Alpine Solitude - Week 23 (October 14 - October 20)

Alpine Solitude

Week 23

Attempting to stay as up to date as possible, but this is my last apology for tardiness until such a time as I enjoy multiple early endings to class each week, pixies are used to light street lamps and trains run on sugar water. Sarcasm, it's what's for dinner.

So, I guess this is for 2 weeks ago. It was a fairly average week, nothing amazing. During the business part of it, I spent most of my time, well, teaching as per usual. The schedule has taken some getting used to, but I'm starting to really get into the groove.

I'm continuing to ask most of my students about the market crash and what their opinions are. Of course the outlook is still generally dire, but I suppose skepticism is the better policy in this situation.

Disregarding any major financial problems (which I am having right now due to a delayed money transfer back to Canadian soil), the weekend rolled to a stop and boarded without any concern.

Sunday saw me headed down Shinjuku way to pick up a couple of books. The primary objective was acquiring Lonely Planet's "Hiking in Japan", a guide book of most the most esteemed caliber. I duly acquired this most hallowed of tomes along with that which occupied my secondary objective, Cormac McCarthy's The Road. I'd just recently finished reading McCarthy's very well known No Country for Old Men, which was excellent but, sadly, spoiled for me by the Coen brother's recent and equally excellent film adaptation. Part of my motivation for reading this book was so that it would not be spoiled by the impending release of the film version of the The Road. Additionally, the book I was reading at the time, 1914-1918, a history book on WWI, turned out to be less about the tactics and instead focuses on a more geo-political level. It kind of irks me when a book glosses over a campaign that lasts several months and sees millions die with a brief description of casualty numbers and movements of the fronts.

Pet peeve.

My tertiary and quaternary objectives were left unfulfilled. I had intended to pick up a copy of Into the Wild as well, mostly on the recommendation of a certain Mair, and the essence of literary quality that I found nestled between the pages of Krakauer's other book, Into Thin Air. Sadly, I left empty handed.

I also briefly debated attending a film screening at Cinema World, which is just down the street from Shinjuku station. Nothing I wanted to see was starting around the time that I got there, which is really odd. It was around 6:30-7:00. Back at the theater in Canada almost every movie playing in the theater would be screening then. Eh. With a shrug I moseyed on back to my apartment where I began to peruse the guidebook and discovered an activity for Monday.

Ian's Hikes - Part 1 - Takao San to Jimba-San

The first hike that I chose to do from the book was a relatively simple one. Approximately 19 km, it started from the base of Mt. Takao in Takao-san-guchi. I began at the bottom of the mountain, bypassing the optional cable car ride that would take me most of the way up. Instead, I climbed up a narrow valley that follows the flow of a small creek.

Just before I left the paved streets for the real climb itself, I stopped to take a picture of a bunch of stone statues. A Japanese man stopped and commented on the make of my camera, which led to me receiving a surprise hiking companion for the next fifteen minutes. His name was Isao, and he is quite the amateur photographer. He still uses old style film cameras in fact, therefore making a member of a dying breed. Isao is apparently a fairly active alpinist too, especially for an elderly fellow. Fuji has been bested by his boot-clad feet no less than 4 times. Takao-san sees his bootprints on the summit multiple times each year as well. We talked a bit about photography before I peeled off to take a few pictures while he went on ahead.

The walk up the valley was quite tranquil. There were a number of other hikers on the trail, but not too many. The path wound through ram rod straight old growth cedar, the path itself constructed partially out of their venous root structures. Beautiful, especially since the trees also did a nice job of keeping the unusually hot sun off of me.

I stopped for a short while at a shrine located adjacent to the trail. The small complex is neighbour to a 5 meter waterfall which is apparently used by monks to train up their asceticism. The shrine was one of those things that struck me as kind of timeless. If you wound the clock back five hundred years I could easily imagine samurai tramping by on a full moon night, swords slung heavily over their shoulders, on the way over the mountains to do battle on the Kansai plains...

Awesome.

The rest of the trip up was fairly uneventful. After starting at around 11:30 AM, I summited Takao (at a scant 599m) shortly before 1PM. The relatively low altitude and the proximity to Tokyo has contributed heavily to the development at the top of the mountain. There's a paved road all the way to the top, doubtlessly one of those extra public works projects the Japanese government likes so much. I actually had to dodge out of the way of a small van right before I got to the top. I was a bit surprised to see a car up there there, but hey, this is Japan, convenience and ease of use is key.

There were a few classes worth of elementary school kids up around the summit, taking pictures with teachers and generally running around like crazy. Pretty cool field trip to go on, I guess.

The weirdest part was the interaction that I had with a guy up at the top of the mountain. I was taking a few pictures of the surrounding landscape when a Japanese fellow who was in his early 30s asked me about climbing the mountain. I told him yes, and then we started talking. Seemed like a nice enough dude, pretty easy going all and all. We talked about where we worked and why we were up the mountain that day and so forth.

Then he asked me if I played sports.

To which I replied in the affirmative, but added the qualification that I only really play winter sports.

He then told me that I should come play badminton with him.

And that he has another foreigner friend that he plays with who is from Laos.

Okay.

Nothing against badminton, but when I said "I like hockey and skiing" badminton is about the furthest opposite, sitting right next to "air rifle target shooting".

So yeah, colour me perplexed.

He kept on talking up his badminton games and before long asked for my phone number...I countered by asking him for his card, which he gave to me. I then proceeded to give him a fake phone number. I'll admit, this was a mean thing to do, but I never want to play badminton unless it's during a tea party at a British manor while the butler holds the extra shuttlecocks and the grounds are patrolled by the most exquisitely cared for Ostriches.

Also, who invites you to play badminton the first time they meet you? That's just weird.

I moved on from Takao shortly thereafter.

The trail I took runs across a ridge line for about 10 kilometers, heading over the summits of 4 increasingly taller mountains before ending at Jimba-san at an altitude of 897m. Since I was hiking on a Monday, and due to the lateness of the season, the trails were almost completely dead as soon as I left Takao-san. I would say, over the next 5 hours of hiking I only ran into about a dozen people. In the last 2 hours I ran into almost no one.

The trail was picturesque, winding along through the high altitude cedar. I'll just quickly list off a few of the best points between Takao-San and Jimba-San.

- Seeing a gigantic, orange, Japanese wasp. This thing was maybe an inch long and looked incredibly solidly built in addition to being coloured orange. Crazy.

- Happening across my first naturally occurring and city-free bamboo stand. Standing beside that verdant spray of trunks was a moment I'd been waiting almost six months for on this trip. Absolutely breathtaking.

