Danny in Asia

I’m traveling with a discount rail ticket called the seishun ju-hachi kippu, which translates to the “youthful 18 ticket.” You don’t have to be youthful to buy it as the name implies, but it does include some restrictions. You can only buy and use it three times a year during the school holidays in the winter, spring, and summer. The ticket is good for five days or up to five people in one day, and is good for unlimited travel within the day it’s validated.

The ticket is a great option if you have plenty of time, as it is only good for local and rapid train service (no bullet or express trains). I recommend it for those travelers who either live in Japan, are visiting friends and have fewer time restrictions, or are linking Japan with travel from or to other Asia countries. I have found this ticket works perfectly in combination with ferry service between Korea or China because five days can give you a leisurely one-way trip between Tokyo and Western Japan, but a round-trip would be rushed and difficult without previous experience negotiating Japanese train schedules and stations. Not to say it isn’t possible. I met a guy who had made it from Tokyo to Hiroshima in one day traveling from first train to last train. He had to transfer over a dozen times, but made it. Make sure you bring a good book.

If you think you can cope with the conditions, this ticket is a real travel bargain at 11,500 yen. Ticket details can be found here.

I left Osaka last night on the last train to Nara, about 40 minutes away, and arrived just after midnight. Nearly tempted by the 5,000yen hotel across from the station, I decided to make the 2 kilometer walk to Nara park, the home to several world heritage sites, the cultural relics of Japan’s first official capital, and over a thousand mangy deer.

I’ve heard of the deer of Nara park several times, formulating an image of green grass, idyllic shrines, and the occasionally family of deer traipsing across the scene. My first encounter as I walked up the main road to the park was with a deer who was happily scattering trash across the sidewalk and into the street. I passed him and he barely batted an eye. Soon I could see in the open space to my right that the place is teeming with them. The field was scattered with dozens of sleeping mounds, making it clear that this would be a poor place to camp. As I walked further into the park the trees became more dense, and as the frightened deer started running away from this bizarre night walker, I realized they wouldn’t bother me if I set up camp for the night.

I found a nice spot free of deer shit behind a large tree located in a fence corner. This would keep me out of view from the early risers I’m sure walk the park every morning. Last night was clear as a bell and very cold, making me realize how much down my sleeping bag has lost. Just when I was about to drift off something jumped on my legs. I kicked and flailed a few seconds until I knew whatever it was had gone. But it wasn’t gone. My new friend had scurried up the tree and was now chirping loudly, alerting all its forest friends of the security breach. There was an intruder in the park tonight.

After about ten minutes of this racket I looked up in the tree to catch a glimpse of this thing. At this point I wasn’t sure if it was a bird or rodent, but then it flew to the neighboring tree through a shaft of moonlight, revealing its identity. It was a giant flying squirrel, or musasabi as it’s known in these parts.

It never occurred to me how lucky I was to see this little guy because he proceeded to chirp at me for the next two hours until being distracted by bigger matters, namely the fiery orb in the sky that was beginning to rise. That little asshole. I hate musasabi.

A couple motorbikes buzzed by an hour later letting me know that the land of the living was starting to stir. I got up and looked around at my surroundings for the first time in daylight. I had picked a beautiful place to set up camp, right next to the Kasuga Taisha Shrine. Strangely enough I felt rested and ready to start my day of exploring Nara. I packed up my bag and set off to find a locker to store my big bag for the day.

Nara park is huge. You can easily spend an entire day here exploring the shrines, museums, and trail network that connects the sites through a combination of open and wooded spaces. The most impressive of Nara‘s sites is the enormous Todai-ji, the world’s largest wooden building. It’s hard to fully appreciate its size until you step inside and stand beside the tree-sized pillars that support the structure. The building houses one of the world’s largest bronze Buddhas, also difficult to put in perspective. The statue was built in 751 and the current building in 1709. A model replica of the original building, completed in 745, is displayed next to the current one, amazingly dwarfed by the original by 2/3rds!

From Todai-ji I walked up the hill to some other large shrines and admired the view of Nara plain on this perfect winter day. The shrines of Nara are impressive, but the highlight of my day was hiking a forest trail up Mount Mikasa. This natural forest is a real treat when compared to the methodically planted industrial cedar forests that dominate much of Japan ‘s mountains.

I didn’t intend to do the whole hike, but met a Japanese man along the way who has lived overseas in America and Australia for 15 years. We enjoyed a great conversation as we hiked along at a terrific pace. By the time I got back down to the trailhead I barely had enough energy to limp through Kasuga Taisha Shine, last night’s camping spot.

