That's all, folks!

Your suspicions are correct: I'm home.
That last cryptic entry, which was meant to look like it was written in Tokyo, was actually written from my brother's place in Philly. I did my best to recover from jet lag there for a few days (epic failure - I was a zombie for days! Thanks, toddler on the plane who proved it's possible to scream for 9 consecutive hours without collapsing from exhaustion...). After that we visited my Dad's family in Albany and pulled a fantastic surprise on my Mom in Rhinebeck. She had no idea I was coming home, so we just showed up at her house on Sunday unannounced. It was great - the full-scale double-take and everything. Well worth the bit of secrecy.
Since then I've been busily visiting, catching cold, and working on getting my life going again. It's true what they say: there's no place like home. I've never been so excited to apply for a job, see an old neighborhood, hear a familiar song, or lay eyes on friends in my life. True story: while driving back from my mother's house, "This Land Is Your Land" came on the radio, and I was singing along until I had to stop - the giant smile on my face was throwing my pitch. It's the little things that make being home just as exciting and wonderful as being away.
But it won't be of nearly as much interest to you guys out there in cyberspace, so as much as I'm sure you'd be fascinated by the chronicles of my trips to Target after work, this will be the end of the road for The Mobile Ms. T. I hope you've all enjoyed reading it as much as I've enjoyed writing to you. Thank you so much for all your participation in my good days and support in the not-so-good ones. It was a great connection to home for me.
And who knows...hopefully someday in the not so distant future you'll get an email saying I've shouldered my backpack once again and The Mobile Ms. T is back in business...
'till then, I am
Katie, The Mobile Ms. T, signing off.

Reflections on months well spent

Well, I've kind of been a bum so far today, but it gave me a chance to think. I've been in something of a reflective mood as my trip comes to a close, and I started realizing that I have stuffed a lifetime's worth of incredible experiences into a few short months.

I have cheered for a yokozuna.
I have eaten soup with my hands.
I have improved my chopstick skills...but not by much.
I have learned to say "thank you" in almost a dozen languages.
I have been blessed by wandering holy men.
I have gone swimming in the Nile.
I have talked politics with an ambitious Liberian refugee.
I have seen giraffes shillouetted against Lake Manyara.
I have heard a shofar blow at sunrise on Mt. Sinai.
I have caught glimpses of two endangered species.
I have had my horoscope read by a yogi.
I have paid my respects at the tombs of King David and Jesus.
I have ridden in busses with armed men...and women!
I have surveyed all of Africa spread out before me from the slopes of her highest mountain.
I have been caught up in an international incident.
I have bargained for spices in an ancient market.
I have shuddered in a dungeon meant for slaves, and felt the privilege of walking out again.
I have been in a Bollywood movie.
I have looked into the faces of pharaohs.
I have entered forbidden royal tombs and palaces.
I have visited tribal villages in the hills of Laos.
I have watched the sun set over the Taj Mahal.
I have gotten close enough to wild lions to hear them breathe.
I have eaten sushi fresh out of the ocean...and thanked the chef in Japanese.
I have raced Nubian children down sand dunes.
I have watched Massai herdsmen moving their cattle to new pastures.
I have touched the Western Wall of Solomon's Temple...and been touched by it.
I have lived in villages that didn't have full time electricity.
I have filled my passport's pages with stamps.
And most of all I have learned the sweetness of coming home again.

I can't wait to see everybody! Not long now...

Finishing last night's post.