- I saw two very spooky things on this portion of the hike. One was what must have been a pretty big rest stop that used to be in operation about 1/4 of the way from Takao to Jimba. Everything was broken down and ruined looking. To top it off, there was a poorly laminated piece of paper with a man's portrait and a bunch of writing hung on the wall of one of the buildings...It reminded me of a Japanese horror film called The Cure, very creepy. The other was this insanely gnarled old tree in the middle of a huge stand of perfectly straight cedar. It's pictured above.

- The spiders. Apparently they're super brightly coloured in this part of Japan. I noticed a number and got a very nice picture of one.

- Watching a group of Japanese lumberjacks fell a few trees. Lumberjacks appear to be much more efficient and more sharply dressed than North American ones. They also had these really awesome split-toed rain boats. Totally cool.

- Admiring the Kanto plain and being simply dumbstruck at the size of Tokyo. What's even more amazing is that even the largest city on Earth looks tiny compared to these relatively small mountains.

I made it to Jimba-san at dusk, which was not a good thing. I quickly snapped a few shots with the white concrete horse at the top of the mountain. Yes, it's SUPPOSED to be a horse. That's not what it looks like though. I then admired the dusk as it slowly rolled over the Japanese alps before quickly jogging down a long flight of stairs to a parking lot a couple hundred meters from the summit of Jimba.

Here I was struck with a rather unfortunate revelation.

The last 3 1/2 kilometers of the hike ran along a mountain road rife with switchbacks and lacking both sidewalks and street lights. It was at this point that I was very, very glad that I brought my headlamp and flashlight along. Cars were whipping up and down that road pretty fast, and the road itself was only wide enough for 1.5 cars. The next 45 minutes of the descent involved a pretty tense situation where I'd be listening for cars coming up or down the mountain and stopping quickly and pressing myself up against the guard rail every time they got close. Slow going at times, which was further exacerbated by the fog that started to show up towards the bottom of the valley. This, combined with the loud waterfalls on the valley floor that did a good job of obscuring cars' engine noise made the end of the hike fairly unpleasant. The worst were the hybrid cars...you just can't hear them coming!

But, since I'm typing this, you know I made it down okay. I'll be setting out earlier next time though.

I grabbed a bus at the bottom of the road and headed back to my apartment where I had departed from nearly 10 hours earlier. Tired, but happy. That was quite the hike.

And that's also the end of the week! I should have the post for next week up fairly soon, followed by possibly a Thailand post this weekend.

I remain the always safety conscious...

Ian "Mello Yello" Cantello


(Pictures: 1- Shrine on Takao-San, 2 - View from Takao-San summit, 3 - Taken shortly after leaving Takao-san summit, 4, 5, 6, 7 - Various points on the way to Jimba-san, 8,9 - summit of Jimba-san at dusk)

Conference Queuing - Week 22 (October 7 - October 13)

Yeah.

It's been a while.

So sue me.

Things have been busy as hell, what do you want from me?

Fine.

Just because your complaining I'm going to write all of this

justified right.

Yeah, not so big now huh?

See who's really in charge?

I thought so.

Okay, you've learned your lesson, back we

go.

Conference Queuing

Week 22

Well, I don't really have too much to say about the start of this particular week. Things were going as per usual. The changeover for Sean occurred this week and so, guess what, I'm super fucking busy. Insanely so. Not so much in regards to number of hours put in for class time, but outside of class I've been putting in a lot of extra time too due to the lack of a manager at my school. Kayoko and I get to pick up all the slack. Admittedly, my esteemed colleague does about 90% more work than I do, but I do my best to help too and always make sure I leave the school at the same time as she does. As one Monique can attest, I hate to leave a coworker with unfinished work. Working alone sucks. My ability to help is severely crippled by my lack of practical Japanese anyways...

On the plus side I got to teach all of my new students for the first time this week. They are, to a man/woman, awesome. I'm really happy to get the chance to meet and teach all these new people. Much of the classes this week were devoted to introductions and a bit of small talk. Tons of fun though and, to break temporality, it was also fun the week after.

Saturday was absolutely exhausting though. Bone-crushingly so. I was sucking back genki drinks at the 4 o'clock point in order to make it through the last few lessons. I'm just glad the students are so awesome, because it would have been very hard to make it through otherwise. There was some kind of moon viewing festival going on in Koganei park that night but, due to extreme exhaustion and the lateness of my arrival home (close to 11) I just veged out on the computer for a few hours before calling it a night.

Besides, I had to get up early the next day because it was time for

THE TOKYO GAME SHOW!!!!!!!!!!!

Sorry, font control got away from me there for a second.

Yeah, Tokyo Game Show, TGS, the Japanese equivalent to the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3). Something I had planned on attending since the day I left Canadian soil.

And it did not disappoint.

Well, it did a little bit, but not too much.

TGS is usually held at a large conference complex called Makuhari-Messe in Chiba. The place is pretty close to Disney Land and is apparently quite famous for the number of large-scale auto shows that are held there. I was enroute for decidedly geekier reasons.

After dragging myself out of bed and arriving a 1/2 hour after the doors opened at 10:30 AM I was 1200 yen poorer but a wealth of potential gaming richer.

I say potential of course because my god, the lines...Everywhere, for everything. I'm not really surprised it was that bad, but still. The fact that you had to sign a piece of paper while you waited in line to buy something at a store kind of prevented me from spending any money on merchandise while I was there. Not that I saw much worth buying, but meh. Too much queuing in my opinion. As Shin put it later on "Japanese people love to line up for things." I don't know about everyday life, but at TGS that's certainly the case.

When you first walk into the dimly-lit and cavern that is the first of the three conference halls occupied by TGS 2008 you were confronted by the first booth, a giant display screen devoted to Koei's retreads of the same basic game formula, Dynasty Warriors. To the left, SNK and King of Fighters 12 (!). Following that Electronic Arts, Microsoft and so forth and so forth.

My first stop was the EA booth just for the novelty of playing a game in the booth of the biggest western third party developer in the Far East. Well, maybe the biggest. I'm not sure which is larger, EA or Activison-Blizzard. Regardless, the point is a played a western game at TGS first. How ironic, no?

The wait was relatively short, and the shortest of the day for me. It only took about 20 minutes to get to the front of the line and play my first game of the show which also made it the first I've ever played pre-release: Mirror's Edge.

The demo was a pretty decent vertical slice I guess. It seemed like it was part of a complete level, but it could have been assembled from others just as easily. I guess the guy providing narration for that demo on the link says that it is. The game was really good. Tight gameplay, although maybe a bit spartan for my tastes so far. We'll see what the full version is like.

