The Phuket Picture Post

Picture Guide: From top down, left to right --
#1: Stilted Houses on Phi Phi Island
#2: An island near Phi Phi
#3: The road by Patong Beach
#4: Patong Beach
#5: One of the best sunsets I've ever seen
#6: A cave on Maya Bay
#7: Me and mah elephant
#8, 9: Another glo


As promised, here are several, poorly arranged pictures from my adventures in Thailand. Enjoy!

Phabulous Phuket

Hey all, I'm writing from an Internet cafe on one of the main roads by my hotel and in about 20 minutes or so, myself and my friend Kate (my other friend Ashley left on Wednesday) are heading by taxi back to the airport to go back to Tokyo. Due to limited time (and because most of the keyboard is in Thai), this'll just be some snippets of my last 6 days here, but I figured I'd lay out the basics.

We got in on Saturday night and walked around one of the main roads in the town. Now I have never really experienced something like Phuket before, a place where as a tourist, you are basically viewed as an open wallet and are haggled every 10 feet by clever (but oh so annoying) Thai salesmen trying to sell everything from wooden motorcycles (SO Thailand, I know) to jewlery to weird looking fish on sticks. I haven't really "haggled" in my life before, but today, when I bought something for my brother, I knew I had come a long way. The guy today offered me 900 baht (about $28) for what I wanted and I got him down to about 400 ($11). NICE!

The town here still has some remnants of the tsumai that happened just over a year and a half ago -- a lot of the stone sidewalks are all chopped up and there is loose gravel everywhere. Phuket was one of the places that was badly affected by the storm and by looking at some of the pictures posted around of the aftermath, it looked devastating. Nevertheless, today you really can't tell that much of anything tragic happened here as all the businesses are thriving and it's as crowded as ever.

The beaches aree absolutely gorgeous here -- long, winding white sand beaches, that aquamarine blue water that you find in the Carribean, and towering mountains in the background, covered in green trees and vegetation. Quite a sight, indeed. However, it's hot. And I mean hot. Did I say it was hot? Because holy moley it is. It's about 90 degrees everyday with about 6000% humidity which makes it, let's just say, uncomfortable. But with the ocean nearby and the gorgeous pool at our awesome hotel (which cost me just over $50 a night and would certainly fetch triple that in the States) it was all okay. And the cheapness of everything certainly helped. Though we did spend a decent amount (mostly on some boat rides, jetskiing, and tours), meals were rarely more than $3 a piece. A bottle of water (you can't drink from the tap here) cost about 14 cents.

Anyways, a sum of the events of the past 6 days:
-Lots of lounging on the beach, which was full of cats and dogs that sat under your chair
-Being haggled by people all over, especially on the beach where they just walk up to you with huge wooden elephant heads or tables and try to guilt you into buying them
-A fabulous ride on an elephant
-A boat tour of Phi Phi (pronounced Pee pee - HAHAHAH!) Island
-Some great meals
-A lot of sweating
-Jetskiing

and more! However there is not much time to explain it all, as I have to leave to catch the taxi in 15 minutes. Anyways, now it's back to Tokyo for 2 weeks of travelling around Tokyo, Kyoto, and Hong Kong with my dad. I'm quite excited to have all the power (langauge, at least) and showing him around the city I lived in for the past 4 months. I'll be home in just over 2 weeks on May 5th. I can't believe it!

And finally, my thoughts go out to anyone affected by the horrible events at VT this past week. I learned about it the day after it happened, and its pretty much not being discussed here, over 5000 miles away. But it still shocked me and I'm just appalled that such a thing could have happened. Hopefully happier days with follow.

Japan -- I hardly knew kimi!

Kimi is informal japanese for "you" -- so DON'T say it to your boss or you may have to chop off your arms like the samurai used to do.

