Auckland - Week 1+2 - Hostel Hop

-- 10/15 to 10/29/2016 --

For the last two weeks I've been in a holding pattern, trying to find a place for myself in this new country and often coming up short. But because of something that happened right after I arrived, I knew everything would work out okay. I usually don't say things like this, but I'm pretty sure I was 'meant to be here.' 

The first two days I was staying with Melinda at her house, spending almost all of my time looking for rooms to rent. The rest of the time, Melinda was showing me around Auckland, commenting on the livability of neighborhoods as we went through them. We also checked out a couple hostels so that I'd have an idea of the options that were available to me before I booked a room with any of them. We went to a place called Bamber House in Eden Terrace, a suburb that's about a 45 minute walk from Uni. It felt super chill, and they had a bed I could stay in for a week without moving around between rooms every night. I booked the room on the spot.

But that's not how I knew everything was going to be okay. I figured that out on Sunday when Melinda took me to Piha beach. It's a gorgeous drive just getting out to the beach, which is on the west coast of the North Island and washed by the Tasman Sea.

Melinda told me that this was the first place that Thegn took her when she arrived in New Zealand when she moved here. Piha beach was also where she went beachcombing with my former housemate Mike (who works on fur seal archaeology) and his then girlfriend Lisa (another archaeologist; it's a real small world) when they visited New Zealand. They found a fur seal carcass and put it up on a rock so they could come back with a cooler or a big plastic bag and haul it away in a car. But when they came back it had been taken away by other people or the tide. 

So Melinda was relating all of this to me as we walked out at low tide to a hole in the rock, and to an area where there's sometimes a spouting horn. It was also super windy, and I put on a hat just so I wouldn't lose my hearing. It was a relief to be walking in the same direction as the wind on the way back to the car. And then I saw something white sitting over at the high tide line near the one dune on the beach. I walked over and found...this guy.

 

It looks to be comparable to some images of New Zealand fur seal (Arctocephalus forsteri) skulls that I found online, but I'm not positive about whether it's a female, or just juvenile. Some of the other New Zealand fur seal crania look way different, but those are all definitely adult males. No matter what, it's amazing to run into a marine mammal skull like this, especially after just hearing how Melinda, Mike, and Lisa tried to bring their find home. Melinda named this specimen Kaimoana, which is Māori for 'sea food' and happens to be the first word I asked Melinda the meaning of while we were at a nature park visitor center.

On Monday I picked up all my bags once again and took them to the University of Auckland, where I was able to keep most of my stuff in Melinda's office. I got a quick tour of the Anthropology department, met some of the people that were around, got introduced to my desk space, and was told repeatedly that I'd have to leave it soon as the office was getting renovated and all the PhD students had to move their stuff out. I enrolled in the University, and spent most of my time dealing with administration. 

In the evening, I moved into Bamber House for the next week. While staying there, I met Eduardo the Argentinian who is bilingual in Spanish and French but speaks French better, Julian the French traveler looking for a car who knew some mechanics but didn't know English very well, and Justine the french traveler looking for a car who's fluent in English but doesn't know much about cars.

During the day, I went to campus, made piecemeal progress on administrative tasks, researched houses to rent, went to visit rentals, and did a little preliminary reading on my doctoral research. At night, I went back to the hostel, and tried to figure out if there was anyone around that I knew, or if they had all left for good. It was a very stressful time. Fortunately, Justine and Julian were cool people to hang out with, and just having someone around that I could get along with really helped me get through it all. 

The main problem I'm facing is an uncanny valley. Because this is an English speaking country, and America and New Zealand are both culturally related to the English Empire, things feel familiar, or at least look like they should feel familiar. At the same time, they aren't, with just enough differences to be profoundly disturbing. But with patience things are starting to become more familiar. 

On the weekend I went out to a bar in Ponsonby (the yuppie neighborhood) to watch a big rugby match (New Zealand v. Australia) with Justine. Eduardo invited me to go out to the beach with him and his friends. I took a ferry out to a volcano island and met a random hiker: Dijana from Australia who's working here to cover a co-worker's maternity leave. On New Zealand's Labor Day, I moved hostels and met a whole new group of folks. Where Bamber House was full of French and German tourists, Oaklands Lodge was curiously full of people from England.

One other big change happened: after viewing an apartment on Thursday, I made a tentative agreement to move in with a couple living only 15 minutes walk from Uni. They are John from Colombia and Sehui from Korea. The only problem was that I didn't have a bank account to actually pay my bond (that's Kiwi for security deposit) or rent. But they put their faith in me, and this week I managed to open an account and get a wire transfer from my US bank. 

And finally, I've moved in. I've settled (or at least I'm starting to). I have a room with John and Sehui, who are taking me to a Halloween party this weekend. I also just got keys to the room on campus where my desk is located (though on Monday they shut that office down for the renovations and I move into a new office, which I don't have keys for yet). Which basically means that it's time to stop having fun and get down to my PhD work. 

But first, I think I'll going on a field trip for an excavation on Great Mercury Island.

New Zealand - Arrival

-- 10/13 to 10/14/2016 - Written from Oaklands Backpacker Lodge, Mt. Eden, Auckland --


The flight to the Philippines was fine. It left in the early afternoon and arrived in the evening. I stepped off the plane into another humid climate, and noticed some immediate differences between Japan and Manila. Articulating specific differences would be difficult, but I'd say that generally there were many more kinds of people in the Manila airport than anywhere I'd been in Japan. A lot more people were wearing a lot more colors and patterns. 

The entire space of the terminal also felt somehow more cramped that I was expecting. There were very few stalls in the bathrooms, and long lines extended out of each one. Different gates were placed very close to one another, so it was hard to tell where one began and the other ended. Small stores extended out into the walkways from the walls, and it seemed like there was only one wall between the gates and the airport check-in. 

I hung around killing time, not able to get any food as all the stalls only took cash, I had no Philippine Pesos with me, and there wasn't a place to exchange currency. I couldn't get online either, as the login details that were supposed to work failed to get me onto the wireless network. So I typed up the first couple days of my Tokyo journal, planning to upload them to the blog whenever I got a free moment in Auckland. 