My feet had had enough. I enjoyed a beautiful day in Nara and it was time to start the trip back to Tokyo. If I got on the train early enough I could possibly get home by late evening. As I sit on the train now, I know I’ll be cutting it close.

When you reserve your seat on the bullet train or an express route, you settle into your seat for the ride and that’s where you’ll be. You could luck out with some talkative neighbors, or enjoy the trip by yourself, but your fate is always sealed from the start. I’ve found the ju-hachi kippu provides more interaction with locals by simple odds. With this ticket you end up getting on and off a lot of trains, increasing your chance of meeting some nice folks.

Yesterday was an amazing day on trains. Maybe it was the outgoing westerners, my big pack that screams “traveler”, or simple dumb luck, but I enjoyed a steady stream of conversations the entire trip back to Tokyo.

On my way to Nagoya an old man asked if he could practice his English. At 70, his mastery of the language was great for the ten years he’d been studying since retirement. During our chat the young woman sitting next to me kept looking over as if eavesdropping. When we all got off in Nagoya I caught up with her and asked if she spoke English. She didn’t, but we began chatting about the old man’s exceptional English and, presto, I had landed my next person to talk to for the next leg of the journey to Hamamatsu.

From Hamamatsu to Shizuoka I found a hostel owner from Kyoto who was traveling with his daughter. He had studied in New York and every so often a slight Brooklyn accent shone through. We got to talking about all the nationalities he’s met running the hostel and before we knew it he’d overshot his stop. I felt kind of bad.

As I neared Tokyo a young girl with a roller suitcase sat beside me. I asked her if she’d heard the train arrival time announced on the speaker.

“No, I also missed it,” she said in perfect English. “You are also traveling with seishun ju-hachi kippu, yes?”

“Yes. I started in Shimonoseki after arriving from Korea.”

“Oh yes,” she said with surprise. “You know because I’m Korean!”

Her name was Youn Jeong, 20, and she had been touring Japan for three weeks solo. From looking through her stamp book it appeared she had left no stone unturned. There was a cute energy about her and a naive sparkle in her eye.

“Why are you traveling alone?” I asked.

“Well you see my family and me have different holidays, and I am a strong addiction to travel.” There was a terse frankness in her voice that added character to everything she said, like she was letting me in on a secret that obviously everyone knew but me.

The timing was perfect. Having just come from Korea I had a laundry list of questions to ask, and we had plenty of time to get through them all.

When we pulled into Tokyo station at 11:30 I had been sitting on a train 9 hours, but it had gone by so fast. We bid our farewells and parted. There would be no camping in Tokyo and all my friends in town weren’t answering, so I decided to make the final push home and see how far I get.

The Tsukuba Express train line opened in late 2005, linking large areas of Chiba and Ibaraki prefectures with high speed Tokyo-bound rail service. Although I live in a tiny rural town surrounded by rice paddies, I can be in Tokyo in about an hour. Tokyo’s proximity to small towns has spurned the social phenomenon of the weekend dad. Thousands of families choose to live in suburban and rural Kanto, away from crowded Tokyo, while the breadwinner lives in the big city five nights a week in an apartment or dormitory.

Every Friday the salarymen fathers and husbands of Kanto board trains like the Tsukuba Express to start their weekly family time. It is a somber procession of silence, where passenger’s eyes tell stories of lonely lives spent more often drinking with the boss or sleeping than with their families. I’m on a car full of these shells. Half of them will spend their precious family time hungover or sleeping off exhaustion. It is a strange way to end this trip, and I find it more difficult to ignore these sad characters like I usually do. There is something about Tokyo that is different from the rest of Japan. There is an air of hopeless dedication that reaches such heights as to choke off any dreams of a better life, as if such a possibility could never even exist. In the past year I’ve become more disillusioned with the capital. It’s not the crowds and pace that I can’t stand, but the faces of these men; their mechanical lives. I feel empty in their presence.

It is 12:26am. I’m on the second to last train bound for Moriya. I’m tired and hungry and want to go home. I hope I can transfer trains in Moriya, but it’s late and I don’t expect the rural Joso line to be running at this hour. I made the decision in Tokyo that if I’m going to be stuck somewhere tonight, I should be stuck somewhere I can camp. I imagine I’ll be stuck in Moriya. The man next to me is very drunk and very unhappy. He keeps pounding his fist into his forehead, recounting some awful memory. I shift to the other side of the car. I can’t watch him anymore.

It is fitting for me to see this now after experiencing so much of western Honshu. My past year in Japan has made me steadily more negative about society here. When I look at the sad faces of commuter trains or hear the stories of infidelity, divorce, or loveless persistence by lonely housewives, I don’t blame the individuals for their fates, but rather the strict system of social controls that exist. Japan’s culture is rigid and most live according to its rules. In Tokyo these examples are most salient.

