice hostel, internet access and full kitchen and the like. Real beds too, harder to find than you might imagine in a country like this. I checked in with just enough time to go to meet Ryoko.
We did a little more sightseeing. I had located a mountain that's supposed to have a good view of the city, Moiwa Yama. Navigating towards it was similarly hellish and I would have gotten lost again, but having someone who actually speaks Japanese with me is a huge benefit. It had a ropeway cable car to take us up, which I thought was cool and everyone else was scared of. There was a chorus of "kowai" everywhere. There was one little kid who just kept repeating "kowai" like a Buddhist chant the whole way up. Unfortunately, the view at the top was obscured by bad weather. The good news is that there are other tall locations from which to see the city from, so I'll collect some pictures eventually. Also it was even colder at the top, which of course prompted additional comments from the observant locals.
Getting back was harder, since bus stops tend to pick up from only one direction, and our GPS wasn't helping much. I made the observation that a bus had come from another direction as we were walking, so I made the deduction that we might find a bus stop if we followed that direction. I was right, and Ryoko was amazed at my detective skills. Even if I can't navigate, I guess my faculties of logic are somewhat useful.
I think my American is rubbing off on Ryoko. We were walking in a shopping arcade (covered outlet malls, basically) and noticed some guy running out of a restaurant carrying a huge bowl of nothing but steaming rice. No delivery tin, no takeout box, not even something to go with the rice, just a kilogram or so of the white stuff. And this prompted her to ask "why is that man carrying a huge bowl of rice." This actually shocked me. Japanese do not question such things; if a man were to carry a dead body across the city, so be it, that's someone else's business. I actually had to laugh at the fact that there was something in her city in the natural order of life that just struck her as absurd. Next she'll be asking me why cigarettes require an ID check while alcohol can be found in street vending machines.
Ok, follow up post will finally have pics for once.
So, I realize now that I forgot to describe and take pictures of my hotel. There was literally nothing impressive about it, it cost like 40 bucks a night and consisted of a small bed and a narrow tunnel from the door to the desk next to it where I could barely fit my suitcase sideways. The bathroom was of course tiny, with the sink connected to the shower with a hose. It was altogether clean and got the job done, but too many drunk idiots could not seem to figure out what their room number was.
Due to price constraints I changed to a hostel starting from yesterday. I had agreed to meet Ryoko at 2 and her android with GPS would have been very convenient, but unfortunately I had to check out at 10 and my luggage wasn't going anywhere, so I decided to make the trip on my own. This would lead into my first adventure. Anyone who knows me should know by now, my sense of navigation is amazingly bad. The first mistake I made was trusting google maps and copying down loose instructions instead of getting a full map and checking the hostel's website. The second was not trusting my own instructions fully. Basically, I made it to the station and took the JR (train) line to Shiroishi. The problem is, the map said to take the Tozai (subway) line. So that put me at the wrong station several blocks away, and I knew my luggage was too heavy to lug around in the pouring snow where I couldn't even see the sidewalks. I went to wait for the bus that goes from the train station to the subway station, which would have been fine until it occurred to me...I checked my pockets.
The good news is that my passport was still there. The bad news was that my wallet wasn't.
Of course I searched around frantically and checked inside and outside of the station. Eventually I became sure that my wallet did not make it with me across town. I couldn't go back to get it, because that would involve buying a ticket with the money that was no longer with me. I thought of calling Ryoko then and having her rush out to help my hopeless foreign self out, but that would have been too easy. If there's an easy way and a hard way to do things, rest assured, Jonah Matteo will take the stupid way. Not that what I did was too stupid though, most people would think to ask a station master for help. The problem is that my Japanese is far from fantastic. Still, I could make out basic questions, like how much money was in it, what color it was, etc. and respond properly. Besides that, I could barely understand him and I'm sure it must have been a little frustrating for him to deal with me, but he was exceptionally understanding and called back to Sapporo station and had them hold it and wave me through ticket check. In America, the second I dropped the wallet it would be gone, and I'd be lucky if anyone involved in public transit would want to take the time to help me out. I like Japanese service people.