Eventually my flight boarded, and for the first time on this entire journey I felt cramped on the plane. It was a full flight, I was in the middle seat, and my knees were brushing the seat ahead of me. Either Philippine Airlines chooses the spacing for their planes based on a shorter average femur length than other airlines, or they just don't care and do their best to fit as many people onto their flights as possible. I put in earplugs and put on an eye mask and tried to sleep. 

A few hours later (maybe it was 3 in the morning? I didn't have room to get my phone out and check) they turned on all the lights and served a meal. I would have slept through it, but I was hungry enough that my desire for sleep was overridden. I wasn't really able to sleep after that.

We then landed in Cairns, Australia at about 7 in the morning, which I wasn't expecting. Fortunately it was a planned part of the journey. We all had to deplane, go through a security check and then hang around before we could board again. I thought about exchanging my Japanese yen and American dollars for New Zealand dollars. I had about
¥18,000 and $100 in my wallet, which would work out to about NZ$390 if everything was exchanged fairly. I went to a money changer and they offered me only about NZ$200, apparently because they would have to change everything to Australian dollars, and THEN to NZ$. I held onto my money.

We boarded, it was another full flight, and I stayed up watching Sing Street on the old fold-down screens that the plane still used somewhat effectively. The movie ended with our hero, a young musician, and his girlfriend sailing from Ireland to make their fortunes in England, ready to spend their future together despite all obstacles. It made me feel awful for deciding to go off to New Zealand without asking Jess to come with me. Thanks, Movie, for judging me.

I landed, and quickly got through the passport check, which was totally automated. Then I got held up in line for the bio-security checks, which the New Zealand government takes very seriously. There is a legend about how Shania Twain visited the country and was fined $250 for not declaring an apple core she had with her. The moral of the story is declare everything that might be considered organic, even if you're famous.

I almost got to breeze through the bio-security check, having declared everything I could think of and being told by the officer that what I had was fine. And then I realized that I had packed a set of juggling balls my mom made for me about 8 years ago, and that each ball was filled with rice. As soon as I told the agent he got very serious and moved me into the line for the highest level bio-security screenings. That line took another long time to get through. But I took the time to gather everything out of my bags that would be considered even potentially risky for them to look over so that I wouldn't have to totally unpack my bags to find them later.

When I met with the screening officer, she only ended up being concerned about three things: the omiyage that I'd bought as a present for Jess (it was food), a Hawaiian dream catcher my mom had given me when I was about 7 years old, and the juggling balls. She unpacked the omiyage, which had a surprising number of layers, peered in at the food, and decided it was okay. She took the dream catcher back to her boss, who said the feathers in it were not a threat. And then she took one of the juggling balls, opened a seam with her pocket knife, and poured out the rice into a bag to make sure there weren't any pests. With that, I was given the all clear, and the rest of my bags went through an x-ray. No threats detected.

Finally, I emerged from the security check and looked for my taxi. My advisor, Melinda, had arranged for a taxi to pick me up, and though it had already been about an hour and a half since my plane landed, I expected the driver would still be there. But he wasn't. I asked around with all of the taxi drivers that were present and none of them were there for me, or knew anyone who was supposed to be.

Stranded, I called Melinda, and she insisted on coming out to pick me up. I hung around in the Auckland Airport, quickly maxing out the time limit on my internet connection to publish and write up the first three days of my trip to Tokyo. While I was sitting around, I was approached by one of the taxi drivers who wanted to let me know that the guy who was probably supposed to have picked me up definitely left earlier. 

Then the driver looked past me, saw some Muslims praying, and swore. "What the fuck are they doing? They're gonna start a bomb scare!" I tried to be calm, and just replied that they were praying. There wasn't any problem with that. Not impressed, the driver walked away, and tried his joke out on another white driver.

When Melinda was getting pretty close to arriving, I went out to meet her in the pick up area, and walked past a giant Dwarven statue that was "on loan from Middle Earth." It took a bit before we found each other, and then we loaded into her car and set off for some Indian cuisine in her neighborhood village. We were immediately on great terms and made fast friends. We talked about where we both came from, our interests outside of archaeology, our common friends, and a lot about Auckland. We ate Indian food, and went back to her house where she invited me to stay for the weekend.

Tokyo - Final Day

-- 10/13/2016 - Written on the plane to Manila --

We got up and I packed. And packed. And packed. It wasn't as rough as the night I spent packing in my parent's house before I left, but it was still difficult to put everything back where it belonged. I reluctantly said goodbye to Alex when I was only about halfway done. We agreed he should come visit me in Auckland sometime, maybe January, and that I'd go to him the next January so we could go skiing/snowboarding up at Zao Onsen. 

I thought I'd go walk around the grounds of the Ghibli Museum, which is in walking distance of Alex's apartment, but I took too long packing and preparing for the New Zealand bio-security screenings. I also didn't get enough time to mail a gift off to Jess, and decided I'd just have to take care of it at the airport, or in New Zealand if possible.

Eight days was far too short a visit for seeing Japan. It felt long enough to see Tokyo, though there are plenty of corners I haven't explored yet. I wouldn't necessarily want to go into all of those without friends to share the experience with, though. Really, I felt the best parts of the trip were spent up in Yamagata, and I definitely want to spend as much time as possible outside of the big cities next time I am in the country.

I took my bags on the train with me all the way the airport. I was much better this time about putting them all up on the luggage rack so that they weren't in anyone's way. There were multiple trains stopping at the same platform as the Haneda airport express, where all the train destinations were only displayed in Japanese kanji, and I very nearly got on the wrong train. Next time I'll know to keep an eye out for the train with a little airplane by its name. 

All that time in Japan, and I almost didn't have any ramen. I stopped briefly for lunch in the airport at a ramen shop though, and got a spicy ramen that had a handful of tiny dried shirmps floating on top of the broth. I felt super fishy the whole way to the Philippines. 