After the demo ended I headed on over to the second show floor to get a feel for the rest of the show. The area between the two show rooms had apparently been invaded by cos-players, as there was quite the collection of interesting wardrobe choices there. For those who don't know, much like Harajuku girls, cosplayers dress up in elaborate costumes and hang around posing for tourists/attendees to snap a few shots. Since we were at a videogames conference the costumes here were, of course, video game themed. In my opinion, the pair playing Phoenix Wright and Apollo Justice win for their choice of a relatively simple, but well done, costume. The Resident Evil/Biohazard guys came in second.

The second show floor was much like the first, packed. I wandered around here too, especially at the Canadian section, which was unfortunately mostly shut down. I rounded a corner towards the end of my perusal of the vacant booths and promptly came to a halt in front of the two employees working representing the Canadian governement. One of them was Japanese, the other Canadian. The latter noticed my Montreal Canadians hat as soon as I came into sight and we both did a double take...me primarily because I hadn't seen anybody in the vicinity so far, her because of the blatant wearing of my nationality on my sleeve...or head as it were.

Speaking of which, Canada takes its bilingualism wayyyyyy too seriously. I mean, the signage at the booth was in French and English. In Japan. You know what would have been really useful? Some Japanese on the signs, that's what. Because this is the TOKYO game show. Not E3, not Montreal, TOKYO. This is not rocket science people.

We had a short conversation that ran along the lines of "what brings you to Japan" before I took my leave and headed back across the display area to rendez-vous with Ryan.

With my fellow gamer in tow, I headed off to find the Sony booth and, awesomely enough, Little Big Planet. Ryan and I got grouped up with another gaijin by the name of Chris and we proceeded to wait another 1/2 hour for our turn at the controls. The game was a ton of fun, although the controls felt a little loose at the time. The avatars have a lot of expression and are super fun to make around with. We were guided along by a Sony employee who made the experience that much more awesome. Because, you know, everything Sony touches turns to gold...that one was for you Colin. My Sackboy Sephiroth ended up taking the win over my two competitors. Very cool game.

We wandered around a bit more after this, lamenting the fact that the closed Square-Enix theater required an early morning arrival in order to obtain a pass to see the show inside. Soon thereafter the floor got ridiculously busy. Just insanely so. Going anywhere required about 10 minutes of shuffling in crowds of people packed shoulder to shoulder. We travelled back across the complex a short while later in order to meet up with Shin, who had arrived earlier.

Shin almost immediately confessed that he wasn't much of a gamer, which I thought was pretty awesome. With Ryan as a casual gamer and myself as a hardcore representative, we had the whole spectrum covered. I guess it was a pretty crazy experience for Shin.

And so, after some more wandering, we ended up ensconced in the comforting grasp of the hour long waiting line outside the Capcom booth for a chance to play Resident Evil 5.

Resident Evil 4 was by far one of the best games to appear on the Playstation 2, so RE 5 on the PS3 and 360 has a lot to live up to. From what I played, it did not disappoint. It may not be as fresh as the last iteration in the series, but damn if it isn't still a ton of fun. Plus the graphics are sharp enough to cause minor retinal damage.

The actual gameplay demo of this last game was preceded by an incredibly awkward introduction done by an actor dressed as one of the characters from the game...It really smacked of a PR team brainstorm gone wrong, an idiotic way to make their game stand out. In all honesty, the day that stupid stunts like this are no longer present at games conferences will be a sign of games being taken seriously as an art form rather than just another 'mindless' entertainment.

Frustration!

After Resident Evil 5 we wandered around a bit more before going through the demo for Mirror's Edge again. I'm really looking forward to this game. This brought us to about 4:30 though, and it was about time to head out. We took our leave of Makuhari Messe and headed downtown to Harajuku for another great dinner at Fonda De La Madrugada. Don, Yuka and a couple of newer teachers with GEOS met us there. It was a great dinner, as always, and one of the other teachers knew a damn good song to request from the mariachis.

I headed home after coffee at Starbucks, tired but happy to have seen TGS. I was a bit disappointed that I got to play so few games and that I didn't run into any of the media-types that I would recognize but hey, c'est la vie.

Monday was uneventful. I spent it mentally preparing for the next week of tightly spaced classes. Other than that, I pretty much spent the day relaxing.

That's it for another week from Tokyo. Stay tuned for more posts later in the week (hopefully)

As always,

Ian "Mello Yello" Cantello

Grilled Malady - Week 21 (September 30 - October 6)

Grilled Malady

Week 21

(no pictures this week due to students being the only subjects of the photos)

Whew.

Man.

The constant blog updating, not to mention the departure of Sean in the last week has been wearing me out a bit. This update is actually for the week right after I returned from Thailand. Things are getting a bit skewed in so far as temporal sequence is concerned, but hopefully the situation will be remedied forthwith! Once I get Thailand and the next couple weeks out of the way I'm also gonna try switching up the styles of my writing, just for variety's sake. I just need more time!

Fortunately though, the week that is the subject of this particular post was fairly non-eventful. School was a bit busy, but not overly so. We were still spending much of our time arranging the details of the switch over after Sean departs. Wednesday afternoon saw me spending my overly long, and now non-existent, break sorting through photos of Thailand, of which there are still many, many more to be seen.

The rest of the week went by quite quickly. Sean's last day at Musashi Koganei was Saturday, and he was quite sad to go. He was losing a lot of students. I'd be pretty upset if I was in his situation. I offered him a free dinner out wherever he wanted, but he hasn't taken me up on the offer yet. Maybe this Saturday.

I also spent most of the week fighting off a pretty nasty cold. Since I haven't gotten to this juncture in the Thailand narrative yet, suffice it to say that Don picked up a pretty nasty cold about 3 days in to the trip and spread it to myself, Ryan and Melissa just in time for us to get sick back in Tokyo. I don't blame him at all though, sucks to be sick in paradise.

I lost my voice a couple times in class, and spent a few days sniffling around. The usual itchy-eyes symptom showed up only briefly on Monday though, which was nice. It's also good that the illness didn't impede my enjoyment of the most important event of the week: Sunday's good bye party for Sean!

Sunday began unusually early for me, which makes it two weekends in a row now. More on that in a later post. I met Sean and Kayoko down at the station a little past 10:30 in order to do the shopping for the Japanese BBQ we were about to have...If I remember correctly the ingredients were as follows:

Egg plant
Onion
Yakiniku (BBQ) sauce
noodles (lots)
Green pepper
Strip chicken
Strip beef
Strip pork
And a few other things that I forget at the moment

We then met a couple of our students who own cars and headed out to Koganei park. I parted ways in the parking lot to loop back to my humble abode in order to pick up some supplies that I'd stashed there the night before. After some exploring, I managed to locate the barbecue area, which coincidentally I have jogged by dozens of times but never realized that it was. My arrival occured much after the majority of the guests had arrived though...

