Back, japan, drunk

Someone told me before I left, that coming back to NYC from Tokyo, was like coming back to a third world country. So true. There is a certain, unavoidable comparison that happens when you travel between cities of comparable size or spectre. There is also a bizarre acclimatization that can happen. For instance, NYC to Hong Kong. Crazy, but not that crazy. Chinese city to Tokyo? You can only stand in amazement at the difference a couple hundred miles can make.

This is the first time I have really thought about the possibilites of living in a different city. There is something that is now so familiar about the NYC way of life. The way you order a bagel at the deli, the endless restaurants which offer a skirt steak, a roast chicken, a fish, a pasta, 4 salads, and some brucetta.

Japan is an island of painful exactitudes. I don't really know where all of the precision came from, there must be some sort of paradigm set in the momoyama, or asaksa, or edo period or one of those, when they started to just be more accurate than anyone else in the world. Its pretty ridiculous. I got these two earthenware cups from my mom. By my standards, they are about the same size, and are a set in my mind. They came in individual boxes, which were about 5mm different in width.

When I walked around in Japan, from Tokyo to the smallest town, I kinda walked around awestruck. Especially as someone who has spent the last couple years learning about how things go together, how they are made, and what it takes to make an object. Its not even that they have this intense pride for what they do, or make or what ever. It's not even a question. Electrical lines are strung with a huge amount of parts, there are fittings for sliding doors, manholes, street cars, just seem to make more sense.

One of the weirdest things to me, and I tried to explain this to some people, who were not in design, and they looked at me funny. But especially after studying Taxis, convincing the public to do things in a certain way is impressive.

Anyway, here goes. In every city I have been in before that has a subway, the subway has stairs. The subway stairs are divided for rush hour, into the up lane and the down lane. The stairs are generally 50% up, and 50 down. These percentages, I assume, come from wanting equal amounts of space for people to move. In Tokyo, its %30 down, 70 up. Someone watching people go up and down these stairs, realized that people going down the stairs go way faster. So in fact, the same number of people are going in both directions. People going up the stairs need more time and space.

I'm not sure why this is so genius to me, except to say that no stone is left unexamined. It reminds me a lot of Denmark, or vice versa in the sense that the planning is so well done, that there is no reason to buck the system.

Opposite to this carefully measured stairway is the Chinese roadway, where there is no center line at all. There are almost no road markings on a Chinese road, no crosswalks, no signs, in larger cities there are traffic lights, but in small towns, people are lucky when there is a curb. There are people walking, bicycles tricycles, battery powered tricycles, electric scooters, scooters, minibuses, buses, tour buses, taxis, scooter taxis, tractors (articulated engine exposed), trucks of all sizes, and everyone drives slow enough that you just pass people when you need to, you drive where there is space, and crossing this street is a very tricky proposition, especially at night. There is this level of common sense that pervades the people and the culture that encourages them to do what works in the absence of higher authority. There has been much scholarship, which I have not read, but a lot of discussion on why the Chinese accept communism as a government, and one of the conclusions is that the Chinese government has always been very big and bureaucratic.

There is a level of tenacity which the Chinese have, that the Japanese seem to have lost. Perhaps it is in some part due to the scarcity that is China.

This survival instinct that pervades China, has been replaced in Japan by what seems to be an endless childhood. Ola thought that the warning signs departments in Japan were either a room full of 1st graders, or aimed at 1st graders. From high voltage warnings, to dog poo signs, to drowning warnings, they all seem to be signs which are ready to be animated into the next pokémon movie. When you look at them, you start to understand better, what Murakami is talking about. You might even think that he designed all of them. This cuteness is perhaps what has infantilized the whole country.

I have to say that I drank a lot of whisky in Japan, and I spent a lot of time looking at the ice they put in my drink. In a certain way, This ice, is one of the ways I characterize Japan. You have never seen ice cubes, so large, irregular, and so PERFECTLY clear in your life. its like a small water clear iceberg was dropped into your glass. If I drank whisky 7 night in ten nights of Japan, I spent 7 nights trying to get a good picture of this ice. I don't know how they do it, but I went to have some nice cocktails with Silvia last night, and while the drinks were nice, the ice was incomparable. This is why Japan will always be at the forefront of aesthetic things in this world. They take the time to figure out how to make something as pedestrian as ice, PERFECT.

Just remember, in Japan, the sound of trickling water makes silence more silent.

