Macaca Fuscata

I have a confession: I am a compulsive list maker. Shopping lists, wish lists, budget lists, travel lists-you name it, I list it.

 

There’s just something so exhilarating about being able to methodically cross off the items of my lists one by one. Success! Success! Success!

 

The list of things I want to do/see in Japan (referred to as my J-Town Bucket List) is no exception. One of the things that I’ve been meaning to do is go and see the famous “Snow Monkeys”, Japanese macaques who have taken to sitting in warm onsen (hot springs) during the cold winter months in Nagano Prefecture. 

Frankly, I’m surprised it’s taken me this long to head out that way since Nagano is a neighbor and I often visit my friend M, who lives there. However, simply because there is so much on my J-Town Bucket List (i.e. be physically present/visit all 47 prefectures), I didn’t have a good excuse to go back to Nagano until my friend Mishka came to visit me.

 

Together we schlepped to Nagano, enjoying the fall colors with coffee, booze and soba noodles as our companions, and met up with M in Nagano City. From there, we took a train to the Yudanaka Shibu Onsen area, and from there walked to Jigokudani (Hell Valley) Snow Monkey Park.

 There were monkeys all over! They are fairly tame-or at least used to human presence- but they are still wild animals so we did not touch them. Most of the monkeys didn’t seem keen on begging or stealing from us anyway, which was a nice change from the pushy deer at Nara.  

Most of the monkeys seemed perfectly content to just sit and relax in the hot springs! It was interesting observing how their faces almost mirrored the looks humans get stepping into the warm water after a rough day.

I did feel a little sorry for the ones who eventually got out of the water. They looked so cold! Surprisingly, their fur dried very quickly, and I never once saw any of them shivering. Clearly, they are doing just fine.

 What a life!

Everyone hail to the Pumpkin Queen!

One key factor that got me interested in Japan way, way back in the day was Sailor Moon. I remember racing home after school and frantically trying to finish my homework by the time it aired at 4 pm because I wanted to give it my complete and undivided attention.

When I had to go away to 6th grade camp for a week, I begged my mom to set up the VCR to record the brand new, freshly dubbed "Sailor Moon S" season premiering on Cartoon Network.

All my other friends were obsessed with "Friends" at the time. I never got into Rachel and Ross, nor did I care about crazy Phoebe's antics, so it's safe to say I missed out on quite a few late 90's/early 2000's cultural references, but I regret none of it.

Screw "Friends", it was all about the power of the moon!

This year, for Halloween, my fabulous roommate helped all my childhood dreams come true. She painstakingly handstitched a Sailor Moon costume for me- essentially without a pattern for anything except for the sailor style collar.

When Halloween finally rolled around, I transformed into the soldier of love and justice and she threw on her fur cloak and applied facepaint to become the wolf girl, Princess Mononoke. Together, we biked to school, giggling and praying that we wouldn't cause a traffic accident.

Impromptu photo shoot!

Needless to say, the staff went absolutely mental. At first they thought we were just being weird foreigners, until we reminded them of the day's significance. After the morning meeting, the reception staff shuffled us outside and there was an impromptu photo shoot.

The photos lasted the entire day. I won't lie- it was really fun, however I don't think I could ever be a serious cosplayer. I was absolutely drained by the end of the day!

The best Halloween moment that I've experienced in a long while happened when 4 of us were riding our bikes to our local bar. We rounded a corner and saw a group of about 12 children and their moms walking down the street- in costume! Since we'd been on the way to the bar to hand out candies, we stopped and gave the candies to the kids instead ( a much better choice than giving it to the drunkards, in my opinion). The kids were absolutely awestruck by the presence of Sailor Moon and Mononoke, not to mention that we were real, live Americans and a Briton! Who knew!

Friday, of course, was the real kicker. Sabina and I threw another house party and it was a wild success. We had plenty of food, some games and heaps of costumes. Best of all, no noise complaints!

So, while we may not ever live up to the expectation of the BEST assistant language teachers that our school has ever had, we're going to make damn sure that we were the most fun!

