I have officially contracted lung cancer.

This morning started bright and early at 4:30 and I am glad to say we are just sitting for the rest of the day; I need to recuperate. As soon as we got on the bus this morning my allergies attacked me – there must have been something in the air because everyone was sneezing – but might have (oh so thankfully) continued and worsened. On our way to the airport we went past Rem Koolhaas’ CCTV tower which is going up and it looks AMAZING. It’s two towers at opposite corners of each other that lean and eventually bridge across to touch one another.
At 7:40 we flew down to Dustville, China (also known as Pingyao). I thought Beijing was dirty, but this is muchmuch worse. Again, there is no sky and hardly any sun. The air actually smells bad. This is a tiny town and there is really nothing to do here, which I think is just fine I guess. It’s significant because it is a wall city. All of the old towns in China had walls around them but when they were “liberated” the walls were torn down because they represented old China. Tomorrow we are actually going to go on a full tour of the town but I just looked out my window and I can actually see the wall from my horrible hotel room!

I got teary today for these people. It’s so dirty here. They burn coal and the pollution just spills into the air. I can’t imagine what it’s like to not ever see blue sky. I would feel miserable. I’ve been here for four days and it’s made me feel awful! Physically and otherwise. It’s so noisy all of the time too. It must feel awful to have little control over your destiny. Maybe I’m being unfair, but China’s poverty seems very different than any I have ever witnessed before (though this is a short list). Poverty exists outside of excess, generally speaking, when I’ve seen it in Costa Rica and Puerto Rico, and if nothing else, in a beautiful lush environment. And poverty might not even be the right word for it….But what little I’ve seen of this seems to be much closer to LA’s situation. There are huge buildings on large properties and then crumbling homes a block over. It’s not even that all of Beijing is excessive, I mean the huge buildings are really that nice. There is just such desperation somehow in the impoverished societies’ existence. They are willing to stand around at all hours and try to sell anything they can because this is all they can do. There were so many diseased people on the streets also. Maybe it’s the pollution and dirt that makes it all much worse….I’m not sure. It’s a jumbled mess in my mind, it just doesn’t seem right.

I do not think the Olympics is going to help China’s image in the world’s eye.

jaded

Today I was in tour guide hell.

We got up early to start our journey to the Great Wall and the tour guide talked the ENTIRE WAY and was upset with people for falling asleep. He was quite rude. And on top of that he took us to a JADE factory. I didn’t mention how yesterday he took us to a pearl factory. It’s very frustrating – apparently they take you wherever they want and there isn’t much you can do about it. (they get kickbacks for it) AND there were people in glass box actually carving the jade! The day started off so poorly, I thought it might be doomed.

Then we visited this place called Commune by the Wall that is a series of 20 houses all designed by different Asian architects (Shigeru Ban was amongst them). Gated and very high end – you can rent them for about $2,000+ a night. The economic split here has been very strange to observe…We only got to go in three of them, but it was a really cool idea. Unfortunately, they weren’t all upkept very well, because nothing in China is. The furniture was often very dirty and not something I would be happy paying thousands of dollars for! They were great party houses and I don’t think anyone would argue against having pieces of The Wall in your backyard….
It was also pretty amazing to see such clean modern architecture in China since so much has been dilapidated or…ugly.

But then came THE WALL and it was AMAZING. Completely redeemed the morning’s sour events. It turns out the wall is not continuous at all (though every picture ever taken would have you believe so). It is no longer taken care of either, so many unbroken sections are dividing as parts crumble. Because the wall is built over mountains there are varying levels of difficulty. We happened to go up a very advanced one.

