Readjusting

Now, I write this from my bedroom, whic has stood empty and full of junk for almost a year, I've recently completed the long process of clearing it and making suitable for human habitation again... A very long job that involved reorganising most of my cupboards, it's nice to have your own space and have something to be responsible for, although it's a big climbdown from what I was doing just under three weeks ago, but already feels like a lifetime ago.

I feel very mixed emotions at being home. It's great to be in a society that I can understand, and more importantly a society that understands me. It's good to be able to understand the language and enjoy the freedoms that we have in this country, it's fantastic to be able to express an opinion freely and talk about politics without having to worry about my words. It's great to benefit from the high technology available to us here and the well built infrastructure. It's good to find most people are not trying to rip you off or mess you about.

Although other things are strange. People are a lot less friendly, starting up a conversation with the fish and chip shop man about one of the paintings on his wall met with a look of utter surprise and an uncomfortable silence. Where before I wouldn't feel strange about going up to random people and talking to them, here I again feel that uncomfortable cultural constriction... we truly are a society that encourages the individual culture with all the benefits and disadvantages that brings.

Another problem I've been experiencing is a feeling of being slightly outside of society. When meeting old friends and new people again. Some are interested in what I've done, and others couldn't care less... That's perfectly normal of course, what ignites one persons passions, may douse someone else's... It's a strange feeling that even the people that are really interested in what you've done can never really understand what it's like to be there and do it. So in a way it's like a private experience that's totally unique to you, someting that you can't really share with others. I imagine it's a similar feeling to what war veterans have, we can all sympathy with their experiences, but can never understand what it's truly like to be there and suffer. It's a feeling that will pass with time, I'm sure.

Another thing I had forgotten is the UK sense of identity, which I had initially thought was quite weak. But upon returning here, one of the first things I noticed was that British culture is incrediblely strong and has reverbrations throughout the whole society. Everything from people's mannerisms and language, to companies and products offered, music, films, cars... It also initially surprised me at seeing how rich everyone is. You notice it particularly as you have been away from it for so long, and spent much time experiencing other country's culture.

One thing I'm sure of, is that I want to travel again, and there are people I want to meet again. There is more volunteer work I want to, in more places, and next time I want to work in a new environment more challenging, where hopefully I can make a big difference. I'm thinking of doing work maybe in HIV clinics in India or China or Africa, or peraps with orphans or something along those lines. Next summer is already feeling exciting, one month's volunteer work followed by more backpacking sounds like a great way of spending the university holidays. But of course, there are many obstacles in the way, such as finances, work and the scariest of all... time.

Time can change everything, for good, for bad. I worry often that something might change at univeristy or cause me to change my plans... I worry that I'll lose contact with the friends I met while I was out travelling... Things are already immeasurably different to when I left. In fact the last year and a half has shown and incredible amount of change. To put this in perspective, February 2007 I was still delivering newspapers as my main job.

I've uploaded a load of photos to flickr, and big wide spread of different stages of my travels... feel free to look through them. I am also working on a video, but it might not be ready for a while.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/28532273@N03/

Enjoy, and it's good to be back... honest.

The End.

I can't quite believe it. Nearly 10 months on my flight home is finally, inevitably almost here. It's been quite a journey one that has found me doing things I could have never even dreamed of before and discovering things about myself and others that I would never have even contemplated.

The money crisis was resolved slowly after a couple of quite stressful days in Ho Chi Minh City cancelling and rebooking flights (because I had to pay for them in cash now) organising money transfers etc etc. Chao helped me no end in this and her support both mental and physical really made all the difference. The two weeks that followed have seen me and her in a variety of places from mountains in Dalat, to beaches at Nha Trang,to culture and long rides through the countryside on a motorbike in Hue, finally returning to the bustle of Hanoi, the place where this last leg of my journey started just over a month ago.

On the subject of the motorbike. I'm sure many are horrified to hear that I rented a 150cc motorbike with absolutely no motorbike training whatsoever and drove it around Vietnam. I wasn't sure of it at first myself, But I found the feeling of driving through the beautiful countryside and small villages, in control of this motorbike to be one of the most liberating and challenging things I have done on my travels. The feeling cannot be described in words, but anyone who has ever ridden a motorbike could tell you. It was even more fantastic to be accompanied by Chao, who every now and then rode with me on the back of the bike as we explored surrounding hamlets and valleys.

Driving in the countryside is not so difficult, driving in the Cities is a very very very very difficult task. Now I have driven the roads of Vietnam myself,I understand why everyone beeps their horns all the time (this behaviour, at first puzzled me no end, as you may recall from my blog post about 6 weeks ago)

Nobody looks where they are going, no one has any mirrors on their motorbikes, no one is wearing any protection apart from a flimsy helmet,which isn't even required by law. Hence if you crash at above 50mph-you die. That is not even a joke, in my time here I've seen 4 road accidents, and one of them was most definately fatal.

So because nobody looks where they're going or has any training or protection,in Vietnam it's absolutely essential to beep your horn loudly and regularly as possible to alert other drivers that you may be overtaking,or even just turning right accross a junction. The incredible absence of any meaningful traffic laws results in several amusing situations, such as trying to turn right accross busy intersections, is often quicker to switch off the motorbike engine and push it accross major junctions as you have to stop so often for traffic flying off in the wrong direction, or driving the wrong way up the road.

My only real advice from the guy who rented me the motorbike was "remember to drive on the right!!"

I will write more about this some other time, but as a trained driver, I do at least have some experience of traffic conditions and road behaviour, and natural instincts such as checking over my shoulder immediatly kicked in, and proved to be very useful. Asides from the mechanical element of handling the bike (which didn't take to long to get used to, even though it was geared) traffic was the biggest concern.

I had many amazing moments, such as stopping by a lake in a rural village, a young guy approached me and starting talking, I was on my guard as this is usually the prelude to some kind of scam, But then he invited me into his home. Upon entering he enthusiastically introduced me to all his family and the shack on stilts that they called home, it was humbling to be treated as a guest and awarded with food and water, and photos of the family. In the end he just wanted to practice his English and I was the first westerner he had ever met. An incredible experience. Most touching was the grandfather I saw.

It's quite common in Vietnam to see beggars with no legs, or older men with plastic ones (although it's often hard to tell as they are so well covered up) These men were victims in the Vietnam war(s) between 1945 and 1975. Many are, understandably quite cold to foreigners who they perceive as having meddled in their country's affairs for generations, and unleashed unspeakable violence upon them. Many of these men are landmine victims. But to my surprise this particular old gentleman was thrilled to see me and ever so (genuinly) cheerful. Even though he had fought in the Vietnam was against the Americans.

I want to bring this to a close now and I will write more probably on my journey home which starts tomorow and ends on the 25th of June, and involves lot's of waiting in airports... Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh,Ho Chi Minh to Doha, Doha to London.

Expect updates to continue however as I finally start to move an enormous backlog of photos online and create several new videos. As well as post trip thoughts, some time in the next month or so.

Anyone who wants to meet up... I will be back at home at 9 Keats Close from the 25th of June... So give me a call sometime on the home number and we can hang out or something. Email me anytime!

Disaster, then hope.

I had a feeling that this would happen eventually. I wouldn't say I was expecting it, but either way it happened.

After getting off the plane, chatting with some other backpackers (including one guy who was, incredibly, cycling all the way from India to Beijing), and generally making plans about where to go to first. I went outside and decided to look for an cash machine, as has been my usual first procedure in every new place I've arrived in, in these last 10 months. It's not cost effctive to withdraw money in other countries and have it converted as you lose a large amount in conversion every time. It's better to have a cash machine handle it, and do a spot conversion from sterling... Even better my building society, Nationwide, does not charge for overseas withdrawels.

So anyway I head for the cash machine, after fighting my way through hoards of touts, mentioning the usual things to tourists, I ask to withdraw 400000 dong (about 12 pounds, enough to last me a few days) The machine pauses for a moment then flashes up in big red capital letters "CARD WITHELD" and then "Thank you for using an ANZ cash machine, we hope to see you again soon"

I'm in BIG trouble. I had already used my back-up travellers cheques a few weeks ago when I found myself in a remote area with no cash machines, and needed money to get food and water then. My only other card has expired since I've been away and so I have no way of accesing my other bank account.

So I'm at the airport, absolutely no money and so that means, no hotel, no transport, no food, no water and no way of calling anyone for help. Panicing in a situation like this will get you nowhere, and so I keep my head, and remember that there is always a way out... every single problem I have encountered along the way in this journey has been solvable in one way or another... There has not been one incident where I have given up completely, and it sure as bloody hell was NOT going to happen now!

I tried a few security guards who shrug me off with the usual "can't speak English" Even when I insisted it was an emergency (which they seemed to understand, but laughed at) and indicated that I wanted to talk to a manager (because they're more likely to be able to speak english) I try a currency exchange desk, who, as soon as they realise I have no money, try to get rid of me as quick as possible. I try the airport information desk, who helpfully look up the phone number of the Bank who took my card, and then with a smile tell me to call them on a payphone. When I give them a sarcastic look and indicate quite strongly that I have absolutely-no-money-at-all. If I have no money, how am I supposed to use a phone box?! The fake smile continues and he tells me he can't help me further.

I have been wandering around the airport for almost 3 hours now, still with no progress. A taxi driver approaches me asking if I want a taxi, and, barely controlling myself, I grumble that I'd rather have the police. But to my surprise, the taxi driver, instead of vanishing, comes closer looking genuinely worried. He asks me what the problem is, and instantly offers me his mobile phone. After phoning the bank in question, they ask for my details, and say they'll get back to me in "a few days". Thinking that in this situation the only ones who can offer me help and advice would be Her Majesty's Representitives at the British Consulate in Ho Chi Minh. I say this to the taxi driver, and he too suddenly starts calling up directory enquiries trying to find the number. I must say that this showing of pure good human nature was a total surprise, as I never expected such support from a total stranger.

It's a shame that my own country wasn't as helpful however. After getting through to them they basically said that all they could do was let me use their phone to call the UK. I told them I had no way of getting to them anyway, as I not only had no map but also no money to pay for transport there, as they were over 7KM away on the otherside of the city, and I had a 15KG backpack on. I stressed that I was only 19 and literally completely helpless, and they told me that it wasn't serious enough, I asked them what would be serious enough, and they said death, arrest or injury of a British Citizen. I said asked them for advice and the gist of it was "we can't give you advice" I was thinking, "well if I get arrsted because I can't pay for my hotel will you help me then?"

So after this... I start sizing up benches at the airport, thinking the only way to get through this now is to live in the airport for two days and drink water from the taps in the toilet. Chao would arrive on Sunday and then I could ask her for help, money for a phonebox so I could call home and arrange a money transfer.

The Taxi driver realiases what I'm doing and he tells me to wait, and makes several phone calls. I tell him not to bother as it isn't fair to ask him to go out of the way for a total stranger. He doesn't seem bothered by this and eventually a cab arrives, and he tells me that it will go to a hotel and that I can pay the cab fare later when I get money. I took the man's hand and gave it the firmist shake I could manage I looked him in the eyes and gave him the most sincere "Thank You" I've ever given. I hope I see him again.