So the rest of my amazing day.
First, Sumo. I actually really enjoyed it. You heard me, I sat at a sporting event for 4 hours and liked it. The guys are amazingly powerful. It reminded me for all the world of all those Animal Planet specials where the water buffalo bulls go clashing into each other. Huge but fast and agile. And I got a little radio with English commentary on it, which helped me figure out some of the finer points of the sport. But the highlight (at least for the two announcers) was when the goji (official dressed in a bright and elaborate kimono) tripped and went flying out of the ring into the battery of photographers. The former wrestler on the commentary team thought it was the funniest thing he'd ever seen. But for me, the highlight was the yokozunas. Those are the top guys in the sport. It's a title kind of like "prima ballerina" - it's an honorific that you can never lose once you've got it, unlike something like "champion," which only lasts as long as you can hold the title. So these guys have won tons of tournaments to get where they are. There were two yokozunas fighting last night, and each one of them comes out and does a short ceremony to show off what big, bad dudes they are. It's a lot of macho posturing, but with more dignity and less clothing. The yokozuna vs. yokozuna match was amazing. Usually they're over in a flash, but these guys were so skilled and well-matched that it went on for over a minute. So sumo has a new fan.
After that, I dashed onto the subway to catch the last act of the kabuki show. I was wishing I'd gotten the English commentary, because I missed a lot in the dialogue. I got the general idea, but since a lot of the comedy was based on verbal wit, I missed a lot of the jokes. But it was still very cool to watch. A word to my Colonial Chorus people: I have a new plan for how to deal with Techs getting seen. Do what the kabuki guys do and just dress them as ninjas. Nobody seems to think twice about seeing a ninja slinking across the stage, and if they do, they'll get a kick out of it...at least I did. The other highlight of the evening was the geisha. Two of them were being shown to their seats by way of the orchestra pit area, so everybody got a good look at them. Apparently they're rare in Tokyo, because everybody leaned out over the railing to get a closer look. So real live geisha! Cool!
After that I went to Starbucks for another lavendar tea and journal-updating session, and from there on to the onsen for another bath before bed. Man, I love a good hot spring. Maybe I'll move to Iceland...they're everywhere up there... :)
Today was a very relaxed day. I walked through the imperial gardens, and the weather decided to do me a little favor. It's been unseasonably warm around here the past few days, so a couple cherry trees got confused and bloomed. They're beautiful, and when you bury your face in a bough full of blooms (which I'm not ashamed to do), they smell heavenly. A couple elderly ladies walking and admiring a few paces behind me agreed...sugoi. Excellent. So in spite of the fact that I visited out of season, I got to do a little sakura viewing after all. My luck is extraordinary. I can't believe it - blossoms in January!
After that it was off to a little shrine, feeling most peaceful and relaxed, and then back to the Kabuki-za for one more show. This one needed no explanation. It was a dancer mourning over lost love. It was exquisite. If you've seen Memoirs of a Geisha, the dance she does must have been inspired by this one. It's a woman walking in a snowy landscape, complete with snowfall. She's dressed in beautiful kimono (which change like magic in an instant with the pull of a few strings), and the lighting is very dark and ominous. As the dance went on, she became more and more wild with grief. Her elaborately done hair fell out and she ended it looking as if she'd run out of the house into the snow in her nightshirt. It was amazingly performed, and their lighting and set designer deserve a medal. Beautiful. Exactly what I was hoping to see while I was here....you can't beat it.
Tonight I'm staying in a capsule hotel. I'm tired of the smoky-smelling place I'm staying now, so I figured I'd try out the capsule thing...should be interesting. But supposedly I have a TV in my cube...I can watch CNN! Yay! Maybe I can catch some inauguration coverage in the morning!! Bye bye Lonesome George!

What a day!

First, I want to tell you about two things that are awesome. Starbucks lavendar tea lattes, and onsens. I hate to plug the evil conglomerate, but you can't get that stuff anywhere else. Remind me why America stopped using flowers in its food?
Onsens are amazing. I've been to one in the neighborhood the past two nights. Nothing like a trip to the sauna followed by a meter-deep, scalding hot mineral bath to recharge the batteries. America needs more public baths. You walk outta there feeling like a million bucks. Did I mention America needs them? If Japan brought us the concept of death from overwork as a corporate drone, it also brought the ultimate de-stressing mechanism. We should follow their example...on the bathing...not the stress...

Anyway, I woke up early this morning and went to the wholesale fish market. I missed the auction, apparently it's insanely early as opposed to "really early," which is when I got there. Then, since I was there, I waited in line (with a film crew, interestingly) for the sushi place on the dock. It was the most amazing sushi I've ever had. It was actually beautiful to look at. It was so fresh it gleamed (I'm sorry Nikki...I know it's because it was alive not so long ago...I know you're cringeing as you read this). But it was delicious. The texture was so delicate, and the salmon tasted like what think heaven probably tastes like. Incredible. Worth the hour-long wait.

