blog migrating

the blog has been migrated to http://asianonastick.typepad.com oh, i had my reasons. thats enough out of you.

hurray for sta...

my travel agent has pre-booked me at the Vengtai Hotel (located one block from the "dubious backpacker mecca" of khao san road, in the words of harvard's let's go writers). i must say, this was a brilliant choice. by placing me in an enormously luxurious fortress situated alongside the exaggerated bustle and grotesque excess of thailand's seediest tourist district, i am both simultaneously terrified to descend from and exceptionally well taken care of in my 4th floor suite. furthermore, by staying alone in a district where backpackers and tourists are even more numerous than locals, i feel incapable of communicating with other travelers (the "you're white?! i'm white!" would be a little contrived). hence, though i am surrounded by people i feel more anxious and isolated than i have at any other moment thus far. bravo, i say. bravo. so i must find other accommodations as soon as possible. the "uno house" in kyoto was actually, despite the cramped quarters, a wonderfully rustic little place to stay with a good community of backpackers (just in case it seems like i spend most of my time complaining). i will eventually get that day of kyoto sightseeing up, i swear... now i just have to go out and figure how i'm going to get myself an indian visa and out of this place as soon as is manageable.

malaria/dengue watch is on

the little fucker bit right through my shirt and left a bright red mark on my back that stings like hell

Bangkok's Khao San road...

a hidden gem exemplifying the worst excesses of crass consumption-based tourism, untouched by the ravages of natural beauty and/or authentic culture. i was going to do some photo essay type posting on the sightseeing in kyoto, but i feel exhausted and blown out after just a couple of hours here (i was also up at 6am to grab the flight). needless to say, i forgot that actual developing world destinations (even, and perhaps especially, those heavily trafficked by tourits) take some getting used to.

what about the sightseeing?

a lengthy post including pictures and detailed explanations of what i actually did in kyoto is forthcoming. had to get all the snarky posts and the learning curve on links and photos out of the way first.

european backpacker man

This is european backpacker man. He travels the developing world with nothing but a rucksack, quirky facial hair, and an utterly refreshing lack of shame. Here he is in his natural habitat, gyrating in the general direction of local women to foreign disco music, bringing them some combination of amusement and embarassment, tinged with just a dash of sexual curiousity. I think I have a lot to learn from european backpacker man.

awkward moments in backpacking, volume 2

the day before yesterday i rode the japanese bullet train (Shinkansen!) from tokyo to kyoto. i sat in the aisle seat of a row of three with two japanese businessmen to my left. the awkward moment: trying to pretend i was asleep while the japanese businessmen enjoyed a nudie mag together.

awkward moments in backpacking, volume 1

yesterday i was asked by a not unattractive and amazonian-sized female australian backpacker the following question - "what is it with short white guys and asian girls?" the awkward moment: trying to answer with a straight face "well... im not really sure what exactly you mean."

outrageously expensive items i have bought in japan

melon - $9.00 shot of gin - $10.00 this internet access - $12.40

cultural exchange in kyoto

walking down a major avenue in kyoto today, i was stopped by an intense, 50ish japanese man. he wasn:t rude or aggressive but nor did he seem particularly friendly. we had the following conversation in a very terse, businesslike manner- "do you speak english?" "yes" "where are you from?" "the united states" "where?" "california" "thank you for speaking" (bows, returns to street corner)