No one EVER mentioned how there are stairs allll the way up the wall. It’s hardly even a wall! It’s allll stairs. The tallest were about 2/3 the way up my calf. It was not a piece of cake. Getting to the top (our section ended) made it all worth it. The wall just snakes across the hills.
I still can’t understand how it could have been built. If I had such a trying time walking up a fairly small section (about an hour’s worth of stair stepping) how could anyone have managed to carry all of the stones up there, and maybe what’s more, how in the world did they stay in place while the mortar was drying? Some of those stones are at a 45 degree angle…..
It was a little breathtaking. I wish I could have gone early in the morning when it was cool and there were no people – I think it would have been more.

It’s a pretty special thing to get to do. I’ve finally seen a Wonder of the World!
And what a wonder it is….

On our drive back we went past the main stadium for the Olympics and the swim stadium and both are amazing – but the main stadium (Herzog and de Meuron) takes the cake!! It is sooo cool. They are all about skin (the wrapper of a building), as you could maybe see in the Tokyo Prada building, and this is no exception. I’m excited for them that their stadiums are impressive!

Otherwise, I’m a little worried for the city. It is in such a rough state I really don’t know how they are going to pull it together for the world. I walked to a busy area a few blocks from my hotel last night and WOW. There were holes, granted small holes, but they were deeper than my leg and not marked in anyway. The sidewalks were hardly that, just dirt and very often interrupted with piles of rubble and holes. They did have construction crews out working on an area of the street but they were stirring up so much dust it seemed dangerous! And if not dangerous, down right disgusting.
It is so dirty, just so dirty.
I really wish I could stay longer just to understand it. The city is kind of awful. People push and shove and hock and spit and there is dirt everywhere and no sun and everything is huge.
I got stuck with a vendor who wouldn’t let go of my arm after I showed interest in a Mao watch (his arm is the ticker…it was pretty funny) and she actually would not let go of me. She seemed so desperate. It’s, it’s sad.

I feel awful about it.

china

CHINA IS CRAZY.

CRAZY.

we arrived yesterday to Beijing. I took a walk down the next street over from our hotel and it was the most insane thing i've ever seen. it's one of the old neighborhoods that are consistently getting torn down to put up high rises...and i can kind of understand why they would want to tear it down (it looked like a bomb had gone off in more than one place) but it’s sad that old Beijing will cease to exist before too long.
anyhow, i saw a baby in a cardboard box on the side of the road. that's what we're dealing with.

the next big world power has babies in boxes.

the usual suspects went to dinner with one of our friends that has been living here - on the aforementioned road. THIS was truly a hole in the wall. it's one of the more famous duck restaurants in beijing though and i guess even george bush sr has eaten there. it was, amazing. delicious. they brought two whole ducks to the table (heads and all) and proceeded to slice them up from there. (when we were walking to our table a staff member walked past us with two raw ducks just hanging on a string..) they sliced the head in half and i ate a tiny piece of duck brain. it was just sort of neutral - it melted in my mouth. dr b informed me it's not a good idea to be eating brains right now for health reasons, so i'm going to steer clear of such adventures in the future. but, when in rome. everything is family style here and we ate like kings and queens..for 12 dollars.

it's so cheap here.

it's also obscenely dirty. there is dust/dirt on everything because beijing is adjacent to a desert and strong winds are always blowing the dirt through (they have dust storms fairly frequently from what i hear). and the pollution...oohhh the pollution. forecast will call for clear skies, but cleark=yellow-brown-gray-colorless. the whole city is colorless and dingy. the sun is always glazed over.
it's disgusting.

the most noticeable thing besides the pollution, is the scale of the city. it's not quite vertical in the way tokyo was, but it's BIG. everything is on lots of land and just huge. the streets - i have never seen such large streets. i think it is so big to make you feel small - insignificant. it's effective too -- such built presence really does make me feel dominated and necessarily subservient in a way.