I arrived at the hotel and explained my situation to the staff there. Unfortunately their English really is about as good as my Vietnamese, and so after acting out what had happened to me, they instantly asked if I wanted food, I told them it's fine I can just drink water for two days and eat on Sunday. We agreed that I would open a tab and that I would pay it as soon as possible. I make frantic emails home and a few phone calls using their free internet. Eventually I arrange a money transfer through my parents. Who I can't thank enough for their support, without that money I would be completely unable to continue, and would most likely have ended up arrested eventually.

Now I'm in limbo. All banks in Vietnam are always closed Saturday and Sunday. Chao arrives on Sunday so I've had to make an embarrising climbdown from my original plan to meet her at the airport and instead emailed her the hotel address so she can meet me here. On Monday I should be able to pick up the money and settle my debts. Although to be honest, I owe the kind people at this hotel here more than a debt of money.

That first night, I sat in my room and the clock read 00:25 I was thinking that it might be time to turn over and go to sleep, when the phone rang. I picked up the phone and it was the night security guard. He wanted me to come downstairs. Upon arriving in the lobby he seemed to gesturing whether I was hungry or not. I shook my head (despite the fact in reality I was starving) He didn't believe me obviously and 5 minutes later returned with a plastic carton and gave it to me. Inside was a portion of fried rice and beef. Because I couldn't thank him properly, I went upstairs and got my camera, and instead sat and spent the next hour sharing photos with him. It was a very human exchange.

The ironic thing is this happens three weeks before I'm due to be heading home, using cash machines has served me brilliantly for this whole trip from start (almost) to finish they have provided a fantastic service. They almost make other ways of transferring money redundant. Except when you lose your only card of course!!!

This is a thank you to all the people who have helped me beyond all measure these last few days.

If this has taught me anything, it's "always have more than one back up!"

Macau

Macau (literally "trading gate" in Chinese) Is one of the oldest colonial concerns in China, it was occupied by the Portuguese for over 400 years and it shows in everything, from the architecture, to street names (try "Avenue Gonaza Gonza Gomes") to the attitudes of the locals. It's a strange expereince, stepping off from the ferry in Hong Kong, to find everything chiefly in Portuguese and Cantonese, with some English here and there.

Macau feels very much like a European city, much mroe than Hong Kong does. Although there are not too many cafes, there are plenty of sun drenched boulivards and cozy medditerranian alleyways, beautiful catholic churches, and oddly enough (and slightly out of place) about 20 enormous Las Vegas style casinos. Which is where the Chinese side of things shows it's face most strongly.

A test of every city or village I visit is the "smile test" and that involves awarding great big beaming smiles to strangers as you walk past to see what their reaction is. Hong Kong did not score highly on this test at all. In fact of all the places I've visited I've not found a place where people smile less than Hong Kong, even in Tokyo you can probe a smile off of a cute girl if you try hard enough. But Hong Kongers are either extremely miserable or very bored and unhappy with their lives, as after 12 days I still couldn't seem to raise a smile off of anyone (except in Chunking Mansions, and isn't that a surprise?)

Macau by contrast scores very highly with all the locals offering such glowing smiles that I haven't seen since Thailand and Laos.

In fact Macau reminds of Thailand in some less impress ways too, namly the sleaze industry. After a fantastic night out at a casino in Macau, I returned to my very reasonable16 pounds a night room at the central hotel (which although the cheapest, even the tout had warned me that it was maybe "not the best choice" and I was about to find out why) Upon arriving in the lobby two very bored prostitutes were waiting on the seats, seemingly waiting to snap up some poor weak witted disgraceful guy. After a few half-hearted calls of "massage?" I ignored them and instead tried to negotiate with the lobby staff (who were turning a totally blind eye to this behaviour all around them) a wake up call for myself. While doing this, a much more persistant prostitute comes up to me and starts the usual rubbish about being lonely and wanting to give me a massage, etc etc. This one actually has the cheek to follow me up to my room on the seventh floor, and stand stubbonly in the doorway trying to convinve me of her services, after about 10 miniutes of smiles and polite "no" on my part, I decide that she really isn't going to go away, and change my tone to as close to menacing as I can get and start grumbling something about flying to Vietnam, and whether the Macau police would be interested to know about her work at the hotel. This seemed to work, and she finally buggered off after pestering me for over 10 minutes at my door. Every where I have gone in Asia there has been a sleaze and sex industry, it's just that in some places it's more covered up than others. Even squeaky clean places such as Central in Hong Kong have a dark underbelly.

After being raised to think such behaviour is unacceptable and downright exploitive and cruel on the women's part, in many cases. It's really depressing to see how popular this kind of Sex industry is everywhere in Asia. No smoke without fire as they say, the amount of tourists sexploiting this beautiful part of the world was initially quite shocking to me, but I suppose I was naive to think that was any other way.

Some fo you may have raised eyebrows when you read I visited a casino. After meeting with a french friend who I met at Chunking Mansions in Hong Kong, her first suggestion for entertainment in Macau was a casino, I immediatly mentioned that I'm not a gambler, and she laughed this off, stating that casino's in Macau are more of all in one entertainment centres. She was right.

Upon arriving at "The Venetian" the first thing I saw was a life size (probably plastic but I'm not sure as it was very realistic) replica of Saint Mark's Square. Inside it truly was the playground of the rich, with thousands upon thousands of gaming tables, unlimited free drinks, caberet shows, enormous hotel suites, high end department stores, beautiful women and whatever else you can possibly imagine.

Taking advantage of other's misfortune by getting many free drinks, and watching others win big (and lose big) by the end of the night I did decide that I would have to try a small bet on Roulette (50 HK, about 3 pound fifty) just to see if I could cover my taxi ride for the next day. Unfortunately lady luck was not smiling at me, and I lost. It was another "ticked box" on the my imaginary "list of things to do in asia" list. It was easy to see how one could be sucked into the deadly gambling cycle however, as the temptation to withdraw more money to continue playing was surprisingly strong. My friend said that several people per year "mysteriously disappear" as a result of unpaid gambling debts. After hearing that, it seemed that the glamorous veneer that this Casino presented, was perhaps hiding something much more sinister underneath.

Despite this however, if you can control your spending, then there's no reason why a casino would not be a fun place to hang out for a couple of days, especially with some good friends. Although it's not the number one reason I would come back to Macau. The ancient churches and building are the most beautiful thing about this city, and in a way I wish I had another day, as I sit here in the airport looking mournfully our the window at the crap weather that's hit us suddenly (another Amber Rainstorm alert was issued this morning) In any case it's back to Vietnam now, the land of killer roads, where I have to prepare myself for the rather intensive battering I'm going to receive once I get off the plane. It'll go something like this:

Tout 1 (screaming) : "You want moto-taxi?!"

Me: "No"

Tout 2 (screaming): "You need room??!, MANY GIRLS!!"

Me: "No"

Tout 3 (whispering): "You want Hashish?"

Me (loudly): "No I don't want Weed in the airport"

Tout 3: *Vanishes*

Unfortunately as I've said many times before having a backback is the ultimate I'm-a-tourist-and-have-just-arrived-and-have-no-idea-what-I'm-doing look. And also the sign of a soft target, as you can't get away quickly, because you have the dexterity of a turtle. Fortunately I'm meeting Chao on Sunday so I won't have to suffer the madness alone for long. It's only 17 days now until my flight home. This one which I will not be changing at the last minute. But I don't really want to think about that right now.

Anyway I must go now as my flight departs in 15 minutes.

Is Hong Kong keeping people out? Or in?

Today, on my last day in Hong Kong, I took a trip back to the border through which I came almost two weeks ago. Standing on the border, I could see the border fence, which is throughly equipped with cameras, motion sensors and infrared detetectors for the whole perimeter. The perimeter itself stretches for over good few hundred kilometres. Beyond the border fence is a kind of no-man's-land, of several empty fields and a small river extending out 200 metres or so, before the checkpoint for Shenzen and access to mainland China. It would certainly be a dangerous and potentially deadly crossing.

It's impressive security to look at. Thousands of people form the mainland and elsewhere try their very best to get into Hong Kong every year and about 30% manage to get through. These immigrants can have a detrimental effect on Hong Kong's economy because of it's delicate balance of high skilled workers required.

But today it occured to me to the first time that's it's keeping people in as much as it's keeping them out. Sure on the face of it, Hong Kong citizens are free to apply for PRC passports and naturalisation, not a process that applies the other way around. Mainlanders don't get so easy access to Hong Kong, with most having to apply for a lenghy permit, before being granted 7 days access at a time. By contrast I got granted 180 days when I arrived on the border, without any Visa requirements at all.

At the same time, these regulations and the border fence are a great way to keep Hong Kong ideas (such as Freedom of Press and Freedom of Speech and the Power of Demonstration) securely inside of Hong Kong, with no ability to spread to the mainland and affect the rest of China. If the central government is concerned about a particular journalist or politician, then they just don't issue them a passport or visa for the mainland. So, the border fence at first I saw as a great thing for Hong Kong, I now see in a much more sinister light a government tool, still being used by various powers to inflict what they see as the correct ideals upon normal people. It's now more obvious to me why the central government decided to keep the border fence and patrol regime unchanged after the 1997 handover.

There's always two sides to every story.

Chungking Mansions In Depth.

A
B
C

D

Above are some interesting pictures I took from inside the Chungking mansions from my last blog post. Image A is the view looking down from my window and image D is the view looking up from my window. Image B is an interesting picture of the building superb electric wiring, and image C a picture of the haphazard commercial centre on the first few floors of the building.

The inhabitants of this place are truly international, it's an odd mix of backpackers, of all nationalities, Indian and Pakistani businesses, African businesses, and a few elderly Hong Kongers running shops. I've also bumped into and had conversations with loads of girls (usually) who have come from the phillipines, who are mostly doing "Domestic Hygiene" work. I also found out that this was named as one of the best places of globalisation in action, and that's certainly true.

The businesses are made up of money changers, electronics shops, guesthouse, indian restaurants, food shops, local convienience stores and so on.

At first I found the environment quite threatening, with being pushed and shoved in all directions by various people after my business. The constant callouts, massive queues for tiny lifts, serving large parts of a building. By far the scariest thing that happened was when I was trying to get out of the building. After waiting 25 minutes for the lift and finding it full 3 times, I decided to brave the buildings poorly maintained stairs. I went down to the ground floor but found the door to be blocked by a shelf from a shop someone had set up on the other side. One more floor down took me to the buldings back alley exit, all I could see was one scrawny cat and a load of rubbish, undettered I went outside. This was a big mistake.