Happy Hiking Tails 2- Fuji Redux

Part of my new series of goals for 24 is to get out and try to become more physically fit. All that walking down under made me realize how cooped up and suffocating living in the greater Tokyo area is. There’s no space to breathe-at least, that’s how I feel sometimes.

In honor of my birthday, I took the very next off and went hiking with some teachers from my school. The day started out sunny, but we went up to an elevation of about 3000 meters and ended up in the middle of a cloud bank. Needless to say, there were no spectacular views, and some of the climbing was a bit dodgy. Still, it was a nice way to finish the week and break in a new year!

One of the teachers I went with was the rad I-sensei, the guy whom I went skiing with last February.

Back  in August, he helped Sabina and I take on Mt. Fuji. The first time we went, with a larger group of people, was not successful and rather disappointing. Conditions for my third try were completely different. 

To start with, I-sensei drove us in his car. Did you know that there are grooves bored into the road that case your car to be filled with a special “Mt. Fuji Welcome” melody? No? Neither did I, until we passed into the park and car was suddenly its own music maker!

Second, the weather was perfect. It was slightly breezy and was a cloudless night with a full moon. The moon was so bright, in fact, that we barely needed our headlamps.

Somewhere around the 8th station, about an hour left to go!

I-sensei had climbed Fuji several times before, so we set off at a steady pace. The ascent was uneventful because there was no rain, and we made it to the summit in about 5 hours- at roughly 3:30 in the morning. I wanted to sleep so badly, and I was much colder than I had prepared for. I-sensei ended up rousting us and making us walk the circumference of the crater, which turned out to be awesome.

Have you ever seen the shadow of a mountain caused by moonlight? The full moon was so bright there was a perfect, conical rendition of the mountain laying across the sea of clouds beneath us.

Eventually, the sky started to redden and we scrambled to find a place to perch and watch the sunrise.

People who have hiked Fuji often say that it’s the most beautiful sunrise they’ve ever witnessed. I’ve seen some sunrises (yay, night shift!) but they’re right-this one was pretty special. The way the sky changed colors as the sun finally broke through was mesmerizing, even to my tired eyes. 

The descent took a little over 2 hours. The trail consisted of really slippery shale, so I ended up turning sideways and half sliding down the mountain. Boy did my knees hate me for the next few days for that stunt! Hundreds of people descending at the same time caused a lot of dust to get kicked up too, plus the sun was bearing down full force now, so I pulled my hat low down around my ears, tied my bandana around my nose cops-n-robbers style and put my stunner shades on. I’m certain I looked ridiculous, but I didn’t get sunburned or black lung.

And now I can finally say that I’ve conquered the beast. Third time really was the charm!

Channeling Freddie Mercury for epic greatness

Armidale, amirite?

It is my own traveler’s belief that you never really know a place until you see the countryside, even if it’s just for a few hours. Cities cater to tourists and they have their time and place, but real life is in the suburbs or the rural areas.

Enter Armidale. Now, considering Australia has a big, huge, massive empty center, this place wasn’t rural in the exact sense, but it was smaller than Sydney and significantly smaller than the Tokyo/Saitama hyper metropolis. In the end however, this turned out to be a wonderful side adventure.

I landed at the airport, walked off the tiny plane across the tarmac and into a terminal that was roughly the size of my house.

“Oh, so it’s that kind of place,” I thought.

As soon as my friend J walked through the door, with a big  grin plastered on his face, I knew the next few days would be fantastic regardless of how small a town I had put myself in.

My time spent with J and his lovely family (plus adorable dog) was incredible-for so many reasons. It was relaxing, rejuvenating and insightful. J himself is one of those people that I just clicked with when I first met him in Japan. We both have a love for history and share a sarcastic, dry sense of humor; we spent a lot of time nerding out or quoting film and television lines to one another (A noteworthy example: Pretty much every line from the episode of The Simpsons where Bart has to go to Australia to pay a fine. It’s hilarious. Watch it).  We did a lot of reading. We did a lot of napping. We did a lot of chatting. We did a lot of eating (Oh sweet holy Buddha, the Lamington cakes…). We drank copious amounts of tea (Dear heavenly Batman, the peppermint tea...). We did a lot of walking. Nothing clears the head and soothes the heart like walking.

