In Japan: Hiroshima

Hiroshima is a beautiful city, full of trees and rivers, like a city built upon a garden. The atmosphere is leisurely, and the people are few. It's a first for me to feel so relaxed in Japan, and what a relief it is.

Of course, there is the dark past about the city, everywhere I go I was able to spot some charred remains of trees that people had refused to take down, in order to remind others of the bomb. The rivers were beautiful and pristinely green, it's hard to imagine so many people died on their shores.

Kie was not her usual self this time. Having just broken up with her boyfriend, I'm sure she's in no mood to tour the city with me. I am however glad to see her. Somehow she's much quieter around me, it makes me wonder which is the real Kie. The energetic girl I met in Toronto, or the quiet lass that I faced in Hiroshima. Perhaps even she had to cover up her cheerful self in Japan.

I met a nice old lady working in the hostel. She was eager to chat about the war, and the relationships between China and Japan. It was a pleasant chat, so much so that I forgot the time and was late for meeting Kie. Tonight I was able to have a long discussion regarding society and war with a high school boy in my dorm. He traveled by himself to Hiroshima, and is in love with clouds. Japanese are just like any other people, generally good natured, and just wish to peacefully go about their lives. They care little about politics, and are often confused why the rest of Asian dislike them. Even having been to Yasukuni, I cannot bring myself to antagonize them. Is so much hate really necessary?

I spent the rest of my day climbing Ushita mountain after parting with Kie. It was the most pleasant time I had in Japan. There wasn't a soul on the trail except for the singing of the cicadas and the dancing butterflies. I suddenly felt really Canadian, hiking in another country. Ushita mountain was 230 meters high, not very tall, but certainly a lot more interesting than Mt. Fuji and it's truck loads of people.

I'm glad I came to Hiroshima, even if it was just an afterthought. If I ever have to live in Japan, Hiroshima would be my first choice. Here or Okinawa, their food seems to be the only thing that I can stomach in Japan.

In Japan: Day 6

Went to Nara yesterday. Met a nice couple from Vancouver. They just graduated from UBC and took a year off to travel. They've been on the road for 6 months now and have been all over Asia. What is it with people and traveling for such a long time?

We walked around Nara Koen, and fought off the persistent deers. They left for Osaka yesterday night, and left me their contact. Maybe I will be able to meet up with them again, as I'm heading for Osaka tomorrow.

I got to know two Korean guys in the hostel that I'm staying in, and then drank the night away with them and two other Japanese guys from Osaka. The manager lady joined us too. Listening to them chatting in Kansai-ben was a delight. The Koreans headed off for Aomori today, and are going up north to Hokkaido. The Japanese guys are here for a track-and-field competition for medical students. I've found that so far everyone I've met are involved in medical science some how. Melissa was a doctor, the Vancouver couple was in micro-biology, and this Japanese guy is an acupuncturist and a medical student. Either this is a sign from god, or the medical field is very popular.

Youko suddenly emailed me telling me that she wants to meet me after all. This just threw my plans into a jumbo. Now I suddenly can't think of anything else.

Nara was good I suppose, and I spent today visiting some other temples in Kyoto. But really, they are not anything I've never seen before. I'm a little tired of temples now, well starting tomorrow, I will be meeting people in Osaka, Hiroshima and Tokyo, so it should be a nice change of pace.

Paul Newell emailed me to thank me for my help during my work at Autodesk/Alias. I'm a little touched, that he remembered me at all, and actually bothered to write me an email in his position and schedule. My internship has only finished less than a week ago, and yet it feels like years ago, and the life in Canada feels so far away.

In Japan: Day 5 - Osaka

Osaka is a pretty horrendous city. As soon as I stepped off the train I knew that I was not going to like it.

It's a maze of shop upon shops upon neon signs of some kind of dystopia's concrete jungle that came straight out of Blade Runner. Here everything felt run down. At night people prowl the streets in distasteful fashion to seek physical companionships, truly a city of decadence and greed. I'm thankful that I needed only to stay for a day.

Meeting Jenny took a little longer than I anticipated. She too shared much of my frustrations, but decided to like the city nevertheless. I'm sure I'm in no position to make a justified judgment of the place after only a day's stay, but the business nature of the city just turns me right off.

In Japan: Day 4 - Kyoto

I met a girl yesterday in the Kyoto tourist information office. Turned out she's Australian and has been traveling around the world for a few months now. I suppose calling her a girl is inappropriate. She's actually a fully fledged doctor, having recently graduated from medical school. We decided to watch the Daimonji fire together, and trekked all the way east, and found some obscure temple on the top of a hill behind a web of houses and alley ways dotting the far corner of north east Kyoto. Well at least the place seemed to be obscured to us foreigners, all the Japanese seemed to knew that it was a good spot to watched the fire, and showed up en mass.