speaking of massive things...
today we went to tiananmen square. ONE MILLION people can fit in it at a time. i don't even know what that means.
apparently mao's body is preserved in one of the buildings bordering the square and i really wish we could have gone to see it...it's weird and creepy but i'd totally be into it.
from there we went to the forbidden city, which was disappointing at best. china totally lacks the design sense that japan has. everything is...ugly. the forbidden city is a big deal though -- so i understand why we went. it just kept going and going and going. it was where 26 emporers lived up until 1911 when the Republic of China was founded. Before then it was not open to the public.
in the afternoon we went to the temple of heaven, which was more interesting design wise, but still ugly.

today was difficult because it was super hot and there are people EVERYWHERE. these people aren't friendly the way the japanese seemed to be either; they push they shove they try to sell you stuff (i got hit twice by this man trying to sell me a parasol). in the bathroom line today i let someone go in front of me because there was an empty squatter stall and i wanted to wait for the western toilet and it opened the flood gates. no less than ten women pushed past and aggressively stole every stall. i had to shove my way in front of this lady as to not be left by my group! and worst of all, this women came into the stall with one of my friends who wasn't quiet finished up. she came inside!! that's prettty bold.

we're hitting up the great wall tomorrow (!!!) and hopefully driving past the herzog and de meuron olympic stadium that's going up right now. after we get back i am also hoping to go see the CCTV building rem koolhaas designed, it's in progress as well. there is a TON of construction going on for the olympics right now. apparently no new stuff is to be started in order to make sure everything in progress can be completed by july 2008. they are really trying to clean up their act for the rest of the world.

china is much more difficult to visit than japan - but i'm so fascinated and curious - i wish we could spend more time here.

So much!

Yesterday we went north to Sendai to see Toyo Ito’s Sendai Mediatheque. No one seemed to like it, but I think I did, at least conceptually. I’m glad we saw it though. It’s so weird seeing buildings in person when you’ve only ever imagined them through photographs. I like it.

Today we went to this place called Minka-En, which is a collection of about 20 old Japanese houses in various styles. Though it sounds a little hokey, it was really awesome to see. I wish we had had a little more time there so I could have gotten through all of them.

We came back near our hotel and went to the Mori Art Museum, which is on the 52ndish floor of a building in Roppongi Hills. It’s a viewing tower also, so we saw the entire city. It was unbelievable. As far as I could see there was city. So so crazy.
The exhibit we went to see was on Le Corbusier (he’s THE architect) and just opened today, which was amazing good fortune since today is our last day here. It was SO impressive. There were paintings and sculptures and models of every important project and sketches and two full size mock ups of his designs. It was so awesome. I wish I could fully explain, other than saying SO one million times.

I get really excited about architecture sometimes.
I keep thinking about Hayne and how he’s graduating today/tomorrow! I’m really sad I’m missing out, really sad, it makes me teary every time, but I’m so proud of him. I have been telling everyone, it’s probably kind of annoying. I’m a little bit jealous of him getting to graduate from something, to be quite honest.

No big plans for this evening, we’ve talked of going to the Park Hyatt which is supposed to have the best view in the city and was prominently featured in Lost in Translation….but after the view today I’m not necessarily that keen on it. Plus, I’ll be back and I’d rather go with my Lost in Translation buddy anyway. Ashes and Snow is here also and I missed it when it was in LA last year, so that’s an option too. It’s kind of tricky to get to, so I am not sure it will work out.

We have to leave at 6 am tomorrow for the flight to Beijing.

I love this city. I feel really excited for Miles and happy I got to find out all about it before he moves here. It also makes me feel a lot better about him being all alone out here, it’s such an amazing city I think he’s going to make it.

fish

I just got back from the fish market in Tokyo. Whoa. Biggest fish market in Asia. It gets going at five in the morning and runs until ten – we left at six. It was nothing short of remarkable. So many fish! I didn’t really realize how big tuna are. They had huge knives to cut through the tuna and the other big fish (I saw whale, it looked like meat) and the fish were stuffed with ice. The tuna meat was so beautiful.
Grossest thing: the eels with their heads partially cut (lots of fish were like this) and floating in their own blood – coupled with the eel that we saw it’s head get stabbed and stripped of skin. That was disgusting.