I immediately found myself in a tiny alley, it was nighttime so it was occasionally lit by several out of date poorly repaired flourescent lights, most of which did not work, casting errie shadows along the alleyway. The path was covered in planks, rubbish empty cardboard boxes and general filth, from above, what I hoped was water (but was more likely airconditioning vent waste, or possibly something much worse) dropped down frequently almost like rain, and I did my best to avoid this. While walking around shady characters emerged out of the darkness, occasionally leering, or greeting me with the immortal "hashish?" With a sense of panic growing I doubled my pace, expecting to find the familiar sight of the main road just around the corner. To my horror, I just found another alleyway even worse than the one I had already passed, with no way out and no way back, I was thinking that perhaps this was going to get very very messy. Just when I thought I was out of luck and out of time, I spotted a giant double decker bus moving in the distance, inspired, I ran as fast as I could and found myself on the familiar surroundings of Nathan Road.

Aside from this one major mistake (and in reality I probably was never in any danger, but the sheer unfamiliarity with the situation is what almost caused me to panic) I've really warmed to this place. I even found an article on "Time" which sums up the place very well. http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/best_of_asia/article/0,28804,1614524_1614473_1614447,00.html

What it says about Hong Kong's multiculturalism is very true. Hong Kong does pride itself as being a world city, but this is just as much proved by the existence of places like Chungking Mansions as it is by the skyscrapers of Central and Admiralty.

In fact it's hard to believe that this rabbit warren of a building, the absolute opposite of what Hong Kong is known for (wealth and prosperity) exists barely 5 minutes accross Hong Kong bay from skyscrapers built by tycoons who made their billions. It's the first time I've seen such a polarising wealth gap since bangkok. The wealthgap definately exists in communist countries too, but it's no where near as polarising as it is in capitalist ones.

Aside from marveling at the great place to stay, I've found that exploring Hong Kong on foot as revealed many hidden treasures, such as the kowloon walled city park and A SARS memorial.

I'm expecting to stay in Hong Kong for another few days, leaving for Macau on Wednesday and flying back to Vietnam on Friday.

Hong Kong

I arrived in Hong Kong about 5 days ago and since then have been taking in the atmosphere of this incredible city. Here is totally different to mainland China, it's kind of like a Chinese London except with more high buildings, one of which I'm currently staying on the 17th floor of, for the foreseeable future until I can obtain a new visa for Vietnam to continue my travels for perhaps another month or so. I'm now staying inside of a rather legendary backpackers haunt, inside a large building complex, but inside is somewhat anarchaic. Inside is a disorganised mixture of budget shops, budget hotels and budget restaurants, stretching up over 20 floors with no real organisation. It's a fascinating place to stay, but the first I've stayed in, in some time that's made me nervous. I have the luxury of a window in my room but under no circumstances will I open it again. I made this mistake once and was overpowered by the stench of exhaust fumes from a restaurant exhaust fan being sucked up a few floors below here. It's also totally dark outside the window, despite being so high up, and the view accross from me is a broken airconditioning fan and a grimy window. The good point is it's only 8 pounds a night and I need to tighten my belt a bit for this next month in order to stretch out the money. The sooner I can get back to vietnam the cheaper and better things will be. As long as I can actually find my way out of this building, which seems to follow no logical patterns on the inside. Anyone interested in further information check out this website http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chungking_Mansions

My travelling partner is working for the next few days but we've arranged to meet up in Ho Chi Minh City in about 12 days. I even managed to find cheap flights from the neighbouring territory of macau, so that should be a bit of an adventure. hopefully we'll be able to work are way north using the famous reunification express, and stop by the ancient capital of Hue, although that one may be a tad difficult.

Hong Kong as a City is a fantastic place which has really caught my imagination, especially as the culture swings strongly from Cantonese-Chinese to being scarily similar to the UK in many places. I really want to write more but i'm a bit hungry and so now am going to explore the rest of this building looking for food.

Hope everyone at home is well :)

Chaos

Ok, it looked like that last post worked! Well to keep everyone up to date I'm now in China, I wasn't affected directly by the earthquake, but the knock on effect it's having through society here is incredible, and I'm amazed to see it being so underreported on other news websites. The amazing thing is the governent decided to call three days national mourning, and the result was that all websites changed their font to grey and featured candles and other memorial information. All "fun" activities were suspended for three days too. If it was considered fun, then the government wouldn't allow it as the country was in mourning. I observed the 3 minutes silence along with many others while I was in Long Ji. Not much more to be said on this.

My impressions of China so far is that it is a very beautiful country, stunningly beautiful in fact. The people are hard working, generally friendly although quite firey at times. (example, our tour leader tried to convince a very persistent street seller to stop following us, the smiles on the street sellers face faded to an angry mask and loud yells, stamping of feet etc) the people are very curious of foreigners. The one thing I majorly dislike about China is the government. After having spent over a month now in countries that curtail freedoms in some way or another, I'm really starting to get fed up of having to censor what I say all the time. I'm fed up of having my ability to search for information covered up or blocked out by the government filter. I'm fed up of being treated like a terrorist every time I cross a border.

When crossing the Vietnam-China border passports were checked over 8 times by different officials, our bags were checked throughly. The X-ray machine was available, but switched off. So we were forced one by one to open our backpacks to border control police and go through every single item one by one. They were particularly interested in my books, they opened them up flicked through all the pages and asked me what the book was about. Another person from our group had copied some of her photos onto CD's, these were instantly taken away by the border police because they wanted to know whether she was a spy! After about 25 minutes they came back again.

The most insulting part was after all this, there was ANOTHER X-Ray machine (which this time was switched on) and then we were asked to put our already checked luggage through this as well!

Of course frustrating as this all was, there was nothing we could do but grin and bare it.

Another interesting experience was my 19th Birthday, my last ever one as a teenager. On that day, I found myself in a remote village called the Dong Village in very rural China. I was not expecting much of a birthday, more of a repeat of Christmas, which was quite lonely sitting alone in my apartment in Japan. But the most fantastic and wonderful surprise, was that my tour group had rallied for me, bought an absolutely MASSIVE cake (which someone had transported about 20 miles from the nearest town on the back of a motorbike) and surprised me by singing Happy Birthday! I was so incredibly moved I couldn't really put it into words here, but if any of you are reading, you have my grattitude, you can't imagine how much that meant to me.

This is especially moving for me as I've really missed spending time with my family, whom I have such a close relationship with. In a way the group has really helped me to get over that homesickness, although I know it won't be long now until I'll be back living at 9 Keats Close. Things are definatly coming to an end now, I can feel that the I don't have a reason to stay travelling much longer. I can't quite believe I've been out of the UK now for over 9 months. I'm pretty much last man standing, almost everyone else has already gone home. People who I've met from all corners of the globe, I'm kind of proud to have lasted this long.

Despite this however, I'm strongly considering staying for another four weeks. But this is of course dependent on the PRC officials in Hong Kong issuing me another visa (which they may or may not do) at the moment it seems to be very much on a whim, for example some days visas are available, some days they aren't, some days certain types of visa are available and other types aren't. Border controls and visa issuing is very chaotic at the moment, as the government is strongly trying to control the flow of people to all different regions, which is understandable of course. My advice to anyone thinking of going to China is, don't. Until things calm down a little. Visiting the special zones (Hong Kong and Macau) and major cities such as Shanghai (apart from ones in Sichuan) should be fine however.

I'm sure I'll get time to make another post sometime in the near future... until then everyone take care and might be seeing you in another month! :D

Test

This is just a test post to see whether I can actually get past the government filter. I've been able to access my post screen but I am unable to view my actual blog, likely because it contains some controversial terms. (I've discussed politics and all sorts on here)

If this works, please email me if you can view my posts...

In Laos... where electricity is only a possiblity....

Things have moved on quite a lot since I last posted... To sum up, I spent about a week in Bangkok before going to Phuket for 3 days and then returned to Bangkok to join the intrepid tour, which has consequently taken me northwards through Thailand, into Laos PDR up through the Mekong River before entering Vietnam this morning. A note to anyone who was worried about the Burmese cyclone... we were well out of it's path, and we're completely fine (although we did have a rather noisy night) we saw a lot of things going the other way, probably to the Burma border however. Anyone who was concerned about the facebook status that stated I got shot at, don't worry I didn't get chased by police or anytihng, me and a few friends just wondered a little to close to one of the many public firing ranges in Phuket.

Of course with travelling you get sick from time to time, so a long with the normal stomach complaints I have managed to get sunburnt a couple of times as well. But by far the most spectacular injury so far took place while tubing on a river in Laos. Tubing down the river takes about 3 hours, and along the way there are many bars and such, just float up to the bar get off and have a couple of drinks, get back on the tubes, continue the leasurely float down the river. One such bar also contained an extremely high jump into the river (about 8 metres, doesn't sound like much, but once you get up there... trust me, it's like jumping from the roof of your house) also on this jump was a huge swing which swung out a good twelve metres into the river, this swing was spectacular fun, and me and two other crazy people had much entertainment swinging from this thing and then dropping into the river from the lowest point (probably about 4 metres above the water) On my last go I decided to try and outdo the other two and decided to drop the the highest point while swinging (about 8 metres!)

Falling from that height was absolutely bloody terrifying as well as the most thrilling thing I've ever done. The problem was the way I landed. After falling through the air I hit the water at an awkward angle in which my shoulder entered the water first followed by my face. The sensation was not to dissimilar to being punched in the head (that's happened to me too) When I came to the surface I felt something crunchy in my mouth... turned out the force of hitting the water actually managed to chip a chunk of one my incisors off. Fortunately it was only enamel and there's still plenty left protecting the tooth, and the tooth is not currently painful four days later. Even more fortunately I still have the piece of tooth and I am happily carrying it around in my wallet until I get home where I'm hoping my dentist can reattach it, or at least fill it in. Any relatives. Any dentists reading this please "chip in" your advice (ho ho ho)

Laos was peaceful and sleepy, Vietnam is loud and dangerous, is one very simple way of summing up the places just visited.

The fascinating thing about Laos is it's government. The government is officially communist, hence Laos PDR people's democratic Republic. But the best way of describing it is half-heartedly communist. It has characteristics of communism, as in big monuments to the revolution, hammers and sickles, and other strange random thing like every single hotel or guesthouse we stayed in (about 5) used the same soap from the official soap factory. There's also a government curfew that comes into force around half eleven, to ensure all residents are back home for midnight, although this is more strictly enforced in places that actually have a police force (or more likely, an army division) nearby. And trust me, those guys are scary. Despite this, Lao Thai and Vietnamese people are all very friendly and it's no wonder these two countries are nicknamed the land of smiles.

But apart from this and a few other things, Laos is very similar to any other developing country, it's definately the little brother of all of the East Asian countries. Being landlocked and very isolated with a poor road system, it's not exactly been touched by tourism that much... although I realise that ironically by visiting and writing about it this will only increase interest. Infrastructure is unreliable, internet comes and goes, and electricity is not available in all areas, or sometimes just between certain hours! Powercuts are random and frequent. The best way to get around Laos is by boat. We spent a great two days floating down the Mekong drinking Beer Lao and taking in the sights.