Back at Sapporo station I winged it and figured that if I went to one subway I'd figure out where the Tozai line actually was (it wasn't listed as any line connecting to the station). Sure enough, it was a connecting line. So with that out of the way, I had my next task: finding my damn hostel. The hostel is about 4 blocks from Shiroishi subway station, which means that I was wandering around for an hour trying to find it. My own instructions were pretty bad considering how difficult it is to make out block differentiation and how heavy my bag was and how little I could look up at the street for how much snow was in my face. Eventually I got to a park, gave up, sat on my suitcase and pondered what to do. Across from the park looked like some kind of community center. I decided to have a smart moment and actually read the kanji, 東札幌図書館. Oh. A library. That would be helpful.
I went to the desk, and I could have read out the address to the circulation fellow and asked if he could draw me directions or such. That would have been the easy way. Again, Matteo, lateral thinking. I asked him if he could give me a map of the area. He rented out to me a thick, Japanese-only residential guidebook of the entire area. I soon learned that I was within about a block of the area where the hostel was listed, even though I couldn't find the hostel itself on the map. I still felt lost and it would have been a grand idea of me at this point to ask the guy at the desk to point out to me where on the map I might find the place I was looking for. Y'all ask too much of me. And before you ask, there was no wireless internet or public access computers. I checked. By the way, traversing through snow with a heavy suitcase sucks. Did I tell you guys that? The snow provides additional resistance, making errrrrrthing worse. It was also cold. I don't think I've mentioned this enough. I could make a fantastic drinking game out of how many times I heard "samui" the entire trip.
Somehow though, within 10 minutes I actually did manage to locate my destination. It's a pretty nice hostel, internet access and full kitchen and the like. Real beds too, harder to find than you might imagine in a country like this. I checked in with just enough time to go to meet Ryoko.
We did a little more sightseeing. I had located a mountain that's supposed to have a good view of the city, Moiwa Yama. Navigating towards it was similarly hellish and I would have gotten lost again, but having someone who actually speaks Japanese with me is a huge benefit. It had a ropeway cable car to take us up, which I thought was cool and everyone else was scared of. There was a chorus of "kowai" everywhere. There was one little kid who just kept repeating "kowai" like a Buddhist chant the whole way up. Unfortunately, the view at the top was obscured by bad weather. The good news is that there are other tall locations from which to see the city from, so I'll collect some pictures eventually. Also it was even colder at the top, which of course prompted additional comments from the observant locals.
Getting back was harder, since bus stops tend to pick up from only one direction, and our GPS wasn't helping much. I made the observation that a bus had come from another direction as we were walking, so I made the deduction that we might find a bus stop if we followed that direction. I was right, and Ryoko was amazed at my detective skills. Even if I can't navigate, I guess my faculties of logic are somewhat useful.
I think my American is rubbing off on Ryoko. We were walking in a shopping arcade (covered outlet malls, basically) and noticed some guy running out of a restaurant carrying a huge bowl of nothing but steaming rice. No delivery tin, no takeout box, not even something to go with the rice, just a kilogram or so of the white stuff. And this prompted her to ask "why is that man carrying a huge bowl of rice." This actually shocked me. Japanese do not question such things; if a man were to carry a dead body across the city, so be it, that's someone else's business. I actually had to laugh at the fact that there was something in her city in the natural order of life that just struck her as absurd. Next she'll be asking me why cigarettes require an ID check while alcohol can be found in street vending machines.
Ok, follow up post will finally have pics for once.
Saturday, January 21, 2012
From 70 degrees to 16 below zero.
So this is going to be my blog on the whoooole 6 month trip I'm taking here. I'm just gonna put my preface here, it's not G-rated. I won't be talking about my time at strip clubs, using drugs, etc etc etc because I'm a poor, law-abiding student and I'm honestly not into anything excessive groady. But at times, I will indeed talk about booze and porn because those are just staples of Japanese custom and it's my goal to be frank and try to give as accurate and in-depth of a picture of this country and my experience as possible, some personal things notwithstanding. If you don't think the kids should see this, don't show them. I'm not gonna talk about Japanese women at the next Thanksgiving or anything like that, so if you have any questions at any time, put them here and if I'm going to answer them, I'll answer them here. So let's get going.
