(I will have to post pics later, but for now here is the long awaited blog update....er...it's a bit long)
You know how crack-heads react when they get access to crack after they ain’t had any in a while? Well keep that in mind as you picture me in Tokyo with my credit card, after not having used it for 5 months. If I could have freebased expensive clothing, I would have. It was a fun filled couple of weeks that has left my credit debt higher than ever, and me feeling guiltier (although better dressed) than I have been in a long while. Looking back, it was a combination of factors really that made me lose control. First there was the fact that I could actually find stuff that fit me in Tokyo – the realization of which brought tears to my eyes, and elicited many nervous looks from the staff at Zara Roppongi, as I clutched an XL blazer to my chest and thanked the heavens through quiet sobs.
The second factor was all the noise and flashy lights that Tokyo is famous for. Walk around in the neon jungle that is Japan’s largest city for a couple hours and you’d be willing to sign away your first born for anything that looks cute, flashy or has a brand name on it. It is a hypnotizing city. I don’t even remember all the credit receipts I signed….they just kind of blended together in the end.
The next factor in my overspending, of course, was the fact that the Tokyo women all look so hot that a mangy white chick like moi felt the need to overcompensate by buying a whole new wardrobe and refusing to leave the hotel without layers of make-up on. However, since I don’t get many chances to dress up in Shimabara, I loved the fact that I finally got to feel like a woman again (god I hope some random feminist doesn’t send me hate mail for that statement….).
Apart from shopping, I also did a fair bit of drinking. So much in fact that my liver has given notice, and is currently looking for vacancies in other bodies. I wish him luck (yes my liver is a male – only a male could give me so much trouble…).
Apart from now being owned by my credit card company and impending liver failure, the highlight of my holidays was actually the fact that my brother and sister came to visit me here in Japan. They were looking forward to seeing this strange world that I inhabit, and were highly excited at the fact that it was much warmer here than back in Canada (it hardly ever falls below 0 degrees Celsius) and there is normally no snow. As luck would have it though, on the day they arrived in Nagasaki we had a freak snow storm and it took me three hours driving at 20 km/h with zero visibility to get to the airport from Shimabara. A big part of the problem was that the Japanese people living in Kyushu are not used to dealing with snow, so while the storm itself was not really that bad – at least by Canadian standards – they started panicking and ended up driving insanely slow. The upside, however, was that on the way back from the airport we made almost normal time since the Japanese drivers had all abandoned the road in fear by then.
My brother and sister stayed 4 days in Shimabara with me, during which time they saw an Iaido and Jodo demonstration put on by my Sensei; discovered the joy of onsens (natural hot spring baths); and got to go to Shin’s numerous times. My brother in particular took a liking to Shin, due in large part to a strange bond that they share for weird music that no one has ever heard of. It was hard to separate the two. We spent Christmas at my place but it passed without feeling Christmasy, (the snow melted the day after they arrived and it had gone back to being warm-ish and sunny). I did get a whole bunch of amazing presents from back home though. My supervisor from work also invited us to Christmas dinner at her brother’s traditional Japanese inn. Of course this was no regular turkey-and-stuffing type meal, but rather a very intricate 7 course feast of super traditional Japanese food. This means that it mainly consisted of raw fish and various other raw and highly undelectable looking sea creatures. I thought it was a great meal, and though I personally did not love everything served, it was a unique experience that would have otherwise set us back about $150 per person at least, not to mention would have been very difficult to order without speaking the language. My brother enjoyed it immensely, but my sister, whose tastes run more to things like Kraft Dinner, tried very hard to at least try everything given to us but mostly just looked nauseous. Among the highlights of the meal were raw whale (yep, not much Greenpeace presence here people!), Fugu (that’s right, the lethally poisonous blow fish that you need a license to make and that several people in Japan die after eating each year – I took comfort in knowing that the chef is required to take his own life if one of his customers dies from a Fugu dish he prepares, however my sister did not seem as consoled by this fact), some rather offensive looking snail like animal, and various other types of sea creatures – some with eyes and/or appendages still attached. I was very grateful to my supervisor for allowing us to experience this unique meal, but shortly after getting home my sister curled up in fetal position and refused to move for several hours until we gave her some plain, normal food. The rest of the trip, my brother took great pleasure in pointing out raw fish, tentacles, eyes, etc., to her to gross her out.
On the 26th, we began our long journey across Japan with the first stop in Fukuoka. We had a pretty good time there considering it was a Monday during the winter holidays, and the city seemed much deader than usual. We also slept in a traditional inn. This is a great experience and I recommend it to anyone traveling in Japan. The places are much cheaper than hotels and are very clean. You get your own Yukata (thin kimono) to wear and get to sleep on the floor in a very old fashioned, Japanese type setting. My brother commented that it made him feel like a geisha, and frankly which grown man could pass that feeling up?
Over the next few days we traveled to Kobe, Osaka, Kyoto and finally Tokyo. In Kobe we sampled the world famous Kobe beef which was truly everything that it’s cracked up to be. The cows used for Kobe beef are treated like royalty. They are fed better than most people, sleep on cushions, drink beer, and are given massages so as to ensure even fat distribution. The result is that the meat actually melts in your mouth (ah crap, first I was pissing off feminists….and now I’m gonna get death threats from animal rights groups).