Vietnam roads are legendarily dangerous. Crossing the road is even scarier than Bangkok, when stepping out into the road traffic flies at you from all directions and the only way to gurantee safety is to walk in A VERY STRAIGHT LINE and hope that buses, millions of mopeds, cars, motocyclos and pretty much everything else find their way around you. crossings, where they exist are useless as no one stops at traffic lights anyway :D

The bus we came on would regularly pull out on blind corners, swing on to the wrong side of the road, overtake other vehicles with a shockingly narrow margin. Enough to make all of the backpackers on the bus (including myself) cry out in alarm. Another thing that seems to be popular in Vietnam is horn honking, from the second any journey starts horns are blaring, sometimes even to customised tunes, and sometimes seemingly for no reason at all other than to alleviate boredom.

As is always the case when travelling I'm not sure when my next post will be, especially as within a week or so I will be heading into China, up there I'll be behind the infamous great firewall, which blocks horrible anti-government behaviour, including many blogging websites I've heard.

Surprise

Well I got to Thailand and now I'm writing this from a random little net corner cafe thing just off the Khao Sarn Road in central Bangkok. My first impressions of Thailand in order from when I got off the plane at the airport.

1. Hot
2. Friendly
3. Vicy
4. If you have money, everyone is your friend

This place is in a whole new league compared to Japan. It's absolutely mental here, you need to stay alert all the time or you might get

1. Scammed
2. Ripped off
3. Run over

This society is really something else, To the unprepared solo traveler (me) this is a pretty interesting experience. The number one interesting thing about this place is that whatever your vice, you can find here. In my first day I saw weed and meth being sold on the street, pimping, prostitutes walking the streets, sex shows being "advertised"a great deal of "massage" parlors, all going on in the street around my guest house.

I did indulge in a Thai Massage, but it was just that a massage, nothing dodgy. A friend told me that a good way of telling the difference between a real massage parlor and a brothel is the size of the women on the front door... If she looks like a farmers girl with arms like tree trunks then she's probably a genuine masseuse , anything else is probably a brothel, and brothels outnumber genuine massage parlors by a pretty high margin. In any case the massage lasted two hours after starting with a foot massage (200 baht or about 3 pounds) after the first hour I decided that I'd go for the full body oil massage for another 300 baht (5 pounds) after being on the go for almost 24 hours it was really relaxing and totally helped clear my mind. At the end it was strongly hinted that if I wanted an "extension" that I could go upstairs for another 150 baht but politely declined this none the less intriguing offer.

Food is delicious and cheap but spicy as hell. Any price can be negotiated whatever you find yourself buying. After getting caught out a couple of times, I'm starting to improve my bartering skills. I managed to get a nice pair of shorts down from 900 baht to 700 baht (still way more than they were worth, but I really liked the shorts and I thought it would be worth it) The first price is always negotiable I've found... The trick seems to be to at first to ask for a price way below it's value, and then slowly work your way up if you have to. Another good trick is to by two and ask for a discount. I'm still learning the ways of this subtle art however.

The weather is in one word hot and humid, I wake up in the morning resigned to the fact that as soon as I step out of my room I will be exposed to the intense heat and spend the rest of the day dripping in sweat. But despite this it's not really bothering me that much, perhaps because I was mentally prepared for it from when I left Japan, it's quite similar to what the weather was like in Japan in September and October.

I have taken some photos but maybe will upload them in the next couple of days.

Sayonara

So this is it, the last step on the Japan journey... After a wonderful 12 days traveling with my family, I find myself back in Tokyo again, for the last time, and back at New Koyo with all of it's little eccentricities. There remains little to be accomplished in Japan for me now... I've said most of my goodbyes, mostly tearful ones. The 12 days traveling with my family was really interesting and it was fantastic to see them all again after so long. It was nice to see that they had changed, but in many ways stayed the same. They found all of Japan a bit bewildering, as any new arrival would. It was a real privilege to travel with them. Hearing some of their observations of Japan genuinely surprised me, as some of them I shared but some of them I'd never even considered.

I'm really unhappy about leaving, it's strange that I should feel this way now, as I found the place so intimidating at first, there were times when I wished I could get home as soon as possible. International departure is extremely difficult, leaving home is difficult but it can be tempered by the knowledge that one day you can return, and that there will always be family and people there for you. But leaving Japan, is horrible, because you don't know when you can come back (if you can come back) whether it will still be the same when you come back, you don't know what will happen to the people you left behind. Leaving any place means that you will slowly be forgotten, which again is difficult.

Things may change in the years to come but, I really hope that I can return to teach English in one of the major cities after graduating. So in a way, I'm leaving so that I can come back.

But in the short term, I've got a very exciting trip lined up , I'm sure everyone knows the details already so I won't go on about it. I've trimmed my backpack down to the bare minimums, it preparation for the intense heat of bangkok. It's pretty scary actually as I'm going in 3 days and I still don't have any accommodation sorted for Thailand. It seems best just to head for Khao San Road (allegedly backpacker central) after negotiating the infamous Thai taxis, and finding something there. I'm quite looking forward to going into the chaotic and disorderly metropolis that is Bangkok. One lingering worry is that Thai border control might give me a hard time because I don't have a return flight. This is usually a prerequisite for entering Thailand, but I'm leaving via the Laos border, which I've been told could be interesting...

I do apologise to any regular readers that I haven't managed to update this quite as much as I would have liked. I've intermittent Internet connections and being generally busy and distracted by real life. So I never got around to make that video or post most of those good pictures, But I promise when I get back to the UK in late May I will do a mega post, including stuff from Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, China... In the mean time I will try to continue to update small posts like this from time to time over the next month. But I really can't make any promises there as I don't really have a clue what's going on exactly, or where I'll be. Please mail me if you need to contact and I'll get back to you as soon as I possibly can.

Everyone take care, and thanks a lot mum and dad and Hannah for coming out here, It really made this part of the trip something special.

NOTE: I would like to inform the reader that the spell checker had to make over 75 corrections to this document, which just goes to show how much your spelling suffers when you don't get to see English all the time.

Post Placement....

So, now it's almost a month since I said goodbye to my beloved "206 Amenity Tsukuda" (My apartment) my work colleagues, and some good friends. The last 3 weeks have given me plenty of time to think over my experiences here, and face new challenges as they have come up.

Saying goodbye to work was surprisingly difficult, and at times tearful. The most difficult goodbyes were the ones that involved saying goodbye to people you had watched grow (in the case of the nursery) or decline (in the case of the intensive care home). A paticular tug on the heartstrings was the small children at the nursery innocently saying "Bye bye David-sensei" expecting that they'd seem me the next week, when in reality they probably won't ever see me again. Ignorance is bliss I suppose. I found it impossible to keep myself from blubbing in front of everyone at that point, despite the blow to my masculinity. Another sad point in the last week was the death of a resident at Nishio Roken, and also the sad onset of Alzheimers in one of my favourite residents which meant she no longer recognised me, or anyone else for that matter.

Despite this sad news, I look back with mainly good memories of work, and I tend not to feel too sad now... The most important thing is, not that I have left, but that I came in the first place. Although I have a role to play in these people's lives no longer, I can temper this sadness by knowing that the work I did really did make a difference. Whether I'll be remembered in the long term is not important.

Since leaving 206 I've been staying in a variety of places, other peoples houses, net cafe's, hotels, trains, people's floors etc etc. I've combined several homestay's with trips here and there. I am finding myself once again totally dependent on the kindness of strangers, which is a humbling experience after 6 months independence.

One of the weirdest things about homestaying was being reintroduced to the family unit, something I thought I would find difficult, but in actual fact it was quite easy to reintegrate into a family atmosphere. It was a good feeling, to know that there would be someone there for me to cook breakfast in the morning or to help me with any troubles I had (sometimes very enthusiastically!) Of course, I have had the fantastic support of my family the whole time I have been in Japan, of which I am very grateful for. But it's easy to forget what it's like to have the personal day t0 day interaction with other people, having to moderate your behaviour etc. At first I thought I would dislike having my freedom slightly curtailed, but in reality I have felt a sense of satisfaction from cooperating with my host and contributing to the positive atmosphere that these homes emit. Whether I would continue to feel like this in the long term is a question I would be unable to answer.

These homestays have helped me gain a really interesting insight into Japanese family life, and contrary to my initial beliefs, I have seen quite a different picture with every family I have stayed with. I stayed with three families, one was a retired couple, another was a very traditional rural Japanese family, with four generations living in the same house, the final one was a kind of weird combination of the first to types of family. A universal trait of all 3 families was very strong family links. In Japan it is considered normal for a child to live with their parents until they get married, (which probably explains the surprisingly low marriage age in Japan) even if the "child" is in their 30's. While at home this is chronically embarrasing, in Japan it arouses mild curiosity as to why the person in question is not married. This seems to be less common in major urban populations however.

It does however provide a very interesting explanation for some unusual Japanese insitutions, such as "Love Hotels" . My only visit to a love hotel came by accident when I got the last train into a major city at 1 am in the morning, exhausted and with nowhere to sleep (I had not intended to end up in that city). I asked many people on the street about the locations of any hotels or net cafes, and I was told that my best chances were with a Love Hotel, as all the regular hotels would be fully booked and very expensive. "Love Hotels" As the name suggests, are hotels that exist purely for sex. They are completely indiscreet on the outside, easy to spot with enormous amounts of neon and garish pink plastic yet completely discreet on the inside, no interaction with staff, everything is done through computer panels . You can't reserve a room. you show up in the heat of the moment and chose either "rest" (a few hours) or "stay" (24 hours) To most foreign observers, this probably sounds extremely shady. But in reality, love hotels are simply fufilling a need in society. When you have a girlfriend, but you live at home with your parents, and bedridden grandparents, do you really want to be sneaking around trying to express your emotions physically to your partner? It's not restricted to young couples either, older married couples whose homes (which are often tiny) are crammed full of grandchildren, scarcely have the privacy to perfom marital duties, and will commonly take a few hours every now and again to visit a love hotel. Many Japanese are flabbergasted when I tell them that Love Hotels are a very Japanese phenomenon and we don't really have them in the UK (sure, we have shady motels instead!!!!)

Anyway getting back to Japanese family units, (that was way off track wasn't it?) Strong family interaction was common in all families, but varied in strength from family to family. Most interesting was the strongly traditional family. Their home was very old, but had been extended many times throughout it's hundred year history. In this family was the Great-grandparents aged in their 80's, living in one section of the house, the "grandparents" aged in their 50's who were the main breadwinners, despite the house techinically belonging to their parents!, the three "children" all in their late 20's, one of whom who was married and had a son of his own (aged 4) but who still lived in another section of the house. With each passing generation, another part of the house had been added to accomodate them, (but only after they were married) I am even now, not sure what I think of this system.

It appears to be the ideal care system for a family, the old and the young living in harmony and caring for each other, in short, the needs of the individual are sacrificed for the benefit of the greater group (the family). This seems like a really great idea, but I couldn't help but feel that some of the younger members of the family, felt like they HAD to stay with their family, and get married and have children, continuing to contribute to the system. As a very independently minded person, I internally found this a bit upsetting as many of the younger people would never go out and do things that they might otherwise do.

