Friday, October 17, 2008
Cambodia: Temples and Terror
After arriving into the Bangkok airport from Japan my first task was to find my missing sister, Lauren, and then find a way to make it to Cambodia. Due to the mishap that is called Malaysia Airlines, I was 12 hours later than expected. Luckily I have a track record for missing flights and being late, so Lauren didn’t worry as she spent the day waiting for me at Bangkok International.
All of my research on entering Cambodia stressed that it was much easier to fly from Bangkok. Complaints about cheating bus companies and shady border officials are supposed to deter travelers. I thought that made it sound exciting. So Lauren and I set off on a train from Bangkok to the Thai-Cambodian border. After being stamped to leave Thailand, we crossed through No Man’s Land and lined up at the Cambodian Visa booth. The sign over the booth read “Cambodian Visa: $25.” When I handed my passport and $25 to the visa agent he said “No, it’s $35.” Hmmm. I explained to him that the massive sign hanging outside of his office said $25. He threw my passport at me, slammed the window, and went back to playing cards with his 4 other uniformed friends. I asked someone next to me where I could find the police. Pity, it turns out that the men charging $10 extra for visas were the police. All of the other pushover Americans ahead of us had paid the extra money and so I wasn’t left with much bargaining power (I wanted to start a strike) and so I threw a tantrum until he eventually lowered the price to $30.
As far as first impressions go, Cambodia wasn’t doing so well.
After we eventually made it into Cambodia we stood at the border with 30 other foreigners who had been ditched by their unscrupulous bus company and were ride-less. Luckily, we had heard about that scam and had opted instead for the train and finding our own transport once inside Cambodia. A number of shady men who had been “helping” us with the visa process were now trying to “help” us on to “tourist busses.” I tracked down a few taxis but everyone that agreed to take me was then subject to harassment from the man “helping” us to find a bus. The entire racket was so frustrating that we finally hiked down the road with our backpacks, found an independent taxi that was using us as a cover to smuggle shoes through a checkpoint (he had over 50 pairs of shoes hidden under our backpacks in the trunk and under the mats in the car by our feet), and offered him a reasonable price to take us to Siem Reap.
Upon entering Cambodia, its most notable characteristic is schizophrenia. It accepts three currencies: the Thai Baht, the Cambodian Real, and the American Dollar. Dollars come out of the ATM machines, change is given in Real, and Baht are worth 30% less than in Thailand. They drive on the right side of the road. Or the left. It kind of depends on what is in front of you. Normally, you can try to determine which side of the road to drive on based on which side of the car is the driver’s side. However, in Cambodia, some cars had the driver’s side on the left, and some had it on the right. Our first stop within this befuddled country was Siem Reap.
Siem Reap’s fame comes from its proximity to the Angkor Wat ruins. It’s got a few streets full of trendy, touristy restaurants and bars (such as the clever “Angkor What?” bar) but right outside of that center is a pretty typical Cambodian town: Motorbikes, dust, street markets, and burning garbage. Lonely Planet and other guide books suggested spending anywhere from 3 to 7 days perusing the nearby Angkor Wat ruins. Lauren and I penciled in a day and were done by 1pm. The numerous ruins were laid out over several square miles and we had to hire a tuk-tuk (motorbike with a cart attached to the back) to take us from ruin to ruin. The crown jewel of the ruins, THE Angkor Wat temple, was where we went at 5am to watch the sunrise. After that we visited some other famous spots including Tha Prohm, left a ruin for so long that massive trees were growing out of it; Ta Keo which we were able to climb up for some great views; and Preah Kahn which had phallic symbols on everything including a little water spout shaped like a penis. At this point, Cambodia started to redeem itself.
After the world’s fastest tour of the Angkor Wat ruins, Lauren and I packed up our backpacks and climbed (backpacks and all) onto the back of a set of motor bikes and jetted off to the bus station. Holding a 40 pound backpack on your back while judging how tightly you should be hugging the little Cambodian man driving the motorcycle is always challenging. My case was especially challenging because I was also screaming at him to turn around as I had forgotten my sunglasses at the hostal. Once I finally communicated this message, which was unfortunately once we were already at the bus station, we turned around and returned to the hostal to search for my sunglasses. I guess hostals don’t really expect you to come back once you’ve checked out. If they did, they would probably go to more of an effort to make it at least look like they’ve changed the sheets and towels. How pleasant. Even more unfortunate was that my sunglasses weren’t even there and that I had left Lauren to stall the bus for me. After enduring 30 minutes of glaring stares from fellow passengers, Lauren was very happy to see me return with my sunglasses. Which had actually been in my purse the whole time. Oops.
The ride from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh allowed us to sample the culinary cuisine at each road side rest stop. Some people may think this is why I contract regular food-borne illnesses while traveling. I think there is no other way to really experience the country. On this trip I sampled boiled eggs, fresh corn on cob, and bananas stuffed with sweet rice, all without hazard. But occasionally, you do get burned. Lauren and I had opted to play it safe and skip the fried grasshoppers in favor of some packaged crackers. Perhaps a bit less protein, but what could be safer than packaged crackers? After holding them in her purse, on her lap, for at least 2 hours, Lauren opened the crackers and 3 little cockroaches crawled out. Playing it cool, Lauren started screaming at the top of her lungs and jumped up onto the seat while throwing the crackers halfway across the bus. I took my flip flop and frantically started squashing cockroaches. We had not made many friends by holding up the bus for 30 minutes. We lost our remaining allies with this little display. I suppose it is one thing to waste 30 minutes of your life, but another thing entirely to miss part of one of the most romantic Cambodian love song videos of all times, which just happened to be playing on the bus at that moment.
