It's always shocking to be called back to reality...

We have been here for over six months now. We are starting to feel comfortable and somewhat at home. It is still very interesting and exotic to be here, but a lot of the “gee whiz” has faded. Sometimes when we are walking down the street, we feel that we had adapted to Japan and no longer feel like such a foreigner in a foreign land. “We’re hip,” we tell ourselves, “We live here. We ain’t no dorky tourists…” We might even feel that we are starting to blend in…

Then we see another foreigner, usually a westerner like us. And it is startling, almost shocking, too see that person. They stand out so much among the Japanese, especially if they are dressed in the westerner tourist outfit, as compared to the usually well dressed locals.

Then, with a sinking feeling, we realize that’s us. That’s how we look. There’s no blending in.

The Japanese are very polite. You will rarely see them checking you out. You might catch a pair of eyes glancing away if you turn that way. The illusion that you are just cruising along, blending in as a “foreign local” is just that – an illusion.

Trying to be a better blogger...

Mom berated me yesterday to write more on our blogs. We had started out strong, but we both have faded. I have been focusing more and more time on seriously studying Japanese, and Joan has been learning how to be a teaching at our university. Also, this summer was incredibly busy with traveling, hosting many guests and escorting them around. It has been too easy to just say, “Oh, I’ll write about it later…” The problem is that something just as interesting happens, and writing about the earlier thing gets pushed further down the list.

Also, Facebook comes into to play. It is easy to post a quick status update, comment or upload a photo in the immediacy of the moment and leave it at that. The problem is that not everyone is on Facebook, nor does it lend itself to longer and more thoughtful commentary (most of the time).

Today was a good example. We had the big excitement of Typhoon Melor coming to visit. I wrote a few comments on Facebook about what was going on, but that might have been all I wrote…

So, back in the saddle!

Asia is regularly hammered by the powerful storms; the Philippines just got hit by two back to back and are experiencing horrible flooding. Japan gets them, too, but it has been two years since one actually has made landfall. We had bad typhoon related weather earlier this summer which caused some damage from flooding and landslides in the south, and a small number of people were killed. Today was supposed to be a big one.

Yesterday, many of the students said they were going to stay home. Our farmer friends were worried about their crops. The streets were strangely quiet and empty last night; many shops and restaurants were shuttered. It had been raining steadily but not too heavily for the last day or so, but in the night, the intensity picked up. We could hear it drumming on the roof above it, yet the wind did not seem too bad. By the morning, the intensity of the rain had slackened, but it was still coming down. It did not look too bad outside, and the sky was lightening.

However, we soon received a text message from our boss saying that morning classes were canceled. Hurrah! Typhoon day! (It doesn’t have the same effect as “Snow day!” does it?)

So I stayed home to continue studying kanji, and eventually Joan headed into to school to do some preparation for classes. We have a friend from Michigan visiting us for a week, and later that morning, we headed down to the station to send her on her way for some sightseeing.

As we stood outside the station, and I explained to her the train system and what she would need to do, we suddenly r that the train full of commuters we could see at the platform had not moved in well over five minutes. Usually, the morning trains are fast, furious, and frequent. What’s going on?

With a sinking feeling, we headed up the stairs into the station and saw something I have never seen before. Chaos! A broken down system! There was a milling crowd at the turnstiles, not being let through by the station staff. A uniformed man on a megaphone was talking to the crowd, which swelled and ebbed as more and more people came up the stairs and then left when they realized the world famously punctual trains were not running… There were some staff handing out slips of white paper, which commuters took in hand and left: a “the trains were shut down” note to give to the boss? Another staffer had a map booklet in hand and was offering alternative routes.

I went up the ticket window by the turnstile gates to check that no trains were running. He confirmed it and said he did not know when they would be running again. Behind him was the computer monitor that normally shows the train system with all the routes in their colors: orange, blue, green, etc. Today they were all outlined in angry, pulsing red. Well, well…

Back at the apartment, I checked in with Joan by email and found out that the afternoon classes had been canceled, as well, because the Chuo train line, the main one that students use to come to school, had been shut down due to flooding and high winds.