Anyways, I'm feeling sort of in a reflective mood this afternoon, so I figured I’d sit down and write out my last entry as a part of the TUJ program in Tokyo. I leave for Phuket, Thailand in just two days (!) and it kinda hit me today how much I’ve been through here and how I’ve grown to adore this place. Sorry if this is sort of a mish mash of things, but hopefully it’ll end up as some sort of coherent pasting of words that will sum up this experience here. But fear not! If possible (i.e. if Internet is available) I will post an entry or two from Thailand and force you all to weep endlessly over pictures of me sitting on the beach. Just when you thought I had a sensitive side!

I’ll try to prevent making this article too mopey, since I think it’s more important to look back on my experience and smile instead of the opposite. Sure, it’s okay to be upset about leaving and all, and I surely am, but it’s much more refreshing to think back and say “Well goshdarn Dan, you did it!”

Before writing this I actually took a glance over my first entry which I first arrived to Japan and it really gave me a sort of perspective on it all. Then I looked at my next entry, and the next, and I pictured a line graph that went up and down like a rollercoaster plotting all of the ups and downs of the past three months. Surely, the first few weeks had more extreme ups and downs than the rest of the trip – I was excited out of my skin and jet lagged and homesick and lethargic and overstimulated all at the same time. The funniest part (or at least most thought-provoking) of looking back at the first three or four weeks is how much the people I associate with have changed. For the first few days, everyone sort of made those convenience friendships – we’re all 50,00 miles from home, perhaps for the first time in our lives, and all really need are people to surround ourselves with to prevent falling into that bottomless hole of loneliness right from the start. That’s one big thing I’ve learned – loneliness is a killer, especially in a new place. Sure, I did tons of neat stuff on my own, but no matter what I needed that base of people I could come back to and just be around. And there were times were I wanted to strangle many of the people that I live with – and some of them still bother me – but I think it was extremely beneficial to have to cope with all of these people at once and realize that it’s impossible to like – and be liked – by everyone you meet.

I look back at the people I hung out with the first few weeks and the people I’m with now and see there’s a clean cut between the two – not one person I went to lunch with on my first day in Japan is in my “group” now, and I think that’s one of the mysteries of friendship. There was a point (and I remember it distinctly) when I realized that I needed to find a new group and I think that happens with everyone at some point.

The first few weeks were incredibly difficult due to a variety of reasons. Of course there was the general homesickness and culture shock and all that. I also felt that I was here for a completely different purpose from everyone else – the people that just sat around on a weekend on watched South Park for eight hours – and that really bothered me. But it was something my dad said that really turned it around for me and that was that I didn’t always need people around me and if they didn’t want to do stuff then forget them! Once I started venturing out on my own every once in a while, the whole experience turned incredibly great and I’ve been riding that wave ever since. And after a few weeks, I did meet people that I wanted to be with and am incredibly happy that I did. That changed it all. There’s no sense in trying to go it alone, because it makes it all that much harder. So to conclude this little rant about relationships (and to perhaps wax sentimental), the people I’ve met here were just as valuable as the experience itself and I think I would’ve enjoyed it much much less if I wasn’t around them.

Okay! Enough with the heartfelt stuff! Japan ROCKS! And I mean that more than you’d imagine. This place is magical. More magical than Disney Land. Being here is quite a unique experience, because it’s clear that you’ll never ever see a culture quite like this every again. Sure there’s the superficial stuff – yeah, they’re all shorter than me and are always running to everything and push people on trains and what not – but it's the nuances that really fascinate me. And, despite what many people might think, Japanese people do not hate foreigners – they honestly just feel a bit overwhelmed by them. It’s mostly the language barrier, at least according to my speaking partners. A good percentage of Japanese people know English (though not a large percentage by any degree – if you are looking for a place where you can vacation and get by with English, don’t come here – most places, even in Tokyo, do not have English anything in them – this was quite surprising at first, actually) but the problem is their confidence. Japanese people have a tough time forming English sentences in their heads and then actually saying them. Their reading skills are actually quite good. But once I started taking the extra effort to meet people, I really met some of the nicest people in the world.