Tokyo is a super-capital. Every political or economic decision goes through this city, if not originated here. More often than not, I’ve found, these decisions don’t make Japan a better place. It boils down to how much people enjoy life. On paper Japan is one of the world’s wealthiest countries, but wealth doesn’t translate to livability as Tokyo proves. Everywhere I see examples of the bizarre slice of the world this “economic miracle” has carved for itself; crowded, uncomfortable, and cold.

I didn’t want to include some actually useful travel advice at the end of such a negative post. All that bagging on Tokyo did get me to this point:

For travelers thinking of coming to Japan I would suggest spending less time in the Kanto region (Tokyo). Most of Tokyo’s sites can be seen in a day or two, and the Kansai region (Osaka) to the west offers similar sites plus a whole lot more.

Osaka is big, crazy, and packed with just as much neon quirkiness as Tokyo. From Kansai you can see so much more in short day trips, or quick overnighters. The sites around Tokyo in Kanto are more limited.

I’ll break it down by comparing similar destinations in both regions. My top three Kanto spots are Nikko, Yokohama, and Kamakura, all of which have an interchangeable rival in Kansai.

1. While Nikko is my favorite place in Japan, getting there from Tokyo is quite a long trek. The feeling and beauty of Nara rivals Nikko and is only a 40 minute train ride from Osaka or Kyoto.

2. The open air, refreshing feeling of Yokohama can also be experienced in Kobe, 40 minutes from Osaka, where you can also stroll through an incredibly clean, overpriced Chinatown, and see the world’s longest suspension bridge.

3. As for Kamakura, its main attraction is a large bronze Buddha which is smaller than the Buddha in Nara.

Above all, the feeling in Kansai is so much more open. It felt more talkative generally and I was approached on nearly every train I got on, a rarity in my Tokyo/Kanto travels. Apart from the similar sites mentioned, Kansai offers Kyoto, easily 3-4 days worth of sites; Himeji, a beautifully maintained traditional castle; Shikoku, Japan’s smallest big island, separated from Honshu by the majestic inland sea; and Hiroshima, an easy overnight excursion to explore tragic history and the metropolis that’s risen from the ashes.

I’ve met so many travelers who base their travels in Kanto, and do side trips to Kansai, mainly Kyoto. You should do the reverse. Fly into Narita, spend a night in Tokyo at the beginning and end of the trip, but set up camp in the West. Centrally located Kansai has it all if Japan is your destination.

I caught the last train from Moriya to Mitsukaido on the Joso line at 1:10am. This was better than I had expected. Considering I boarded my first train of the day in Nara at 2pm, I had really done well in my travels. The problem is that I live in Ishige, five short stops north of Mitsukaido. I would have rather been stranded in Moriya for the night where I would have had no choice but to camp. Now I am stuck a mere 12 kilometers from my bed and shower. The choice is obvious. I can walk 12 km in less than 4 hours, the time before the trains start again, so walking it will be. The curry plate from 7-eleven isn’t treating my stomach very kindly. Probably not the best choice after going so long without food. This trip is all about starvation. My feet are well rested after my epic train ride. With a crack of the beer I’m off.

It turned out being a 2.5 hour, three beer (two tallboys and a shorty) trip. At the halfway point I was no longer fresh, I was dragging. But soon the white silhouette of the Ishige community center/castle could be seen standing out from the black night sky. No matter how long I walked it always appeared to stay the same distance away. But I made it.

From Seoul to my apartment, I traveled over land and sea approximately 1,060 miles (1,700 km), and saw a lot in these wonderful two weeks. It is always nice to return home.

Yes, English is difficult. Any language is difficult. Most rewarding undertakings in life are difficult. We adults realize this, but must keep this fact secret from the kids.

There is a second grade teacher at one of the larger elementary schools where I teach who is passing on her learning insecurities to her impressionable young students, and I’m trying to stop it. She is a nice enough woman and gives me snacks everyday after class since we’re desk neighbors in the teacher’s room. But she’s a baby talker, taking this annoying habit to such new heights that I can hardly stand talking to her. The baby voice is a phenomenon in Japan that continues to bother me. The diminutive woman is still preferred, I guess. You’ll hear it when you get change at the grocery store, in chain restaurants, or in some elementary school classrooms as I’ve discovered.