I could try to catalogue the 24 some-odd hours I spent in transit but since I actually don't hate you all, I'll try to keep this detail concise. I'll start in New Orleans: beautiful winter weather of 70 degrees at T-minus 3 hours til my first embarkment. I had to say a surprising amount of goodbyes. I say surprising, because applying to this program I didn't feel like I was leaving much behind. Like, yeah, I had a few friends in New Orleans, but most of them were coming and going anyway and it's not like I saw them more than once every few weeks. But by the time I was ready to leave, it seemed like I had quite a few people backing up my journey, and I was amazed at how much love I got. The tangibility of my journey didn't really start to effect until my parents and all of my friends, one by one, came by to visit and hug and tell me how much they were gonna miss me and how jealous they were and what a great time I would have. The number one questions I was asked, by both domestic and Japanese friends alike, was "are you excited?" The answer was quite astounding. Saying goodbye to all my party buddies, thinking buddies, the Frenchie I live with, et al was the easy part. Letting it sink in and then facing myself later was the hard part. 6 months is actually a long time, just so you know. And before I return, my roommate will have already moved out and back to France, which really marked some heavy finality in my life. But all this reminded me of my goals and supported what I was doing. My journey is about getting out of my comfort zone, trying something new, discovering what it means to be human, and maybe accidentally stumbling upon happiness along the way. That's stuff I just couldn't guarantee happening if I remained stagnant in New Orleans, and I know my friends are all behind me finding new answers to my life questions, no matter how unorthodox the methods (read: going to a country where bars don't card). So I set out with a heavy heart, a mission, and half of a plan. Good news though, I put in a nice application for a research project about the culture of jazz and hip-hop in Japan. Good chance it will go through, and they said if it didn't win with the committee I applied with, they'll move it over to another grant automatically.
So the way out of New Orleans was moderately uneventful. The fellow on my left was a jovial father-figure. I shot the shit with him a little and told him about my journey eastward. He was impressed at how I had arranged my major and worked in my study abroad experience and had everything set to really make good out of international study. He said I struck him as such a smart kid, and asked me if I played an instrument growing up (the answer is no). He said that he had heard how that's one thing that causes kids to grow up with a higher IQ. I suggested to him that if he wants a well-rounded child, he should aim to have him practice hard at three things: a foreign language, an instrument, and a sport; and most importantly, he should be allowed to choose the most interesting topic of each of those three lest he should grow up hating what he was put through. I probably should have added in "logic puzzles." Oops.
The flight to Tokyo was painfully uneventful. Seat was crammed, legs hurt, sleeping was hard but highly demanded. I pretty much arrived a zombie, and I simply did not get a chance to catch up on sleep in transit to Sapporo. The one thing I must note about that international flight was that there was like a huge block of Americans around me. I can't help but feel like they purposefully clumped all the gaikokujin together just to quarantine us from the actual Japanese for the convenience of everyone but us. I with my functional Japanese was not amused. I hope the attendants enjoyed having me respond to their English in Japanese. I absolutely loved check in at Haneda, they just shot me right through customs with no whining in about 10 minutes, and then shipped me on a terminal bus where I met two American airline employees who told me about how their job allowed them to pick places like Japan to visit and how their degrees didn't have shit to do with their work. C'est la vie. Coincidentally, one of the dudes had a sister at Loyola. Small world indeed.
Getting out and into Sapporo was a breeze. My guide for this city is my friend Ryoko, a local I met through an online language exchange community (fantastic investment of 6 bucks a month). She's giving up her few days off from her 7-5 hell to show me around the place. The thing I discovered about Sapporo is that it's a city of festivals. If you can catch the snow festival or the sports festival (snowboarding and skiing in the middle of the city), it's fantastic. Otherwise, it has little to display beyond everything in your average Japanese city. It's like a cross between the urban content of Kyoto and the urban design of Manhattan. No, seriously, it's my understanding that an American planner was hired to simulate the design of New York while developing the place in the Meiji Era. It shows. It's also cold. Very cold. A giant thermometer outside of Sapporo Station shows how far below 0 the temperature has dropped (celsius). You could play a drinking game with how many times we said "samui." Finding gloves was one of the high points of my day. Though, I have to say the snow was beautiful.