We split up today and she's off to Shirakawa for beaches and Onsen. I'm on my own again, and went temple hopping.

I wasn't able to reserve a hostel for yesterday before I left Canada, so I had the JR office reserve a hotel for me to stay for yesterday night. The hotel was nice, if not a little too expensive. Today I moved to the hostel that I had reserved, and the place is very nice. The woman managing the place is very nice, and the place is kept clean and professional. She lives alone though, but she doesn't seems to be too lonely, with all the travelers coming in and out. She doesn't seem to speak a lick of English though, and occasionally throws out her Kansai dialect when she gets happy, which always throws me off.

Kyoto is not at all what I imagined it to be. It's a rather small city, humid and is littered with little traditional houses. However at the center of it all is a twisted mess of steel and concrete. Especially the over-sized Kyoto station, which hugs the landscape with its monstrous size, and sprawls out its aging rail ways from the center of the city. It's like a cancer that eats away at the city from its heart. It seems that Japan is full of such contradictions, industrious but full of anachronisms, automated but stuffed with manual labours, with an incredible infrastructure that one cannot help but to admire their engineering prowess, but at the same time showing a lot of questionable designs.

So far I've found all my sight seeing destinations to be average at best. Japan seems to be one giant tourist trap that almost everything they build are designed for tourists. The most enjoyable part of the trip has been the trek between the destinations and the people I've met. I've just walked all day to day to find Gingakuji, finding my way through little alleys and unarmed streets only to be total underwhelmed by the little wooden "temple".

Tomorrow I'll take a day trip to Nara, and see if it will impress me a bit more. I have to admit, I miss the grandness of Chinese architecture.

In Japan: First 2 days

I've arrived in Japan 3 days ago. Ran into some troubles and took over 4 hours for me to find my hotel. Got in contact with Justin and visited Yasukuni with them on the 15th, the same day Koizumi decided to pop in for his visit. It was a very eye opening experience, basically Japanese at their worst. Afterwards we visited the emperor's palace, I then took a stroll through University of Tokyo on my way home. Thus far the trip has been very surreal. I've arrived at Kyoto today, and is staying at a hotel beside the Kyoto station for tonight. Tonight is the Daimonji, looking forward to it. I'm typing this in the Kyoto visitor's information center. The internet rate is a killer right now, good thing I'm writing down a journal on a notebook as I go along. Using a computer really is the last thing on my mind right now. Perhaps I will type up my journal when I get back to Canada.

In Japan - First Day: The Hostel

When I exited from Hongo Sanchome, the sky was already dark. I couldn't read the map that the hostel had provided since it didn't have street names. After asking various passer bys, I managed to find the little alley that leads to the hostel. However walking alone in a dark alley after three screw ups in a foreign country doesn't exactly inspire confidence in a person. Nevertheless I had no real choices but to follow the darkness ahead, clinging on to the words of every sign posts, hoping that the name of the Hostel would jump out at me. Suddenly I overheard the oh-so-familiar English behind me. They were two teenage Japanese girls just chatting away in perfect English. Thinking that they were tourists like myself, I asked for directions. Turned out that they lived right beside the hostel, and happily showed me the way. After a bit of introductions, I found out that they had both stayed for 4 years in England previously, thus explaining their flawless English. I had asked for their names, but regrettably for the life of me I can no longer recall them. They were like angels that came to my aid when I was lost and confused, and led me to light ( well, the hostel ). I am forever grateful.

The hostel people were expecting me for a while. After informing that my actual location of stay is in a separate residence a block away, the overweight woman who came out to greet me showed me the way to th Morikawa residence. She insisted on carrying my heavy backpack, even-though she was sweating and panting profusely. She seemed to feel that it was her duty to carry my bags. Like a soldier, she forged on even-though it's clear that it was too heavy for her. A man from Morikawa *ran* out to meet us half way, and took over the guide duty. He led me to the hostel, and showed me the facilities in broken English. I in turn replied in broken Japanese. Nice people.

The hostel is a traditional Japanese style ryokan. With tatami rooms and futons. It's very clean and orderly, even-though its wooden halls do show its age. The smell of wood permeated the place, it was a very enjoyable atmosphere.

By this time, I was tired and starving. Japan was much hotter than Toronto, the temperature was around 30 degrees C. Personally I found it rather comfortable though. I was too tired to go out and sample the local delicacies, I had more than enough new experiences for one day. Instead I bought some instant noodles and some breakfast for the next day, and called it a night.

In Japan - First day: Arrival

Arrived in Japan. It was a long and uneventful flight. Being cramped in such a small space for 13 hours certainly doesn't heighten one's spirit. When it was over, I was too fatigued from the time differences and my throbbing ass to be excited about the arrival at all. Everything was strangely familiar, but different. People still dress about the same, the buildings are not all that different, but there's a constant feeling that some dark alienness lurks in the shadows. It was a strange feeling, to be somewhere I've never been but yet so intensely familiar with. Everything from the sound to the way people behave are so familiar to me, but so alien at the same time.