After that, I took the subway up to the sumo stadium and got nosebleed seats to the tournament. Turns out they're pretty good seats! Since I was there so early, it was still amateur hour, so I went to the Tokyo-Edo museum to kill some time (great collection there). Then it was sumo time! I hung out by the South Gate with the superfans getting pictures of the wrestlers as they came up. Then I went in to my seat for the grand parade of giant wrasslers. It was awesome. So much pageantry and tradition. I loved it up. And it turns out I kind of like sumo wrestling itself, too. I'll explain more later, because they're trying to close up shop here (it's midnight and I've been going all day!).
But it was awesome. I loved it, then I went to see some Kabuki. Which was also awesome. G'nite! More when they're not shutting the lights out on me...!

Tokyo is strange...

Or rather, Harajuku is strange. You jump out of the subway, and you immediately see a crowd of teenaged girls in funky getups. It's like the Hot Topic kids at school, only in a larger group and people come from everywhere to take photos of them. I was expecting something far more outrageous. A couple had some clever outfits (the rabbits with elaborately painted faces and cigarettes, for instance), but mostly it was just standard issue gothness. After Gwen Stefani's numerous references to them, I was expecting...I don't know...something a little more glam. Anyway, next door to the Hot Topic types and their entourage of tourists, you find the Tokyo Rockabilly Club. They've got loud speakers playing vintage rock'n'roll while they do some rather unusual interpretations of American dance (including the Russian "coffee grinder" thing). They've all got the black skintight pants and the leather jackets and the greaser hairdos, and some of them even have saddle-shod girlfriends. And next to those guys are the would-be Harlem Globetrotters. They're just starting to work on their skills, but they're goin' for it...

But that's what I love about public parks in Asia. Everybody can go there and be who they are. Nobody's judging them. Nobody even notices! People having a barbecue dressed as cows? Whatever. A guy teaching his little dog how to ride a tricycle? How cute, can I pet him? Actors rehearsing? Try not to distract them. People working on the next version of STOMP? Watch out for flying chips of broomsticks! Martial artists honing their craft? Join in! Public aerobics class? Grab your sneakers. Nobody thinks anything of it except me...direct from the Land of the Free and the home of the conformist-minded. If any of this kind of thing happened in American parks, people would make sure the participants knew they were weird. But all over Asia, people use public space like an extension of their own living rooms, and everybody just lets everybody else be themselves. I'm a big fan of that. I've got to learn how to do more of that myself.

After that prime people-watching, I walked through the park, which was lovely. It felt like a fall day today, so the weather was nice for strolling until it started getting dark. Saw another nice garden, but it was more focused on azaleas and iris, which aren't really winter plants, so I could tell I was missing the best of the place. Still, it had some great fish and bird watching. I tried to get a shot of these cute little green birds for my grandmother to identify for me, but they're camera shy little things. Couldn't get the shot. But I did get a shot of an equally cute (although not green) little thing. Japan has some really cool birds. I saw a bright blue one the other day, but again, I was too slow to get a picture. I gotta work on that. Gram - I'm tryin' for you!

I couldn't do Harajuku without shopping, so I hit a couple of the vintage shops in search of a coat to replace my totally shoddy current overgarment. I feel like a bum wearing it in classy fashion-conscious Tokyo. I found so many fantastic coats that I'd love to wear around Boston and think "I got this in Tokyo," but alas, my big gangly Anglo arms stuck out several inches from the end of the sleeve. So no fabulous wool coats for me. Alas.

After that I headed back to the hostel. I wandered around a bit, but I couldn't bring myself to go get dinner, even though I'm really hungry. I am sooo over dining out by myself. Especially since I have atrocious chopstick, which makes me feel like everybody's staring at me. But I'm also over freeze-dried ramen. So I headed back to the hostel to get my trusty dinner companions (my book and a Newsweek). Now I just have to decide where to go. One of the tempura places, or the sushi joint where the plates come passing by on a conveyor belt...both are exciting, but would be so much better with someone to go with. I'm looking forward to getting home to my kitchen, where I don't have to choose between having a decent meal and looking like a loser....