We walked from here...

...to here!

Except for that moment when I thought I lost my camera and all the photos I’d taken in Australia and San Diego. I needn’t have worried though, it was hiding in the dog’s bed and was mailed to me a few weeks later.  

No, J didn’t make me sleep in the dog’s bed! I was just petting and cuddling Bundy after watching a teary film about an Australia dog (“Red Dog”, if you feel like crying) when it fell unnoticed from my pocket and was buried in the sheets.

J and the camera thief, Bundy

What was supposed to be a 3 day stay turned into a week long-hang out. Because of the camera fiasco, I put off driving to the coast for a day and J decided to come with me, which meant cancelling my rental car and saving a ton of money. So I got to stay another day in his house, enjoying his mama’s fine English/Southern hospitality all the while. I saw my first rugby match (and had no idea what was going on aside from grimacing every time someone was tackled or thrown halfway across the field), read some hilarious ANZAC comics, and generally just dossed about.

And every minute of it was beautiful.

The Most Isolated Continent

After spending 10 days being a lump in San Diego, I packed my bags again and began the (very) long journey to my next destination: Australia.

I’d spent hours in the spring pouring over places I wanted to go, until I found a great deal on multicity tickets from Tokyo to LA to Sydney and back. It would have been foolish to pass them up. It was probably the proudest moment of my Deal Seeking life!

So, I jetted off to the land of marsupials, monotremes, sunshine and red dirt.

First stop: Sydney!

My first impression was that the city was strangely reminiscent of San Diego. At first I found this a little disappointing, but by the time I moved on a few days later I had come to see the differences.

The people, oh the people. Maybe I was more outgoing because this was my first trip flying completely solo, but I expect that Australians, in general, are just plain friendlier than most people I’ve met on my travels.

This guy has a pretty good...Koality of life!

The customs officers gave me recommendations on where to get a taste of kangaroo (Kangaroo Pizza at the Australian Hotel, by the way, was fabulous!), and which areas to go to and avoid. The waitress at a café near my hostel and I chatted for a good 15 minutes about Japan and how she used to work there. A lovely couple at a restaurant struck up a conversation with me and were awestruck that I was traveling alone, and then looked at me like I had a horn growing out of my forehead when I told them the next stop on my trip was the tablelands of New South Wales. That’s like the equivalent of showing up in LA as a first timer and then saying you’re looking forward to going to Montana.

And that was just in Sydney.

My kangaroo pizza. Delicious, but extortionate.

I enjoyed the feel of the city, but it was incredibly expensive! A bottle of water cost $3 wherever I looked. Cafes and restaurants, while delicious, were pricey as well. I ended up making a few meals at the hostel, which turned out to be a blessing since I was then socializing with other travelers, several of whom I connected to really well.

Of course I saw the tourist sites! The Sydney Opera House was massive and beautiful. The Australian museum was informative and I geeked out for several hours there. The aquarium and mini-zoo next door were both entertaining and well maintained. I’m still upset that the platypus was too shy to make an appearance in her exhibit though. My entire vacation would have been platyperfect if I had seen a live platypus! I made sure to go to a beach as well, as no trip to Australia would be complete without seeing some surfers and waves.

I walked so much. Tokyo gave me a good practice run.

Just keep swi-er, walking. Walk those Sydney streets!

By the time I needed to leave Sydney, I was torn. I wanted to move on and see my friend J, but I didn’t want to leave my new hostel friends. And there was still so much left to experience in the city.

I was once told that it’s wiser to leave a place when you still feel like it’s too soon than to end up wishing you had left earlier. Those feelings make you want to come back. And go back I shall, one day.

Flying: Much safer than the shortcut at Satan's Ridge and Suicide Trail

Next stop, the boonies of New South Wales!

We gonna shine

The 10 best things about going “home” to San Diego for the summer holidays.

 

1.    Realizing just how much stuff I’ve come to live without. Don’t get me wrong, my room was pretty Spartan, but it was full of old mementos and photos and miscellaneous knickknacks that I wasn’t really attached to anymore. My book collection, however, was begging to be stuffed into my suitcase and carted back to Japan!