This particular teacher talks to 8 year olds like they’re 2, and me like I’m 8. I’ve severed all pleasantries with her because of this but every day the candy shows up on my desk like clockwork. I eat it and say arigato. In the morning she sighs and mentions something about “ew, so tired.” I nod and continue preparing for her class later in the day. By the time her class arrives I’ve told myself to ignore her comments, but I find it hard. With second graders there is only so much that can be introduced to them before they tune out or retention becomes impossible. She waits for me to approach this line; I can see she wants to say it.

“It’s my grandfather,” I belt out. “He is smart.” The students barely finish repeating the sentence before she chimes in with her high pitched sigh:

“Eeew, Engrish so DIFF-culto!” Oh yes, now they understand. Well done.

I say something condescending to her, right into her eyes, like “they’re smart” or “they can handle it.” She’s not listening. English is too difficult to even begin listening for this type.

Encouraging this type of mentality infuriates me. Yes, Japanese face some major hurdles when tackling most Western languages, especially regarding grammar and pronunciation. But to explain these challenges to 8 year olds in inexcusable. To these kids English is just something else to learn, another batch of fun new facts to soak up in their spongy little brains. But when teachers reinforce negative attitudes about language they start to believe what they’re being told. What the teacher says must be true, right?

The most important thing for teachers to teach is the attitude that everything is learnable, to encourage curiosity, and model these at all times. This is a difficult step for Japan.

It’s been interesting to see how the students’ reactions to me have changed over the course of the year. Initially I was looking forward to teaching fifth and sixth graders based on my positive experience teaching Chinese elementary kids last March. Japanese kids are different. I quickly found this age to be difficult. They’re shy and almost paralyzed by the fear of breaking away from their peers. The group mentality dominant in Japan starts to take root around the third or fourth grades and by the end of the sixth grade whatever is deemed cool by the leaders becomes the law of the land. Obviously in the start of the school year English class wasn’t cool.

The younger kids reacted differently. For many of them I was maybe the first foreigner they’d spoken with, possibly even seen in this small town. I am an alien to them and they remind me every day of this fact. I am tall, as is my nose. My eyes are reportedly scary…but in a good way…maybe. The young kids liked me a lot at first, but as the newness of having another foreigner around wore off I started to blend into the scenery like any other teacher.

What has happened over the course of the year has been a reversal of roles that is indicative of age. The older students have steadily warmed up to me and the young kids have grown bored of me like an old toy. I used to dread climbing the three stories up to the sixth graders rooms, but now look forward to their classes. It just shows the change kids start going through at 11 or 12. They are leery of new people, especially someone who doesn’t look like them. I’ve had to play a lot of soccer and spend many hours jumping rope to earn their respect.

This human being thing is fun.

Sunday, February 11, 2007

The sun shining through the curtains this morning was an unexpected surprise. Last night we fell asleep to the sound of a downpour and expected a day spent relaxing indoors.

The rain cleansed the air of its rural haze and a strong wind is helping as well. Today was the perfect day I’ve been waiting for to return to Mt. Tsukuba for a hike. I climbed this mountain over two years ago right after I arrived in Japan and I’ve felt I’ve wasted the opportunity to return in the past ten months, seeing that I live within eye-shot of the peak.

Japan is covered mostly in rugged mountains, but you wouldn’t know it just visiting Tokyo or the surrounding Kanto region. This flat area is only disrupted by three famous peaks, Mt. Fuji (Japan’s largest and most famous) to the south, Mt. Takao to the west, and Mt. Tsukuba to the north. Tsukuba-san, as it’s called in Japanese, offers a peaceful retreat where you can climb the tangle of roots and boulders to the summit and enjoy a hot bowl of noodles. If the hike up wears you out, not to worry. There is a railcar you can catch for the trip down for 570 yen.

The best thing about hiking in Japan is the attitude of the people you encounter. In day to day life Japanese people become experts in blocking out the noise and crowds of modern Japan. With so many people around it’s to be expected. When they venture into the outdoors people really come out of their shells and become chatty. They become konnichiwa machines.

Everyone we passed today said hello, or ganbatte (don’t give up), or daijoubu (are you okay?). It really added a lot to the already beautiful day. When we got to the top of this 877 meter peak the wind was howling, so we only had a brief time to enjoy the view. Laid out before us was the flat expansive grid of rice paddies, roads, and small towns that make up southern Ibaraki prefecture. To the north the rest of the mountain stretches toward the proper mountains of Tochigi and Gunma prefectures along a narrow ridgeline. Because of the exceptionally clear weather we could see the towering silhouette of Mt. Fuji on the horizon to the south. I never even thought to look for the peak from here, assuming it would be too far to see. But there it was, a gray smudge in the distance that slowly grew pink, then purple, then faded away into the night sky with the setting sun on her western shoulder. I’m happy I waited patiently for this perfect day on Tsukuba-san.