The bus ride led us into the pulsing heart of Phnom Penh. After the green rice paddies and wooden stilt houses of the country side, the tall dirty-white buildings and streets bustling with motorbikes was a change. Phnom Penh does have a very nice area full of restaurants and bars along the Mekong River and a Royal Palace to attract tourists. Unfortunately for Cambodia, the other main attractions are The Killing Fields and Tuol Sleng Prison.
For a quick history lesson on Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge came to power sometime after the French lost control. Their main goal was to create equality in society by returning Cambodia to its agrarian roots (sometimes called communism). To the Khmer Rouge, this meant exterminating and relocating anyone in society who qualified as educated, elite, or urban. This included everyone from teachers and doctors to people who wore glasses to people who had recently moved to cities from the countryside. They relocated thousands of people back into rural areas where they were forced to work side by side with, and hold a lower status than, their rural countrymen. Many people were forced into Tuol Sleng Prison and other “jails.” The jails and countryside became feeders for the mass extermination graves now referred to as The Killing Fields. It is estimated that anywhere from 1-3 million people were killed between the years of 1975-1979. Cambodia’s population was only about 7 million at the time.
Toul Sleng prison was a former high school whose rooms had been turned into mass holding cells where people were chained together by their feet. Other rooms had rudimentary wooden walls set up to create solitary confinement cells. Today it is a simple museum with metal bed frames and torture tools left in the cells, hundreds of prisoner mugshots posted on the walls, and pictures of mutilated bodies haunting the rooms. Almost 30 years since the prison has been used, there are still blood stains on the floor. A list of rules is posted outside of the prison and includes things such as “Don’t be a fool for you are the chap to thwart the revolution” and “While getting lashes or electrocution you must not cry at all”. Eerie, would be an understatement. I could feel ghosts there.
Prisoners held at Toul Sleng were transported to the nearby Killing Fields. Today, besides a tall, narrow monument, all you will find on first inspection is a grassy field with pockmarks the size of kiddy pools. The monument is full of skulls, clothing, and other personal effects of the people who were found nearby. The pockmarks in the field are 30 year-old, partially sunken graves. Upon closer inspection, and especially after a good rain, you can see the clothing being burped up from the ground, tattered and bleached by time. Some of the graves are even labeled based on who or what was buried there: Headless bodies, women and children... Shockingly, this genocide, where upwards of 2 million people were systematically murdered, is very rarely discussed. Have you heard of it?
All right, so that’s kind of a big downer to end on. I’ll go on to say that after a day in Phnom Penh Lauren and I took off to Sihanoukville, a beach town about 5 hours from the capital. There we rented a bungalow overlooking the ocean for $12 a night (total) and feasted on fresh fish, octopus on a stick, and beer. After two days of down time at the beach, we returned to Phnom Penh to catch a boat down the Mekong River into Vietnam. We passed from the main river channel into smaller tributaries that make up the Mekong Delta. The smaller rivers were flanked by houses on stilts, farmers wearing conical hats, rice paddy fields, water buffalo, and bathing children. It was so idyllic and serene, it almost made you want to move to Vietnam. Almost.
All of my research on entering Cambodia stressed that it was much easier to fly from Bangkok. Complaints about cheating bus companies and shady border officials are supposed to deter travelers. I thought that made it sound exciting. So Lauren and I set off on a train from Bangkok to the Thai-Cambodian border. After being stamped to leave Thailand, we crossed through No Man’s Land and lined up at the Cambodian Visa booth. The sign over the booth read “Cambodian Visa: $25.” When I handed my passport and $25 to the visa agent he said “No, it’s $35.” Hmmm. I explained to him that the massive sign hanging outside of his office said $25. He threw my passport at me, slammed the window, and went back to playing cards with his 4 other uniformed friends. I asked someone next to me where I could find the police. Pity, it turns out that the men charging $10 extra for visas were the police. All of the other pushover Americans ahead of us had paid the extra money and so I wasn’t left with much bargaining power (I wanted to start a strike) and so I threw a tantrum until he eventually lowered the price to $30.
As far as first impressions go, Cambodia wasn’t doing so well.
After we eventually made it into Cambodia we stood at the border with 30 other foreigners who had been ditched by their unscrupulous bus company and were ride-less. Luckily, we had heard about that scam and had opted instead for the train and finding our own transport once inside Cambodia. A number of shady men who had been “helping” us with the visa process were now trying to “help” us on to “tourist busses.” I tracked down a few taxis but everyone that agreed to take me was then subject to harassment from the man “helping” us to find a bus. The entire racket was so frustrating that we finally hiked down the road with our backpacks, found an independent taxi that was using us as a cover to smuggle shoes through a checkpoint (he had over 50 pairs of shoes hidden under our backpacks in the trunk and under the mats in the car by our feet), and offered him a reasonable price to take us to Siem Reap.
Upon entering Cambodia, its most notable characteristic is schizophrenia. It accepts three currencies: the Thai Baht, the Cambodian Real, and the American Dollar. Dollars come out of the ATM machines, change is given in Real, and Baht are worth 30% less than in Thailand. They drive on the right side of the road. Or the left. It kind of depends on what is in front of you. Normally, you can try to determine which side of the road to drive on based on which side of the car is the driver’s side. However, in Cambodia, some cars had the driver’s side on the left, and some had it on the right. Our first stop within this befuddled country was Siem Reap.