My beautiful, neurotic, annoying princess of a cat.

2.    Getting to spend time with my kitty. I got her when I was 8 years old, so she’s getting up in years and the months leading up to my departure were touch and go for her health. I’m proud to report that aside from irritating my parents by becoming their 5 am alarm clock, she’s doing well.

3.    Perspective. It’s amazing how refreshed one can feel by simply removing yourself from a situation that was laced with unhappiness.

4.    Extraordinary Desserts and extraordinary friends. Seriously, how can you be mopey with cake, coffee and people whose Quarter-Life Crisis party is going to be a ball to plan (and attend!)

5.    Simply hanging out. I could sprawl across the couch, flop on the grass in the lawn, or eat cheetohs and drink slurpees at 1 am without a care in the world. It’s not what we were doing that was important, but the fact that we were together.

6.    Seeing my pseudo-children. I started babysitting them when they were roughly 6 months and 2 years old; they’re now 8 and 10. Watching them grow, even from a distance, has been a beautiful and satisfying experience. If I’m anything like their parents if and when I have children, I will consider myself blessed.

7.    Horse riding. It is my therapy, plain and simple.

8.    Surprising my parents and my big sis. They were all expecting me home a week after I actually landed. Thankfully I had some awesome friends who were in on it and helped me randomly show up. 

 

9.    Mexican food. Japan, you don’t know what you’re missing without burritos in your life. C’mon, you like portable food! You like stuffing unidentifiable food insider other foods. YOU WERE MADE FOR EACH OTHER.

 

10.  Love. Family, friends, pets, and even my friendly dental hygienist made it a wonderful, healing, introspective vacation.

Cambodia

 I try to keep this blog Japan centric, but ever since I started reading “First They Killed My Father”, by Loung Ung, my mind has been going crazy with images. Most are the mental projections of the author’s story, but some are my own.

The novel is part memoir, part memorial. It is written by a survivor of the Cambodian genocide which took place during the 1970’s. Parts of it brought tears to my eyes, passages made me despair at human nature, and the final chapters made me realize the importance of resettlement agencies. Reading the book made me remember the Cambodian students I had worked with while interning for the International Rescue Committee. Thankfully none of them had to live through the genocide, but their parents all survived it, and that itself is shocking to think about.

While studying abroad, I decided to go to Cambodia. I hadn’t had much interest in it before I started looking at my options of where I could (cheaply) travel too. Thailand produced lukewarm feelings, but for whatever reason Cambodia stuck out and I just knew that was where I wanted to go.

At the time of the Khmer Rouge takeover, there were roughly 7 million living in Cambodia. In 5 years time, 2 million were dead. That’s a significant amount of people just eradicated from existence, often brutally murdered with hammers, saws, axes and other crude implements so as not to waste bullets.

I saw the skulls with perfectly round hammer-sized holes in them. I saw the skulls with hacked axe marks crisscrossing their crowns. I saw the skulls with shattered orbits and I saw a few skulls with small holes in their foreheads. These lucky few received bullets.

I walked the Killing Fields of Choeung Ek. I saw the pits, now covered in grass with gently sloping edges. I saw the trees against which soldiers beat civilians. I tripped once, looked down, and saw that there were clothes surfacing on the path I was walking. A few feet away, bones wrapped rags were protruding from the earth. There was so much death in this one small place that it simply couldn’t all be excavated. Year by year as the rains come and wash away the soil, more and more bits of victims are seeing the light of day. It’s impossible not to step on them, so you just have to be careful. 

At the risk of sounding like a pretentious “It changed my life, man” snob, let me state right now that going to Cambodia did not change my life. I went home, I still went to school, I had a part time job and life went on.

However, I like to think that it influenced part of my outlook on life. That life is precious. That without compassion we are nothing.

"Enemies" of the new regime

Despite the sense of sadness that still lingers in the country, it is nevertheless a beautiful place. The people were some of the friendliest I have ever met in my travels, and they always had a smile on their face. They were proud of their heritage, regardless of the dark spots tainting their history, and looking forward to making Cambodia a better country for their children.