One of the cool parts about being a foreigner is that everyone is interested in you, no matter what. Everyone wants to know where you’re from, what made you interested in Japan, why you’re here, what you do in the states – and they are genuinely interested in it all. I would surely come back here just for the people.

Man it’s tough to summarize this experience in a blog entry. I don’t really know where to go from here, so I guess I’ll just revisit those five goals I listed at the beginning and see where I’m at.

1. “Become really really really good at Japanese” – I would probably addend that to one “really”, though I still have miles and bounds to go before I’m fluent. This last half of the semester, when I had speaking partners and just spoke more Japanese in general, contributed to most of this advancement in skill. The biggest thing is that I can read a ton more characters than I could at the start, which is quite nice. I still need to work on my listening – some conversations just sound like people are saying “Whiirrrrrrr” really fast.

2. “Travel. Travel. Travel” – I can say with confidence that I’ve taken this goal head on and beaten it to death. I really have seen a whole lot of stuff. To be specific, in Tokyo: Harajuku, Shinjuku, Shibuya, Ginza, Roppongi, Asakusa, Nippori, Yanaka, the Imperial Shrine, Meiji-Jingu, Ikebukuro, Ueno Park, Odaiba – and there are about 50 other places I didn’t list. Outside of Tokyo: Yokohama, Kawagoe, Hakone, Nikko, Mt. Takao, Nagoya, Kamakura, Kyoto (in two weeks), Phuket (on Saturday). So NO ONE can say I didn’t see stuff. Because that’s just NONSENSE.

3. “Make friends. Awww. Shut up” – See above. And shut up.

4. “Challenge myself to go outside my comfort zone” – YES, YES, YES, YES and YES.

5. “Eat any 5 (or more) of the following: eel, octopus, a part of the fish besides the yummy parts, fish eggs, some weird vegetable that I can't pronounce, abelone, natto (fermented soybeans), etc.” – well I didn’t actually eat any of those things, but I think chicken penis trumps them all and then some. Yeesh

This trip has been extremely successful and studying abroad was surely one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. It was been rewarding beyond belief and I will find some way, no matter what, to work Japan and Tokyo into my future plans in some way, shape, or form.

Again, look for an entry or two from Phuket and maybe one more when I get back, but besides that, it’s been fantastic writing this blog out and sharing my experiences with everyone here. I hope you all have enjoyed it and laughed, cried (if you cried, you’re a little baby), and guffawed along with me during my three and a half months here.

Minna-san, doomo arigatou gozhaimashita! (THANK YOU VERY MUCH EVERYONE!!!!)

Izakaya Redux, the Great Buddha, and the Bamboo Forest

The title to this entry sort of sounds like a Harry Potter book title, though I doubt Mr. Potter would go to an Izakaya, unless he wants to risk getting mauled by Voldemort who is certainly close by drowning his sorrows in an appletini or some other girlie drink of sorts.

Sorry about the hiatus this last week. It’s not that I wasn’t thinking about my lovely readers, it was just that nothing of note really happened last week (besides a “shopping” field trip with a 3^rd grade Japanese class) and I couldn’t really think of much else to write about.

But alas, another weekend (my final weekend, actually, with the TUJ program) has passed and thus there are new morsels of my exciting travels to share with you all!

Friday night, myself and about fifty-five (actually, about thirteen – I was going for effect) friends and I returned to that Izakaya we went to last week. My friend Sarah from Cornell, who is currently studying abroad at Sophia University until July, came along as well – and boy, was it a weird feeling to be meeting her in Tokyo! Anyways, this time around we actually got our own room near the back and ordered tons of food and drinks and generally had a really great time. Of course, we befriended hoards (yes, hoards) of Japanese students and new company employees in the two rooms next door. The best part about Izakayas, again, something absent in American bars, is that you can pretty much walk into any room there and be welcomed. Obviously, the fact that we are exotic foreigners (I almost wrote farmers – no idea why) doesn’t hurt, but the overall friendliness-like (I love constructing new parts of speech!) atmosphere of the place is contagious and just makes the whole experience cho-fun (I’m going to start adding cho- to all adjectives in English – in Japanese, adding cho- in front of something is like saying “Super ____”. It just rolls off the tongue!) We are going to go back there for my last night on Thursday – which is technically my second to last night, but considering I need to wake up at 5:45 AM on Saturday for Thailand pretty much rules out everything besides knitting on Friday night, a skill that I unfortunately do not possess, so I reckon I’ll just sort of sit in my room at count the number of blinds on my window curtain the entire night.