Siem Reap’s fame comes from its proximity to the Angkor Wat ruins. It’s got a few streets full of trendy, touristy restaurants and bars (such as the clever “Angkor What?” bar) but right outside of that center is a pretty typical Cambodian town: Motorbikes, dust, street markets, and burning garbage. Lonely Planet and other guide books suggested spending anywhere from 3 to 7 days perusing the nearby Angkor Wat ruins. Lauren and I penciled in a day and were done by 1pm. The numerous ruins were laid out over several square miles and we had to hire a tuk-tuk (motorbike with a cart attached to the back) to take us from ruin to ruin. The crown jewel of the ruins, THE Angkor Wat temple, was where we went at 5am to watch the sunrise. After that we visited some other famous spots including Tha Prohm, left a ruin for so long that massive trees were growing out of it; Ta Keo which we were able to climb up for some great views; and Preah Kahn which had phallic symbols on everything including a little water spout shaped like a penis. At this point, Cambodia started to redeem itself.
After the world’s fastest tour of the Angkor Wat ruins, Lauren and I packed up our backpacks and climbed (backpacks and all) onto the back of a set of motor bikes and jetted off to the bus station. Holding a 40 pound backpack on your back while judging how tightly you should be hugging the little Cambodian man driving the motorcycle is always challenging. My case was especially challenging because I was also screaming at him to turn around as I had forgotten my sunglasses at the hostal. Once I finally communicated this message, which was unfortunately once we were already at the bus station, we turned around and returned to the hostal to search for my sunglasses. I guess hostals don’t really expect you to come back once you’ve checked out. If they did, they would probably go to more of an effort to make it at least look like they’ve changed the sheets and towels. How pleasant. Even more unfortunate was that my sunglasses weren’t even there and that I had left Lauren to stall the bus for me. After enduring 30 minutes of glaring stares from fellow passengers, Lauren was very happy to see me return with my sunglasses. Which had actually been in my purse the whole time. Oops.
The ride from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh allowed us to sample the culinary cuisine at each road side rest stop. Some people may think this is why I contract regular food-borne illnesses while traveling. I think there is no other way to really experience the country. On this trip I sampled boiled eggs, fresh corn on cob, and bananas stuffed with sweet rice, all without hazard. But occasionally, you do get burned. Lauren and I had opted to play it safe and skip the fried grasshoppers in favor of some packaged crackers. Perhaps a bit less protein, but what could be safer than packaged crackers? After holding them in her purse, on her lap, for at least 2 hours, Lauren opened the crackers and 3 little cockroaches crawled out. Playing it cool, Lauren started screaming at the top of her lungs and jumped up onto the seat while throwing the crackers halfway across the bus. I took my flip flop and frantically started squashing cockroaches. We had not made many friends by holding up the bus for 30 minutes. We lost our remaining allies with this little display. I suppose it is one thing to waste 30 minutes of your life, but another thing entirely to miss part of one of the most romantic Cambodian love song videos of all times, which just happened to be playing on the bus at that moment.
The bus ride led us into the pulsing heart of Phnom Penh. After the green rice paddies and wooden stilt houses of the country side, the tall dirty-white buildings and streets bustling with motorbikes was a change. Phnom Penh does have a very nice area full of restaurants and bars along the Mekong River and a Royal Palace to attract tourists. Unfortunately for Cambodia, the other main attractions are The Killing Fields and Tuol Sleng Prison.
For a quick history lesson on Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge came to power sometime after the French lost control. Their main goal was to create equality in society by returning Cambodia to its agrarian roots (sometimes called communism). To the Khmer Rouge, this meant exterminating and relocating anyone in society who qualified as educated, elite, or urban. This included everyone from teachers and doctors to people who wore glasses to people who had recently moved to cities from the countryside. They relocated thousands of people back into rural areas where they were forced to work side by side with, and hold a lower status than, their rural countrymen. Many people were forced into Tuol Sleng Prison and other “jails.” The jails and countryside became feeders for the mass extermination graves now referred to as The Killing Fields. It is estimated that anywhere from 1-3 million people were killed between the years of 1975-1979. Cambodia’s population was only about 7 million at the time.
Toul Sleng prison was a former high school whose rooms had been turned into mass holding cells where people were chained together by their feet. Other rooms had rudimentary wooden walls set up to create solitary confinement cells. Today it is a simple museum with metal bed frames and torture tools left in the cells, hundreds of prisoner mugshots posted on the walls, and pictures of mutilated bodies haunting the rooms. Almost 30 years since the prison has been used, there are still blood stains on the floor. A list of rules is posted outside of the prison and includes things such as “Don’t be a fool for you are the chap to thwart the revolution” and “While getting lashes or electrocution you must not cry at all”. Eerie, would be an understatement. I could feel ghosts there.
Prisoners held at Toul Sleng were transported to the nearby Killing Fields. Today, besides a tall, narrow monument, all you will find on first inspection is a grassy field with pockmarks the size of kiddy pools. The monument is full of skulls, clothing, and other personal effects of the people who were found nearby. The pockmarks in the field are 30 year-old, partially sunken graves. Upon closer inspection, and especially after a good rain, you can see the clothing being burped up from the ground, tattered and bleached by time. Some of the graves are even labeled based on who or what was buried there: Headless bodies, women and children... Shockingly, this genocide, where upwards of 2 million people were systematically murdered, is very rarely discussed. Have you heard of it?