I read later on the Internets that about 9,000 people had to be evacuated due to flooding, some roofs were torn off and that one bridge had been washed away. The only fatality I have heard of was a newspaper delivery guy on his motorcycle was killed by a falling tree.

The weird thing was that by mid-morning, it was very warm and sunny, although windy. You wouldn’t know there had been a typhoon except for all the leaves and branches in the street, as well as the rows and rows of bicycles that had been blown over.

So, this afternoon, we rode bikes over to Kichijoji to show our friend some local sights. Also, I had to drop my badminton racquet off at Racquet Shop Fuji. I snapped the strings last night at practice. It cost 2,205 yen to get it restrung (about $24). On the way back, we stopped by the tallest building in Musashinosakai to go up to the 11^th floor and look to the west. On a clear day after the rains, if the visibility is good enough… Yep, we were able to see Mt. Fuji outlined by the sunset. All in all, a pretty good day.

Hokkaido Trip 2009 (part two)

The Hamanasu night express train from Aomori to Sapporo, while an efficient way to save some time on our trip, was definitely not the most comfortable. I truly considered getting out one of our new ThermaRest sleeping pads and finding a space to stretch out in the aisle with all the other unlucky (lucky, perhaps?) souls.

We rolled into Sapporo with most of day to spend because Ryan would not be free till later in the day. So, groggy and grimy, we found a "manga kissa" - (comic book cafe). These are places where, for about 300-400 yen an hour, you can read all the comic books (manga) you want, as well as surf the Internet, sleep/relax in comfy arms chairs/sofas, take a shower, and drink all the free drinks (soda, coffee, juices). Pretty sweet deal if you are traveling and need a break.

So, for about $2.50, we both got a shower and loaded up on coffee and juice to start the day. Sapporo reminded us a great deal of Kazakhstan cities with the layout and wide, open avenues and green spaces. We did a quick tour of the fish market and declined to have sushi and raw sea urchin for breakfast. A botanical garden tour was followed by a failed attempt to walk to a shrine/park area that was too far away. With time to spare and a day of unlimited local train rides, we headed back out of town to Otaru, a seaside town, to see the sights. Unfortunately, we did not have enough time to do it right and ended up just eating black squid ink and wasabi flavored ice cream - actually pretty tasty!

Another pretty long train ride, we got to Asahikawa and were picked up by Ryan and friend who had a car. We whisked over to a really nice onsen (hot springs bath) for a cleansing soak, followed by an all you can eat salad bar restaurant, a nice change from three days of travel food.

We gratefully fell asleep at Ryan's apartment, glad to be not traveling for awhile.

The next day was full of helping Ryan's friend, Toby, build his rice straw bale house. The weekend had been a workshop for those wanting to learn how to build with straw bales. Quite a project! The carefully crafted wooden internal structure was finished, so we measured, cut and stacked hay bales all day with people from all over Hokkaido and Japan. Joan will blog about it later in great detail...

That night, we did some hurried food planning, shopping and pacing for our seven camping trip, following Ryan's advice on what to bring: mostly soba and ramen noodles with lots of dehydrated tofu and shitake mushrooms.

In the morning, we were picked up by anther friend of Ryan's, Mark, who had access to an SUV, which cut out a lot of travel time spent on train, bus and hiking/hitch hiking to the trail head. Once there, Ryan and Yuka stashed an extra week's worth of food for their second week in a hut shelter, and then the five of us shouldered our packs and started heading up the trail.