Tokyo - Day 8 - Climbing Buddies

-- 10/12/2016 - Written on the plane to Manila --

I left Alex's house late in the morning after setting up final arrangements to open my New Zealand bank account. Thinking I might try to find some more stickers to send back home, I headed to Senodai, a 6 floor art supply store in Shinjuku. While I was there, I also ended up getting some stationery to write home to Jess and my family with. 

From there, I went to the North end of the Imperial Gardens, stopping for a quick lunch at an Udon and Tonkatsu restaurant. I had some chicken with mayonnaise on rice with a bowl of hot udon noodles. Some other European and/or American tourists came in while I was there, and I felt proud that I had handled ordering food with the ticket system better than they had. Like a vending machine, you put money in and it gives you a ticket for your order, which you hand to the staff. I had no problem with that...though they did have to show me a menu before I could figure out that they were asking me about my choice of side dishes.

When I was done with lunch, I headed to the Imperial Gardens and started a long long walk through them, stopping to check out some crows taking a bath in a water feature. I went past a concert arena that had lots of young women lining up to see a boy band, and then went into the Imperial Palace itself. The grounds were huge, and I still don't have a good sense of their scale. I eventually exited, and then walked along the exterior for what seemed like ever before I reached the end of them. 

I decided to pass through the Ginza district in search of the Tsukiji fish markets, and found the Ginza to be strangely reminiscent of New York City. Apparently a lot of American tourists say the same thing about it. It had to do with the way the streets and the buildings were arrayed like a grid, I think, and the way that the buildings were of a generally uniform height and style. Somehow it was the only part of Japan that had the right density of structures arranged in straight lines to create the impression of being in Manhattan. 

I got to Tsukiji at the absolute worst time. It was about 3:30 and there was no market to speak of. The few shops that still had open doors were all cleaning up and about to close. All the other buildings were shuttered, and the streets were totally quiet. It was really terrible timing, and I'll never have another chance to see it there and have the freshest sushi in the world considering that the market is about to close down and reopen in a totally different part of the city. Although maybe my experience was just a poetical expression of what the market is going through right now. 

With a lot more time left to kill before Alex got of work, I went to the nearby Hamarikyu Gardens, which were established by a shogun, and found a place to sit. My feet were aching at that point, so I only took a little time to walk around and take pictures of bugs, birds, and the landscaping, which was framed by towers on most sides. 

The gardens closed at 5, so I went out and tried to find Shimbashi station and take a train to the climbing gym where I was gonna meet Alex and others at 7. That ended up being unexpectedly complicated, and then I had some trouble getting directions to the climbing gym. Eventually I tried to get help from Alex, who told me to head to the Akiba station. There is no place called Akiba in Tokyo on the maps, so I used some of my precious little mobile roaming data for additional help. Turns out Akiba is short for the Akihabara neighborhood. 

In Akiba I wandered around electric town and turned down offers to go into maid cafes, where some men go to pay women to talk to them. I wasn't feeling very comfortable there, so I found a river and walked up and down it, trying to take pictures in the dark of the buildings on the opposite banks, which had much nicer designs on the riverside than on their streetsides.

Eventually, Alex, Audrey, Ivar, and Canyon met me at B-Pump Climbing Gym, and we went in for an evening of bouldering. I don't know if there is a standard Japanese rating system for bouldering problems, but the one this gym used was totally different from the one I'm familiar with in North America. Besides that, all of the routes were built in a way that felt totally foreign to me. It's like they expected the climber to tackle each problem with a fundamentally different approach from that used in the American gyms I've climbed in. They were all very interesting to work through, but I wasn't able to solve very many of them.

The best part of the gym was the third floor, which had low lighting and had deep blue accent lights built into the climbing wall itself. It felt like climbing around in an alien cave or spaceship. I only happened to get pictures taken in one of the few well lit areas, so this photo doesn't do the room justice at all:

After we were all exhausted, we walked to Kanda station to a Chicago style pizza place, which had some really good local stout that managed to be perfectly malty and chocolatey. The 'Chicago pizza' was delicious, and a good attempt, but it didn't hold up to my standards for real Chicago style pizza. Specifically, the pizza stubbornly held its edges when we cut into and lifted it out onto our plates. You could practically eat it with your hands. I don't think that should be possible with Chicago pizza; the cheese and the sauce should ooze out of the slice once you cut it and barely hold any form, forcing you to eat with fork and knife. But it's been 10 years since I visited Chicago, so maybe I'm not remembering it correctly at all.

Sadly we all had to go eventually, and I said goodbye to my new climbing buddies on the train. Alex and I headed back on our own, giving each other some intense Game of Thrones trivia questions. We continued the quiz show as we did laundry, and we took turns playing Overwatch on Alex's computer until everything was dry. Or at least, mostly dry. Some of my clothes needed a bit more time, but I'd already spent some of Alex's money on an unnecesary wash cycle at the laundromat by accident, so I didn't ask for any more of his spare change. We finally got to sleep around 1:30 in the morning.

Tokyo - Day 7 - Curry Fest Crawl

-- 10/11/2016 - Written at Sumidagawa Bar and on the plane to Manila --

Today I woke at the more usual time of 9-ish and convinced my phone that it should receive messages from the U.S. for the first time in a couple days. I got to have a short video call with my girlfriend, and then I was on my way by 10:15. I stopped for breakfast at Honey Bagels, and got the almond chocolate bagel again with another bagel that I picked at random. That also turned out be a chocolate filled bagel. The server tried to make sure that I was okay having two kinds of chocolate bagel, but I didn't understand her and told her it was okay. 

Based on Audrey's advice, I took a couple trains out to the Yurikamome Line monorail out to O-Daiba, a man made island in Edo Bay with some cool museums and big shopping malls. I spotted a cool looking maritime science museum built to look like a cruise ship from the monorail and tried to get in, but it was closed. So I feel back on my original plan and went to the Museum of Emerging Technology to see some robots. But then I found out that place was also closed, because it was a Tuesday. There were two older Mexican guys also trying to get in, and I almost tried to hang out with them, but ended up being too shy.