It is another of those issues where I think I feel differently because of my upbringing, and despite it feeling slightly "wrong" to me, it's not my place to pass judgement on other nation's cultures. Society here just works, I get the feeling that trying to "correct" these "injustices" might just have entirely the wrong effect. It's probably to do with the fact that human beings are selfish creatures at heart anyway. In the UK many of us are brought up to be independent without even realising it, but independent people are more likely to do "independent" things like start entrepreneurial business, travel, or alternatively beat the crap out of other people. Group minded people are less likely to do un-groupy things, and such creates something of a "harmony". Collective harmony is not always individual harmony.

As well as homestaying, I took a final opportunity while the whether remained cold in early March, to go skiing. Once again at the generosity of Dr Takahama. It was my first time skiing on actual snow (I have only ever done dry skiing in the UK) and I'm not sure whether I took more out of the mountain than the mountain took out of me, especially after some particularly spectacular accidents coming down the slope, including one very amusing one, when I found myself sliding backwards down a slope towards a very high cliff edge, a worried Dr T just waving and yelling "Fall down!!! JUST FALL DOWN FACE FORWARD!!!", falling down face forward causes the skiis to detach from your feet, thus stopping my perilous slide towards oblivion. But the adrenaline rush was absolutely incredible, and by the end the day I had improved.

Another thing I have done most recently was a great trip to the northern most island of Japan, Hokkaido. Hokkaido is famous for having fantastic food, warm people, and a bloody freezing climate. Instead of taking the expensive option of flying, we decided to head North only using regional JR lines. The advantage of this is we travelled over 1500km (over 7 days) for about £50, another advantage was that we stopped at many cities along the way, and we were really able to appreciate the gradual shift in architecture, climate, and people as we went northwards. The disadvantage was that we spent about three days of the seven just sat on trains (when I add up all the train journeys) In this time I was able to observe some very interesting Japanese train ettiquette.

Japanese Trains 101:

1. All Japanese people will either read or sleep or play with their phones on trains, they rarely just sit there.
2. The Japanese that sleep, have some kind of intrinsic ability to wake up approximately 30 seconds before their intended desitnation
3. Every train on regional lines looks exactly the same, they even have the same adverts in the same places on the train.
4. The conductor always looks incredibly cheerful, even though his job must be one of the most mind numbingly boring jobs on the planet.
5. Getting on late night trains is like walking into a pub that is full of locals. You get the feeling that you are "not supposed to be there" Especially as they are filled with the same business men, who have been taking the same late night train, with the same people on the same day for over 20 years, and are shocked that you have entered their world.
6. The trains run to the second, they are never late. (except during typhoons, check the september archives for that story)
7. The "women only carriage" (a carriage that only women are allowed to use, to decrease incidents of groping) always attracts an unhealthy concentration of slightly frightening men near the doors on either side.
8. You may have the luxury of using a squat toilet. These things are difficult enough to use when standing still. How any human being is able to "aim" succesfully while aboard a swaying and shaking moving train is completely beyond me.

So with that amusing note, I think I'll end it here, I'll be sure to post up a few pictures tomorrow, and hopefully I will get time to make a video (probably the last one for a while). Right now I need to concentrate on the fine details of my parents visit in a short two weeks, and after that, it's on to Thailand to what will be one hell of an adventure.

Take care! :)

A couple of photos...

Haven`t posted photos in a while, mainly because on my net connection it's too slow to upload what is now about 2 gigs worth of photos (read over 2000 individual pics) and about 3 hours of video. But anyway here are some of the better pics from the last trips I went on, Kyoto, Nara and the Mie Onsen...

Coming to a close

Made two new videos, one a profile for the month of January, and the other a special one off about a really amazing fire festival I went to. I’m just going to let the video speak for itself. It’s worth watching trust me. People catch fire. Same place as usual. The fire one is not quite finished yet so expect that in a few days...http://www.youtube.com/dryan5
Next up is one month’s worth of homestays with various people, followed by two weeks travelling with my family around Japan, followed by a 30 or so days backpacking tour from Thailand to Laos to Vietnam to China and finally to Hong Kong when I hope to return to the UK. After one week back in the UK, my good Japanese friend is coming to Europe, where she will visit London, Winchester (where there is the possibility of her homestaying with our family, which would be a real honour to return the favour, still need to confirm this with my family though) Sheffield, Manchester, Edinburgh. From there we will travel to several Northern EU nations over two weeks (still working out the details there, can’t wait to try out my German again though) ending up with homestaying together in Poland with friends for two weeks. After which we will part ways for a few weeks. I’ll probably spend much of July re-establishing my UK life, going through reverse culture shock and seeing friends and family and spending a lot of time at home, brushing up on studies for September, maybe buying a new Xbox 360, or getting a temp job. Before meeting up together with another good Japanese friend one month later in August, and do a tour of the Southern EU nations. As a triple it should be great. I’m really looking forward to returning the enormous amount of kindness I’ve been shown here.
One of the interesting challenges ahead will be acquiring Vietnam, Laos and China visas. My tour company doesn’t do this for me. Of course if I was at home this would be much easier, I would simply travel to London on the train hand in my passport and jump through some hoops. Tadaa visa. But being a foreign resident in Japan foreign embassies (particularly China) get very bureaucratic. The Chinese want me to apply in person (Nagoya Chinese Embassy is no good for some reason, I have to go all the way to Tokyo…again), they want my passport, they want my japan visa, my japan foreigner registration card, a letter from my employer saying that I am a good volunteer, 5 days to “process” the document, and 4000Yen for the privilege. Also amusingly, the visa fee form says American citizens: 15000 Yen, All other Nations: 4000 Yen. Did I miss something or did the Cold War not actually end? I’m only going for 9 days! The Vietnamese embassy by comparison just wants my passport and a form, and they don’t even need me to apply in person. Laos visas I can get on the border. Thailand doesn’t need a visa at all. Now I can understand a nation being proactive about who goes in and out of the country, but the Chinese buraocracy seems rather over the top, especially for a country that is supposed to be an up and coming power, maybe even superpower. These guys will have a heart attack when millions of westerners suddenly start applying for Visas to go to the Olympics. Tommy said he just couldn’t be bothered with it, and in many respects I understand where he’s coming from. It’s a pain in the arse, but hopefully it will all pay off. Besides it’s experience anyway. Bloody Communists.
Interestingly I occasionally ask Japanese people what their opinions of their close neighbours are. South Korea usually gets quite a favourable response, especially about Korean food or Korean movies. Vietnam and Thailand also, often comments like “The people there are kind”. China however more often than not gets a negative reaction or an unsure reaction. China is considered very dangerous compared to Japan, and often people comment that the pollution there is really awful, a story I have heard many times is that you can wave a white flag in industrial areas of China and in 10 minutes it will turn black. (But I bet you the same could be said of Nagoya Bay or Teesside). The story you may have heard a few months ago about poisonous Chinese food in Japan, is still big news here. Sales of “Gyoza” (Chinese dumplings) have plummeted. Often early morning talk in the X-ray room is about this. People say Chinese people are untrustworthy, loud, that their culture encourages them to cover things up etc etc. What upsets me a little, is sometimes I hear these kind of things from people I really wouldn’t expect to hear from. I’m sure what is said about the Chinese must be true to a certain extent, but many people seem to refuse to believe that there must be some good will there as well. I think the main problem may be lack of communication and travel. These two enormous nations despite being as close as the UK and Poland, rarely visit each other. I have heard mandarin being spoken only once or twice since I’ve been here. And likewise many Japanese I have spoken to have never been to China. This is partly because until two years ago Even Japanese had to get a visa to visit China. Now they can visit for about 5 days without a visa. Travel broadens the mind as they say… I hope communication between these two nations continues to improve, because there will be disastrous consequences for the world at large if they ever descend into the kind of relationship they had 60 years ago again. Things would be rather more nuclear, if they happened again. To this extent, look at what free trade and open borders has done for communication in Europe, the relationships between European nations has been completely transformed. Yes there are still old rivalries, but not to the extent there used to be. What’s better about this arrangement though, is there is not a 3rd party power influencing things behind the scenes. What happens in the Europe is increasingly the EU’s business, for better for worse. And yes the UK is part of Europe, not matter what we like to think about our lovely little island (which I do love dearly).
On this topic I’m really proud of the Japanese attitude to war. Not one Japanese person I have spoken to has been in favour of increasing the armed forces strength or changing the constitution to allow Japanese forces to engage in offensive operations. If you mention the Japanese armed forces, and the topic of changing the constitution, you get the kind of look you might get from a British person if you told them you were in favour of reconquering Africa in the name of the British Empire. I think this is perhaps one of the very few truly pacifist nations. That being said, the Japanese can afford to maintain a pacifist stance in many ways because they have the protection of Pax Americana and the current status quo. The current system is not perfect, but it is keeping things peaceful. However when it changes (not “if”, because it will change) god knows what will happen. It doesn’t stop me admiring them for their values.
Another things that’s interesting is that it seems I’ll probably have to be getting a new passport a lot early than 2017 (which is the current expiry date on my passport) By the end of this trip there will be a Japan Visa, A Foreign Citizens registration document, A Laos visa, a Vietnam visa, a China Visa, Hong Kong and Thailand entry stamps and I’m starting to run out of pages. Especially as next year I want to do something like Camp America, so that’ll be a US Visa as well… Most of these things take up more than one page too, and there’s only 24 pages. It’s starting to feel like a challenge, I really want to fill up those remaining pages, and I’ve only got until 2017 to do it. So my goal is to fill my passport with so many visa’s that I have to get a new one before the expiry date. But I suppose, even if I don’t, people already say I don’t look like my passport photo, which is only a year and a half old. Maybe it’s the shoulder length hair and face tattoo? (just kidding)
Another funny question I’m often asked is “which country do you like the best?” I find this to be an impossible question. One person’s perfect country is another person’s hell. There are things about Japan I infinitely prefer to the UK (the toilets for one thing, man they are awesome) and there are things about the UK I infinitely prefer to Japan (Dammit, I wanna eat some Fish & Chips and down a proper pint soon).
I’m currently in the process of reorganising my flights. Which means I now have a pretty good idea of when I’ll be home. What’s irritating is STA won’t let me change my departure airport to Hong Kong. I would be less irritated if I hadn’t got such a crap response from them. I just got a computer generated email with “REROUTING IS NOT PERMITTED” No options for secondary back up plans, or anything. This is weird because their attitude up to now has been that you can customise and be flexible about your flights to the nth degree. So I’m going to ring them up and have a nice little chat and see if we can’t change something. I don’t care if it means completely changing the home flight schedule, I really don’t want to have to fly all the way from Hong Kong to Tokyo, go through the whole process of re-entering Japan just to go straight back out again… home. It’s an unnecessary expense. But maybe I’ll just have to suck it up and go through with it, such is the nature of travel. But it’s also partly emotional reasons. Since coming here, I firmly believe that once you decide to do something, you should go through with it to the full. Delaying doesn’t achieve anything it just makes things more difficult. So when you want to leave a place or a person, say your goodbyes, and just go. If I leave Japan and then come back again it will be so much harder, because I have such an attatchment to this country that coming back will give me just one more taste and then I’ll have to give it all up again. Leaving the UK was not so bad, because I am a resident, so I know I have a home country that will willingly take me back anytime I want to return. I have a guaranteed home. But once I leave Japan I have no idea when I can come back. It will certainly be at least a year, and probably a lot longer than that in reality. Maybe one day I will marry a Japanese girl and then I can live here with her forever… who knows… and before anyone panics, don’t worry, marriage is definitely not on my cards for at least another ten years.
So give or take a couple of days I’ll be back home between 27th of May and 6th Juneish. Which will mean a grand total of about 8 months or 274 days or 6576 hours or 394560 minutes out of the country. When you put it like that it doesn’t seem so long. I can’t believe I haven’t seen so many important people, like family and close friends in so long... I can’t believe I’ve been living without Fish & Chips, Bitter Beer, English speakers, British TV, Xbox 360, a car… I have to be serious a lot of the time here so in many ways it’ll be good to let loose a bit when I finally get home. I do wonder how the UK itself has changed in 8 months. Probably not that much. When I left Gordon Brown was really popular in polls, is that still the case? Rhianna was topping the charts with that bloody “Umbrella” Song that gave us crap weather in the summer. Most of my friends hadn’t even started University. Pavarotti was still alive, so was Benzir Bhutto…