At several times I was met with what makes me occasionally shake my head and say "oh Japan." This included my experience with department store assorted goods such as a book called "Jindiana Jones," an Obama mask, various 420 paraphenalia (in a country where no one smokes due to how illegal it is, like meth/heroin levels), sex goods right next to video games, tasteless shirts with broken English, and schoolgirl costumes designed for men up to 180 cm tall (the men were even displayed modeling the costumes on the packaging). I also identified to Ryoko that within Japan there must be parts of Jigoku (hell) and Tengoku (heaven). Jigoku for me was the hobby shop that was more pornographic, copyright-violating material (they apparently do not have SOPA here, who knew) than actual original-print manga or videos. It was a row of some 8 consecutive vending machines on the side of one building. Tengoku is the Golf Bar, a minigolf and batting cage that includes...well, a bar. So you can get trashed before you swing a few shots. It was also a few eternal cuisine favorites of mine, including huge bowls of miso ramen and chu-hai, a cheap canned cocktail made of shouchu (Japanese vodka, like soju) mixed with fruit juice or soda.
I suppose I should also talk some length about Ryoko and her gateway for me into the world of the Japanese, since this blog is about ways I'm discovering myself in the world. Ryoko's English is fantastic. My Japanese is not. Naturally, being Japanese as she is, she fretted about not being able to understand me properly, a concern that I, being American as I am, didn't care enough to worry about. Of course she's trying a lot harder to speak and understand English than I've been with Japanese, but as they say here, shikata ga nai. Not like I haven't tried. Our friendship is fantastic because we both feel like we suck at each other's language, but we still manage to hold deep conversations about life and can laugh with each other and really try to get to understand where the other comes from. I've gotten a lot more out of her than I have out of a lot of people I used to be friends with in America, and I'm going to explain why.
Ryoko is a funny case because she's been quite exposed to American ideology, as in she's been to America, speaks with Americans often, etc, yet she's still trapped in the Japanese ideology. I tried to explain the Rocky Horror cult to her. She was surprised that people would do smutty things on-stage. I told her our student board puts on one public theater presentation of a porn per year (true story). She said such a thing could never fly in Japan. I asked her if this was the same Japan where porn is easier to find than deoderant even in a grocery store. She reluctantly conceded. Another cultural challenge was compromising our differing cultural ideals of responsibility. As I explained to her, in Japan, when someone tells you not to do something, you assume it can't and shouldn't be done, so it doesn't happen. It's why, as a Chinese immigrant notes in the movie Shinjuku Incident, "Just because the Japanese don't steal, they think we won't" in reference to how easy it is to just grab food from an open market in Shinjuku. In America, I said, when someone tells you not to do something, you weigh the consequences of doing it, and if they don't exceed the benefits, you do it anyway. This, I said, was actually a virtue on the part of the Japanese. It meant they found themselves responsible for doing what they were socially expected to do and implicitly said they would, and didn't utilize technicalities to worm their way out. Those technicalities don't exist. There is no "What one does not know can't hurt him" principle in Japan. Call it honor, sheep mentality, whatever, it's the reason why Japanese can get shit done and don't have to shout about being the best country in the world while failing to get shit done. It works, and Japanese work, and I, the heartless, inconsiderate jerk, can talk with them, because in place of passive-aggression and hiding the truth and protecting oneself with technicalities, Japanese would rather just engage people and answer the questions they are asked and not ask questions that they don't want answers to. I love the Japanese. Sorry America. That's not to say I automatically despise all Americans. I'll always judge people on an individual basis, but as a whole I'd rather meet Japanese people than Americans for the long run. There's something about their genuine honesty even to the gates of hell that I don't think I could find anywhere else in the world.
I have some pictures to put up, but unfortunately I'm screwed for time and I just had this post sitting around from last night from before I got an internet connection, so I'll drop another update tonight or tomorrow morning JST.