I resorted to visiting the shopping malls and walked over to Diver City (is that supposed to be a pun?), a 6 floor shopping mall that has a 1:1 scale model of a Gundam towering outside. I went inside looking for stickers that I could send back to a friend in the U.S., and then checked out the skate park on the roof of the mall. 

The next mall, Venus Fort, was like a Disney Land set. I got in through an open History Garage, which was designed to look like the streets Italy, U.S.A., and Britain in the 1950's with some really nice historic cars parked in their appropriate countries. I went through and also found a library of old toy cars (or car models?) of historic makes. The first floor of the actual mall wasn't very unusual, but I did find a store that was selling puppies for ¥600,000 each (~$6,000)! All the puppies that were there seemed pretty happy, but the place felt super weird, and I wondered where the moms were and how they were doing. 

At the second floor, the mall completely changed into a representation of an Italian city, with a fountain, a piazza, and a church facade (for weddings!). Only the most high brow restaurants and brands had shops there, though there was also an indoor Airsoft 'survival arena' in one corner. I ran out of things to check out in the mall and went looking for a replica of the Statue of Liberty on the north waterfront.

Before I got there, I ran into a ferry terminal with two companies working out of the same pier, and realized that going up the river was exactly what I wanted to do. One of them said they were closed (because they're closed on Tuesdays that follow a national holiday like Sports Day), so I got confused. I was stubborn though, and hung around drinking a juice until I saw that a Tokyo Cruise employee was helping a group buy tickets. I asked to make sure there'd be a ferry coming soon, and got a ticket for a boat that would take me up to Asakusa.

I sat on top of the first stage and took in Edo Bay. It was the most open space I'd seen in Tokyo, and even though it was ringed in by blocky modernist high rises on all sides it felt very free. Then we changed boats at Hinode Pier and I found a place in the open area at the back where I could watch the city go by. The boat tried to helpfully tell me the names of all the bridges we passed under, but I couldn't hear any of them for all the engine noise. Being on the river felt much more oppressive, being wedged between so many tall buildings. 

The ferry let me off in Asakusa and I was enchanted by a huge, obsidian glass brick of a building with what looked like a giant golden daikon sitting on top of it. Turns out, it was actually a giant golden piece of shit.

I walked over to it and tried to figure out what the building was for. It seemed to be associated with the Asahi beer company somehow, but I couldn't figure out what was actually inside there. I found a restaurant nearby and decided to sit down for a while with an anchovy, tomato, and olive pizza and a whiskey-ginger. 

After dinner, I really needed to charge my phone so that I could meet up with Alex in a bit. I tried going to a Baskin Robbins which had a wall outlet in the entrance. I got an ice cream and then asked in broken Japanese if I could charge my phone, but they said I couldn't, and then recommended that I go to Burger King across the street. I walked through covered markets until I finished my biscotti espresso ice cream, then came back around to Burger King. This time I checked that they had outlets first, and then got some fries. 

When my phone had a decent charge, I started walking west and got a message from Alex moments later. Our options were basically to head to Shinjuku and wander around, or go to Shimokitazawa for a curry festival. We decided on the latter. I almost headed to the wrong place though when Alex just called the place by it's colloquial name of Shimo, but there's also a station that's just called Shimo. Fortunately, I figured out my mistake before I got on the train.

We met at the Shimokitazawa station and kicked off the night with some small steam buns filled with curry. We waited around eating them, looking over the list of 150 restaurants participating in the curry fest, while Alex's friends Shioka, Gabe, and Nat made their way to us. Once we were all met, we went to Banana Moon, a bar that had curried chicken wings. Then it was off to Avocado, a Mexican restaurant serving curry tacos, and then a nicer place I don't remember the name of to get curry, cheese, and omelette logs on rice. We finished our night in a bar that with some heavy hippy influence and ate curry over rice. We stayed there long after we were finished eating, just talking and using a children's Japanese atlas of the world to show off our home countries and our favorite animals. 

With that, our curry crawl was ended, and we said goodnight. Alex and I went home to sleep off the crazy amount of food and drink we just had.

Tokyo - Day 6 - Volcano Shrine

-- 10/9/2016 - Written on Shinkansen to Tokyo, and the Inokashira Line to Shibuya --

Alex woke me up at 7:10 in the morning so that we could eat breakfast before it closed at 8.  There were several new things to eat there today: cold pickled fish, bacon and sausage cooked at the table in a tin, cold poached egg in a clear liquid (rice vinegar?), and natto - fermented soy beans. There was a surprising amount of stringy, fermented goo that kept making a long stringy mess between my mouth, my beard, chopsticks, the natto, and anything else I touched. The trick was to stir the natto up with chopsticks, add some soy sauce, and eat them with rice. I found them just a little too...bitter? (But now I kind of feel like they'd be a nice snack). Overall, it was a very salty meal.

We went back to the room, grabbed our bags, and headed out for a massive mountain adventure. We planned to take a tram to the mountain tops, hike out to a caldera and the mountain peak, and then climb all the way back down to the bus station to take us back to the Yamagata station and the shinkansen to Tokyo. 

We started out on the main road, following our map to the Zao Sanroku Ropeway Line, stopping only to buy some snacks (nigori, croissant with red bean paste, black chocolate cubes, and orange juice for me). We bought one way tickets up and rode the first stage facing the mountain so that we could see the ski slopes and gondolas disappearing into the clouds. Then we rode the Sanchou Line to the mountain top facing backwards so we could watch Yamagata and Zao Onsen disappear as we reached the cloud line. 

Up there, most of the trees were totally burnt and dead looking from the wind. When we got off, the weather was extremely windy and cold (1.5 °C according to a sign at the mountain's base). I felt really stupid up there, having left my hat and gloves back in Alex's humid and hot Tokyo apartment. I ended up putting my raincoat on over my wool sweater with the hood up, and walked with my hands in my pockets in hopes that would be warm enough. We rang a big bell for good luck, and then walked out past a big Buddha statue and then up to Sanpokojinsan peak (1,703 m ~5,600 ft), which was only a few minutes of vigorous running away via a steep path. We took the more gradual path back, and set off for the caldera that all these peaks branched off from.