The market was crazy busy: carts flying everywhere willing to run you over, fish being cut, buckets and buckets of dead + alive fish (I saw an alive octopus and the biggest crab I have ever seen – three feet from one side to another).

Wearing flip flops was probably not the best choice (they were throwing fish guts+blood all over the ground, but there were lots of hoses running to wash it away) and we got some laughs at our feet.

On the street side of the market there were tiny restaurants with people lined up outside waiting to eat fresh sushi.

One of the coolest things I’ve done here.

can we talk about how sweet my day was??

as a class we went around and saw Maki buildings. (Maki is this big Japanese architect, my professor says the most famous Japanese architect and maybe top five important architects in the world. I think maybe he is exaggerating...but I know hardly anything.) Anyhow, Steele, my professor, and I basically made fun of the buildings all day. They lacked inspiration and interest. Apparently Maki is very conservative and has been quite successful theoretically (with writings, etc) but not necessarily architecturally, as far as I can tell. i think it was probably important to see some of his buildings though.
We went to visit his office also, which always makes me excited about architecture -- arch offices are so cool. They have some big projects going on, biggest of all is one of the four towers going up in NYC where the World Trade Center was. We also got to meet him, kind of, he's prettttty old.

what really made my day was finding the capsule tower. i'm prettty proud of myself for this one -- i had to look it up online because no one knew where it was and even our translator was unsure how to get there on the subway -- but i figured it out! it really wasn't THAT difficult, but the subway maps are very confusing. i think tokyo is sitting on an entire system of subways, there is actually no dirt for at least forty feet below the whole city. anyhow, this building is really important because it was the first one to actually use capsules, distinct pieces, in it. it totally revolutionized the way architects thought about space -- at least it added a new dimension. AND worst of all, it's slated to be torn down!! i had a small heart attack when i got out of the subway (finally) because there was a demolition site right there. it turned out to be just down a few blocks, thank goodness. it is...remarkable. how anyone could want to tear something so beautiful down is beyond me.
i was there for ten or fifteen minutes trying to take pictures and all the while the passerbys stared at me. they would look at me and then all look up trying to figure out what i could possibly be so interested in. i got a huge kick out of this. but it also makes me sad because i know people just walk by and think nothing of it. they obviously think so little that they have to look to see what i'm photographing!



i came back into the area i'm staying, akasaki, and went to a cheap ramen place my guidebook recommended. i ate some weeiiird stuff, let me tell you. it was, as the menu accurately described, funky. it had pork, boiled and chopped, and some onions that i wouldn't have known where onions if i hadn't read it. the meat came in three ways, a huge chunk, weird strips that i THINK were pork? and bacon like pieces. there was also a boiled egg. roe was an option, but i declined.
i tried all of it, but basically ended up eating the broth and the noodles. i'm glad i had real ramen, but it was odd. quite odd. the place was cool though.

i'm now doing laundry, in a very weird washing machine with detergent that i hope will not ruin all of my clothes. we'll see.

there are models staying in our hotel. they are very skinny.

i had a long talk about the city today with my professor because there are lots of things i've been curious about -- mainly about the lack of public spaces in the city. there are never benches to sit on and places to just hang out. rarely, anyway. he says the idea of public space is very western and so totally foreign to asia. they are very private here; you go to work and then you go home to be with your family. this idea makes many other things make sense. we also talked about how the cities are pretty ugly, which is ironic for people with such design sensibility, and he said he thinks that is a result of the privacy issue as well. there is little need to make your cities beautiful if you aren't really spending time in them. so individual homes are lovely, but the public cities are not. the trash can issue (noted below) also makes sense, if you are never outside except in transit you would never need to throw anything away.
i take western-ness for granted.

things i have maybe mentioned and maybe not:
1. every single man wears a suit to work. suits everywhere.
2. there are soooo many vending machines. vending machines with alcohol, cigarettes, meals.
3. no trash cans anywhere. none. weird for such clean cities (kyoto is cleaner than tokyo)

for now.

tokyo is uhmazing.