Another thing that made me laugh recently was I got the opportunity to speak German for the first time in forever. A Japanese guy I met in Kyoto had lived in Austria and had a great level of German, so we talked in German for a while, but the weird thing was, I was regularly tempted to use Japanese words, and phrases in my German. It was really strange. I suppose there is only one part of the brain for learning languages, and having 3 floating around in there is a bit of an overload, except for those of us who are fortunate enough to be fluent in more than two languages (which will probably never be me hahaha!)

I just spent a really great four day weekend exploring various parts of Japan, it was really two trips combined into one. The first one a two day trip to Nara and Kyoto with Dr T. Which was like a lightening tour, I really enjoyed it but it was one of those kind of trips where we were rushing from one site to the next, and so in many ways although it was an excellent trip, I really wanted to take my time a bit more. But that’s the kind of person I am… I was lucky enough to see golden temple in Kyoto in the snow which does not happen so often, so I consider myself extremely lucky to have seen it, and it is a sight I will never forget. The second trip was one I’d organised together with some friends, we went to an Onsen to chill out for a couple of days. It was pretty expensive, 15000 yen each for the night (£75) but for that price, we got a boat trip to a private island where the hotel was, a personal maid (Kazuko-san) who waited on us hand and foot for the whole time we were there. A massive room, with loads of space and tatami floor, futons , great view, amazing toilet etc. A absolutely superb evening meal (meal does not do it justice, it was a feast) brought directly to our room, and laid out for us, then an amazing breakfast. A superb onsen (kind of spa) where I relaxed for over an hour in the various hot springs, enjoying many kinds of green teas etc. Oddly Japanese people at Onsen are usually quite chatty, but I tried talking to a few here, and they didn’t seem too interested which was a shame.
So what will happen to this blog? Well I have no intentions to stop updating it. I want to continue to write in it until my final trips end in August. I feel they are all connected. Between late April and early June the updates will be small and sporadic, if anything at all. As I will be travelling around a lot, and spending time in rural south Asia. Not too many net cafés and certainly no time to make long blog posts or videos. But when I return to the UK I will let everyone know how it went. This blog will not be deleted even after I stop updating it. I want to keep as a kind of online memory. Who knows, perhaps in a year or two I will have a reason to start writing in it again…………..
Well this is it, the end of my volunteer work is coming up next week, and with it the end of the most amazing six months of my entire life. I am in no way exaggerating this. As I mentioned before, doing this has created some pretty polarizing emotions in me. I have felt some extraordinary highs and some exceptional lows. But the important thing is I think I have never felt more alive, despite highs and lows, this is living.

A little extra

This is just a letter I wrote to one of the new gappers recently, I thought it was quite an interesting insight into life here so I've posted it here.

Well my first piece of advice would be to learn as much Japanese as you can possibly manage between now and the short seven weeks or so before you arrive. I, like you arrived being able to speak almost nothing and this was most certainly a mistake. Very few of your colleagues speak conversational English, there’s usually at least one person in every section where you work who can but not always, there are only around two or three fluent English speakers too. Of course if you’re anything like me, I read the warnings about not having enough Japanese being a bad thing before I came too, but just never found the time to work on it. Please learn from my mistake here. Of course you can get by for the whole six months just fine without ever speaking any Japanese at all, gestures body language and expression are all part of communication too… But although you’ll be ok, you won’t nearly have as good a time as if you really try and smash that language barrier. It’s really awesome being able to talk to your colleagues in Japanese and make Japanese friends. You meet many awesome people this way. That being said the gaijin (foreigner) community here is pretty tight knit. There are people from all over the place, ALT’s, JET’s, Language trainers, other GAPpers, students, Expats, of all nationalities all over the place. Out here in Nishio it’s rare to see foreigners, (foreigners being non Japanese) so the small English community has a number of very interesting people in it. You know you’ve been in Japan too long if you stare at other Foreigners as much as the Japanese do. You’ll know what I mean when you get here. If you get to know the people at the international centre you will also make some good friends who speak English. I would really encourage you to step out from the immediate gaijin community from time to time though, I met some really great people who are really good friends to me and have offered me homestay and all sorts. Also, the girls love it when you speak Japanese, no matter how poorly ;)
If you were under the impression that Nishio City would be a pretty bustling place because it has “City” in the name, then you might be disappointed, as I was when you first arrive. Nishio is more like what we would call a town in the UK. It’s of reasonable size, with two shopping centres, plenty of pachinko, a couple of arcades, at least four major Kareoke spots, A million convienience stores, a gym, a few playing fields, quite a lot of weird and obscure shops, and a good railway network. Japanese nightlife and drinking especially out here is not really anything like at home and this surprised me greatly when I first arrived. Make the most of the humble British pub while you still can. There are a few “bars” but they’re not really like at home. The most common way to get sozzled is to buy a few cans from the convienence store and take them with you into karaoke, which is the normal way of doing things here, and has no connotations of scabbiness like it does at home when you bring your own beer into a pub. Another time people drink a lot is at late night “restaurants” these are restaurants, there’s often a sitting charge, and you’re expected to buy snacky type food along with the drinks, but they’re open really late and many people coming tearing out at the early hours this way. There are no nightclubs or anything like that in Nishio, there are a couple in Nagoya so you can have a pretty awesome time out there if that’s your thing, but it is expensive as hell and the trains stop at midnight (but they start again at 5am). And from what I’ve heard, not all that awesome, as it’s just like being in a UK nightclub, and that’s not really why I came here. Also of course the drinking age is 20, so if they card you, you’re buggered unless you have a very fast tongue. Or are over 20. Strangely though apart from nightclubs no where seems to do compulsory ID checking at all. Not once the whole time I’ve been here have I been asked to prove my age, buying alcohol from convenience stores, or in bars, this seems to be universal, so unless you are unlucky enough to look about 12 you’ll be fine. There’s also a couple of very seedy hostess bars in Nishio, but these places are dodgy as hell and really not cool unless you are an aging businessman with nothing better to do than to waste £30 hour having some vaguely attractive girl stroke your ego. To be honest, despite how awful this might seem if you are a real party person (like myself) it’s not really all that bad, Kareoke is really quite fun. The Beer here is quite cheap, maybe about a fiver for a sixpack, but the one thing with Japanese beer is it’s quite sweet by comparison to UK beers. It’s also difficult to find many of the drinks you are familier with, Coke, Fanta, Smirnoff and Guiness/Budweiser are fairly common, others do exist but are difficult to find. I did manage to get some Newcastle Brown Ale once, but it was expensive as all hell because it’s an import and considered quite exotic. Odd. But instead of finding the usual drinks you may find yourself regularly buying melon cream soda, café au lait, Mitsuya Cider (It’s not actually Cider, more like lemonade.) squid legs, dried fish and other such oddities and random packaged meals from 24 convienience stores when you get hungry. It’s quite hard not to get addicted to those places actually. Also Japan is the land of vending machines, you have not lived until you see some of these, It is also the land of the vending machine that sells the one litre Beer can. The more you can adapt to Japanese tastes the easier life will be for you. (easier reads cheaper)
Note, the above probably makes me sound like a complete drunkard, but I actually haven’t been quite as irresponsible as I make myself sound.
Food is interesting. It really really helps to have an open mind when it comes to this. Your diet will be completely changed, prepare for a lot of rice and fish. Certainly is healthy though. Some of the stuff they serve at the cafeteria will actually make you audibly mumble “what the hell?”. A lot of the stuff you may not actually know what it is. Some of it even now, I don’t know what it is. One of the things that surprised me at first was being served an entire fish, head, tail, guts and all, literally a boiled fish, and having the misfortune to eat the guts, to the amusement of my Japanese collegues who waited till I finished eating before telling me, that “you’re not supposed to eat that bit”. Other weird combinations I have eaten are Tofu and prawn “cake”, seaweed and vinegar, horse meat and fish reproductive organs. If it all gets a bit much there are 3 mcdonald’s in town and a KFC, but Burger King does not exist in Japan full stop on the plus side, every single McDonalds is open 24 hours. There’s also a brilliant chain of Japanese Curry Restaurants called CocoICHIBANYA, which I highly recommend you try, because they are cheap and delicious and Japanese curry is completely COMPLETELY different to the Indian curry we are used to in the UK. If you’re a fan of Fish and Chips like myself, get your fill before you leave the UK, as you will find plenty of fish in Japan but not Fish and Chips or Harry Ramsden’s anywhere.
If you need a taste of big City life Nagoya’s only 45 mins by train, and it’s the fourth biggest city in Japan, massive unending metropolis that seems to go on forever, it’s an interesting place. I’ve been there maybe 5 times or so, but as it’s a transit hub (great bus and shinkansen connections) sometimes I was just passing through. There’s a lot of familier brands and other such sights in a great district called Sakae, just look for “Sakae” on the Nagoya Subway map.
Anyway, you won’t need to bother buying a phone, one of the great things about this particular placement is that you will get a mobile phone, with effectively unlimited credit as part of one of your work benefits. Although it’s techinically “unlimited” it’s best not to abuse their generosity and piss them off. But then you didn’t need me to tell you that haha… Other benefits include a bicycle, as many meals as you want from the staff cafeteria (this is a godsend, trust me) all utilities paid for at your apartment, and 50000 yen per month. They also include free Japanese lessons at the International Centre, but these are somewhat problematic. They happen on Thursday and Sunday, A Thursday is a working day for you, and the Sunday lessons are centred towards the Japanese-Brazillian community and so are mostly in Portugues and Japanese. Thursday lessons are very good… IF you can get to them, it requires changing your day off from either Saturday or Sunday to Thursday, and this makes things very difficult, because it messes up weekend plans with everyone else, because you have to work Saturday. This is the one disadvantage this placement has over others, It’s better than many of the other placements in that you get so many benefits, and a flexible work timetable, but the disadvantage is it’s hard to learn Japanese. The good people in the Xray room will let you study Japanese in the office during your work hours when you are not busy, this is great but also kind of hard, as it can be difficult to concentrate with people rushing around you everywhere, X-ray machines beeping, alarms going off, patients screaming, cute nurses etc etc… Of course you are also free to study in your own time, but quite quickly your time gets eaten up by a lot of things, and often you can find yourself pretty exhausted after 9 hours or so work every day.
Another thing I did was take up teaching an English Lesson once a week to Roken staff, I didn’t get paid at all for it, but it’s a really good experience because you meet some really interesting people, and get a lot of free food, if you were ever thinking of teaching English here, but have no background, it’s a great way to get a foothold on the ladder as it were. The class will probably end when I leave, you guys are under no obligation to take it up at all, but if it interests you I would strongly recommend it, just mention it at one of the weekly meetings. Another advantage of this is that you will probably learn some Japanese from them too.
As far as bringing a laptop is concerned, I found it to be really important for me, others have said different. In the early days we were able to “borrow” someone elses wireless connection in this apartment, which was pretty sweet because we got free *private* internet, then around Christmas time they got wise to this and put a password on it, so now we are internetless. Laptops I found were useful for several key things 1. Messenger, the cheapest way to stay in touch is through messenger on your computer or through skype, it’s a really easy way to stay in touch and works great. You don’t even want to bother with the phonecard it’s horrendously expensive by comparison. And before you ask, the mobile phone they give you is made to not call international. 2. I made a blog as a way of staying in touch with family and friends and as a kind of memory for myself. I also make videos for youtube from time to time as a kind of living diary, (you can check them out at http://www.david-ryansan.blogspot.com and http://www.youtube.com/dryan5 ) laptops are great for this, as they give you privacy to work and aren’t charged by the hour. 3. Laptops make great entertainment centres! I’ve been dumping all the pictures I’ve been taking on my laptop, and it works great as a DVD player and music player, especially as the DVD player in my apartment is broken, so good for entertaining others when they come round. They’re also great for games, if that’s your thing. 4, I use my laptop to make a little powerpoint presentation every week for my English class, it really helps with the teaching. So in my opinion bringing a laptop is a very good idea.
But if you don’t, you can use the internet at Roken’s office in the evenings after work, but of course, you can’t do stuff like use skype or messenger on that, or plan powerpoints or whatever. There are plenty of private 24 hour net café’s around, maybe around £5 for two hours, and you can get as many drinks as you like from the drinks machine, and read any manga you want from the vast library of manga. (except of course, most of it, you won’t be able to read…but still pretty pictures oooooh) As far as a wireless place where you can bring your own laptop…. I’m looking for a place that does that now… I sometimes use a friends house, but it’s not very cool to be constantly dropping in like that.
I hope this gives you something of an idea of what it’s like to be here, I hope your preperations are going well, and I hope I get to meet you in a few weeks, if you get my apartment please treat it well. The door already had a crack in it and the sink had the crack in it when I arrived. The curtains will fall off at some point as they have done for every gapper since time immemorial. The burn marks are from my predecessors setting of fireworks on the balcony and Lee setting one off in my room. I don’t know why the air conditioner makes an explosion sound every 30 mins or so, but I’m pretty sure it’s harmless. Any food left behind is good to eat, The toaster looks like it does because I burnt my takoyaki one day, and I don’t use it enough to merit cleaning. Despite what the note in the book says, there are no mice as far as I can see. The heated toilet seat is awesome. The doorbell is also awesome but kinda rubbish and only really useful for scaring people passing by your apartment. The dreamcast never had any cables, The scratch marks on the floor were me moving the sofa one night for no reason, the remote doesn’t work because the previous gapper tripped on a beer can and sat on it.