I could try to catalogue the 24 some-odd hours I spent in transit but since I actually don't hate you all, I'll try to keep this detail concise. I'll start in New Orleans: beautiful winter weather of 70 degrees at T-minus 3 hours til my first embarkment. I had to say a surprising amount of goodbyes. I say surprising, because applying to this program I didn't feel like I was leaving much behind. Like, yeah, I had a few friends in New Orleans, but most of them were coming and going anyway and it's not like I saw them more than once every few weeks. But by the time I was ready to leave, it seemed like I had quite a few people backing up my journey, and I was amazed at how much love I got. The tangibility of my journey didn't really start to effect until my parents and all of my friends, one by one, came by to visit and hug and tell me how much they were gonna miss me and how jealous they were and what a great time I would have. The number one questions I was asked, by both domestic and Japanese friends alike, was "are you excited?" The answer was quite astounding. Saying goodbye to all my party buddies, thinking buddies, the Frenchie I live with, et al was the easy part. Letting it sink in and then facing myself later was the hard part. 6 months is actually a long time, just so you know. And before I return, my roommate will have already moved out and back to France, which really marked some heavy finality in my life. But all this reminded me of my goals and supported what I was doing. My journey is about getting out of my comfort zone, trying something new, discovering what it means to be human, and maybe accidentally stumbling upon happiness along the way. That's stuff I just couldn't guarantee happening if I remained stagnant in New Orleans, and I know my friends are all behind me finding new answers to my life questions, no matter how unorthodox the methods (read: going to a country where bars don't card). So I set out with a heavy heart, a mission, and half of a plan. Good news though, I put in a nice application for a research project about the culture of jazz and hip-hop in Japan. Good chance it will go through, and they said if it didn't win with the committee I applied with, they'll move it over to another grant automatically.
So the way out of New Orleans was moderately uneventful. The fellow on my left was a jovial father-figure. I shot the shit with him a little and told him about my journey eastward. He was impressed at how I had arranged my major and worked in my study abroad experience and had everything set to really make good out of international study. He said I struck him as such a smart kid, and asked me if I played an instrument growing up (the answer is no). He said that he had heard how that's one thing that causes kids to grow up with a higher IQ. I suggested to him that if he wants a well-rounded child, he should aim to have him practice hard at three things: a foreign language, an instrument, and a sport; and most importantly, he should be allowed to choose the most interesting topic of each of those three lest he should grow up hating what he was put through. I probably should have added in "logic puzzles." Oops.
The flight to Tokyo was painfully uneventful. Seat was crammed, legs hurt, sleeping was hard but highly demanded. I pretty much arrived a zombie, and I simply did not get a chance to catch up on sleep in transit to Sapporo. The one thing I must note about that international flight was that there was like a huge block of Americans around me. I can't help but feel like they purposefully clumped all the gaikokujin together just to quarantine us from the actual Japanese for the convenience of everyone but us. I with my functional Japanese was not amused. I hope the attendants enjoyed having me respond to their English in Japanese. I absolutely loved check in at Haneda, they just shot me right through customs with no whining in about 10 minutes, and then shipped me on a terminal bus where I met two American airline employees who told me about how their job allowed them to pick places like Japan to visit and how their degrees didn't have shit to do with their work. C'est la vie. Coincidentally, one of the dudes had a sister at Loyola. Small world indeed.
Getting out and into Sapporo was a breeze. My guide for this city is my friend Ryoko, a local I met through an online language exchange community (fantastic investment of 6 bucks a month). She's giving up her few days off from her 7-5 hell to show me around the place. The thing I discovered about Sapporo is that it's a city of festivals. If you can catch the snow festival or the sports festival (snowboarding and skiing in the middle of the city), it's fantastic. Otherwise, it has little to display beyond everything in your average Japanese city. It's like a cross between the urban content of Kyoto and the urban design of Manhattan. No, seriously, it's my understanding that an American planner was hired to simulate the design of New York while developing the place in the Meiji Era. It shows. It's also cold. Very cold. A giant thermometer outside of Sapporo Station shows how far below 0 the temperature has dropped (celsius). You could play a drinking game with how many times we said "samui." Finding gloves was one of the high points of my day. Though, I have to say the snow was beautiful.