In Osaka we got to experience a blade-runner type setting – with tons of little stalls and large throngs of people, aligned against a hyper technological and slightly dirty-feeling cityscape background. We also ate Okonomiyaki, (which is a large pancake-type food filled with octopus, squid, beef and vegetables, and covered with mayo and BBQ sauce – my poor sister was loosing weight drastically by this point), which is a dish that Osaka is famous for.
In Kyoto we saw some really amazing temples and encountered the recurrent theme that the Japanese of older generations had failed to repeatedly learn from the same lesson. Namely, the history of every temple spoke of repeated burning to the ground followed by rebuilding, and more burning down. Typical history read something like this:
1210 – Temple made entirely of wood, and built with blessing of gods
1211 – Temple burns down completely to the ground
1212 – Temple rebuilt, and made larger, using more wood. Blessed by special priest.
1225 – Lighting storm, temple burns completely to the ground and takes out several neighbouring buildings.
1235 – Temple rebuilt, straw roof used in addition to entirely wooden frame.
1276 – Match is lit a hundred meters away. Temple burns down to the ground, half of Kyoto set on fire as result.
Etc. etc.
Seriously, you would think that they would eventually get the idea that wood tends to burn really well. For god’s sake, use a different material people!
In Kyoto we also met two really interesting characters in an Izakaya (Japanese pub). They were both professors at a Kyoto University – one an American, the other British. We started talking mainly because the British guy was loudly bashing Canada and Canadians, and when I couldn’t take it anymore I finally started arguing with him. Turns out he had seen that my sister had a Canada shirt on and had started bashing Canadians just to see how we would react. Pretty funny actually and resulted in a very loud and interesting evening.
For the final leg of our trip, we arrived hung-over via Shinkansen in Tokyo. Since my brother’s friend works in the hotel biz, she got us an amazing room in a high end Tokyo hotel. Moreover, the room was on the executive level so we were treated super well (we even had a private room for check-in; access to the onsen and pool in the hotel, a computer with LCD screen and net access in our room, and a rather large flat screen TV). It was the perfect start to our profuse money spending three days in Tokyo.
It was New Year’s Eve when we arrived and so getting all fancied up, we headed out for the bright lights of one of the world’s most vibrant cities. We started off at the only Canadian bar in Tokyo – called the Maple Leaf. It’s was a nice place, but it’s essentially a pub. Good food and nice people but for me it ain’t New Year’s unless I am dancing among sweaty, half naked people in a crowded nightclub. So I dragged my brother and sister to Roppongi (the nightlife district where foreigners congregate), in search of a crazy night out. We found it in a place called Queen Lexington. Cover was 6000 yen ($60) but it was all you can drink. The place was crazy packed though, and we could hardly maneuver within the small area we were standing in, let alone get to the bar. Soon though, the need for booze overtaking me, I elbowed my way to the front and got quickly tanked whilst enduring people touching me in all sorts of inappropriate ways. The rest of the night is a bit of a blur, but let’s just say it was a great time. We finally left the club at around 4 or 5 am and happily stumbled upon a donair stand (it took me back to post drinking shwarma’s in the Annex, in Toronto). The next day we were all in such crappy shape that it was all I could do to drag my sorry ass to the hotel’s sauna and onsen to sweat out some toxic chemicals.
The next few days in Tokyo we made the rounds to Harajuku (the fashion is truly amazing), Shinjuku (land of neon lights, aka epilepsy town), Shibuya (where they don’t like foreigners much) and everywhere else we could reach through Tokyo’s insane but highly extensive subway system.
We had a great time together, and so I was very sad when Tina and Tomo left on Jan. 3 to go back to Canada.
The day after they left I went to the movies and walked around Tokyo by myself. It was lonely, and a bit depressing. However, the day after that I met up with my friend Miki (who is a U of T Masters of Social Work grad but lives in Tokyo again now) and she showed me the parts of Tokyo that you have to be in the know to find. We hung out for two days and she took me to all the best clubs/and bars in Roppongi as well as to some great restaurants. We went shopping and sightseeing and I was really grateful to her for taking time off work just to show me around. We had a lot of fun, and because she works as a counselor, she was also great to talk to about a lot of stuff that had been on my mind. The day after, Miki left for Okinawa and my speech contest student arrived in Tokyo for the speech finals.
The speech contest was long, and frankly I have heard my students speech so many times now that listening to it makes me want to impale myself on sharp objects, but it was worth it in the end! She got second place in all of Japan (out of 47 participants who were all champions of their respective prefectures). We were all very proud of her and it’s a pretty big deal in our school now.
On Monday, Jan. 9th I finally returned via plane to Nagasaki, where Trisha was nice enough to pick me up at the airport for the drive back to Shimmy. I had had a lot of time to think on the plane. I loved Tokyo and could see myself living there. I love my life in Japan, and my life in Shimabara is very productive and good for me. At the same time, I do still miss my family and friends from home a lot. I guess we can’t have it all. I know I will go back to Toronto for a visit this July, and for now, that is something I am really looking forward to. Before that, some friends will come to visit me, I plan on going to China, and I made pacts with Jenny and Nicole to go to Fukuoka to party as often as possible.
Coming home (for Shimabara finally feels like home to me) felt really good. I walked into my place, watched some ‘Lost’, and passed out happy to be in my own bed and with nothing but the silence of a small town all around me.
I am excited to see what 2006 will bring; because you better believe whatever it is, I am ready!
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