There were about 25 of Sean's and my students there. I had a great time chatting to them all, especially some of Sean's students because it gave me a chance to meet them before I taught them for the first time the following week. Spent a lot of time hanging out beside the BBQ chatting with Keiko and Shinobu while enjoying fresh meat and veggies off the 'cue. The weather was pretty good, nothing amazing though. It rained slightly towards the end, which sent everyone scurrying for cover beneath the tents we rented.

Sean finished off the occasion with a nice speech which received a well deserved round of applause. We packed up and headed home soon thereafter, tired, but full and quite content.

Not too much else of note occurred. Monday saw me taking it REALLY easy and trying to recover from the Thailand trip. First day I felt like I really got a chance to relax in the past three weeks. I also had another interesting shopping episode.

Shopping can be absuredly difficult when you can't read the labels on anything in the store. I suffered from this last weekened when I attempted to purchase the ingredients for Bacon and Eggs. What I thought was strip bacon was, in fact, strip beef.

Which doesn't taste very good fried.

At all.

The eggs were good though.

And that was it for this week! Sorry, super short post. I should be getting back to more serious discussion of Thailand and whatnot later this week. I'll be writing the post for week 22 first though.

Yours eternally...

Ian "Mello Yello" Cantello

Zoological Combatants - Thailand (September 23)

Zoological Combatants

Thailand

Thailand: Bangkok Day Three (Day 2 of 7 in country)

Ugh

Hangovers. Soon to be a fixture for the rest of the trip, but unwelcome every time they crop up.

Day 2 in Bangkok started pretty late because of the above. We ended up wandering out of the hotel at around 2 in the afternoon, and headed back to the area where we had dinner the night before. I remembered the restaurant frin the first night around midnight yesterday, after I published the last blog edition. it was a very cool place, although I heard that the food was too weak to be satisfactory for the spice hounds in our party (Seth and Ryan).

Banana shakes and some light food was what it took to get us back on our feet. The restaurant was playing a bootlegged copy of The Dark Knight with subtitles that made absolutely no sense. I don't just mean they were bad, I mean it was almost like random words strung together. I'd love to have had a copy to bring home, it was comedy gold.

We split up in the afternoon for a little while. Our original idea had been to go to Ayuthaya, an ancient capital of Thailand, but unfortunately we were up too late to take the train out there. Instead Ryan and I headed out far towards the eastern edge of the city to take care of a little errand I had promised a friend back home I'd take care of. I got to take part in the time-honored tradition of foreign merchants in Thailand: silk speculating.

Jim Thompson, the first westerner to seriously develop the silk trade in Thailand, has a number of stores scattered across the city and, most specifically, a factory outlet store located on 93 soi Sukhmvit road. Since silk is so expensive normally, the 50% slash on bulk silk here is pretty nice.

It took us about a 1/2 hour to make it to the store and then another 1/2 hour for me to pick out 12 meters of silk in 4 different shades. Hopefully they're useable. Ryan was a good sport and spent his time upstairs perusing the smaller silk items that were available for sale. After picking out a light grey, a middle-orange, a light pink and a light yellow, we headed off. There was a very friendly attendant at the front door that called a metred taxi up for us.

The trip out there was surprisingly cheap. There and back probably only cost us about 500 baht, maybe $15. That was also taking into account that we paid 45 baht in each direction to take the toll highway. It was worth it, I think, just to see most of the city. Bangkok really did remind me of Tokyo during the ride. It is about as dense, the only differences being that the buildings are generally shorter and also that the whole place is filled with GIGANTIC billboards. Huge. I guess they kind of ruin the skyline, but in some cases they also distract from the slums that they loom over. Boy, if anything will drop your property values it's a 150 meter billboard on your front lawn.

When Ryan and I got back to the hotel we discovered that Seth, Don and Melissa had all taken a break and gotten various kinds of massages for the hour and half that we were gone. We had caught up with them just in time to head off to the Bangkok zoo together.

The trip to the zoo took FOREVER. We thought we had plenty of time, but the absolute gridlock that characterized the majority of the trip kind of made us worried that we'd miss our chance to get in. As it turned it we made it there a little past 4 with plenty of time to spare. The zoo was pretty fun and we got to see a lot of the wildlife that is indigenous to Thailand, including the usual smattering of exotic African animals and whatnot. We saw a Pelican eat a very large fish at one point, right out of the water. I thought that was pretty neat to see.

We left the Zoo shortly before closing and took another very, very long cab ride across the city to Luphini Park, where Lumphini stadium is located. Our goal: authentic Muay-Thai (Thai kickboxing). When we first arrived at the stadium one of our cab drivers directed us to a fellow in front of the ticket gates. He was saying something about getting cheaper tickets if we paid for him, since the match had already begun in earnest. I'd read that this was a common grift, so I was highly skeptical. In the end it didn't really matter though, we ended up leaving to find food first anyways. There's a very large night bazaar right beside the stadium that featured much higher scale shopping than that which we had seen so far. We stopped at a nice little restaurant in the bazaar, had dinner, and then carried on, back to the stadium.

We bought tickets for the third class section, which were the cheapest. The view was still quite good though and it was a visceral event to watch. The atmosphere was great, with the rundown stadium really adding to it. The section we were in was so sketchy that everytime someone walked by the floor would sag noticeably. It was also kind of neat hanging onto a chainlink fence, straining forward to get a better view of the pugilists as they went at each other. The second fight and the third fight we saw were really good. Muay Thai is highly entertaining. I prefer watching it to UFC or standard boxing, mostly due to the emphasis on kicks and the lack of grappling. Hearing the crowd surge when one of the fighters landed a couple of good strikes pumped your adrenaline way up. Be that as it may, we were all pretty tired from our crappy sleep the night before and running around all day. Energy levels were critical.

After the big bout of the night finished so too did our stay at the stadium. We left for our final destination of the night, Soi Cowboy, another strip of go-go bars. We were really determined to find some ladyboys apparently. I wasn't all that happy to be headed out to another red light district, I'd had my fill the night before. When in Bangkok...

Soi Cowboy is definitely glitzier than Patpong though. Tons of neon, lots of crazy mirrored-plexiglass-LED-lighted bars. At the end of the street you get a wonderful view of three skyscraper hotels which seems poised to funnel their cargo of balding, overweight, middle-aged men directly into Soi Cowboy's bars like so much congealed animal fat on a highschool cafeteria stove.

We hopped around the bars a little bit looking for a good one. The first one that we sat in was quickly rejected due to the old Australian quotient. We eventually found a place and settled down for a few hours. I nursed a number of beers throughout the couple hours we were there. Since I was declining the approaches of all of the women in the bar, one of them jokingly suggested that my beer was my girlfriend. I smiled, gave my Heineken a hug and followed it up with a big swig. Everyone's a comedian. Melissa, Don and I spent our time drinking and singing to the music, which was actually pretty good. I hope I did Enter Sandman justice.