Wow, it was tough. We had done some conditioning and hiking in Tokyo, but it is no replacement for a rough, steep trail and a fully loaded pack. Luckily, the first days was only three hours up to the lake where we set up base camp for days hikes. Obviously, one of the best things about the park is the visual beauty, so I will let the photos and videos do most of the talking (park photos start about half way):

http://picasaweb.google.com/richbailey911/Hokkaido2009#

The second day was a long day hike to determine the condition of a trail and the location of a water source on the trail. One idea was to hike this long trail to another mountain series and do some exploring on the second half of the trip. Well, the trail was almost completely overgrown by "sasa" - a type of bamboo grass - and pretty much shredded us and our clothes. We also did not find any water. Scratch that plan.

On the third day, Mark headed back to civilization and work, while we did a long hike down the other side of the plateau we were camping to an onsen and mountain hut. Ryan had not been there yet, and the idea of a hot bath and sleeping in a hut sounded pretty good to us. It started out fine, but we got to really steep stuff, it started to rain. Then the trail started following a stream. The the trail became the stream, full of slippery rocks and flowing water. It, quite frankly, became rather miserable and unpleasant. Joan took a fall crossing the water and ended up on her back in the stream. She had been less than happy in general, and this was a bit too much. We took a break, and Joan took a little alone time to sort herself out.

However, we finally made it down to the onsen and hut. A good, long, hot soak in the onsen and a dry change of clothes in the warm and snug mountain hut did wonders for everyone's outlook. We had planned for staying over and so had our sleeping bags, pads, stove, and food. It was a good thing because there was no way Joan (or the rest of us, except maybe for Ryan) was going to hike back up that watery trail in the rain and gathering dusk.

We slept really well and awoke to a sunny day four. More soaking, some quick laundry (clean socks, anyone?) and relaxing in the sun got us ready to hike back up the trail. It was much nicer and more enjoyable, especially now that we could see the spectacular views of all the mountains around us. We made it back to the lake campsite and were glad to see our tents full of food undisturbed by the fox we had seen the second day and by the bears we had imagined would be ravaging our tents while we were gone.

Ryan and Yuka decided to keep on hiking and head back down to the trail head and the hut to get their extra food. With a change in the original plan of where we were heading, they decided it was better to lug all the extra food (with our help) with them so they would be able to go where they wanted for their second week in the park. They took their sleeping gear and the only stove to stay in the hut and took off. We ate our dinner that we had quickly cooked and took a walk around the lake, seeing another fox. Luckily, some other hikers had showed up earlier that day and set up camp, so we did not feel all alone. However, it was a cold, windy, and rainy evening, so we were in the tent before seven and soon asleep. In fact, we all quickly adopted the pattern of going to be before 8 pm and getting up around 4 or 5 am. Nothing much else to do when it gets dark...

Continued...

Hokkaido Trip 2009 (part one)

The idea of our trip to Hokkaido started when we met our second couchsurfing guest, Ryan. He had come to Tokyo to find work as a photographer and check out the Tokyo scene. He had been bouncing between Hokkaido and Thailand for a couple of years, hiking and photographing Daisetzuan national park and building an adobe house in the north of Thailand. His apartment had not been ready when he arrived in Tokyo and needed an emergency place to stay. As the apartment situation dragged on, he ended up staying with us for about 10 days. He finally decided that maybe the big city was not meant to be for him and decided to return to Hokkaido.

Luckily, while he stayed with us, his knowledge of the country and Japanese language skills helped open doors for us. He went with us to restaurants and stores and often explain what was going on behind the scenes. He also was pivotal in finding Joan a farm to work on, something she is very thankful for.

When he left, he suggested that we come up to Hokkaido and visit him. He offered to guide us around the park and a base of operation to explore the island. He also mentioned that the heat and humidity would be horrendous in August and that in Hokkaido it would be much cooler and drier. So all spring long, we had been talking and planning about a big trip up there. My job provides a ridiculous amount of summer vacation, so we had the time to do it right.

As we had not brought any hiking or camping gear, we started looking around at what was offered in Japan. They are crazy here about hiking and camping, but the prices are really expensive, especially for shoes and boots. So we ended up having a lot of our old gear sent from the States, as well as some hefty purchases from REI.