Alex and I followed a steep trail that was initially vegetated towards Jizo-san peak. After a while, the trees ended and we were mostly walking into high winds from then on. The trail resembled a railroad track made of broken stones more than the cut trails that I'm used to. Large basalt cubes were placed in long parallel lines, and the space between was filled with basalt chunks, which were very uncomfortable to walk on. We ended up walking on top of the sides instead, stepping on the high points rather than walking along naturally. There were also tall posts regularly spaced along the trail so that there was something to follow in deep fog, or if the trail was totally covered by snow.

We reached Jizo-san Peak (1,736 m ~5,700 ft), where there was no view because clouds. We went down the other side to a saddle, where this creepy statue sat on a pile of broken rocks. Its head had a scary smile, and the body was from a different statue.

The next part was confusing. We wanted to walk to the next peak and then the caldera, but we went straight to the caldera rim and then back to the peak without realizing it. At Mt. Kumano ("bear field peak"), there was a small shrine with a hut, which was full up with people taking shelter from the wind. We ate some of the food we brought for a lunch out in the wind, and then set off again, almost going down the wrong side of the mountain by accident. We got on the right track, and walked to the caldera rim, which was totally obscured by clouds. We stood on the edge and looked around at the parts of the sheer drop that we could see, and then headed back.

When we got to some stone huts we'd passed earlier, we realized that we'd gone to the peak in a roundabout way. We followed the path back to the creepy statue and went down the mountain side by the haraikawa course ("exorcism river" [!!!]). that took us to the iroha bog, where the trail was replaced by raised wooen tracks through a swampy clearing. By then we'd finally gotten out of the wind.

As we exited the bog, our previous plan to cross the mountain and descend to Zao Onsen was forgotten as soon as we ran into the Utopia ski lift, which was actually running. We rode it down for the sheer novelty, and got some great views of Yamagata and Zao Onsen as the clouds began to clear up at last. We paid ¥240 for the ride and then tried to figure out where we were. 

We determined our only way back to our planned route was to walk back up the hill to the top of the lift, but as we set out we found an open ski slope with such great views that we just kept walking down along it.

 
Then we got a little lost, but we found ourselves on our map when we crossed a road and a closed gondola line. We took another slope down, getting just a little bit less lost this time, and then found ourselves at Zao Astoria Hotel, a big ski resort. We didn't want to hike straight down the ski slope right in front of the rope way station and maybe get in trouble, so we started down a road we could follow.

I immediately noticed a nice cement-channeled waterfall with a path opposite the road, and we decided to cross over to it rather than keep going down with car traffic. We jumped across the waterfall, and got onto the trail, which was on the map and went through some beautiful forest that reminded me a lot of the Pacific Northwest. Along the way we went through a bunch of weeds that stuck to our pants and stained them with black spots from the seeds. 

Our trail took us to Shigi no Yachi Pond ("Sandpiper's Marsh Pond"), which we walked down to and along until we found a trail back up to Zao Onsen. We talked about getting some pizza in Zao Onsen, but then we remembered that everything would be closed there between lunch and dinner. So we went into a curry shop and ordered some beef curry with fries. 

While waiting for our food, Alex got up to help an Israeli couple who came in and were having trouble ordering their food. We asked if it would be alright for us to sit together, and spent the rest of the meal talking about each other's travels. I immediately forgot their names, but they were both accountants from Tel Aviv spending three weeks in Japan. We were both apparently up at Kumano Peak at the same time. They offered us jasmine tea, and we shared our fries. 

Alex and I left before them to buy some souvenier snacks at an omiyage shop, and then we went to get on the bus for Yamagata. We were about to depart when the Israeli couple showed up just in time for the bus. they gave us some fruity jelly bean things, and then we didn't really talk after that. Everyone was pretty tired. We said goodbye at the station, and Alex and I got onto a shinkansen for Tokyo. 

Back in Alex's neighborhood of Kugayama, we picked up some Indian food (mixed veggie curry, garlic naan, and chaat samosa - which comes with a bunch of creamy-curry like sauce over square samosas). It was weird ordering Indian food in Japanese, especially because the menu items were all English words for Indian food adapted for Japanese. We also stopped at a kombini ("convenience store") and got some yogurt drinks to stand in for lassis. I also finally found an ATM to withdraw cash and pay back Alex for almost everything that we'd done that weekend.

We took our food and drinks back to Alex's and watched the second round of U.S. presidential debates, which was easily the most exhausting part of our day.

Tokyo - Day 5 - Mountain Temple

-- 10/9/2016 - Written on the bus to/from Zao Onsen and Shinkansen to Tokyo --

The second day of my trip to Tokyo while not in Tokyo started off at 8:35 with complimentary breakfast at the top of the hotel tower before breakfast closed at 9. We ate a LOT of preserved vegetable foods - sea weed, umeboshi (pickled plum), taro root pickles, and other stuff I don't know - with rice, curry, miso soup, and juice. There was one woman at breakfast who talked about me and Alex in Japanese. Basically, she just said "Oh, there are foreigners here," and then went on to say that her sister met a foreigner once during a trip to Nepal or India. 

We packed, rested a bit, and then got on a train to Yamadera, the mountain temple. (Our transit passes were messed up because we never tagged off last night in the broken down train station, and the gate agent was unreasonably upset with US about it). We passed through lots of cute farms on our way up a valley into the mountains to a little tourist/farm town that straddles a confluence of two small rivers. Funnily enough, Alex began to recall the town, realizing that he'd actually visited before when he was first living in Sendai years ago. From the train station, we looked across the valley to our destination, a temple hanging onto a hillside covered in trees. 

Following groups of Japanese tourists, we made our way up the 1,100 steep steps to the top of the temple, stopping to look at numerous shrines and offerings along the way. In one spot, there were dozens of shrines carved into a huge rockface, with hundreds of coins wedged into its porous surface, and hundreds of prayer sticks arranged at the base. At the top, we walked around the main temple and the other shrines, taking in views of the town and valley below. There was supposed to be an eternal flame that had burned for at least hundreds of years, but it wasn't out for the public or we just didn't see it.