That was pretty much the night. It was interrupted at times by hucking ping pong balls for 100 baht tips, which seemed pretty fucking misogynistic in retrospect. I guess when you're 7 or 8 beers up you can't be blamed for a small digression. I just hope that the way the women acted when they caught a ball was an act, because if it wasn't that's super depressing.

After a few hours we hired a cab and headed back to the D&D. Before hitting the sack we booked our flight down to Phuket for the following morning. I snapped a few pictures off the top of the hotel. Soon thereafter it was time to hit the sack. More travelling awaited us the next morning.

Phew. Getting towards the really interesting stuff soon. I remain, as always,

Ian "Mello Yello" Cantello

(Pictures: #1 Bangkok, on the way to Jim Thompson, #2 Siberian Tiger, Bangkok Zoo, #3 Muay Thai Boxers preparing for their match, #4 Muay Thai Boxers going at it, #5 Bangkok from the roof of the D&D Guesthouse)

Religious Prostitution - Thailand (September 22)

Religious Prostitution

Thailand

Thailand Chronicles Day Two: Bangkok (day 1 of 7 in country)

The first real day of our vacation began around about 9:00 am. The posse had to struggle its way through reveille in order to be downstairs in time to catch the complimentary breakfast offered by our hotel. This was a wasted enterprise however, for the breakfast could be uniformly described as lackluster, if not terrible.

But breakfast really doesn't matter when you have three different temples and a whole city to explore.

Leaving the hotel presented a much different Khaosan road than the night before. Street vendors had materialized every, selling everything from souvenir tchochkes to burritos. Hell, one intrepid copyright-infringer had even set up a computer to import single albums onto iPods. I tipped my hat to the latter. Now that's creative thinking.

We proceeded on foot out towards the nearest temple, Wat Phra Kaew and the Grand Palace. A somewhat perplexing obstacle struck us almost immediately: how do you cross 4 lanes of extremely busy street without the benefit of a stop light or a crosswalk?

One carefully timed game of frogger later, we were on our way to the temple again and, unfortunately, headed like the Titanic into our first negative impression of the Thai people.

On the way to the Grand Palace we walked down a wide tree-lined pedestrian walk when we noticed a large flock of pigeons in front of us. Seth told us that he'd seen this before, and that the pigeons had grossed him out last time as they had kind of swarmed him. The group split up for a minute here. I went over to the road to snap a couple pictures of a government building and when I turned back I noticed that Melissa and Ryan had both been stopped by Thai people. As I was skirting the edge of the pigeon flock a woman in a bright yellow shirt walked up to me and threw three small bags of feed corn into my chest.

This was somewhat surprising, as might be expected.

I barely even reacted to the bags of corn hitting me. They fell to the ground, so I picked them up and offered them back to the woman. Instead of taking the bags, she deftly untied the elastics that held the bags closed and spilled the corn all over the ground. This of course attracted dozens of pigeons towards us, which I guess was mildly amusing. It occupied maybe the same level of entertainment as riding one of those little mechanized rocket ships/trucks/helicopters that are always parked outside of malls in America, existing solely to occupy the bastard children of suburbanites while their parents yell at each other about how a 12 pack of Coke is cheaper just down the street.

It was about that entertaining.

I tried to laugh it off, but as I was turning to leave the woman grabbed my wrist, slammed another 3 bags into my hand and opened them, again spilling corn everywhere. At this point, I was getting a little bit pissed. I dropped the corn immediately and turned to leave again. Same thing happened. I felt her grip on my arm and then all of a sudden pellets of corn the colour of day-old urine are falling to the sidewalk again.

This time, when I turned to leave, she grabbed my arm and said "You pay 650 Baht!"

*sound effect - needle being pulled off of a record mid-song*

650 baht is approximately equivalent to $20.

What the fuck?

I smiled at her and told her I wasn't paying that, which prompted the two other grifters (as I now knew they were) to collapse on me and start yelling for me to pay. I tried to talk them down, but no dice. What topped it all off was that when I opened up my wallet to pay the woman actually REACHED into it and took what I hope was only a 1000 baht bill. One of her buddies stuffed the change into my hand and I beat a bewildered retreat.

Not a great way to start a day off sight seeing. On the plus side it provided a great way to joke about prices for the rest of the trip. "Our flight to Phuket only cost 18 bags of corn."

Ah well.

We finally made it to the grand palace only to be struck with another interesting grift. We were stopped on the way to the gate by a fairly distinguished looking Thai fellow bearing a blue umbrella and a pair of dark shades. He proceeded to inform us that the Grand Palace was closed and that the best way to tour it would be to take a Tuk Tuk ride to another few temples before coming back to that one later on in the day.

A Tuk Tuk, for those who are uninformed, is a small, three wheeled (in Bangkok anyways) vehicle that sounds like the most hardcore lawnmower you've ever seen and is about as sturdy as one too. Actually, maybe less. They're very light, quite nimble, and decently fast. This allows them to move fairly effectively through the congested surface streets of Bangkok.

So this Thai gentlemen was saying the temple was closed despite the stream of tourists exiting the compound further down the street and the sign behind him indicating that the visitor's entrance was in the other direction. The grift is apparently just to get you to buy a Tuk Tuk for a couple of hours and ride around to the other major temples in Bangkok and return to the one you're at in the end.

We didn't fall for this one.

Instead we meandered down the road to the entrance and rented some long pants in order to appear decently respectful on the temple grounds and in front of the Grand Palace.

Wat Phra Kaew was quite impressive. Never have I seen a greater wealth of coloured glass, gold foil and just all around glam and glitter accumulated in one religious monument. The three main spires of the temple complex are absolutely beautiful, especially on an incredibly bright, warm afternoon, with the sun warming up your neck and a nice new camera dangling off its strap begging to be used.

So I used it. A lot.

The centerpiece of the temple section is the Emerald Buddha, which has a very interesting history as elaborated here. We spent about 10 minutes sitting in the inner sanctum with the Buddha, legs carefully placed so that our feet were facing away from the altar. One would not wish to disrespect the Buddha. It was awe inspiring, sitting in that incredibly decorated temple with an artifact that may be nearly 2000 years old. Very peaceful, very spiritual.

After wandering around the Palace grounds a little bit and taking in all the sights (I was particularly impressed by a model of Angkor Wat. Maybe Cambodia next year?) we left the temple grounds, traded in our loaner pants and found a nice little place for lunch. It was just a small restaurant off the side of a busy street. The food was good and it was nice to have my first Singha of the Thailand trip.