On Saturday, due a variety of circumstances/other plans/etc., a lot of people were busy so I decided to venture out on my own to the NHK building, home to one Tokyo’s TV stations, to take the tour and buy some Domo-kun merchandise (if you don’t know Domo-kun, Google it. He’s ridiculous). Much to my surprise – and joy – I happened upon the 2007 Major League Baseball Festival right outside the NHK building, filled with batting cages, pitching mounds, videos screen, merchandise – you name it! If I wasn’t alone, I probably would’ve partaken in it all but, as I have learned over the past three months, there are things you can and cannot do when traveling alone and running around a fake baseball diamond as fast as possible is really not one of them. To see my point, picture me huffing and puffing around the bases at full speed and sliding head-first into home plate, checking my official time, picking up my backpack, and nonchalantly whistle while walking away. Doesn’t seem right, huh?

After lounging around the festival for an hour or so (most of it involved me playing an MLB Playstation 2 game and thus denying hundreds of little Japanese children the chance to play; in fact, I waited for a while behind this one kid and I was surprised how upset I was getting at the kid because of his total lack of video game baseball skill. I found myself almost screaming aloud at certain points, wondering why in the hell he had left Curt Schilling in until the 9^th inning when it was clear he needed to be taken out BECAUSE HIS STAMINA WAS AT A MERE 7% AND HE WAS THROWING WILD-PITCHES EVERY OTHER AT BAT, JIMMY, COME ON!!!! The kid’s name probably was not Jimmy, as it is not a very popular name here in Japan, but you get the point). Okay wait, I actually started this paragraph with a fragment of a sentence, but got so side-tracked with my parentheses rant that I sort of ended it without paying any attention to it making sense. Ms. Hackenburg, my 7^th grade English teacher, is probably rolling in her non-existent grave right now (I hope it’s nonexistent, otherwise I’d sort of feel bad). Anyways, after the festival, I toured the NHK studios and bought assort Domo-kun “stuffs” including some stuffed animals, phone charms, and the like.

Today was definitely the most exciting day of the weekend (if you don’t count harassing 5-year old Japanese children by myself at the baseball festival exciting). Bernie, our Japanese friend Saya and I went down to nearby Kamakura to check it out, since Bernie and I hadn’t been there yet and had heard good things. When we arrived, we realized that the crowds of people was not attributed to my arrival (as I had hoped) but to the beginning of the week-long Kamakura festival. So we decided to do the crowded stuff in the morning and then do some of the quieter things in the afternoon. Said “crowded stuff” refers to seeing the famous Great Buddha, a huge-normous bronze statue of Buddha that was cast in the mid-1200s that sort of towers over everything within a mile or so. The grandness of it all, however, was counteracted by the fact that the local tourist board actually stared allowing people to climb into the Buddha, and look out through a small wire grating in his back. Tacky!

After that we headed to the main shrine (I’ll spare the boring details, since it was just a huge crowd waiting for this dance performance to start, again, not waiting for me as I expected, and wasn’t very exciting at all.)