TOKYO TOKYO TOKYO!!!

whoa am i excited to be here!

what a totally different place than kyoto. it's nice to be back in a big city!! and this is a BIG city. 28 million people i think?

we went out for the first time this afternoon to the shibuya district and as soon as we got off the train we were in the really famous tokyo intersection. apparenly it is also the biggest crosswalk in the world. the whole thing shuts down for a few minutes while hundreds of people cross. there are lights and screens and music and ads and people and it was crazy and wonderful.


we wandered and then headed towards what is called the champs-elysee of Tokyo. it's lined in trees and full of stores, mostly designer. on our way there we passed by the olympic swim stadium by kenzo tange - a building we've studied for four years. we just happened upon it! cities are amazing like that. but THEN we got to see dior, which was awesome, at least on the outside (the inside was lacking).

but we really went to see the Tod's store by Toyo Ito which was inspired by the trees lining the street - and the Herzog and de Meuron Prada store. The Prada store was AMAZING. I didn't really get any good photographs because it was really dark by the time we got there but..wow. Also REALLY funny because, as we were exploring, my friend Eric got stuck in a dressing room. They are a special feature because they are glass rooms and when you go in you can press a button that instantly fogs up the glass (craziest thing i have ever seen.) anyway, he pressed the button to lock the room, which apparently malfunctions frequently, and he got stuck. prada was not happy with us.

(this is tod's)

it was amazing to see four buildings in one day, four buildings i've only ever seen in pictures (we also saw the tokyo forum when we first arrived).
i am SO EXCITED for MILES!!!! he is going to have an amazing time here, and i'm excited to come back.
it's so beautiful in this curious way.
the people are amazing to watch. the girls are all decked out (teasing hair is big here, as well as black knee socks worn with heels). i am definitely underdressed.

i'm so excited so excited! i'm in tokyo!!!

This morning we took an hour long train ride to Himeji to see the castle there. It is very lovely and all at once very different from Western castles and exactly the same. It was not opulent in anyway that I could see, other than pure size. The palaces and homes have been much more opulent. This seemed purely militaristic.

In the afternoon we took a cab over to Engyoji, a series of temples on a hill. It was a little too quick of a trip, but the large temple we got to see had the most beautiful porch I’ve ever been on. The hike up to the top was nice also and revealed a beautiful view at once.

So my time in Kyoto has come to an end. It’s really lovely here, particularly when you are inside the temples and shrines and palaces and castles. The city itself is kind of small and sprawling, definitely short. It really isn’t so lovely, though there are parts that you happen upon that are totally beautiful. It is mostly fascinating and wonderful. Sometimes conventional beauty doesn’t matter.

Today was travel intensive. Very travel intensive.
We took the train down to Ise and saw the Ise Shrine, sort of. There is a torii at the entrance and then a bridge over the sacred river. Within the complex there is the shrine which gets rebuilt every 20 years and is inside three fences. You are partially allowed inside the first, but no further. There is very little to be seen, but that is the point. It’s a funny thing to do, travel to see something that can’t be seen. But it is the shrine of all shrines.

(this is the view of the shrine)
I wondered a lot about this today, how curious it is for humans to construct something only good enough for the gods. And not even to keep it totally hidden, but expose just a bit. I’m totally fascinated by the idea of sacred space, but I don’t know that I understand it at all.

We took another long leg of the trip to this little village, which has been preserved for the past 200 years and is without any vending machines and essentially no power lines, etc.
This was, to be honest, disappointing. I mean, it would have been cool if we had not already seen 80 villages almost exactly like it, except with vending machines and the like.

We got back late, at 9ish.