The real champion of this lunch break was the restaurants bathroom. In an incredibly memorable twist, you had to walk through the tiny kitchen where the cook was hard at work into the bathroom. The air freshener was sliced up limes in the urinal and the toilet required a manual flush using water from the sink. Classic, if not classy.

From the restaurant we walked over to the next of the three most holy temple complexes in Bangkok, Wat Pho. The centerpiece of this temple is the largest reclining Buddha, fully 46 meters long and 15 meters tall. Staggeringly large, and covered in gold foil, along with mother of pearl on the soles of it's feet. The Thai's certainly do know how to roll. We spent a little while wandering around this temple soaking up the sound of people praying and watching the orange-clad monks go about their work.

The last stop after Wat Pho was Wat Arun. On the way over we stopped by a small coffee shop that touted the best iced cappucino in Bangkok. I didn't really have time to compare but Seth assured me that this was in fact the case. It was pretty delicious.

We took a short barge ride across the river to visit this final temple in our trip. Wat Arun was, in my opinion, the most impressive temple in Bangkok. For one, it really stands out by being located on the bank of the river. You can also climb it, which if you remember from my Fuji post, is something I've expressed a passing interest in. The view from the top of the temple is very impressive too. Most of the city is laid out in front of you, incredible view. There's some unusual skyscraper architecture in Bangkok too. It was neat to get a good picture of how the city is laid out, with downtown to the south and the sprawl in almost every other direction. In this respect, Bangkok and Tokyo are fairly similar.

I had a nice little moment at the top of the temple when it struck me where exactly it was that I was standing. I find that whenever a realization like this strike me the first thought afterwards is almost always "I never thought I'd see anything like this." There's a sense of the surreal that occupies my mind everytime I see something really amazing on this trip abroad. Guess I never thought I'd have the guts to strike out on my own(-ish) like this. Surprised myself.

We headed back to the hotel via Tuk Tuk. This was a ton of fun, if somewhat nerve-wracking. If cars drive fast but orderly in Canada, slow but somewhat disorderly in Japan then in Thailand they drive fast and extremely disorderly. Our Tuk Tuk driver would routinely veer into oncoming traffic at high speed, scoot between cars and trucks on the centerline and narrowly avoid collisions with passing motorbikes. They would even drive headlong into the middle of massive 4-lane-in-each-direction intersections and just kind of force their way through.

Scary.

Entertaining.

I did find myself making sure my fingers were fully inside the Tuk Tuk at all times. Didn't want to lose anything unnecessarily.

Arriving safe and sound at the hotel we dropped off our stuff and headed out for dinner (I can't remember where). Afterwards we went back to the hotel and bounced up to the top floor of the guesthouse to both play and use the pool that had taken up residence there. The water was a bit cold (Bangkok cools off quite a bit at night) but it was nice to relax in the water and enjoy the panorama of the Bangkok cityscape.

Close to 9PM at this point.

Time for one last sightseeing activity.

Patpong.

Patpong is known for two things. One: the night market that caters to foreigners that runs down the center of the street. Two: it's also one of Bangkok's premiere red light districts. It's a pretty chaotic place. As soon as we got onto the street we were immediately confronted with a half dozen menus advertising the oh-so-infamous ping pong show, or variations there on. This, combined with the street vendors attempting to draw you over to peruse their capable, if obvious, counterfeit products, makes for a bit of a sensory overload. The area is confined to a street with bars and go-go bars running down either side and a huge complex of markets stalls running down the center. Pedestrian traffic only, please.

Our primary goal on this outing was to find a ladyboy cabaret or something similar and, failing that, simply soak up the atmosphere. As we walked down the street we quickly picked up what I would loosely describe as a club promoter. VERY loosely. He was incredibly tenacious though, as he followed us all the way down the street despite Seth's repeated rejections.

Eventually we headed back the way we came and went into what our guide claimed was a lady boy cabaret.

Yeah, not the case, just a regular old go go bar.

And a really dead one at that. There were a grand total of 8 customers or so including us, which made for a pretty uninteresting experience. We had a couple of beers and then headed off down the strip again.

We were still on the hunt for a Ladyboy show, but never did find one, so we just ended up sliding into another go go bar for drinks. We spent a little bit more time making our selection this time out. It immediately struck us that the only real difference from one go go bar to the next was what colour bikini the women were wearing. Walking past the bars felt kind of like perusing a rack of hoodies at American Apparel.

We decided on a patterned white.

This bar was much more hectic than the previous one. Unlike our previous watering hole, all four of the men were immediately approached by numerous employees about various forms of prostitution. I declined politely several times and, fortunately, sat beside Melissa. When the bartender asked if Melissa and I were together I took advantage of the opportunity and nodded enthusiastically.

Voila, no more harrassment for the rest of our time there. The bartender was actually pretty funny, I had a good time joking with her everytime I ordered a new beer.

After a while, Melissa and I got a bit bored and wandered out to explore the rest of the strip. We stopped by a bar that had live music and unfortunately could only enjoy a couple of songs before the band finished its set. I had kind of an unusual experience using the bathroom here. While I was using the urinal some kind of bathroom-attendant-like person came up behind me and started massaging my neck and shoulders...very surprising, and kind of awkward. He also sort of followed me around the little bathroom, so I was still being massaged while I washed my hands and dried them. I tipped him 20 baht and left the bathroom very confused, but a little bit more relaxed. I rejoined Mel, finished my beer, and took off down the strip.

As we left the live bar our "guide" from earlier showed up. Again, requesting ladyboys, he led us to a bar, this time upstairs.

Following him was a mistake at this point.

I remember earlier in the night that Seth had mentioned something about the basement of a bar we had been in being more lascivious then the ground level. Apparently this rule also follows for the second floor of bars. Little to our knowledge, Mel and I were about to be grifted again.

We sat down at a table in the club and before we even got a chance to realize that this was no cabaret, we were surrounded by 7 or 8 women. We both ordered a beer which, surprisingly, seems to translate to "shots for everyone." What the hell?

They immediately shoved a bill in our face for 3000 baht, which is close to $100. Melissa and I at this point were pretty pissed. I left 1000 baht and so did she, but we left immediately with all the bar employees yelling at us as we walked out.

That was it for us. We intended to go home but, on our way out of the strip we noticed a NORMAL bar. No girls, nothing. Just drinks. And a couple knock-off versions of Connect 4. Like an oasis in a desert, we stumbled desperately towards it. Giving our feet a rest Mel and I finally sat down and just talked for a bit while we played 3 games of Connect 4. Despite winning the first Melissa took the match 2-1, but I think I put up a pretty good fight. It was really nice to be out of the go-go bars and so we could just relax and talk without having to scream. It was a neat little bar too, right on the street, kind of small, sort of reminded me of something you might find in Tokyo, if a little bit rough around the edges. The capstone of the night though was using the washroom at this place.