What a week

What a week. That’s all I can use to describe the New Year period. It’s been one hell of a roller coaster ride in so many ways. It started with the biggest surprise. The day before Christmas Eve I got an email from a close Japanese friend of mine, who I have known for some time… she said she wanted to go Christmas shopping with me on Christmas Eve in Nagoya. For the culturally uninitiated it should be noted that Christmas Eve shopping is not a last minute violent melee for presents like it is at home. Christmas Eve is treated more like Christmas day and needless to say the atmosphere in the bustling metropolis of Nagoya was breathtaking. Christmas decorations everywhere, people dressed up in costumes, Christmas music playing from every shop, it was truly amazing. In typical Japanese eccentric style, a real organ had been wheeled into one of the department stores and was playing loud and somewhat eerily gothic Christmas tunes, to the delight of the shoppers. But the biggest surprise of the day is that I went into Nagoya a single man, and left it as a couple. It was like something from Love Actually, perhaps it was the festive spirit, I’m not sure… But it was certainly a Christmas I will never forget. (Richard Curtis would have a field day if he was reading this, you got that Richard? I’m waiting on your phonecall)
After the happiness of Christmas Eve, it was tempered somewhat by a loss of my internet connection on Christmas Day. I had been hoping to talk with my family via webcam on Christmas Day, and maybe even open presents on the webcam, to get something of an idea of what the atmosphere was like at home. Well unfortunately because of the lack of internet that never happened. But I did get a few phone calls throughout the day which cheered me up immensely, it’s a very sad experience to be alone in your apartment on Christmas Day. But that’s what happened and it can’t be helped. Later on I did open the presents, and I have to say mum, you haven’t lost your touch. The presents are all a good laugh and sat very well with the decorations you sent out, my Japanese friends have been particularly fond of the sumo wrestlers and many a Yen has been lost gambling on which one will win. I am extremely grateful for all the gifts I have received. I know I may not have been able to express that too well on the phone, but they really do mean a lot to me. That goes to everyone who has sent me something, I don’t want to list you all, because I know you are probably reading this… but although I may not have been able to thank you personally, it does mean the absolute world to me and I thank you from the bottom of my heart. I honestly will try and send something back, but as I may have already mentioned it’s quite complicated and I am only on Volunteers “pay”.
Regardless Christmas Day ended nicely with a meal at my friend’s house where we all got together for some Western Style cheer and celebrations. The next few days following this were reasonably uneventful as I was making the last preparations for the journey to Tokyo, and squeezed in the last few working days of 2007. I had decided to organise pretty much every aspect of the trip myself, that way the less people organising the less things that can go wrong, and as a plus I could definitely do the things I wanted to do. I told my travel mate Craig (20, Canadian) to worry about his bus ticket and phone and that I would do the rest.
The itinerary ended up being really interesting. Travel by night bus to Tokyo from Nagoya, meet in Shinjuku, stay in a hotel the first night, No hotel on the second night (it was New Years Eve, who wants to sleep on New Year’s Eve?) Capsule hotel on the third night, and budget backpackers hotel/hostel for the fourth, fifth and sixth night. Amazingly almost everything went to plan, aside from spending a small king’s ransom in locker fees for our manly backpacks.
One of the things I love most about these kinds of trips is the kind of people you bump into, and how odd it is that your paths have crossed on your respective journeys, throughout the world and life. As everyone who knows me can vouch, I can talk for England, which is both an asset and a weakness. On this trip I met a Chinese woman (中国人？そですか！), who had been living in Japan and taking her first trip on a night bus, that situation was strange was we were both conversing in Japanese, a language that to both of us was not our first, and all I could think was that it was so amazing that two different cultures could be united through another language that was not their own. But then I’m a dull Linguist, so I would find that interesting. I met two Lithuanians and a Brazilian who spoke flawless English, but were in fact studying business at a Tokyo University, and I was surprised to find I spoke more Japanese than they did. This seems to be the way of the future, English will lose it’s identity as purely being the language of “the anglosphere” and become an international “standard” language that everyone can use to communicate with, regardless of language origin. (aaargh getting sidetracked linguistically again… bad David) But most fun of all were three American tourists me and Craig met wondering around Shinjuku skyscraper district in the early hours of the morning. Two guys and a girl from Arizona, they were the funniest trio in the world so much fun, and we basically spent much of the trip as a group of five tearing up Tokyo.
The most interesting thing about meeting tourists however was it showed us just how far we have come in our four months here already. I was asked odd questions like “why are all these people wearing face masks? Is there a SARS outbreak or something?” And I had to explain that this was nothing of the sort, but normal Japanese behaviour to wear a face mask when one has a cold, as a form of common courtesy towards others. But although this behaviour seems perfectly reasonable and normal to me now, I struck me how odd this must look to someone just off the boat. Another interesting thing that happened was watching them struggle with ordering food and navigating the subway system. It seems, despite how poor my Japanese is, even a little can get you a very long way.
On the subject of language, I’ve had some interesting comments from people about learning language abroad. A few of my friends have suggested that I will be fluent in Japanese by the time I get back, because I live here. This is complete nonsense. Language is a complicated thing, unlike I first assumed, it cannot be simply “absorbed” from the environment you live in. Unless you make a concentrated effort to study a language, it will not just come to you. I found that my Japanese only really started to progress once I made an effort to study a few chapters from a Japanese language book once in a while. And of course there is absolutely no substitute for a good teacher. Unfortunately because of work timetables, I’ve been unable to attend many of the lessons on offer, and instead my Japanese is mostly self taught, despite that the teachers here are really excellent and good friends of mine. What living abroad does give you however is the ultimate environment to practice a language. Your target language is written everywhere and everyone speaks it, so you’ll have no problems finding a native speaker who can give you some pointers and put you in the right direction. The situation is of course different if you already know the fundamentals of a language, in that case you can build on the supports and go a long way quite quickly. My problem was (and still is) that I didn’t know the fundamentals. The next time I go to a country for the first time, I’ll try to be able to say more than “My name is David” when I first arrive. Although that being said, my early days of work were marked with long periods of silence, where I was unable to say anything at all. Nowadays I can talk about a fair bit. Although my grammar is pretty messed up. And I’m pretty sure a lot of it sounds like “Me, week last Tokyo visit good yes?” It’s better than sitting silent. I can always improve. Of course the Japanese are so polite, even if it sounds god awful they wouldn’t say. I have been complemented on my accent however, which is nice.
Anyway (I’m really not good at this getting sidetracked thing) New Year was an unforgettable experience. After much debate during the day about exactly which New Year party, out of hundreds, we should go to… We ended up on the streets of Shibuya (A very fun district of Tokyo) at 23:30 on the 31st of December 2007 with no plan. I remembered vaguely that last year on TV I had seen a big New Year celebration in Tokyo somewhere, but I wasn’t sure exactly where. I had a sneaking suspicion that it was the big square we were in a few hours previously but wasn’t sure. Feeling we had nothing to lose, I decided to usher the group in that general direction, realising that if I’d got this wrong, they would probably kill me. Fortunately however, after a few minutes the crowds began to pick up, and we very quickly found ourselves in the middle of a very large crowd of very excited (some very drunk) people, as the minutes ticked closer to midnight the crowd began to grow and grow, and very soon, even traffic couldn’t move for the number of people filling the square. Now this is not a small square as you can see from the pictures and video, this place was massive. The atmosphere was electric and unlike anything I’d experienced up till then. People were dancing, singing, jumping up and down, cheering, crowd surfing (including myself). Then out of nowhere, “10… 9…8…” Well as you can see on the video, it was truly unbelievable. Oddly enough, the crowd began to gradually disperse almost as soon as the moment of truth was over. A fantastic night. We drank and ate and were merry until the wee hours of next lunchtime.
Although this is not the traditional Japanese way to ring in the New Year, I thought that we would be getting enough “cultural” experiences over the next few days, that we needed something a bit more unusual to break it up.
After spending much of the first day of the New Year in a zombie like trance, as evening drew near we went to our second Hotel “Capsule Inn Akihabra” Located in the mental “Electric Town”. A capsule hotel, for those of you who are wondering what this is all about, is a Japanese speciality. It’s a hotel, where you have only a man-sized capsule as your room. Despite how horrible this sounds, and my mother comparing it to a morgue (pretty close actually, just less dead), I actually found it to be a really fantastic experience and something really different, as I’m sure the photos show. The wash facilities are really great too. Japanese style which means, open plan sat down showers, and everyone bollock naked when they go in. It did cause me great amusement when I saw one European man enter the shower and bath room in his underwear to the stern gaze of many other Japanese and myself, to see him sheepishly turn around and return a few moments later, trying to get to the shower without showing his front side. Naked public bathing was a weird concept to me at first, but it’s grown on me to the extent, that I wouldn’t have it any other way.