Having seen everything, we walked back down the hill in search of lunch, which in Yamadera could only mean soba noodles. We looked at each of the 6-7 soba restaurants and picked the one that wasn't totally overcrowded. We got the Yamagata special plate - soba soup and boiled potato stew - and some ice cream. Alex had zenda (edamame paste) flavor, and I got the black sesame, which was almost overwhelming at first.

Then we realized the train back to Yamagata was leaving shortly, so we paid up and ran through town for the train station, making it there just a minute or so before the train arrived. We rode back to Yamagata, and then killed time before getting on the bus to Zao Onsen by wandering in a department store. There was a manga store that mostly advertised really terrible looking shows (there was one clip of a guy excitedly pouring olive oil all over his food, and another that was just an animated boy-band concert); an "old American clothing store" (with a sweater that just said "BAGEL" on the front); squat toilets; and a stationery/household supply store. 

With even more time to kill, we walked downtown Yamagata in search of an open pizza place, but all we could find was a burger chain called Moss Burger (maybe it was just Mos, but I like to think it was the former). I only got onion rings, which did not come with any condiments. I asked for some ketchup, which came in a little bowl.

We hung out, talking for a while, before deciding it was time to go, and then immediately ran into our bus at an intersection in front of the burger shop. We ran after it, grabbed a couple tickets, and boarded. The bus took us through southern Yamagata and then wound up the mountain roads to Zao Onsen past beautiful overlooks from quaint farm towns. 

The town of Zao Onsen was beautiful. We arrived in the late evening, and walking through the streets we saw steam rising from the grates in the street, smelled lots of sulfur, and watched a hot river running through town that parents would threaten to throw their misbehaving children into. We kept walking uphill and found a kokeshi shop with hundreds of handpainted wooden dolls, and then found our hotel, a building in the style of a French Chateau called Hotel Largent. 

Our host was standing in the parking lot when we arrived, and he greeted Alex by name, and then took us in through a stubborn automatic door. Our hostess gave us a key and wondered if I was a fan of natto, which would be included with the breakfast. We checked out our room and Japanese television before heading back downhill in search of dinner. 

After asking our hosts which place was ichiban oishii ("number-one delicious"), they told us to go robata, which specialized in a dish called jingeshkan (Genghis Kahn). We went to check it out, but it was full, so they took our hotel's phone number and offered to call us if a table opened up in an hour. We walked to a couple omiyage shops and checked out the local souvenir snacks. There's a rule in Japan that anytime you visit someplace new you're supposed to bring back some small souvenir for your people. Alex and I just bought some cider, cherry cider, and münchner style beer, all brewed in Yamagata. Alex quizzed me on sea-life facts while we tasted the drinks in our room until the restaurant called.

By that point we were really hungry, so we went right away and ordered two sets of jingeshkan, which meant putting fresh chunks of lamb and vegetable onto an iron dome over a gas flame in the middle of the table and cooking them ourselves. The trick was to start with a chunk of fat on the top of the dome so that the drippings would run down channels in the dome and pool at its base. Then, you coat the veggies and meat in the pooled fat before putting them on the dome to cook. It was so good, and the set also came with some great pickled things, rice, miso, etc. After dinner, we went out in front of the restaurant and sat with our feet in a hot water bat that was on the side of the road.

Back at the hotel, we put on complimentary kimono and went down to the onsen. We took off our clothes and used a Japanese style shower (sit or squat in front of a hand held shower head while washing your body and hair). Then we put our kimono back on, walked out with geta (wooden sandals) to the onsen in front of the hotel, disrobed again, and sat forever in the hot-spring fed tub. When we were done, we put our clothes back on, walked back to the showers with geta, rinsed off, put the kimono back on, and then went back up to the room. 

It was a lot of ceremony just to sit in a hot tub, but we'd washed three times over and I found it soooooooo relaxing. We stayed up drinking the münchner and chatting, and then went to bed way early for the either of us (10 pm, *gasp!*).

Tokyo - Day 4 - Bullet Train!

-- 10/8/2016 - Written in Sakurambo Hotel, Yamagata and on Senzan Line to Yamadera --

This morning Alex and I got up at a very reasonable time between 9 and 10, gathered our stuff, and traveled to Tokyo station to catch a Shinkansen (bullet train) for Yamagata. Buying tickets for the train was really confusing. First we had to to by a train ticket (densha no kippu), and then we had to go stand in a totally separate line to get the shinkansen fare (jyoshanken) as well. 

[Aside: While waiting in line for jyoshanken, we were standing behind a guy who for some reason thought it was acceptable to wear a sweater that says "I FUCK ON THE FIRST DATE." It's not just America, people. Terribleness happens everywhere.]

With a bit of time to kill before the train left, we went to the Tokyo Station Market, and bought densha bento (train box lunch). Tons of people were grabbing food there, and Alex tells me it's a very Japanese way to eat while traveling. I got a tonkatsu bento, and a steam bun filled with red bean paste. I also got to try some of the cheese cake filled mochi balls that Alex bought. I still think that cheese cake filling is a suspicious addition to mochi, but it was undeniably delicious.

We didn't buy reserved seats for the train, but Alex was pretty confident we'd be able to find seats, until we got to the platform and realized the long lines of people there were all waiting to get on the same train car as us. Alex got in line and I bought us some drinks from a vendor on the platform (turns out that green lemonade is actually limeade). 

Then we were boarding, and some people scrambled, but we managed to get seats together without a problem. We talked on the train, Alex slept, I journaled. We went past Fukushima, which didn't stand out in any way considering how quickly we were going, except that the mountains, fields, and houses were incredibly picturesque:

Consider this the first in a series of pictures of Alex sleeping on trains moving past beautiful landscapes. For once, I wasn't the one sleeping through travels!