Big day planned tomorrow. Up before sunrise to see the fish market and eat the freshest sushi ever. That's something I'm more than happy to eat alone...even at 7AM. Delicious. Then I will get in line early to try to get sumo tickets. If I can get them, I'll be attending the Sumo Grand Tournament for a few hours, watching big naked dudes try to fling each other out of bounds. After that, I'll grab whatever I can for a fast meal, then try to catch the evening kabuki show. It's a long-haul show. After that, I'll probably go to the onsen...if I don't go tonight...

Ryokan experience

So yesterday was kind of half wasted. I woke up later than I planned, and then getting my laundry finished so I could check out took forever. Slow dryer. Then I had to wrangle with the airlines and sit on hold forever while they figured out what was going on. Lame. As a result I'm still waiting on a final date of return. I'm trying to change it so it'll be easier for my brother to pick me up, but they can't find my ticket number, the computers can't find flights even though the people running the computers know there are daily ones from Narita to JFK...it's a mess. But I'll keep everybody posted on my arrival info as soon as Lufthansa and United get their acts straightened out.

But that's not the point of this entry. The point is ryokans. They are awesome. Love it. I got in to mine yesterday a little bit before check in time, hoping to drop off my humongously heavy pack, but nobody was there except one very dear, very tiny old lady...who spoke not a single word of English. And me totally reliant on my Japanese phrasebook...it was hilarious. The only part she understood was "I don't speak any Japanese." She understood that. Thought that was great.

Anyway, I dropped off my junk, left a note for the regular staff, and headed out to buy myself a yukata and the gorgeous formal obi I'd been swooning over, then came back. The owner had since come back, and she was the sweetest lady. She was so nice explaining all the workings of a traditional-style inn to me. There sure are a lot of rules...and shoe changes! You wear your own shoes in the entrance hall, slippers in the hallways, toilet slippers in the bathroom, and no shoes at all in your tatami-mat covered room. But she straightened me out as best she could. And she'd lugged my giant heavy bag into my room already. No small feat, since I think I'm getting stress fractures on my feet from lugging it.

The room itself was decent sized. It had a futon mattress on the floor, and a low table with a tea set and hot water thermos on it. It was warm and cozy, with a heated carpet for extra snugnes while curling up on the floor. I made myself a tasty pot of green tea and set about trying on my kimono and yukata (cotton summer kimono). Happiest nerd on the planet.

Then I took a bath. The bath is for the whole house and is kind of like a jacuzzi without the bubbles, so when it's your turn, you wash off first, so you're all clean. Then you get in. It's crazy hot, and even sitting up straight it's up to your neck. Heaven. I just sat there and got all the coldness of that drafty hostel and walking around all day out of my bones. Perfecto! I loved it. Especially since the last time I had a soak was in Cambodia, and the time before that was in my own apartment. It was pure heaven, and I emerged looking slightly like boiled seafood (that is to say, pinker than I went in) and feeling warmer than I have since I got to Kyoto. No more drafty hostel for me! Woohoo!

Then I put my nifty new yukata back on and went back to the best part of a Japanese-style room...the bed! Since it's on the floor, it's really firm, which is awesome for my back, and since it's on a heated floor it's already toasty when you first get in, and since the blanket is almost as thick and heavy as the mattress underneath, you end up warm as toast and comfortably wrapped on all sides in fluffy goodness. Ahhhhhh...

When I woke up in the morning, it was time for my Japanese-style breakfast. Did I say breakfast? I mean break-feast. There was tons of food, I couldn't even contemplate finishing it all. She actually had to make two trips with her tray to bring it all. There was a piece of grilled salmon, a fried egg with bacon (perhaps not traditional?), a seaweed/spinach salad thing with teeny tiny little baby fish in it, miso soup with cabbage, pickled fruit, steamed rice, silky tofu with mushrooms (boiled in a little sterno-fired kettle on my table) and green-onion soy sauce to go with it. And there was something else, but now I've managed to forget what it was. But it was all really tasty. I'll confess I was a little put off by the baby fish things, but I tried them. They gave me the creeps, so I didn't have a lot, but I did eat it. And I may make silky tofu part of my diet at home...but maybe not for breakfast...