Tomorrow we are going to Himeji Castle – supposedly one of the best castles left in Japan.
It too is a train ride away from Kyoto.

Tuesday morning (tomorrow is Monday) we take the train back up to Tokyo, which I am very excited about. I plan on readying the city for Miles :).

Oh! And my new favorite thing, because I knew everyone was wondering, are these little triangles of packed rice. There are lots of different kinds, but my favorite have soy sauce like stuff on the outside. SOOO yummy.

today was lots of driving. we saw modern buildings for the first time -- tadao ando's buildings near kobe.
lovely. (see the flicrk site)

but it turns out i really like the old stuff...

though, ando's work, at least what i saw today, was very much about movement and procession. interesting how everything ties together.

tomorrow we have to be ready at 6 to take the train to ise to see the ise shrine. this is basically the shrine of all shrines -- it's a huge deal and gets rebuilt every 20 years exactly how it has always been done, since the first time, to keep the knowledge within a generation (a generation used to be a lot shorter...) we won't get back until very late so i'll probably be out of commission.

we don't have any more days in kyoto....we leave on tuesday and we are taking day trips tomorrow and monday. then to tokyo!
it will be interesting to see how different the cities are. kyoto is so old and tokyo is so new -- exactly the way japan is.

now

So I’ve been busy!

most impressive thing yesterday: the moss garden. An ENTIRE garden of 120 different kinds of moss. It was like being in a totally different world: a fairytale. So beautiful.

my favorite thing about moss, I realized, are the shadows that play on it. It becomes this carpet (in a way that grass can’t because it has too much tooth) for light to play on.

Today, four of us split from the group to go see katsura palace because only four slots were open at a time (it’s a very big deal, you have to apply). We missed out on going to Nara, the first permanent capital of Japan, and seeing Todai-ji, the biggest wooden temple with the biggest statue of Buddha in the world. And frankly, I’m not sure what the big deal is about Katsura. It’s supposed to be a good example of Japanese style, but it was free and probably because of this, not very well-maintained. Even if it had been as well-kept as everywhere else, I just was not taken aback by it.

However, the very good thing about the day was that we got to go to Fushimi-Inari Shrine, something that had gotten canceled due to a time restraint.
It is a 4 km long walkway lined with hundreds, maybe thousands of orange torii (the Japanese arch/gate) spaced only inches apart.

One of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen. I was really sad our pictures didn’t turn out better (it was dark and they were blurry without flash and the highly lacquered torii reflected the flash when it was on…), but, maybe it’s best sometimes because I don’t know if the pictures could have matched the experience anyway.

The way the Japanese design, or have designed, seems so natural to me. Everything is about the journey. The simplicity and the blending of indoors and outdoors – it’s perfect.

This afternoon I went out for a couple hours by myself. I took the subway up to the Imperial Palace gardens to stroll and read. It was so wonderful and lovely. I felt truly happy.


I keep hearing people saying they’re getting tired of Japanese food and I don’t understand! Firstly, we haven’t even been here a week – and secondly, it’s soooo good I could never imagine tiring of it. Wanting variation, yes, but tiring, no.
The ramen is my favorite I think.
I did order something yesterday that wasn’t so good, these grey noodles I kept seeing and was curious about. They ended up being cold and bland and the broth you dipped them in before eating did not help. I’m not sure I understand having cold noodles – I think maybe they were meant to be hot.
Also, FYI, there are TONS of pastries here. I end up eating them for breakfast in the morning because they are so cheap and plentiful AND delicious. Who knew?

Probably the funniest thing about eating here: there is plastic food outside of most restaurants – depicting the menu’s contents. Recently when there haven’t been English menus we’ve had to take pictures and show them to order, as opposed to our regular pointing.

(these are the cold soba noodles -- in plastic form).

Weirdest thing I’ve seen to eat: a noodle sandwich, unrefrigerated.


Tomorrow we are heading down around Kobe (as in Kobe beef) to look at some modern architecture: Tadao Ando.