Joan had about three weeks of vacation from her part-time teaching job, so that was our window of opportunity. The problem was that is was the same window for everyone else in Japan. It was summer vacation in general and “obon” – the time when everyone goes home to visit family and to pray at the graves of ancestors. This meant that travel options were extremely expensive or completely booked. We did lots of research and hemming and hawing and eventually realized that there was no cheap and easy way to do it. So we decided to take the cheap option (I prefer to think of it as the “frugal” option, thank you very much, peanut gallery).

Three times a year, one can buy “Seishun juhachi kippu” (18 year old tickets). For about 11,500 yen (~$115), it gets you five individual days of unlimited travel on local trains, an extremely slow but extremely cheap way to travel. We had been discussing these tickets as a way to see Japan (bullets trains are so fast that you don’t get a chance to see Japan as it whips by at about 140 mph), so as we had lots of time, we decided to try it. We ended up buying a slightly different version, a rail pass, that offered similar travel but with slightly better options for our trip.

It was going be almost 1,400 kilometers on local trains, so we decided to break it up into three days and see some of Japan. We found a couchsurfing (CS) host in Tendo about halfway up the main island, Honshu, for the first night. The second night was going to find us in Aomori on the northern most point where we would get on the Hamanasu night express train at 11 pm. We would sleep as the train went through the undersea tunnel to Hokkaido island, arriving in Sapporo around 6 am. The third day would be a little sightseeing in Sapporo and then continuing north to Asahikawa where Ryan lives.

So after a great deal of shopping (who knew the 100 yen store would have so many things one needs for a backpacking trip?), organizing, planning, and packing, we left early Friday morning, train schedule in hand. Well, to use the juhachi kippu tickets, we had to make many train transfers to string together all the local trains. Some of this transfer times were measured in less than 10 minute intervals… Well, at our first transfer, we got confused about what platform we were supposed to be on and, yep, you guessed it: we missed our first connecting train. Unfortunately, it completely screwed up our carefully figured out itinerary and resulted in two and a half hours extra travel time. “Shoganai?” (“what can you do?” in Japanese).

Our CS host, Yohei, had suggested we stop by Yamadera, an ancient and beautiful Buddhist temple complex built into a mountain side. Even though we were running way behind, we decided to still visit. The weather was horrible, but it was still beautiful and even more impressive in the rain and mist. We will definitely put it on the list of places to return to.

We arrived in Tendo around 7 pm and were met at the station by Yohei. He had studied in America for six years and was excited to use his English again. He and his parents lived in a nice apartment in a building that reminded us of the big box apartment buildings of Kazakhstan. They had prepared a fantastic meal for us, and we all had a wonderful time telling stories and learning about each other. Joan, of course, will be blogging about the food and recipes she got from Yohei’s mother.

We slept soundly on futons on the floor in the same room with Yohei and woke to another wonderful Japanese meal: a breakfast of rice, pickled vegetables and leftover tofu. With many thanks, we walked to the station and got on another local train and headed east to Sendai where we would turn north again.

It was another loooooong day on the train, but the views were always interesting. In the three days of traveling, we never cracked a book or took a nap; there was too much to see out the windows. Finally arriving in Aomori, we met up with a fellow Asia University teacher, Derek, and his friend for dinner before catching the night express train. They were also traveling around Japan and just happened to be in the same town.

One of the risks with traveling juhachi kippu is that you can’t make any reservations. The Hamanasu night express train only goes once a day, and it is the major (and only) way people traveling on a budget get to Hokkaido. Only two cars on the train on non-reservation, and the guidebook implied it might be a good idea to get in line early. How early? Well, we asked the train station staff how early they thought we should go stand in line. They said, “One hour? That should be fine… but you never know…” So we decided to be extra safe and show up two hours early; again, we had lots of time on our hands.