All in all, I really had a great time with this. If Japan was as cheap as Laos, I'd stay in places like these every night until I leave, but it'll be back to dorms until I go home. And one capsule hotel the night before I leave for the airport.

So now I'm just killing time waiting for my train. I have to go collect my bags after my day trip to the northwestern corner of the city (huge disastrous disappointment - the garden I wanted to see was closed!!!!). But I have an hour to kill, and it won't take that long to eat a bowl of soba noodles for my late lunch/early dinner, so I'm at the international center in the train station listening to beautiful BBC International and sizing up all the back issues of Newsweek. Paradise! I can't wait to have access to US news any time I want it again...

Oh! But I didn't say what kind of train I was taking, did I? Ah-ha! Yes! A kind we benighted savages in the States never see - the shinkansen! Known to us as the bullet train. I'll be zooming along toward Tokyo at the speed of light or something. I can't wait to try it out. I'll take video if there's still enough light.

My awesome new toy!!

Yay!!! I bought a kimono! It's solid burgundy colored, with a striped lavender obi. The obi isn't super fancy - the girl at the store talked me out of the more formal one, but I may go back and get it and try my hand at the more difficult knot...for 8 bucks, it's worth a try.
Now I just have to figure out how to wear it without looking a complete mess...
And the best part, which I just realized a second ago, is that depending on how the color matches my bedspread, I might be able to hang it up for display in my room!
Yay!

I'm in love...

Dee, your friend was right about me falling desperately in love while I'm overseas...but it's not what you think.

I love Japanese gardens.

There, I've said it. They're fantastic. I'm crazy about them. They're truly 4-season retreats. Even in the wintertime they're gorgeous. The ponds and streams, the artfully placed rocks and pines, the mossy carpet that covers the ground...I love it. I could take or leave the Shinto and Buddhist shrines here (although I saw some pretty amazing ones today), but the gardens are fantastic. I think for my last day in Kyoto tomorrow I'm going to just find out which places have the best gardens in town and go there. Perfect.

Fortunately, I don't have to run away to be with my new love as Dee's friend predicted. There's a fantastic one on Martha's Vineyard, and I'm sure there are others nearby....

I've uploaded some pictures for the past couple weeks today, so feel free to look backward to see them!

Kyoto

Kyoto is such a cute town! It's so atmospheric. I just wandered around Gion about an hour ago (it's the famous geisha neighborhood), and while I didn't see any geisha running around, the buildings were all really cool, and I can only assume that the ones that weren't shops or restaurants were geisha houses, which is kind of cool to think about...so secretive!
Today was a late start, but I went out with a girl who's in my dorm to go see the Imperial Palace and a local shogun's castle. Both were cool, but very modest by Western standards. The rooms are completely empty except for the tatami mats on the floor and the occasional throne. We Westerners associate rulership with mountains and mountains of gold-encrusted, glitzy stuff, so it was a litttle strange to see all these empty rooms, but it occurred to me that anyone who has tried to keep a house from looking cluttered will know that having an completely austere looking room is another form of luxury. Just a different way of looking at things, I guess. The coolest part of the day for me was the gardens (oh, how I want my own garden! I would play with the plants and water features all summer long!) and the "nightingale floor." Japanese gardens are also very austere. No English cottage garden bloom explosion. It's a lot of pine trees and stone and raked gravel with water trickling by, possible filled with brightly colored carp. If you're interested I'm sure there are tons of photos online to see, but the nightingale floor really requires description.

The floor is suspended with clamps and nails that make contact only when a person's weight is over them. The shogun installed the floors all over his castle so that if any sneaky assassins should try to creep up unannounced, the floor would do the announcing for him. When you step on it, the clamp and nail scrape against one another, making a creaking sound that, when many people are walking on it at once, does sound a bit like the warbling of a songbird. Very cool. Jess and I tried to go ninja-style and defeat the floor, but it's impossible, even with the lightest of steps. Very cool. I know my boy students will get a kick out of the notion of watchful samurai waiting behind sliding doors for the slightest midnight creak of the secret floor, bursting out blades a-flashing. It'll be all I can do to keep a couple of the clowns from leaping up and doing some kind of impulsive martial arts farce...you know you're a nerd for teaching when the idea of that makes you smile...