moderately sized trouble in little kyoto

i walked around the streets of kyoto today for three hours desperately trying to find an ATM that would accept my wells fargo card after i blew 5000￥last night at a disco (thats 5,000 pennies for those of you who are counting!). newsflash to me, apparently most machines in the country only accept japanese cards to screw helpless foreigners who didnt plan ahead. by three pm i was sunburned, exhausted, and ready to make my way back to the hostel and tell them i:d have to do dishes for the night or give them a massage with a "happy ending" to pay for my room (my room is actually, i shit you not, a sleeping bag on the floor with 8 other people side by side in a line, and this costs 20 dollars a night), as a last ditch effort i walked into a 7-11, thinking they might, just might, have an international machine (AMPM here does not have one, does not give cash back, and sells hot udon noodles at 4 in the morning,　hurray). and thats when i saw her. a blond haired, rosy cheeked white girl, donning a faded 7-11 apron and crouched on the floor, placing shampoo bottles onto the shelf. a fresh faced little annie, escaped from her ancestral home in shopshire or dublin or topeka, toiling away under an evil japanese step mother until one day she can sail home and rejoin her people, all the wiser for having stared the land of 24 hour cyber cafes and condom vending machines in the face. so im figuring, heres someone who can finally help my desperate ass when all of a sudden i had a terrifying thought - "maybe this girl doesn:t speak a lick of english." i figure, california must have thousands of asian girls who couldnt order their way in an asian restaurant out of a rice paper bag, let alone converse with one of their own in the "native tongue." maybe this girl was born and raised her entire life in japan - an american "nell," if you will, who could only communicate with me in bizarre animal like moans and rapid bows. of course, it turned out she spoke beautiful english after all - probably british or australian. she directed me to an enormous department store up the road which hides international ATM machines on the 7th floor, where i silently thanked the dear lord for another safe day of traveling in my dangerous, unplanned, half assed sort of way. but i still cant help but think to myself, what if. maybe youre out there somewhere, my little japanese white girl. crying out for your latino jewish american hero, donning a german passport and synthetic tighty whities from REI. just maybe...

tokyo, oh tokyo

i suppose its not surprising to find out that Tokyo is pretty similar to other major first-world cities (even in the exotic "orient"), at least on the surface. people seem to look pretty normal, busy and going about their business just like anywhere else (although the concept of "business casual" is notably slow in arriving). today i spent wandering around mostly aimlessly with another hotel guest, seeing a few of tokyo's relatively dismal "tourist sites." the experience was not dissimilar to wandering aimlessly around new york, except that the streets were cleaner, the men are shorter, and the per capita concentration of pornography is much higher (tokyo, where is your rudy guliani?) i had my one "silly american tourist" faux pas at a ramen house, when i accidentally used an ashtray to concoct a delicious dumpling dipping sauce (it had no notches to rest the cigarrette - it could have happened to the best of us, i swear). our waitress covered her mouth daintily and was all a-giggles; i hope i've given her a funny american story to share with friends and family. one unusual thing i've noticed is the extreme death of "westerners" - given that a significant proportion of the signs are also in english i would have expected a reasonably sized expat/tourist population. but i probably saw all of 5 or 6 the entire day (and gave them the "you're white?! i'm white!" nod). maybe they hole them up in another part of the city and slap them with a white man curfew. another surprise is that a lot of japanese food and japanese architecture in the united states is surprisingly accurate to the "real" thing - the "real" thing being the parts of the city made up of post 1940s-firebombing architecture and featuring prominently in tourist guides. maybe (hopefully) this will change when i move out of the capital , but i will say the temple in the japanese imperial gardens looks suspiciously like "samurai restaurant" in solana beach, minus a hibachi grill. going to see if i can make my way to kyoto tomorrow. unfortunately i was too cheap to buy a japan guide book, so i will be relying on the kindness of strangers (speaking at best rudimentary english) to get me from point A to point B.

its 4am in tokyo and...

i wonder how many letters, blogs, emails, diarys, etc, have started with the words "its 4am in Tokyo." That... no... wait for it... FOURTEEN HOUR time difference is a killer.

so I arrived sometime yesterday evening on a flight bound from LAX on which, lucky me, a 20+ group of Asia bound marines happened to be traveling. as such, i was doomed to travel 11 hours in a middle seat, although luckily between a small elderly, pear shaped japanese woman (who only once visibly displayed emotion - amusement - when i tore open the seaweed packet too hard and got flakes all over myself) and a recent japanese engineering graduate who'd been visiting friends at UCLA and invited me to hang out if i ever make my way over to nagoya (i don't know if this was a "pity the poor american move", a "we japanese actually *are* much friendler than americans" move, or a "i just graduated and work my new soulless engineering job all day and please... just... im so lonely..." move).

oh, and the flight onboard salty snack was fish based! hurray for asia!

thus far i have experienced neither a torrent nor a trickle of culture shock - but bear in mind the whole of my asia experience so far has been getting to the airport, navigating the forbiddingly complex but delightfuly colorful train system to get to my hotel, and crashing head first onto my floor mat . Basically everyone is, you know, japanese, and everyone, you know, speaks japanese (which can be tricky). But other than that... two a thumbs up for Tokyo!

i accidentally left my digital camera USB cable in the states, but pictures of these mundane events and many more will be up as soon as i get a new one. lucky for me, i happen to be in the country that invented my digital cameria USB cable.