We got to the Yamagata station and there was some cool lego art made by local kids, a giant lego shinkansen, and an art piece made from a section of carpet titled Moss, which looked aptly named. We wandered out of the station, with me leading and Alex looking up hotels on his phone, and found the Yamagata castle. Nowadays, the castle grounds are mainly a sports center with only a small bit of mostly reconstructed castle remaining. 

Alex wasn't having luck finding any openings in hotels, so we went back into town and asked around directly. Two hotels immediately turned us down as they were so full, so we went back to Yamagata station and found an information desk where Alex was able to get some contact info for hotels that might have openings. He called around and most of them were full, but one had an opening for one night only. We took that one, even though they made fun of Alex when he didn't recognize the word they used for breakfast (chuushoku).

Walking to our hotel, we found the real downtown Yamagata, which had been on the opposite side of the station that we originally left from. The town had initially reminded me of any 'little-big' city that you might find in western North America, but the actual downtown felt like a Japanese city, with an Italian karaoke bar, a Southern food bar called Louisiana Hurricane, and a very well stocked model shop that displayed an amazingly detailed Y-wing model. 

The hotel itself was total crap, smoke-filled,and getting close to falling apart. The staff assured us that we were lucky to find a place to sleep at all. With no other options in town, we looked up hotels in the nearby mountain town of Zao Onsen ("shopkeeper-king hotsprings") and found a room with twin beds to stay for Sunday night. For dinner, we went on the information desk's recommendation and ate at a soba noodle (the regional specialty) place that is said to be older than any other soba restaurant in Yamagata. We had tempura on hot soba with warm sake. The tempura was super fresh and lightly cooked. Our waitress knew a little English, and was (maybe) a little happy to practice on us while Alex forced me to try ordering our food in Japanese.

After dinner we went back to the downtown in search of a department store, but the entire city felt like it was closed or closing by 8:30, which was real strange for a place that had NO OPEN HOTEL ROOMS and a three day weekend (Monday would be national Sports Day). Alex tried looking up something to do, and we settled on finding the Sega World arcade.

We took a train, and the station we got off at was being renovated, so there was no way to tag off with our transit cards. We walked on anyway through a super quiet neighborhood down dark streets, under a low, creepy underpass, and past a park to a giant warehouse called the Sega Batting Center. Guessing that we were at the right place, and having never been to a batting center, we went upstairs past the arcade and took turns trying to hit baseballs at 90 km/h. I managed to do alright until the machine that was hurling baseballs at me stopped adjusting for height and pitched the balls at about the level of my knees.

In the arcade, we played a taiko game, Mario Cart, and a weird Final Fantasy game that was supposed to be multiplayer, but it would only let me play the tutorial over and over again while Alex faced off against internet people. There was also a game called Groove Coaster, where you sort of played as a DJ by record-scratching and pressing buttons to the music. 

We went back to the hotel via taxi so we wouldn't have to wait an hour for the last train. We found the taxi parked at a 7&I (the Japanese version of 7/11), and waited for the driver who was inside thinking about buying some porn. He eventually came out and drove us back while watching a Japanese noir movie, and definitely ran several red lights. Fortunately, we made it back alive.

Tokyo - Day 3 - Mishaps in the Night

-- 10/7/2016 - Written on the Bullet Train to Yamagata and in Sakurambo Hotel, Yamagata --

I got up and hurriedly made plans with Alex to take a weekend trip out to Yamagata ("mountain shape") Prefecture in the evening after Alex's work. I'd meet him at his office, do a quick playtest of the game his company is working on, and then we'd rush out to Tokyo station, get tickets, and board a night train. After Alex left, I also got in touch with Audrey, and she offered to take me on a tour of Tokyo. After taking a bit long to get ready, I rushed out the door to catch a train to our meeting spot, packing a bag for the day but not for the weekend.

I met up with Audrey, and we rode more trains out to Asakusa ("wretched grass") to see Sensou Ji, a big Buddhist temple that was totally encompassed by old open air and covered markets. We wandered around the temple and the markets, then grabbed some lunch at a udon restaurant for some cold noodles with vegetable and mochi tempura. 

After lunch, we went over to Shinjuku station, where Audrey showed me around the night club scene, which was much much quieter during the day. We also stopped at Golden Gai - 2 small streets that house over 300 bars, all stacked up on top of one another, though part of it had burned down recently. Then we went to see Tokyo's recreation of London's Big Ben tower (I saw some resemblance, but it was a modernized version with extra tower on top of it), a 6 story square metro block-sized mall called Takashimaya Times Square, and a San Francisco hipster coffee shop called Blue Bottle. Finally, we went to a tower that Audrey called the Government Building and rode an elevator up about 50 floors to an observation room, and checked out the city from way up above. 

From there, we went back to Shinjuku and took a train over to Alex's work. After I got there, I realized I was probably supposed to have packed for our trip out to Yamagata that night. Alex and I talked over the problem, and decided that I should go back to his place for whatever I'd need while he and his team finished setting up the game demo I was supposed to test. I got on a local train, transferred to an express train when one caught up to us, and ran most of the way to Alex's house. But I ran right past it, and had to jog back. 

Once I got there, I couldn't get in. Two keys were required to access his apartment: one to open the front gate of the courtyard, and another to open the front door. He didn't have any extra copies of the gate key, so I had just been sneaking into an 'alley' to open the gate lock from the inside, and then running around to get through the door before the lock reset. When I got to Alex's place that night, the 'alley' was totally blocked by somebody's bicycle.

I stood around wondering what to do, trying not to look super suspicious. I decided that the gate was set far enough away from the sidewalk that I could climb over it, and the next door building would block the people waiting for a bus across the street from seeing me. I worked up some courage while looking totally suspicious and watching all the pedestrians, bikers, and cars pass, and then I climbed over the gate and down the other side. As calmly as I could, I walked to Alex's door, opened it, and got inside before anyone could yell after me.

I was feeling an insane adrenaline rush, and rushed up and down the three flights of stairs, collecting my toothpaste, clothes, etc. I heard sirens and a voice on loudspeakers, and was certain that I was just about to be arrested for trespassing in a foreign country (I later found out that the voice was from an emergency vehicle politely announcing the direction of its turns to everyone in the area). The sirens faded, and I figured it was probably just an ambulance going to Kugayama Hospital. 