Getting the attention of the bartender with a raised hand and the query "toilet?" I was promptly led out of the bar and down the alley immediately adjacent to the bar. About halfway down the alley I was starting to wonder if I would actually get to see a washroom or if I was a couple seconds away from a knife in the kidney and a stolen wallet.

My guide led me into a parking structure which had a bathroom right inside past the front toll booth. It was surprisingly clean, except for the cockroach the size of child's fist that alighted on my shoulder while I was using the urinal. Fortunately I was too drunk at this point to be surprised, so I just muttered "fuck off" and brushed it to the ground. Still, that was a damn big bug.

We finally hit the road home. Just as we left the bar we passed by a baby elephant, which was Melissa's first of the trip (I saw one from the taxi on the way in the previous night). She managed to snap a picture without being harrassed for money by the Elephant's minders. I give it a pat on the head as I passed by. Their hair is reallllly coarse!

The cab ride home was the last remarkable thing of the night. Melissa and I were talking rather animatedly in the back seat of the cab and, for some reason, at seemingly arbitrary times, our cabbie would burst into quiet laughter. It was kind of disconcerting, but just added to the surreal nature of the night.

I claimed the key to my room on the way through the lobby and parted ways with Melissa. Shortly after laying down to sleep Ryan turned up, followed by Don and Seth a bit later.

And that was the first full day in Thailand! I have to say, I was already looking forward to leaving the city after these experiences. Grifters and the flesh trade seem to be generally unavoidable in Bangkok. I was even approached by a couple of prostitutes on the short walk from the cab to the hotel at the end of the day. Hell, the entrance to the D&D guesthouse is lined with suit stores. You get asked about a new suit about 5 times everytime you leave your room.

Honestly though, the street vendors aren't so bad. The red light district on the other hand I found quite difficult to take. I found most of the area around Patpong to be pretty depressing. This is an entire district of a city devoted to foreigners getting their jollies off. Kind of disgusting in my opinion. I'm no prude, but I have a pretty fundamental objection to paying money for sex. It does a pretty good job of taking everything important out of the actual act itself. At the risk of sounding like a naive romantic, sex as a purely physical act has never really had very much meaning for me. Without emotional ties sex is about as meaningful as a pair of wildebeasts mating in the wild. Which makes it fundamentally meaningless to a sentient (mostly) thoughtful species like human beings. Too each their own, but I'm definitely not a supporter of the flesh trade.

Which may in fact be a damaging opinion to take towards Thailand. We visited in the low season shortly after a bought of political turmoil in the country, which had what appeared to me to be a highly negative impact on the tourism industry. The lack of clientele may have made the various prostitutes and street vendors more aggressive than usual, which made me feel less enamored of the general atmosphere. This seemed especially true at the go-go bars.

Patpong was further depressing due to the type of clientele the brothels seemed to be servicing. A lot of old white men, about 50+ being the average. It's just gross seeing one of those guys with two MAYBE 18 year old girls hanging off each arm. It was really hard not to pull them aside and yell "Dude, you're not 19 anymore, grow the fuck up and go home." Sex tourism, it's the name of the game in Thailand.

Maybe it's just me though. I haven't really spent any time in red light districts before this trip, so maybe it was just shock on my behalf. Either way, I was pretty down after that night.

I'll be back to update the blog again ASAP. It's going to take me quite a while to move through everything, the process is going slower than expected. Pics from the trip should be up on Facebook by tomorrow.

Rantfully yours,

Ian "Mello Yello" Cantello

(Pictures: #1 Wat Phra Kaew, #2 Wat Pho, reclining Buddha, #3 Wat Arun, #4 detail shot, Wat Phra Kaew, #5 Near Khaosan road, from Tuk Tuk)

Shocked Departures - Thailand (September 21)

Shocked Departures

Thailand

The Thailand Chronicles Day One: Narita and Bangkok

Well, here we go.

Destination: Thailand
Traveling Companions: Melissa, Ryan, Seth and Don
Trip duration: September 21st to September 29, 2008.
Exchange rate: 100 baht = ~$3.20

"The best place to start is always the beginning..."

- Captain Obvious


My vacation started out on fairly inauspicious terms at approximately 7:30 on Sunday morning when a nice little earthquake woke me up. It's always disorienting coming out of sleep to an earthquake. Always feels to me like some kind of whacked out dream, and I'm never 100% sure until I correlate the experience with someone else later in the day (in this case, Melissa). Always a bit frustrating though, especially in the morning. I just want the earth to quite grumbling and let me get back to bed. After that little bit of unpleasantness, I rolled onto the floor (that's an inch below my futon) at around about 10 AM to wake up and finish getting ready for the trip.

After panicking and doing a last minute repacking, I was out the door and on the way down to Ueno station to catch the Skyliner to Narita Airport. The weather was pretty bad, cold and drizzling, and what with me using my carry-on luggage, it felt surprisingly similar to the day I arrived in Koganei for the first time. I reflected on that a little during my walk. Felt good to see how far I'd come from that day.

The train ride was uneventful, and I ended up at Ueno a little bit late, but with plenty of time to spare. At this point it was only around 1:00 pm, very far in advance of our flight's 6:45 pm departure time. Melissa and I had left early so that we could meet up with one of our cohorts from the training group, Ron. He was placed in a school that's a decent distance from the Tokyo area, so we hadn't seen him since the last day of training 5 months ago. I missed the guy! Ron's hilarious and energetic as all hell, so it made for an entertaining trip to the airport. We talked a lot of shop about teaching and our different experiences. Ron says his Japanese is coming along pretty well too, which was a major concern for him when he was leaving the US. He seemed to be in very good spirits despite having worked a schedule similar to the one I'm about to start next week. I hope I cope with it as well as he appears to.

We reached the airport a little late for Ron's flgiht, so we had kind of an odd parting of ways. He checked in with his ticket and was promptly whisked away from us, through security, without a single parting word. Just a wave at the gate and blurry shot I took with my camera.

See you again soon Ron!

Melissa and I spent the next couple hours drifting lazily around the airport, doing nothing in particular. I tried to find a place to buy sunglasses, but couldn't find one. We had a good lunch at a Japanese restaurant in the airport, one last taste of Nippon before we headed off to Thailand. Our conversation was mostly focused towards why we came to Japan and where we intended to go in the future. Common topics among English teachers in my experience. The reasons I most commonly hear are the following, in no particular order:

1. An intense fascination with Japanese language and/or culture
2. Disillusionment with life before Japan (being stuck in a rut as it were)
3. The ending of a relationship
4. Simple interest in travelling

Seth and Don showed up in fairly short order. Ryan finally showed up after a few delays at about 5:40. We made it on the flight no problem though.