The next day we experienced something I’ve wanted to do for some time, and that was see the Emperor Akihito himself (son of the infamous Hirohito, who was still on throne as recently as 1989). After much panic in changing hotels to the wonderful “Hotel New Koyo” and rushing around trying not miss the speech, getting on the wrong train and going in circles for several hours. We finally made it to the Imperial Palace at about 13:30ish. I was expecting to have to fight my way through hoards of patriotic Japanese, but in reality it was a very organised, calm and professional event. Near the entrance, to my delight mini Japanese flags were being handed out, the purpose of which I was not entirely sure of at this point… but regardless approached the man who quite happily handed out two, one for me and one for Craig. After a very civil and friendly security check, the dreaded moment arrived… I had to suffer a pat down by a beautiful Japanese policewoman… oh the humiliation. I don’t think I looked at her face once, I just grinned inanely at Craig, to make him wish he had left some change in his pocket too.
After the fun and games a serious tone resumed, I began to marvel at the exterior architecture of this most private of places, in the middle of one of the most impersonal cities in the world. I also felt extremely privileged to be able to visit this place. After walking through many beautiful gardens and passing by the Ancient Edo Castle, we found ourselves in a large open courtyard besides the imperial palace, which was a stunningly beautiful building, and eclectic blend of old and new. A small balcony was visible along with a pane of bulletproof glass to keep the Emperor safe. After a wait of about 25 minutes the courtyard pretty much filled with people. And the great man himself and a few other members of the adult imperial family, stepped out. Me and Craig had pondered what the crowd’s reaction would be. Would it be loud and brash? We thought unlikely… Would everyone bow? We thought that would be the most likely situation.
But instead there was a sort of muted cheer that sounded almost like a vacuum cleaner being switched on, as if everyone wanted to cheer really loud, but was just about holding it in, or gasping with awe. Now we found out what the flags we for, the muted cheer was almost immediately covered up by the roaring sound of over a thousand Japanese flags being furiously waved in approval. I turned to Craig, and he gave me a look that said “go for it” so the two of us joined in. I also took a moment to take in the expressions of those around us in the crowd. It was peculiar; almost everyone there looked extremely happy and had an enormous smile on their faces, as if someone had done them some enormous favour. After about a minute or two of this, an announcement came through saying that the emperor wished to speak. The crowd was immediately silent. His voice carried an unusual tone and a sense of authority I rarely hear. It really was a special kind of voice. Despite this the speech was barely under a minute long. Translated it essentially means, “I am glad you are all here today, I wish for peace in Asia and throughout the world” I think the video captures the atmosphere really well. After that the crowd began to file away.
Later that evening both me and Craig discussed what all this meant for the figurehead head of state, both here and throughout the world. Craig had some interesting opinions, Canada as a commonwealth nation, still holds the Queen as it’s head of state, she still appears on currency and performs many ceremonial duties, despite being no political influence. We gradually came to the same conclusion. In a modern world, it is definitely right that these outdated institutions should hold no real power. It’s easy to dismiss them as meaningless, however I think it is essential to maintain these traditions, as at the core they are a part of a national identity for some people. In a world rapidly globalising, identity is a precious thing that cannot be traded in stocks and shares, or given away in business deals.
For me I think this event was the highlight of the trip. The next day we visited Meijjingumae. The most popular shrine in all of Japan for New Year’s prayers. It’s a Japanese tradition to go to a shrine on one of the first days of the New Year to pray for good luck and other things in the year to come. Some Japanese are very superstitious and believe if this event is not performed they will have a terrible year. Not wanting to run the risk of having a terrible year, I went to the shrine. Even 3 days later the crowds were still large, although certainly tolerable. Again the shrine held a unique kind of atmosphere generated by the many people there. I felt a strange rush of adrenaline as I neared the front of the crowd to make my prayer. Although this might just have been nervousness at messing up the prayer ceremony. I took 5 5yen coins and threw them as an offering, I then bowed, clapped twice and bowed again. What I prayed for is secret, I wonder if anyone can guess…? Afterwards I felt strangely pure and refreshed, and happy.
Many, many, other things happened on this trip, so much that I could not possibly list it all. A trip to Ueno zoo was good fun, and we ate in many good restaurants. Hotel New Koyo was a really excellent place. It cost a mere 2700 Yen a night (About £12) for that, you got a room the size of a broom cupboard (no joke) a floor, a window, a plug socket, a tatami mat, a futon, a locker and a tv. .. Don’t say they don’t spoil you. Toilets and wash facilities were shared; there were small kitchens to prepare your own food. The place had this really great international atmosphere with people from all over the world hanging out. The hotel was kind of old and had lots of funny notices posted here and there attached to walls and ceilings and other places telling guests not to do this or that. I am of course in no way complaining. We needed a place to stay on the cheap, and we got it. A truly great place. I’ll be back.
Another odd thing we encountered was a British style pub in Roppongi. It was pretty true to the reality. Walking inside was like walking through a magic door which transports you 10000 miles to the other side of the world, into my local Wetherspoon’s in Winchester. They even had Newkie Brown!!! (That’s Newcastle Brown Ale to the uninitiated) It felt good to taste some real proper British Beer after four months of this really sweet Japanese beer, much as I like it. It was also the first time I allowed myself to get horrendously plastered, most of the time when we go out drinking I need to keep an eye on everyone else especially when travelling. But that day we were within reasonable distance of our hotel, and I didn’t have anything valuable on me, so I just went for it.
The main thing I brought back from the trip was… I WANT TO LIVE IN TOKYO!!!! That place is amazing, it’s unlike any City I’ve ever visited. It’s weird mix of foreign culture and Japanese society creates this crazy mix. It’s also really unlike anywhere else in Japan I’ve been too. If you visit Japan, don’t just go to Tokyo.
Since returning to Nishio City it’s been nice to settle back in with familiar sights and sounds although I do miss the bustle of Tokyo. The day I returned I had organised to go to a local kite festival with my English class, which was good fun, despite me being exceptionally tired from the night bus journey the night previously. Something else really good happened that day. Dr Takahama, who has become a really good friend of mine despite his eccentricities, offered to introduce me to a friend of his who runs an English school (Do you remember my post, about the ever expanding social circle? This is what it’s all about!) We met and had an informal chat. It turns out she’s short of English teachers, and she would be more than interested in hiring me on “Volunteer” terms (i.e. apartment and food, and minimal financial contributions) to work at her English school, after my work placement here at the Hospital finishes. It seems Dr Takahama was sufficiently impressed by my English classes to recommend me! I am quite pleased but also slightly embarrassed, as I have no official training in this area at all and I am not qualified in any way, which I stressed to this person most strongly. Regardless, this deal is still in the early stages, and there is every chance that nothing will come of it in the end. There are many complications when hiring foreigners as it is. Especially foreigners without a degree (yet) and on a volunteer visa. But should it work out, it will be invaluable experience in so many ways, and I would be honoured by the opportunity. I’m still looking at home stay options too and ways to pass the time between placement end and family coming to visit in April. Then after that it’ll be time to move on to backpacking in China, then after that finally, maybe time to think about coming home? I’m not sure I could. If I a degree wasn’t central to so many of my future plans, I would just stay here and make my way in the world from here. I am coming back here in the future without a doubt, most likely when I finish my degree in 2011, I could work as an ALT or something else for a while.
Another thing me and Craig discussed was the depression that one can suffer while on placement. We both went through very similar low points around the late October, early November time. After the novelty of moving to another country has worn off some hard realities really kick you in the bollocks, especially completely adjusting to an altogether different lifestyle and way of thinking. We think that is the true reality of culture shock. And different people react to it in different ways. My fellow gappers responded to it by forming a very tight friendship group that protected them from the difficulties they faced. I tried to integrate with that, and found it really didn’t suit me, which was probably the main source of the friction between my goals and theirs. Travel abroad is like this, it’ll give you some of the most intense lows you ever felt in your life, being completely isolated from all you know, and fighting to find some kind of place or way to fit into a society that is not your own. At the same time when you succeed in something it will give you more of a high than any drug could hope to. It helps you to understand your own personality and character much more than anything else.
My Dad joked several times that a gap year would prepare me for life in Manchester University. It’s not really been like that at all. University is a 100 million billion times easier than this. Ok, you may be living on your own for the first time… but you have a lovely fat loan propping you up! Your parents are no more than six hours away on the train, everyone speaks English, you understand the culture and everything about it, and you understand the social rules to abide by. There is one thing I can think of that is even more difficult than this, and that is moving to university here in Japan. I have met a few people who have tried it, and they are truly brave and extraordinary people. I don’t have the guts to make such a move. I have my heart set on Manchester. A Gap year in this country has not really prepared me in that respect, it’s taken my views and everything I know and completely shaken it up it has literally changed my life up to now. I find the life I led before this to be somewhat unsatisfactory and empty. I would recommend that anyone who can take a trip like this, you should do it!!! That being said it’s not for everyone. I’ve seen a few people burn out while they’ve been here.
Well that’s about enough from me anyway. I’ve spent over three hours writing this and it’s probably time to bring it to a close. Thank you once again to all my readers, as without you this blog would be a complete waste of (digital) space. I hope everyone at home is doing well and studying/working hard.
Please also take a look at the video I made which pretty much sums up the highlights from my trip to Tokyo, same place as usual http:/www.youtube.com/dryan5