All right, so that’s kind of a big downer to end on. I’ll go on to say that after a day in Phnom Penh Lauren and I took off to Sihanoukville, a beach town about 5 hours from the capital. There we rented a bungalow overlooking the ocean for $12 a night (total) and feasted on fresh fish, octopus on a stick, and beer. After two days of down time at the beach, we returned to Phnom Penh to catch a boat down the Mekong River into Vietnam. We passed from the main river channel into smaller tributaries that make up the Mekong Delta. The smaller rivers were flanked by houses on stilts, farmers wearing conical hats, rice paddy fields, water buffalo, and bathing children. It was so idyllic and serene, it almost made you want to move to Vietnam. Almost.
Japan: You Can Tell a Lot From a Toilet
On Toilets
Stereotypes usually exist for a reason and I think Japan’s toilets just go to prove what people already assume about the Japanese: They are technological, orderly, smart, patient, and demure.
Japanese toilets are varied, ubiquitous, and complicated. They range from your standard “Asian squatter” to the “Porcelain Computer,” which takes longer to program than to piss in. The computer version comes with a control panel on the side which allows you to heat the seat, squirt water, and make funny noises among other things. The range of toilets shows the Japanese’s Asian roots and the distance they have come as a technological nation. The ever-presence of toilets is both cause and effect for Japan’s order and cleanliness. (It’s hard to be organized or clean when people are forced to pee on the street). Their complexity is yet another example that the Japanese are constantly looking for ways to challenge themselves intellectually, even in the bathroom.
Meanwhile, due to the complexity, the patience required to use a computer toilet in Japan says a lot about the Japanese psyche. When I have to spend more than 30 seconds figuring out what the button with the little pink butt is or how to stop the toilet seat heater from burning my ass, I get annoyed. From the land of road rage and fast food drive-throughs, I seriously doubt my countrymen would put up with this either.
As has been said about the culture before, the Japanese are also more demure than Americans (with the possible exception of some of my college roommates who would have loved this next invention). That is my explanation for why Japanese toilets have a flushing noise that you can turn on to mask the sounds that you are making in the bathroom. The “fake flush” button doesn’t actually flush the toilet, just makes a similar noise so that you can do your business without embarrassment. Would have saved you a few trips to the basement bathrooms in the dorm, hey girls?
On Being Cute
Beyond having an impressive array of toilets, I also think it is worth noting that Japan is extremely cute. First, the people there seem to think that other people can actually speak Japanese! Unlike my village in Peru, where people were legitimately not aware of other languages, the Japanese are a pretty educated group. Probably educated enough to surmise that a 5’9’’ Caucasian girl doesn’t speak very good Japanese. Despite this, policemen and 7-Eleven clerks had an especially long list of things to tell me. I would always nod politely and smile but I am still wondering what in the hell they were telling me.
Other cute things that Japanese people do include riding bikes while holding umbrellas, putting on slippers to go to the bathroom, wearing really weird outfits, and eating like they will once again see food in the foreseeable future. On this last note, my friend Jackie and I did all Americans proud at an All-You-Can-Eat conveyor belt Sushi restaurant in Osaka (you pull off as many plates of sushi as you want as they roll by). The all-you-can-eat price for women was somewhere around $18 (it was higher for men) and judging from the number of plates in front of Japanese women at the restaurant (I’d say an average of 7), this was probably a reasonable price. However, in an event that still causes my heart to swell with pride, Jackie and I honorably downed over 25 plates of sushi each. Being ill was a small price to pay for the ability to claim such a victory.
On Why Japan’s the Best
Besides impressive toilet facilities and a squeezable cuteness, the Japanese offer a lot of great options for tourists. Some of the highlights include Onsens, food, taxi cabs, and street signs. Onsens are bath houses with a number of pools of varying temperatures to clean yourself and relax in. They are perfect for a cold day or if you just feel like hanging out in a room with 20 other naked people. As for the food, it was the best I have eaten in the entire world. And now that I have been to 41 countries, I think that is a substantial claim. Try sushi at the fish market in Tokyo right after it comes off of the boat and eat Okanamiyaki which is a pancake-like omelet full of vegetables and meat that you cook yourself at your table. Speaking of food, feel free to eat it off of the floor of your taxi cab. Cleaner than your hotel sheets in Vietnam, taxi cabs also come with polite drivers and meters. And you actually know where they are going because streets are, gasp, clearly marked.
On Why It May Not Be For Long
As much as I love Japan, if they don’t start making babies, there aren’t going to be any of them left. Unfortunately, they might be too prude to do that. While in Kyoto my friends and I visited a trendy night club where the entertainment kicked off with a lounge band and finished with a DJ. Throw in a bit of alcohol, and any respectable Latin American night club would have already produced enough action to necessitate a few weddings in the next month. Not in Kyoto. But then again, how could you really put the moves on when you are all facing the same direction, looking at the DJ, and swaying to rap music by yourself? Talk about cultural birth control.