The trip from the airport to my hostel wasn't exactly smooth. I arrived at 3:10pm, but only managed to reach my hostel by 8:30pm. First I managed to miss the express train to Tokyo. The train seat was reserved by a polite lady in the Narita JR service center. I managed to miss it because the train was so early that I didn't believe that it was mine. Not certain if I needed to reserve again for the next train, I decided to just get on and pretend all was well, only to have the true seat owners arrive. At this point everyone was staring at me weirdly. I'm sure the idea of an unreserved seat taken was unfathomable. I escaped to the walkways between trains to avoid the stares, and just when I was breathing a sight of relief and started to enjoy the Japanese country side that rush past the window, a ticket checker came up to my face to ask about my reservation. Luckily with some explanation with my rusty Japanese, I was in the clear, and was told to find a seat.

The train ride from Narita to Tokyo took an hour. The whole time I had my eyes wide open to absorb as much scenery as possible. It struck me that the vegetations and geography was actually very similar to China. The bamboo forests, the rows of rice wafting in the wind, the green mountains that dominated the landscape were all too similar to that of SiChuan. So much so, that if people were to remain silent, and take away the Shinkansen, I would no doubt believe that I am in China. The city was a strange 80's land. Drab sign posts and buildings overflew this uniformly gray concrete jungle, extending it as far as the eye can see. As if time had stood still, and Japan still revels in their golden days, with only the occasional rust neon signs and metal frames to give away their age.

I ran into a bit of trouble going from Tokyo station to Hongo Sanchome. I needed to change to the Marunouchi subway line, but my Japan Rail Pass couldn't be used on subways. I was a little stumped on how to get a ticket, as I had nothing but 10,000 yen bills on me. Luckily I ran into a nice girl from San Diego, who cheerfully offered to pay the 160 yen for me, and pointed me to the direction I should go. I was later that I realized that the direction she gave me was incorrect. Since she was going the opposite way as I was, I suppose she went the wrong way too.

Before that, there was another incident. I bought a bottle of tea for change in the station. While I was about to pay, my train ( the one going in the wrong direction ) pulled up. I rushed to take out what I thought was a 5,000 yen bill, and got the change from the sells lady, and hurried into the train. When I checked for change, I realized that the change I got was for 1,000 yen instead. The sells lady did see me chatting with the San Diego girl, did she try to pull one over me -- the hapless gaijin? A little miffed, I decided to go back and confront her. 5,000 yen is a lot of money. She insisted that she was correct of course, so I asked her to check the bills, since the money I paid was old and ripped, it should stand out from the rest. Then my eyes almost popped out when I saw that the bill was indeed 1000 yen. Now with my face blushed with embarrassment, I apologized profusely, although probably not as politely as I should have. All my grammar thoughts went out of window at the moment. When I went on the train again, she gave me a bemused smile and waved me goodbye.

So there you go, I've been in Japan in less than 4 hours, and I've already fucked up 3 times.

八月游

昂头瞻，星空茫茫。
翌日别卯时，
单骑走扶桑。
昂头瞻，碧空苍苍。
男儿志在何方。

Bee's Knees

My Knees are messed up.

I've been having dull discomforts below my kneecaps for a few months now. It's only recently that they start to hurt. At first I suspect that it was injury to my meniscus plates, since I do quite a bit of weight transfers on my legs in low stances when practicing Baji. I thought that I might have twisted my knee sometimes in my practice when I was still doing thing incorrectly, and that worried me quite a bit. Meniscus injuries are no walk in the park, all my researches came into the conclusions that it probably requires surgery. Well my knees don't feel THAT bad, and I seemed to recall that my knees started worsen after my 5 km run June. So I looked up runner's knee, and it seemed to fit my condition. However without a doctor's diagnostic I can't be certain.

So I went and got professional opinion. After I told my doctor that I ran the 5 km on concrete with my only pair of crappy shoes, he gave me a dirty look and simple said: "Those are not running shoes" ( no shit Sherlock ), I'm pretty sure he was thinking "What a bloody idiot!". After he manipulated my knees a bit, he came away with the conclusion: Patellofemoral Syndrome. Patello-what? It's basically irritation below the kneecaps with improper tracking of the Patella bone. Supposedly to be a very common problem, probably from over-use and improper running form and footwear ( ding ding ding! ).

The moral of the story? Footwear is important, especially running. I ran out and got myself an open knee-strap, as well a new pair of shoes. Now my knee feels pain feel with them! I will need to give them sometimes to heal, and then everything should be ok. It's a good thing I caught this before the trip. I can't imagine what I'll do to my knees backpacking around Japan in those shoes for two weeks.