The highlight of the day was by far Hokoku-ji Shrine, a spot that I would never have found in a million years if not for Saya’s Japanese expertise. The temple itself was pretty and sort-of generic (though any temple here is not really “generic”, but I’ve seen so many already, that unless there’s some sort of flying pig hovering about or a giant chimp that shoots fire out of its ass, I’m not going to be overwhelmed) but the real highlight was the bamboo forest. This was my first bamboo forest of this entire trip, and it was spectacular. I seriously could have just set up a bed right in the middle of it all and lay there all day. The bamboo shoots were about 40 or 50 feet tall, super thick, and clustered very tightly together so not much light could get through. If you stopped on the path through the forest, all you could hear was the faint rustling and leaves and the occasional bird chirping – it was like the sounds were being piped in through speakers. To make it that much better, in the middle of the forest was a teahouse, where we drank traditional green tea in a hut, right in the middle of it all. It was heavenly and is surely something that I will not forget. To top it all off, after the forest Saya took us to a huge rock tunnel nearby that had a bunch of caves and crevices in it and was covered in all sorts of moss. Let’s just say, I was very happy to have her along.

Anywhos, it’s all starting to hit me now that this is my last week in the TUJ program and though I’m sad to be leaving some of these people behind (many that I’ll never see again), I’m certainly looking forward to getting out of this dorm and traveling around with my dad, etc. I’m also psyched for Thailand in less than a week and some time to just relax on the beach and unwind.

On Thursday, I’ll probably post a reflective, end-of-semester entry of some sort. For now, I’ll just leave it at that. If you asked me at the start if I thought the whole thing was going to go by as fast as it has, I surely would have replied “No way”, but looking back I realize that that would have been a foolish and quite naive response.

Jaa mata ne!

P.S. This last picture I posted is a bit random, but I wanted to show you (finally!) what Shibuya looks like when people are crossing the street. This intersection near the station is officially the busiest in the world, and you can certainly see why! Enlarge the picture if you can.

Picture Guide: #1: Us and our new Japanese friends at Wara-wara, #2: The Great Buddha himself, #3: The fabulous bamboo forest, #4: The rock tunnel, #5 Shibuya

Phallus Fest 2007

But more on that in a minute.

This weekend was actually a lot of fun and packed full of a good amount of social activity. This was the first of two weekends that I have left with the people in the program here, so I really wanted to make sure I took advantage of it – and I think I did a good job of it.

Friday:

Friday night (after I spent most of the afternoon in Shinjuku-gyoen napping under the cherry blossoms – heavenly!) we decided to go and meet our Japanese friend Saya at an Izakaya. An Izakaya is a great establishment here in Japan – it’s a mix between a bar and a restaurant, but they serve only small finger foods at really cheap prices. I hadn’t actually been to one yet here, so I was excited to go. The place was really neat – all six of us sat in one of the traditional Japanese rooms (albeit, not correctly – evidently, as I have aged I have lost the ability to sit “Indian style”, a position that all children can do, but now I can’t do for more than four seconds at a time without pulling some ligament or something.) The Japanese room was actually neat because it was a large, open area with a bunch of other tables of Japanese people in it, so it was very loud and social.

Of course, the best part of the entire night was the touch-screen ordering system you used when you wanted food or a drink. So cool! Anyways, after a while the Japanese people around us had gotten quite drunk and once they noticed the group of six foreigners and a Japanese girl sitting close by, it was only a matter of time before they joined us. We met a few very interesting personalities throughout the night:

Yoshi: Yoshi knew about six words of English, including “Ya mon!” and “Cool dude!” that he pretty much repeated over and over again the entire night.

The pantomime guy: I don’t think this guy ever told us his name, but what he did do was stand up repeatedly and go “I AM PANTOMIME” and proceed to do some sort of pantomime trick, whether it be grabbing an imaginary rope attached the wall or being trapped in some sort of box.

The flasher: This other guy at the same table as the pantomime guy thought that us foreigners would love to see him show us his chest repeatedly, so he kept on flashing us and started hysterically laughing afterwards.

Though they were crazy, it was actually a lot of fun – the camaraderie that these types of places force is really absent in the United States. If people go up randomly to other tables in the U.S., rarely are they received well. But here, everybody is extremely friendly (perhaps a product of the sake, but who knows) and easy-going in general. I’m going to miss that.