At several times I was met with what makes me occasionally shake my head and say "oh Japan." This included my experience with department store assorted goods such as a book called "Jindiana Jones," an Obama mask, various 420 paraphenalia (in a country where no one smokes due to how illegal it is, like meth/heroin levels), sex goods right next to video games, tasteless shirts with broken English, and schoolgirl costumes designed for men up to 180 cm tall (the men were even displayed modeling the costumes on the packaging). I also identified to Ryoko that within Japan there must be parts of Jigoku (hell) and Tengoku (heaven). Jigoku for me was the hobby shop that was more pornographic, copyright-violating material (they apparently do not have SOPA here, who knew) than actual original-print manga or videos. It was a row of some 8 consecutive vending machines on the side of one building. Tengoku is the Golf Bar, a minigolf and batting cage that includes...well, a bar. So you can get trashed before you swing a few shots. It was also a few eternal cuisine favorites of mine, including huge bowls of miso ramen and chu-hai, a cheap canned cocktail made of shouchu (Japanese vodka, like soju) mixed with fruit juice or soda.
I suppose I should also talk some length about Ryoko and her gateway for me into the world of the Japanese, since this blog is about ways I'm discovering myself in the world. Ryoko's English is fantastic. My Japanese is not. Naturally, being Japanese as she is, she fretted about not being able to understand me properly, a concern that I, being American as I am, didn't care enough to worry about. Of course she's trying a lot harder to speak and understand English than I've been with Japanese, but as they say here, shikata ga nai. Not like I haven't tried. Our friendship is fantastic because we both feel like we suck at each other's language, but we still manage to hold deep conversations about life and can laugh with each other and really try to get to understand where the other comes from. I've gotten a lot more out of her than I have out of a lot of people I used to be friends with in America, and I'm going to explain why.
Ryoko is a funny case because she's been quite exposed to American ideology, as in she's been to America, speaks with Americans often, etc, yet she's still trapped in the Japanese ideology. I tried to explain the Rocky Horror cult to her. She was surprised that people would do smutty things on-stage. I told her our student board puts on one public theater presentation of a porn per year (true story). She said such a thing could never fly in Japan. I asked her if this was the same Japan where porn is easier to find than deoderant even in a grocery store. She reluctantly conceded. Another cultural challenge was compromising our differing cultural ideals of responsibility. As I explained to her, in Japan, when someone tells you not to do something, you assume it can't and shouldn't be done, so it doesn't happen. It's why, as a Chinese immigrant notes in the movie Shinjuku Incident, "Just because the Japanese don't steal, they think we won't" in reference to how easy it is to just grab food from an open market in Shinjuku. In America, I said, when someone tells you not to do something, you weigh the consequences of doing it, and if they don't exceed the benefits, you do it anyway. This, I said, was actually a virtue on the part of the Japanese. It meant they found themselves responsible for doing what they were socially expected to do and implicitly said they would, and didn't utilize technicalities to worm their way out. Those technicalities don't exist. There is no "What one does not know can't hurt him" principle in Japan. Call it honor, sheep mentality, whatever, it's the reason why Japanese can get shit done and don't have to shout about being the best country in the world while failing to get shit done. It works, and Japanese work, and I, the heartless, inconsiderate jerk, can talk with them, because in place of passive-aggression and hiding the truth and protecting oneself with technicalities, Japanese would rather just engage people and answer the questions they are asked and not ask questions that they don't want answers to. I love the Japanese. Sorry America. That's not to say I automatically despise all Americans. I'll always judge people on an individual basis, but as a whole I'd rather meet Japanese people than Americans for the long run. There's something about their genuine honesty even to the gates of hell that I don't think I could find anywhere else in the world.
I have some pictures to put up, but unfortunately I'm screwed for time and I just had this post sitting around from last night from before I got an internet connection, so I'll drop another update tonight or tomorrow morning JST.
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