But the big news is that tomorrow, I'm gonna buy a kimono!!! Woohoo! I'm so excited. I don't know how I'll fit it into my bag, but I'll manage somehow. I found this fantastic vintage store with a whole floor full of hundreds of kimono, obi, and all the other things you need to be a true Japanese lady of (secondhand) fashion. I'm so looking forward to trying them on! Yay! I just need to learn how to tie an obi...I plan to wear it when I introduce Japan in class...and every Halloween from now to perpetuity if I end up teaching American history. Yay! I really, really love clothes...especially funky exotic clothes...I can't wait.

Hiroshima

Hi, I'm not exactly sure how long it's been since I posted, but I feel like I dropped off the planet for a while. It probably hasn't been that long, but with lack of sleep it seems like an eternity.

Anyway, I had a blast my last couple days in Beijing, mostly due to my roomies in the hostel. They were three American girls from NY who are in China for a month for a language course, and they were absolutely hilarious. Two of them grew up in West Africa, including one girl who had lived in Ghana as a refugee for a short time, so we shared Ghana stories and had a lot of laughs over that. The three of them were also generally hilarious, so there were long stretches where the whole hostel probably had to listen to us cackling away in our room. Good times all around.

Then I got up crazy early for my flights to Japan. I don't know whether it was the fact that it was a small plane in windy weather or if the pilot was really bad at his job, but it was pretty nerve racking. Nothing really scary, but lots of steep turns and wings dipping up and down. I like a little excitement in a plane trip, but this was more exciting than I was a fan of. And the worst part was that we had a stopover in Dalian before we left China, so after the first "does this pilot know what he was doing" flight, I had to get off the plane, get through immigration, and then get back on voluntarily to do it all again. That's courage, man.

Hiroshima was awesome. The hostel was lovely and snug and warm, and full of really fun people. I arrived at 4 and shortly after I settled in, I asked a guy who was heading out to the grocery store to show me to a decent noodle shop in the neighborhood, so we walked and chatted, and he displayed excellent taste because dinner was delicious. After I ate I headed back to the hostel, and since all the sights are closed after 5, I figured I'd have an exciting night reading the newspaper in the lounge - a for reals paper, incidentally, they don't have the Herald Trib in Laos and China's papers are all censored, so it actually was a little exciting. Anyway, I had not read the first article on Gaza when my dinner guide returns and the lounge fills with a raucous, trash-talking Uno game. It didn't take long for almost a dozen of us to strike up a friendship and decide it was time to hit the town for some serious karaoke. Of course, to protect everybody's anonymity for our bad singing, we all went by nommes de guerre starting with "sister" or "brother." Brother Fury, Sister Phoenix and suchlike, which just added to the hilarity of it all.

Here's how karaoke works in Japan: you get a private room with your buddies so nobody has to see you make a fool of yourself except people who already know you're a fool. You then get to play all the songs you want to sing, and not have to listen through anybody who decides he wants to sing a 20 minute Meatloaf song. Perfect. So we cranked the music and sang until we were hoarse and exhausted, which was approximately 3:30 or 4AM. Our international delegation had excellent taste in music, and I must say, we rocked it out. One thing I love about traveling is how within 5 hours of of your plane touching down in a country you can have a new posse of best friends...

No rest for the wicked, however, because I had a bus ticket at 4PM the next day to get to Kyoto. So I got up at 8:30 and headed to the A-bomb park. After the previous night's frivolities, it was quite sobering. The first thing you see when you get off the bus is the A-Bomb Dome. It used to be the domed agricultural hall, and a major landmark in town. It was right under the hypocenter of the blast, so somehow the steel skeleton of the dome remained while all of its covering and most of the building under it was vaporized. In all those pictures of the blast zone that you see, it's one of two buildings that were left standing in the neighborhood. It has been left as it was on that day as a permanent reminder of the scars that don't heal after an event like that.