It’s lightning and raining outside right now….and I’m kind of enjoying it. I miss a good storm!

kyoto 1

it's a little chilly here and i mostly packed for the weather at the equator!

today was our first real day in kyoto - and of "school" - we went out to several palaces and temples and it was incredible.
(yesterday evening some of us walked around the city and wandered over to the river and the old district of town - geon - where the geishas are - AND we saw a geisha on the street! she was beautiful)

this is ryoan-ji --- the very first thing i was assigned to study in my arch 114 class at 10 on monday of my very first day of college ever --- it's basically the most famous rock garden ever.

it has fifteen rocks and 7 groupings. 15 is an important number in buddhism and there are 7 groupings because it was believed that you can only hold 6 thoughts in your head at once. also, you can never see all fifteen rocks at once.

we also went to the golden pavilion today, a home a shogun who abdicated the thrown built for himself. (a shogun is like the head military leader of japan, head samurai in a way. they coexisted with the emporers for a while.)
it is the gold-est thing i have EVER seen.



the colors of everything are super saturated and wonderful (still).

but most noticeably - i have never met a more wonderful people. the japanese are incredibly and unimaginably friendly at all times. they are always smiling and saying thank you and though communicating is difficult, they are never annoyed.

nevertheless, i have also never felt intimidated the way i do here. there is such a communication barrier (hand gestures only take you so far) it's....well, very different.

oh -- and maybe the coolest thing -- each of the temples has their own calligrapher and their own symbols. you have to buy a special book and then take it to the temple's calligrapher and for about 3 dollars (300 yen) they will draw in it. by the end the book will be (hopefully) full, but definitely incredibly gorgeous.


need to run off and shower in a bathroom that is as big as my shower at home! (everything is so small!!) we are headed out to dinner somewhere for my friend eric's 22nd birthday. should be fun!

we went into narita last night ---

japan is beautiful. the colors are rich and the signage on the buildings is amazing. everything is remarkably quiet. sooo quiet. the cars the city the people.

i'm already having strange feelings about being a tourist. i've never traveled in a group like this either and it's a little difficult for me: no one seems to understand that you should be quiet where others are quiet.

and it seems most japanese don't speak english.


last night was really nice, but i got super tired. we had sushi japanese beer and such.

packing up and then on to kyoto -- which i am very excited about.



oh - and - the vending machines here are absurd. the diet coke cans are way cooler than ours (the coke are the coolest). you can get hot meals (good hot meals!) out of a vending machine! how amazing is that??

at last

everything on this page is in japanese, it's very confusing for me.


i'm here!!

actually, it's been a little anticlimactic.
we made it over the ocean in about 10+ hours instead of 11.5 -- which was much appreciated. JAL (the airline) was quite nice, i was impressed with the service. the flight was LOONG and i started getting antsy around hour 4. we flew into Narita, which is an hour or two away from Tokyo by train and we are staying here for the night.

tomorrow morning we will check out at 9 and take the bullet train down to kyoto for several days. apparently, this will only take three hours. the first half of our two weeks in japan will be spent in kyoto and then we'll come back to tokyo for the second half.

there has not been too much to observe (yet) but it smells different here and is incredibly lush. veryveryvery green. also, the japanese seem incredibly friendly and i feel very white. being fairheaded suddenly makes me quite conspicuous.

oh - and - as miles had warned me - the toilets are extremely confusing. there are options to spray bidet pause and it will, without pressing a button, heat the seat and deoderize the bowl.
fun facts to know and tell, even if they are a little inappropriate.


anyhow, i'm going to join some people to explore (somewhere, though we are in the middle of nowhere) soon and then probably crash fairly early.

i'm feeling a very long way from home.

dreaming

i want to go here....but it's proving to be very difficult.
those chinese.
(i can probably get in trouble just for saying that....)

for asia. etc.