I almost passed out today.

I almost passed out today.

It was hot and we went riding bikes all over the place. I wish I could upload some photos. Here is a poem that was written by a famous Chinese poet about the area I'm in:

The river is like a blue ribbon, winding through the
mountains like jade hairpins.

I think there is something lost in translation. but it is nice out here.

A lot happened since I posted last, and I dunno if I am going to get through it. but we will try in this hot ass internet cafe I'm in.

Hong Kong.

We took the tram up Victoria Peak, and at the top? a mall. Chinese people love to buy things. also, in hong kong they like to make these malls where you cant find your way out. so we were in there for a good 20 min before we found the way out. from there, dad suggested that we hike up higher. we spent the next 30 min walking up this hill, where there are all sorts of rich people houses until we got to the gate of the weather station. that was nice, we were way above the top of the tram and there was no one there. It was possible to see the south side of HK island, and it was nice.

The thing about traveling with my dad, or, a thing about my dad is that he loves talking to the experts. He loves taking tours and tour guides and all that. so he reads about this tour called Hong Kong, the land between. which is a tour of the northern part of the SAR where there is not really any people. I mean there are villages and stuff like that, but its not developed. we soon realized that our tour guide was using the tour to talk his populist agenda. He hated speaking the actual text that the HK tourism board made him say. for instance, at this one lookout point, he made a point of saying, "here is what I am supposed to say," which had something to do with how the view was impinged by the fog and clouds, and not by pollution. By the end, he had taken us to this fish farming village, where the whole village is floating out on this bay, and had some nice strong words for the new three phase, multimillion dollar housing project going up on the hill overlooking the little village. It turns out that they are taking the fishing village out, so they can put a marina for super yachts in that place.

From there, I thought it was only right to go on a shopping trip. the places that I had gone looking for the day before, I had done some research and found the little street where they were, I dragged my sis and dad out to patterson st. in Causeway Bay, and found some crazy shops. There are some hipster ass shit out there, but when I asked if any of it was Chinese, the answer was always, "no." its all Japanese, American and European.

One cool thing about the subways in HK, is that they are all open air somehow, and the train is continous from one end to the other. So instead of having A/C they just have this cool breeze blowing through the whole thing. This also means that the stations are not blazing hot and nasty like the NYCT.

After looking at some super expensive T shirts, Yaya and I decided that we wanted to go see if we could find some good ass bootleg shit. People were walking around all over with those fresh Polo shirts with the giant logos, but there were all sorts of fake versions. we went to the night market in Kowloon and never really found what we were looking for. But in anycase, the night market in Kowloon is like Canal St, but 10 huge alley ways of it.

The next morning we took the communter train to GuangZhou, which came into the smaller East train station. We took the subway back to the Bigger one, and it was really the first taste of how crazy China is. Unless you have been here, you have no idea about the scale they are working on. Its bigger, dirtier, more people, more people on top of those people, louder, and pushier then anything I have ever seen in the west. If you have ever experienced Chinese people pushing their way on to the D train, the B train, whatever, and think that they are rude, try doing that with a whole overnight train.

We took the night train out to Gui Lin, which is a big tourist town. we were in the six bunk section which has little sections of two sets of bunks which are stacked three high. apparently there is a section like european trains where there is four and a door to the compartment, but this was not that. Space was at a premium. Little seats were by the window on the aisle side, and if you were on a top bunk, that's about all you got. People walking around selling food, newspapers, beer, and to top it off, the whole time, state TV is playing. which was centered around the olympics. its pretty much all they are talking about right now. This program was about how to understand Greco-Roman wrestling.

In a tourist town, there are always people trying to sell you shit. trying to get over on you. Its a good thing my sis talks good enough Chinese. While we were at the hostel, waiting for a room to open, we went to buy some icecream next door. From these people, we learned that the hostel was overcharging by a grip and they had a hotel next door which they could rent to us for about a third. It was straight out of the Commie era. It had huge rooms, and a red carpet, a little dingy, but lots of space. It was way better then staying with all the stinky european backpackers.

That was a couple days ago, but now I have to go.
China is great. I have not gotten a bad stomach, I eating everything, and people are very nice. With the three of us, its possible to fly under the tourist radar just enough so we are not mobbed. In every place we go, there are stalls and shops to buy things, and the noodles are good.

Hope all is well where ever you are.
K.