While in Japan I visited Hiroshima, Osaka, Nara, Kyoto, Tokyo, and the little known town of Atsumi-Onsen. Here’s a short synapses on each of them:
Hiroshima
My first trans-Japanese stop was in Hiroshima, made famous by its unfortunate status as the first city to have an atomic bomb dropped on it. The first place I visited was the A-bomb museum. Strangely, 24 hours prior to this visit, I had been perusing the Siloso Fort Museum in Singapore, in part dedicated to remembering the atrocities wreaked by the Japanese who invaded the Malay Peninsula during WWII. Once again, it appears that the bad guys are usually those who didn’t get to write the museum blurbs. In Singapore, the experiences of WWII included a scathing report of a brutal Japanese invasion and occupation. And while the atomic bomb museum did not deny any of these events, they were relegated to a single short sentence mentioning a minor foray into the Malay Peninsula, along with a passing comment noting that Japan had been a bit “unpeaceful” during WWII. (I suppose that is why the Chinese are still mad at you?). But despite the bias, the destruction wreaked by the atomic bomb was no doubt real, devastating, and horrific.
It would be comparably pleasant to think that the atomic bomb just killed a lot of people. In truth, people at the epicenter were mercifully vaporized, while those nearby were mutilated and tended to stay alive for long enough to reach home, see their families, and then die in excruciating pain, usually from horribly burned skin and damaged organs. Visuals of skin melting off of people’s bodies and skin that had been burned black, along with first hand accounts of people who watched their family members die while begging for water, were heart breaking and sickening. Many other people died in the weeks to come from the radiation, and many died years later from related cancers.
The museum leaves you wondering, was it better to drop a bomb to stop the war even though it killed thousands of Japanese civilians? Or would it have been better to sacrifice thousands of American and European military men, including our great uncles and grandpas, who were on the verge of shipping out to a virtual slaughter to attack Japan and Japanese-occupied South East Asia by land? I don’t think these are ever very easy questions to answer. The most you can hope is that the people we’ve elected into office are smart enough to make these tough decisions. Oh…shit.
Apart from its historical significance, I found the city of Hiroshima to be little more than a concrete jungle. This is likely because everything was built after 1945. Right outside of Hiroshima I visited the island of Miyajima, home to the Itsukushima Shrine and the famous Torii Gate, one of the most photographed sites in Japan. It was my first introduction to Japanese shrines and the over-use of wood, which I got a heck of a lot more of when I continued on my journey.
Osaka, Kyoto, Nara
Honestly, these three towns are a blur of temples, Zen Buddhism gardens, shrines, castles, old Japanese farm houses, an aquarium, some pagodas, conveyor belt sushi restaurants, and sake tasting. My pictures do them more justice than I ever could in words.
Tokyo
First, I would like thank my Hilton Honors American Express Card and a hectic work travel schedule last summer which allowed my friends and I to stay in the $485 a night Conrad Hilton in downtown Tokyo. I would also like to thank the Conrad for their slightly stupid slogan of “giving you the freedom to be yourself” which is surely why they politely looked the other way as we doubled the amount of people that were supposed to stay in the room and trekked through the lobby with oversized, smelly backpacks.
During my 24 hours in Tokyo I visited a number of different neighborhoods. I went from the red light district to the high-end shopping district of Ginza to the American night club district of Roppongi (which was oddly full of black ex-military Americans working as bouncers). The city was clean, the people were well dressed, there were lots of neon signs. No surprises there.
But the experience that blew me away was the Tsukiji Fish Market, the largest wholesale fish and seafood market in the world that opens in the wee hours of the morning. I arrived at the fish market at 5am and wandered along the stalls full of fresh seafood that had just been brought off of the boats. In the freezer room, I saw tuna that fit into boxes the size of coffins and would set you back as much as a small car. Small restaurants along the perimeter of the market sell fresh sushi, and for $35 a plate at 6 am you can eat the best sushi of your life for breakfast. This only leaves you feeling mildly ill for the rest of the day.
Atsumi-Onsen
My main reason for traveling to Japan was to visit my friend Riley who I met while in the Peace Corps. In the 5 years that we have known each other, Riley and I have never actually met on American soil. Riley was in the JET (Japanese English Teaching) Program and teaching English to kids in his small Japanese town. At a height of 6’ 4” with long blonde hair, he was also probably terrifying them.
The train from Tokyo to Atsumi-Onsen heads straight north for about 4 hours and passes through bright green farm land nudged up against grey mountains that run down the center of the country. In the rainy season, which I believe runs from January to December, the dark sky and low clouds give the countryside a very cozy feel. Riley’s 12,000 person town is equally quaint. Atsumi-Onsen literally means “Hot Water Hot Springs” and their town mascot is the ever-intimidating Mighty Radish. Yes, their mascot is a radish. And there is a huge purple radish on top of a 20 foot high pedestal in the middle of town in case you forget.
Atsumi-Onsen sits right on the ocean and all of the close-together houses have their own little gardens. The rural quietness of Atsumi-Onsen is a side of Japan that you rarely hear about. And, although small, Riley’s town does offer the conveniences of a bakery, a 7-Eleven, a foot onsen, and a tatami making factory. A foot onsen is a hot tub for your feet. You can sit and drink tea while soaking your tired treads in some warm water. Tatami mats are the straw mats that cover the floor in Japanese homes.