It’s a good thing we did. As we walked down the stairs to the train platform, we could not see the end of the platform where the line would form. We came around the food kiosk that was blocking our view, and… oh my… There were already many, many people waiting, sitting on the ground with their backpacks and bags. We picked up the pace and even passed some people walking down the long platform. Some quick questions in our poor Japanese determined we were in the right place, so we quickly took our place in line. We struck up a conversation with our line neighbor (we always seem to luck into strangers who speak English) and learned it was his third trip to hike in Daisetzuan park. We also learned that the night we were there, Sunday, August 9th, was the busiest travel day of the year, and the train would be packed! We nervously asked him if we were close enough in line to get a seat because we didn’t want to have to stand for seven hours – nightmare memories of Kazakhstan came flooding in! He thought that we had a good chance, but just to be sure, that when people started boarding, to move quickly and not hesitate about getting any seats.

During the two hours we sat there, a steady stream of people came walking down the platform. It was funny and horrible to watch their expressions as they realized the situation and hurried to get in the lines which grew longer and longer. When the train finally pulled up to the platform, everyone jumped to their feet, shouldered their packs, and pressed forward. The doors opened, and people surged into the train, closely watching the people filling the seats coming from the other direction, hoping to get to open seats. We made it to a pair of seats with not much time to spare and gratefully sank into the…extremely hard and uncomfortable seats!! Argh!! It turned out that the poor SOBs that had to sleep on the floor of the aisle probably had a more comfortable ride and more sleep than we did…

Continued…

Baileys now on YouTube!

Lord help us, we just can't get away from Rich and Joan. Now we have to watch and listen to them now... Won't they ever stop pestering us?

http://www.youtube.com/user/richbailey911#play/all/uploads-all/2/3ZFHunY_vWE

Panda party!

Last weekend, we decided to go out for dinner after a day of swimming and gardening. Our plan was to go to a ramen cart that we had seen the other day, set up on the south side of the station. It looked like it had the potential to be a diamond in the rough.

Well, it was not there when we biked over Must have packed it up and rolled away. So, I mentioned a little izakaya (Japanese traditional bar) that I had seen on the way, and off we went.

It was, perhaps, one of the best nights we have had here in Japan.

It is extremely small -maybe three tables that sit four each and a long bar that serves about 10. The bar was interesting in that you sat with your feet in a concrete trench under the bar and with your tuckus on the lip of the trench.

It was also hot and noisy. However, that was made up for by the incredibly friendly staff, cold beer and tasty food. Any visitors will be taken there!

At an izakaya, you will drink. And you will eat. You are served food whether you order it or not, and since you will pay for it, why not eat it?

So, with not much time to get our bearings, the main guy behind the bar, Reiji, started putting

food in front of us. First was a small dish with a cube of "nikogori" - a type of meat-based gelatin with random vegetables ("meat jello with veggies" we called it) - and a fried "wakasagi" (a small fish eaten whole). It came with two sauces: a miso-based salty paste and a creamy sesame flavored dressing.

Next was a battered and fried meatball with chunks of carrot, onions, and peas inside. It had a pleasant curry flavor and came with sliced cabbage on the side.

Last was something we saw another patron eat, and we just had to try it. Turns out it is a ball of pork (a little like Spam but better) wrapped around a quail egg. Then it is rolled in cooked rice

that had been soaked in something savory (miso, soy sauce?). Finally, it is steamed until cooked all the through. They served it with a sauce of spicy red bean paste in sesame oil - heavenly!

Kris, my boss, gardens with Joan and had come with us. She found herself adopted by the tipsy Okinawan woman at her end of the bar. She got the full cultural immersion, including an Okinawan cream cheese with mango sauce and flat bread to spread it on. Derek, a fellow teacher,

who does not eat fish and strange food, watched bemusedly.

A couple mugs of cold beer washed it all down, and at the end of fantastic night of jumping with both feet into Japanese cultural, we tipsily rode our bikes home. We'll be back!

A map of our town

Here is another map that shows our little city, Musashino-shi, in Tokyo. If you have any questions about the location of other things we have mentioned, please feel free to ask...

Click on this link to see our map.