The 6 hour flight passed pretty slowly for me. I usually can't sleep on planes unless I'm absolutely exhausted. Instead I watched two and 1/10 movies. Speed Racer (surprisingly good!), Recount (a Kevin Spacey TV movie about the Florida recount in 2000) and, due to lack of time, the last 25 minutes of The Matrix.

And voila, you're in Thailand.

We were immediately propositioned by a number of people offering us rides into the city. Deciding that this was most likely a grift, we instead went upstairs and hired a pair of cabs from a legitimate business. They took us (at very high speed) to Khaosan road, an area that caters towards the backpackers and younger tourists that make it their goal to explore the capital of Thailand.

And what's this I feel?

Ah yes.

Culture shock. A little bit of one anyways. It actually wasn't anything too severe. I think it was just once again being in an unfamiliar place with an unfamiliar language. It passed pretty quick this time though. By the time we'd maneuvered up a side street and made it to Khaosan road proper I was already feeling comfortable again. We checked two guesthouses that were full before we hit Khaosan itself. It was a little past 1:00 am when we got there and the strip wasn't too busy. There was a ton of neon on the street, more so then many places I've been in Tokyo. Actually, on the whole the advertising, at least in this little burgh, was more omnipresent then in my adopted hometown.

That's no small feat.

We ended up checking into the D&D Guesthouse, which is arguably the nicest guesthouse on Khaosan street, much to Seth's chagrin as he was intent on paying very, very little for accomodation throughout the trip. Even so, it only amounted to about 300B ($9) each for two rooms with A/C and hot water. Costly digs by Thai standards, but well worth it in my opinion, especially after the long flight.

We dropped our bags and freshened up quickly before heading back out to grab a beer and soak up the atmosphere. We stopped at a bar that, oddly enough, didn't have any Singha or Chang in stock, only Tiger beer. Sadly enough, our first beers abroad weren't of the local persuasion.

After watching a bit of the soccer game that was humming away quietly on the bar television and draining our beers, we returned to our hotel, exhausted, but ready for a good sleep and a relatively start the next morning...


Oh my God! I still didn't get to the actual good stuff!

Hehe.

Sorry, I don't have the time tonight, have to get to bed early to be up in time for the early classes on Saturday.

Here's a consolation prize: Tokyo Storm drains.
Oh, and for maybe the least intelligent sounding foreigners in Japan...The Butler Cafe

Quote of the clip "I thought it was English teaching or nothing."

Genius, just genius.

I swear, real, actual, interesting, travelling stories tomorrow. If only work didn't start at 11:00 on Saturdays...

Anyways, until tomorrow,

Ian "Mello Yello" Cantello

Focal Inhabitants - Week 19 (September 16 - September 20)

Focal Inhabitants

Week 19

*huge sigh*

My apologies. I realize that posting has been a bit intermittent due to my recent vacation, so bear with me over the following week. I should hopefully be up to date by next Tuesday if all goes well. I've spent the past couple of nights going over the 2000+ pictures I took while on vacation, choosing the ones I want to keep and getting rid of the rest. It's tedious work, but at least the pictures I'm looking through are very nice for the most part.

Here's my plan for updates over the next week. I should have three different posts which will cover the following.

1. Bangkok
2. Phuket
3. Ko Phi Phi

I plan to have them all done by the end of next weekend, but that's really fucking ambitious, so no promises.

That's big enough a waste of space though. On with what you're really looking for here: the week BEFORE I left for Thailand.

Yeah.

That's right.

You get to wait a little while longer for the actual recount of my self-described "global wanderings". I shall sit back in my tiny apartment and steeple my fingers as I imagine the argent needles of anticipation gnawing at the periphery of your every waking moment. This thought makes me grin in the most savage of glee...

Seriously though, I'm sorry, I'm writing as fast as I can.


Well, the week leading up to Thailand, Tuesday to Saturday, was pretty uneventful. Class went along as per usual, although everyone was pretty busy due to Sean's impending departure. We spent a lot of time working with a really great manager named Hosomi. He's a quite cool and relaxed and he's been a great help in smoothing everything over. I've heard this is typical of Kansai people but...

WAIT

Hold up.

Kansai people? Okay, one second.

It's generally thought in Japan that people from Kansai (Osaka, Nara and Kyoto) are much more relaxed and laid back than a lot of the other Japanese. They're thought to have a strong sense of humor and are also supposed to be a bit more direct than most of their compatriots. A lot of this is thought to descend from the merchant background of Osaka, which was and still is a major port city. Most of those characteristics would likely not be so pronounced if it wasn't due to the region's close proximity to the Kanto region. Kanto people are supposed to be more reserved and respectful, traditionally Japanese. Once of the mountain range, relaxed and humorous, the other side serious and traditional. Interesting, no?

Rerouting back to the main dialogue from that digression, the Kansai characteristics are well represented in Hosomi. He's a chill guy.

So that was pretty much the week at school, really nothing amazing. On Wednesday I took an extended lunch to run back to Kichijoji and Yodobashi camera again. I bought a couple of lenses for my camera (which have since been EXTREMELY useful. Worth every yen). One of them is a telephoto, the Canon EF 55-200MM USM F 4.5-5.6 II. It's not the sturdiest lens on the planet, but it's relatively cheap for a decent telephoto. For the uninitiated a Telephoto lens is used to make very distant objects appear very close.

The other lens is a Canon EF 50mm F 1-1.8 prime lens. It has no zoom function on it, but that's okay, because its focal length is already covered in the lens I got with my camera (18-55mm). The point of this lens is just that it takes verrrrry clear photos and is cheap, like the budgie (thank you Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels). The second to fifth pictures above show the flexibility I've gained with the new purchases:

#2 - 18-55mm lens at 18mm (wide angle)
#3 - 55-200mm lens at 200mm (telephoto)
#4 - 50mm lens at, well, 50mm because I can't very well change that
#5 - 55mm-200mm on the left, 55mm on the right, digital clock only thing in focus.

With these two lenses I was already starting to feel like a real photographer. I'll let you judge by next week's shots whether this is accurate or not.

Other than that, the week was all about frantic planning and co-ordination before departing the land of the rising sun for a week. I did, however, get bored on Thursday night and took one of the above pictures. I'm sure you can guess which one.

Saturday night just involved me going home and packing for the trip. I had a pretty solid load by the time I was done, which was stupid in retrospect, but that's another story, for another blog post, another day, another...format. Or something.

Tune in over the next few days for the description of the exciting stuff.

Until...tomorrow? I remain, as always...

Ian "Mello Yello" Cantello