As if I haven’t made a big enough deal about how good the food is in Japan, I must mention one of my best meals in Japan was at I’s house, a friend of Riley’s. Her house is right on the ocean and her kitchen and living room windows look out across the sea, which she seemed to think is pretty normal. She served us sweet tofu stuffed with rice and noodles, hand rolls that we could fill with all sorts of vegetables and raw fish, raw tofu, and a spinach, egg, and sugar mix. It is no wonder that I liked Japan so much.
On Leaving
Alas, all good food orgies must come to an end, and thus I must take my leave of Japan. I took the night train from the town of the Mighty Radish and headed into the heart of Tokyo and on to the Narita airport. While Japan has made a name for itself in timeliness and efficiency, Malaysia Airlines seems to have slipped into the country undetected. Because they are incapable of calculating and hedging fuel costs, they arbitrarily decided to charge all passengers extra, on top of their ticket price, for fuel. Of course they wouldn’t have competitive prices if they did this up front, so they try and charge you extra when you are checking in at the counter. So, after a slight tantrum on my part and some re-booking I spent the next 12 hours at the Tokyo airport waiting for a flight on Northwest Airlines. With my faith in South East Asia no longer intact, I returned to the land of noodles and Buddhism for a month long tour of Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, and Bangkok.
Stereotypes usually exist for a reason and I think Japan’s toilets just go to prove what people already assume about the Japanese: They are technological, orderly, smart, patient, and demure.
Japanese toilets are varied, ubiquitous, and complicated. They range from your standard “Asian squatter” to the “Porcelain Computer,” which takes longer to program than to piss in. The computer version comes with a control panel on the side which allows you to heat the seat, squirt water, and make funny noises among other things. The range of toilets shows the Japanese’s Asian roots and the distance they have come as a technological nation. The ever-presence of toilets is both cause and effect for Japan’s order and cleanliness. (It’s hard to be organized or clean when people are forced to pee on the street). Their complexity is yet another example that the Japanese are constantly looking for ways to challenge themselves intellectually, even in the bathroom.
Meanwhile, due to the complexity, the patience required to use a computer toilet in Japan says a lot about the Japanese psyche. When I have to spend more than 30 seconds figuring out what the button with the little pink butt is or how to stop the toilet seat heater from burning my ass, I get annoyed. From the land of road rage and fast food drive-throughs, I seriously doubt my countrymen would put up with this either.
As has been said about the culture before, the Japanese are also more demure than Americans (with the possible exception of some of my college roommates who would have loved this next invention). That is my explanation for why Japanese toilets have a flushing noise that you can turn on to mask the sounds that you are making in the bathroom. The “fake flush” button doesn’t actually flush the toilet, just makes a similar noise so that you can do your business without embarrassment. Would have saved you a few trips to the basement bathrooms in the dorm, hey girls?
On Being Cute
Beyond having an impressive array of toilets, I also think it is worth noting that Japan is extremely cute. First, the people there seem to think that other people can actually speak Japanese! Unlike my village in Peru, where people were legitimately not aware of other languages, the Japanese are a pretty educated group. Probably educated enough to surmise that a 5’9’’ Caucasian girl doesn’t speak very good Japanese. Despite this, policemen and 7-Eleven clerks had an especially long list of things to tell me. I would always nod politely and smile but I am still wondering what in the hell they were telling me.
Other cute things that Japanese people do include riding bikes while holding umbrellas, putting on slippers to go to the bathroom, wearing really weird outfits, and eating like they will once again see food in the foreseeable future. On this last note, my friend Jackie and I did all Americans proud at an All-You-Can-Eat conveyor belt Sushi restaurant in Osaka (you pull off as many plates of sushi as you want as they roll by). The all-you-can-eat price for women was somewhere around $18 (it was higher for men) and judging from the number of plates in front of Japanese women at the restaurant (I’d say an average of 7), this was probably a reasonable price. However, in an event that still causes my heart to swell with pride, Jackie and I honorably downed over 25 plates of sushi each. Being ill was a small price to pay for the ability to claim such a victory.
On Why Japan’s the Best
Besides impressive toilet facilities and a squeezable cuteness, the Japanese offer a lot of great options for tourists. Some of the highlights include Onsens, food, taxi cabs, and street signs. Onsens are bath houses with a number of pools of varying temperatures to clean yourself and relax in. They are perfect for a cold day or if you just feel like hanging out in a room with 20 other naked people. As for the food, it was the best I have eaten in the entire world. And now that I have been to 41 countries, I think that is a substantial claim. Try sushi at the fish market in Tokyo right after it comes off of the boat and eat Okanamiyaki which is a pancake-like omelet full of vegetables and meat that you cook yourself at your table. Speaking of food, feel free to eat it off of the floor of your taxi cab. Cleaner than your hotel sheets in Vietnam, taxi cabs also come with polite drivers and meters. And you actually know where they are going because streets are, gasp, clearly marked.
On Why It May Not Be For Long
As much as I love Japan, if they don’t start making babies, there aren’t going to be any of them left. Unfortunately, they might be too prude to do that. While in Kyoto my friends and I visited a trendy night club where the entertainment kicked off with a lounge band and finished with a DJ. Throw in a bit of alcohol, and any respectable Latin American night club would have already produced enough action to necessitate a few weddings in the next month. Not in Kyoto. But then again, how could you really put the moves on when you are all facing the same direction, looking at the DJ, and swaying to rap music by yourself? Talk about cultural birth control.