With everything I needed in hand, I calmly exited. I didn't run into any police looking for a criminal Gai-jin. But I did find several hundred middle- and highschoolers walking to the train station at the end of the day. I took the train back to Alex's work, but couldn't find the right building, so I texted him and he came out to get me from a nearby boulangerie. I played his game, which was a super interesting exploration of some ideas we'd talked about a year or two ago.

By the time I was finally back, done with the playthrough, and finished answering Alex's questions, we had missed the last train to Yamagata and decided to just go get dinner instead. We went to Shimokitazawa, Tokyo's nearby hipster district, and found an excellent okonomiyaki restaurant. Okonomiyaki are a special savory pancake that Jess and I treasure, and Alex and I got two with yakisoba, one topped with kimchi, and the other with seafood bits. 

Now full, we walked to Hanegi park and did a bit of semi-structured parkour training, but mostly we were just playing around. The park was pretty intense in terms of having a ton of awesome structures for kids to play on that have absolutely no safety features whatsoever. There were 20 foot tall drops off the top wooden slides that had no railings, and in an art area some younger people were building big parade floats of Shin-Godzilla and a flying pink elephant. 

After our little training session, we wandered around in search of a metro station, stopping a policeman for directions. We eventually worked our way back to Kugayama, but took the north exit rather than the south and found a park with a play castle that Alex hadn't known about. We climbed the castle walls and then wandered through some more streets to a small Buddhist shrine, with Alex providing Japanese lessons along the way, and all the way back to his place.

Tokyo - Day 2 - Crepe Party

-- 10/6/2016 - Written from Kugayama and on the Inokashira Express Line --

I woke up around 7:40am, somehow feeling great, and took the morning slowly. The shower in Alex's apartment took some getting used to (there is a whole room in the bathroom that is a shower stall and bathtub). I hung out with Alex for a bit, and then followed him out the door on his way to work to grab some food.

I stopped for bagels at Honey's Bagel, while Alex ran ahead to catch his train. I picked out one that had almonds on top of it, which turned out be a small, sweet flavored bagel with a chocolate filling, not unlike a croissant aux chocolate, but chewy instead of flaky. I took it back to Alex's apartment to take care of a couple internet chores I needed to finish, and then set out for Harajuku.

I was already hungry, so I went looking for a gyoza restaurant that was, according to my Tokyo guidebook, well known and favored by the locals. I had a really hard time finding it, largely because I was too nervous to ask anyone for directions. When I did find it, I was not let down by the food, but the 1,000 yard stares on the faces of the staff told me it was a soul crushing place to work, and maybe just a tourist trap. I began to think I shouldn’t put very much faith in my guidebook.

For the rest of the day, I walked.  First I went up into Meiji Jingu, an artificial forest planted around a Shinto shrine dedicated to Emperor Meiji. I went to the shrine, and then out the north end of the park and walked through the neighborhoods of Sendagaiya and Roppongi Hills, and then part way back to Sendagaiya for a subway that would take me back to Shibuya. By then it was 5:30 and extremely dark (Japan doesn't do Daylight Savings), but I still had a ways to go before Alex would be off work. 

I decided to go in search of a nice sounding craft beer taphouse called Good Beer Faucets. The problem was that I didn't have any idea where to look for the place. So I found the neighborhood that my guidebook said it would be in and walked up and down each block of the neighborhood in search of the bar. No luck. My feet were aching, so I decided to use some of the precious data roaming that my phone plan allowed to look up directions. I had passed it several times the night before while orbiting Shibuya station...on the opposite side of the station that I was looking for it in. By that point, I basically gave up on my guidebook.

Going into Good Beer Faucets was a really strange experience. It was on the second floor of a triangular building, and was accessed by a big external staircase. Everyone working there could see me coming up the stairs, and greeted me with the usual call of "Irasshaimasu!!!" But half of the people working there were not Japanese. My american waiter seated me at the bar in front of a television playing Mars Attacks, covered with stickers of Oregonian, Californian, and American breweries that I recognized.

I decided to order from the list of house-made brews instead of having a beer I could have gotten in Portland. First I went with a Smoke Stout (that what it's called, Smoke Stout), which reminded me a lot of Basecamp's s'mores stout. Then I had fries and a Cream Ale (that's what it's called, Cream Ale), which won a local award for being so good. It tasted like a super malty lager or something. I'd go into more detail (mostly for you, Dave, if you read this), but I don't have a wide vocabulary for flavor.

I got a text near the end of my second drink while watching the Japan v. Iraq soccer match the bartender had switched to, and left to meet Alex at a party for one of his friends that was going away. We met up at Higashi-Matsubara (halfway between Shibuya and his house) before grabbing some drinks for the party. We got a bunch of different owl beers (that's not what it's called, they just had an owl on its logo), then went over to Audrey and Ivar's apartment.

Audrey turned out to be a French woman who was initially confused that some stranger had turned up at her door with Alex. But we were both invited in and Audrey and her Swedish husband Ivar showed us a bunch of food (salmon pasta salad, meat balls, tomato and cheese skewers, a cheese loaf) and some very alcoholic punch. After hanging around and getting to know some of the folks, Audrey pulled out 30 crepes she had made ahead of time, and we loaded them up with chocolate, apple and bananas, caramel, straberry jam, and whip cream. Nutella was also available, but it was made clear that it was considered an unethical topping considering how much the palm oil industry fucks over local economies and environments. 

We ended up playing Cards Against Humanity, which usually makes me uncomfortable because I can't tell if it's a game about deconstructing awful power-relationships or about reinforcing and indulging in them (see Phoebe Rusch 2016; or sexual assault allegations against one of the co-creators). This particular game was really fun, even when a couple of the players didn't understand all of the references.

Eventually, Alex and I left to catch the last train, but first Audrey and I exchanged numbers so that she could give me advice on where to go during my stay in Tokyo.