Saturday:

Yesterday we pretty much did Hanami all day at Shinjuku-gyoen, and again, we made some more unexpected Japanese friends. These guys were just as nutty, but had three animal costumes that they were more than happy to give us to wear. Bernadette was the tiger, Chelsea was the cow, and Emily was the hamster. Then they gave me some ridiculously small Elvis costume (see picture) that I really barely fit into. Of course, this caused quite a commotion among the millions of Japanese people at the park (they love Elvis here) and I am certainly going to be on no less than 50,000 Japanese people’s digital cameras (and hopefully family photo albums) for some time to come. We also tried (key word, tried) to learn this abstract Japanese game they play at picnics where everybody has to name each station on the main Yamanote subway line (in order) and if you mess up, you’re out of the game. The sad thing is I can pretty much name them all (what else is there to do on the train while you are being sandwiched between two businessman than memorize the train map – jeez!) much to the surprise of our friends. Must have been quite a sight – a foreigner, dressed as Elvis, nonetheless – screaming out the names of stations in front of thousands of people. Osaki! Shinagawa! Tamachi!

Sunday:

You thought that the other two days were intense, wait until you hear about this. I must put a disclaimer in at this point in the entry to protect any children reading this. The following descriptions are rated PG-13 (perhaps even R) so proceed with caution.

Today, a group of about ten of us from the dorm, went to the Kawasaki Festival of the Phallus (or, crudely, the “Iron Penis Fest”). Let me explain. This festival supposedly dates back to the 1600s when they used it as a way to fend off syphilis from the many prostitutes that lived in Kawasaki at the time. There was a young girl at the time that was supposedly “possessed by demons” uh…down there…and the demons…down there…would bite off any penises that tried to enter. So the Japanese, being crafty as they are, fended off the demons by using an iron clad one that broke the demon’s teeth and thus freed the town of this wretched curse (true story – LOOK IT UP).

These days, the festival has lost all religious and spiritual significance and is pretty much a festival praising the penis. The events that I will describe are NOT part of any April’s Fools Joke, I assure you. Just look at the pictures and see for yourself.

We got there right in time for the parade. There was a huge mob of people gushing down the street – men dressed in robes (with no pants, of course), women in kimonos, children (poor children…), you name it. Then came the floats. The first float was a huge wooden structure housing, yes, the very same iron-clad penis they used in the 1600s. It was spectacularly huge. The fifty or so people carrying it were all screaming some word in unison (I think its better that I didn’t find out what it was) as they marched down the street. Then came a second float with a smaller iron specimen (and by smaller I mean closer to human sized). Then came the third float, which pretty much blew the previous two out of the water – a giant (and when I say giant I mean like 10 feet tall giant) neon pink penis carried by twenty or so transvestite men. They actually named it "Pinku" (Pink) in Japanese. I am not making this up. No more words are needed.

And this wasn’t just like a drunk Japanese man event – old women and men were parading around and selling (yes) penis-shaped lollipops for all to enjoy! Near the shrine dedicated to the phallus, there was a large, rideable wooden penis that people could get pictures with and “mount” – I saw this dad even put his newborn son on there for good luck – poor kid. Of course, there was more normal stuff, like taiko drumming and traditional music, etc. but boy, it was quite a sight to be seen.

In a place as uptight as Japan, it was really a breath of fresh air. To see thousands of people, unabashedly praising male genitalia was certainly a spectacle. Of course, many of the people there were foreigners (how could you resist going!) but overall it was incredibly hilarious and totally worth it.

So I’ll add an addendum to my last entry – if you’re coming for Hanami to Japan, chances are this festival will coincide with it and I highly recommend it. You will never ever ever ever ever see something like this in the United States. And come on, who doesn’t want to see a neon pink penis paraded around by transvestites. It’s the Japanese way.

Jaa mata ne!

Photo Guide: #1 - Bernie and Yoshi at the Izakaya, #2 - Me as Elvis, #3 - Us and our new friends at the park, #4 - The Iron-clad Penis, #5 - (as if it wasn't evident already) The Pink One, #6 - The huge crowds following the Pink Penis down the road.