While in Japan I visited Hiroshima, Osaka, Nara, Kyoto, Tokyo, and the little known town of Atsumi-Onsen. Here’s a short synapses on each of them:
Hiroshima
My first trans-Japanese stop was in Hiroshima, made famous by its unfortunate status as the first city to have an atomic bomb dropped on it. The first place I visited was the A-bomb museum. Strangely, 24 hours prior to this visit, I had been perusing the Siloso Fort Museum in Singapore, in part dedicated to remembering the atrocities wreaked by the Japanese who invaded the Malay Peninsula during WWII. Once again, it appears that the bad guys are usually those who didn’t get to write the museum blurbs. In Singapore, the experiences of WWII included a scathing report of a brutal Japanese invasion and occupation. And while the atomic bomb museum did not deny any of these events, they were relegated to a single short sentence mentioning a minor foray into the Malay Peninsula, along with a passing comment noting that Japan had been a bit “unpeaceful” during WWII. (I suppose that is why the Chinese are still mad at you?). But despite the bias, the destruction wreaked by the atomic bomb was no doubt real, devastating, and horrific.
It would be comparably pleasant to think that the atomic bomb just killed a lot of people. In truth, people at the epicenter were mercifully vaporized, while those nearby were mutilated and tended to stay alive for long enough to reach home, see their families, and then die in excruciating pain, usually from horribly burned skin and damaged organs. Visuals of skin melting off of people’s bodies and skin that had been burned black, along with first hand accounts of people who watched their family members die while begging for water, were heart breaking and sickening. Many other people died in the weeks to come from the radiation, and many died years later from related cancers.
The museum leaves you wondering, was it better to drop a bomb to stop the war even though it killed thousands of Japanese civilians? Or would it have been better to sacrifice thousands of American and European military men, including our great uncles and grandpas, who were on the verge of shipping out to a virtual slaughter to attack Japan and Japanese-occupied South East Asia by land? I don’t think these are ever very easy questions to answer. The most you can hope is that the people we’ve elected into office are smart enough to make these tough decisions. Oh…shit.
Apart from its historical significance, I found the city of Hiroshima to be little more than a concrete jungle. This is likely because everything was built after 1945. Right outside of Hiroshima I visited the island of Miyajima, home to the Itsukushima Shrine and the famous Torii Gate, one of the most photographed sites in Japan. It was my first introduction to Japanese shrines and the over-use of wood, which I got a heck of a lot more of when I continued on my journey.
Osaka, Kyoto, Nara
Honestly, these three towns are a blur of temples, Zen Buddhism gardens, shrines, castles, old Japanese farm houses, an aquarium, some pagodas, conveyor belt sushi restaurants, and sake tasting. My pictures do them more justice than I ever could in words.
Tokyo
First, I would like thank my Hilton Honors American Express Card and a hectic work travel schedule last summer which allowed my friends and I to stay in the $485 a night Conrad Hilton in downtown Tokyo. I would also like to thank the Conrad for their slightly stupid slogan of “giving you the freedom to be yourself” which is surely why they politely looked the other way as we doubled the amount of people that were supposed to stay in the room and trekked through the lobby with oversized, smelly backpacks.
During my 24 hours in Tokyo I visited a number of different neighborhoods. I went from the red light district to the high-end shopping district of Ginza to the American night club district of Roppongi (which was oddly full of black ex-military Americans working as bouncers). The city was clean, the people were well dressed, there were lots of neon signs. No surprises there.
But the experience that blew me away was the Tsukiji Fish Market, the largest wholesale fish and seafood market in the world that opens in the wee hours of the morning. I arrived at the fish market at 5am and wandered along the stalls full of fresh seafood that had just been brought off of the boats. In the freezer room, I saw tuna that fit into boxes the size of coffins and would set you back as much as a small car. Small restaurants along the perimeter of the market sell fresh sushi, and for $35 a plate at 6 am you can eat the best sushi of your life for breakfast. This only leaves you feeling mildly ill for the rest of the day.
Atsumi-Onsen
My main reason for traveling to Japan was to visit my friend Riley who I met while in the Peace Corps. In the 5 years that we have known each other, Riley and I have never actually met on American soil. Riley was in the JET (Japanese English Teaching) Program and teaching English to kids in his small Japanese town. At a height of 6’ 4” with long blonde hair, he was also probably terrifying them.
The train from Tokyo to Atsumi-Onsen heads straight north for about 4 hours and passes through bright green farm land nudged up against grey mountains that run down the center of the country. In the rainy season, which I believe runs from January to December, the dark sky and low clouds give the countryside a very cozy feel. Riley’s 12,000 person town is equally quaint. Atsumi-Onsen literally means “Hot Water Hot Springs” and their town mascot is the ever-intimidating Mighty Radish. Yes, their mascot is a radish. And there is a huge purple radish on top of a 20 foot high pedestal in the middle of town in case you forget.
Atsumi-Onsen sits right on the ocean and all of the close-together houses have their own little gardens. The rural quietness of Atsumi-Onsen is a side of Japan that you rarely hear about. And, although small, Riley’s town does offer the conveniences of a bakery, a 7-Eleven, a foot onsen, and a tatami making factory. A foot onsen is a hot tub for your feet. You can sit and drink tea while soaking your tired treads in some warm water. Tatami mats are the straw mats that cover the floor in Japanese homes.
As if I haven’t made a big enough deal about how good the food is in Japan, I must mention one of my best meals in Japan was at I’s house, a friend of Riley’s. Her house is right on the ocean and her kitchen and living room windows look out across the sea, which she seemed to think is pretty normal. She served us sweet tofu stuffed with rice and noodles, hand rolls that we could fill with all sorts of vegetables and raw fish, raw tofu, and a spinach, egg, and sugar mix. It is no wonder that I liked Japan so much.
On Leaving
Alas, all good food orgies must come to an end, and thus I must take my leave of Japan. I took the night train from the town of the Mighty Radish and headed into the heart of Tokyo and on to the Narita airport. While Japan has made a name for itself in timeliness and efficiency, Malaysia Airlines seems to have slipped into the country undetected. Because they are incapable of calculating and hedging fuel costs, they arbitrarily decided to charge all passengers extra, on top of their ticket price, for fuel. Of course they wouldn’t have competitive prices if they did this up front, so they try and charge you extra when you are checking in at the counter. So, after a slight tantrum on my part and some re-booking I spent the next 12 hours at the Tokyo airport waiting for a flight on Northwest Airlines. With my faith in South East Asia no longer intact, I returned to the land of noodles and Buddhism for a month long tour of Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, and Bangkok.
Singapore: Asia on Rules
I get the feeling that Singapore was created by someone who found other Asian countries to be very annoying. Everything that could potentially annoy you about Asia is illegal in Singapore. You can’t stand on toilet seats, you can’t bike or use your motorcycle on the sidewalks, you can’t harass people to buy things on the street when they are eating at an outdoor kiosk, and you cannot ask for money at religious sites without having a legitimate offering box. You don’t like this, you can pay a fine. That’s Singapore: There are rules, there are signs, and there are fines.
After spending a day in Singapore, I got to thinking that all of this order, predictability, and price transparency shouldn’t go to waste. If only there were some way to export it…So here is what I was thinking: First, we bring in engineers, city planners, business people, and government officials to Singapore from across the globe. Then, we give them a list of things that they must accomplish throughout the day (such as visit a number of different sites using public transportation, seek medical care, go to the bathroom, and buy alcohol). Once they have accomplished all of these daily necessities, they will be required to do the same thing in their own country. I believe this could be enlightening. I don’t think we are going to get anything crazy out of it, like clean, air-conditioned buses throughout the developing world, but if we could even get a few more rolls of toilet paper in public bathrooms, I would be satisfied.
Despite Singapore’s lack of disorder, the country isn’t as sterile as you might think. There is a Chinatown where you can buy all of your name brand products at knock-off prices. There is a Little India that has bright Hindu temples and wonderful food. The downtown is full of shiny, high-rise buildings. There are colorful neighborhoods along the river that have cute, brightly colored, yet overpriced, bars and restaurants. There are some beautiful parks where you can see that Singapore is not all concrete. And throughout the country are food stalls and hawker stands offering cheap, and maybe even sanitary, eats.
So you’ve got the culture, the food, and the quaintness, but you don’t have to deal with a lot of the things that makes traveling in developing countries so difficult. Of course, all of this comes at a price and this means that Singapore is much more expensive than any other Southeast Asian country that I visited. So, while I do enjoy the toilet paper and kind of got excited about bus schedules, you can plan to see me in Thailand.
My last stop in Singapore, ironically as you will later see, was to Siloso Fort, a former military stronghold, on Sentosa Island, a tiny piece of land-turned-resort town right off of the coast of Singapore. The Fort is now a museum devoted to telling Singapore’s version of WWII, including their account of the Japanese invasion. This version was notably different from the version I got in my next stop, Hiroshima, Japan…
After spending a day in Singapore, I got to thinking that all of this order, predictability, and price transparency shouldn’t go to waste. If only there were some way to export it…So here is what I was thinking: First, we bring in engineers, city planners, business people, and government officials to Singapore from across the globe. Then, we give them a list of things that they must accomplish throughout the day (such as visit a number of different sites using public transportation, seek medical care, go to the bathroom, and buy alcohol). Once they have accomplished all of these daily necessities, they will be required to do the same thing in their own country. I believe this could be enlightening. I don’t think we are going to get anything crazy out of it, like clean, air-conditioned buses throughout the developing world, but if we could even get a few more rolls of toilet paper in public bathrooms, I would be satisfied.
Despite Singapore’s lack of disorder, the country isn’t as sterile as you might think. There is a Chinatown where you can buy all of your name brand products at knock-off prices. There is a Little India that has bright Hindu temples and wonderful food. The downtown is full of shiny, high-rise buildings. There are colorful neighborhoods along the river that have cute, brightly colored, yet overpriced, bars and restaurants. There are some beautiful parks where you can see that Singapore is not all concrete. And throughout the country are food stalls and hawker stands offering cheap, and maybe even sanitary, eats.
So you’ve got the culture, the food, and the quaintness, but you don’t have to deal with a lot of the things that makes traveling in developing countries so difficult. Of course, all of this comes at a price and this means that Singapore is much more expensive than any other Southeast Asian country that I visited. So, while I do enjoy the toilet paper and kind of got excited about bus schedules, you can plan to see me in Thailand.
My last stop in Singapore, ironically as you will later see, was to Siloso Fort, a former military stronghold, on Sentosa Island, a tiny piece of land-turned-resort town right off of the coast of Singapore. The Fort is now a museum devoted to telling Singapore’s version of WWII, including their account of the Japanese invasion. This version was notably different from the version I got in my next stop, Hiroshima, Japan…
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