After that I went to the Children's Memorial, which is a monument inspired by a girl named Sadako. Most of you who were kids when I was probably read the book about Sadako and the 1000 paper cranes. She was exposed to the blast, and after her initial burns healed, they thought she would go on to lead a healthy life, but several years later she developed leukemia. According to legend, anyone who folds 1000 paper cranes will have their wish granted, and she wanted to live so badly that she started folding. When she hit 1000 and still wasn't cured, she began to make the smallest cranes possible, using a needle to make the folds. Even that was not enough to save her, however, and she eventually died when she should have been attending middle school with her friends. Her schoolmates organized the memorial in honor of her and of all the other children who were killed (hundreds of students were killed instantly in their schools or while they were working on a major public service project in the neighborhood of the hypocenter). The simplicity of the monument almost brought me to tears. It's surrounded by plexiglass boxes filled with cranes sent by children around the world. But the monument itself is just a tower topped with a little girl holding aloft a golden crane. Inside the tower is a bell that people can ring for peace, and watching little kids go up and ring it was really moving...

After that, I went past the flame of peace, which will only be extinguished when the last nuclear weapon in the world is destroyed. Beyond the reflecting pool under the flame is a granite casket holding the name of every victim of the blast, where a small shrine has been set up for people to pray and leave offerings.

Then I went into the museum, which was unbelievably affecting. So much so that despite the number of people there, the place was absolutely silent. There were a lot of material testimonies there. Watches that stopped at the instant of the blast. Children's lunch boxes with the charred remains of lunches never eaten. A tricycle twisted beyond recognition that a little boy had been riding at the time of the blast. A staircase where a person had been sitting at the moment of the blast, with the shadow of that person's outline burned into the concrete by the brightness of the flash. Photos of people wandering in search of help, burned and disoriented - all I can say is thank heavens they were in black and white, because even that was gruesome. And most unspeakable of all, the clothing that people been wearing when the blast hit. I can't explain it, but you can almost see the injuries that the stains and holes in the outfits surrounded. I took a lot of photos in that museum, but I couldn't bring myself to photograph that. It was too awful. Especially the children's clothing. Such tiny garments...

As I walked through, the theme of water continually came up. Radiation and burns leave people desperately thirsty, but with esophageal burns, even a sip of water can be fatal. As word of that got out, those who had escaped injury and were trying to help started to deny the victims water in the hopes of saving them. All the survivor testimonies mention being haunted to this day by the moans of people begging for water that they couldn't give them. When I left the museum, I realized that the park was full of fountains, and that almost all the memorials had water flowing over them. The survivors, in their way, have given the dead the water they could not give them on the day of the blast.

After this, I can think of no reason why a country would ever want to possess nuclear weapons. Why own them if you're not willing to use them, and frankly it would take an absolute lack of conscience to use one, having seen the short- and long-term effects it's had on Hiroshima. I suppose there are countries where conscience doesn't apply, but I feel pretty strongly that America should not be among them.

Leaving China

Last day in China. Very low key today. I went shopping for a couple things (mostly tea-related). I stopped at the big flea market in town and agonized over a Peking Opera costume. But as spectacular as it was, I couldn't justify 100 bucks for it. But man, I wanted it. So bad. I can only imagine the stir it would have caused if I rocked into my classroom wearing that the first day we studied China...sigh...alas for missed opportunities. I know I'm going to kick myself in the butt forever for not getting it. Well, someday when I'm rich and famous I'll go back and snag as many of those gaudy things as I want. For now, I love my students, but not at 100 bucks for 1 day a year.

I'm setting up my last few lodgings right now. I can't believe that I have three more cities to see and then I'm home! It's really unbelievable. It's weird. But I'm really looking forward to it. It's going to be so strange to go back - everybody else has been living their lives for 5 months, and I'm dropping back in expecting it to be 5 months ago. I'm living in suspended time right now...very strange...

But I've got to concentrate on continuing to live as if this is the first few weeks of the trip instead of the last few weeks. I can't check out on my travels before I've actually left Asia. By this time tomorrow I'll be in Hiroshima, and 24 hours after that I'll be off to Kyoto to go Geisha-spotting and Sumo-watching and onsen-soaking and all those lovely Japanese things. Yay!

What I've been up to

Well, mostly it's included freezing and thawing out again. The weather here is really quite pleasant in the right circumstances. It's just that wind, man! It's straight out of Siberia, and you can feel it. It just shoots right through you! It actually hurts when the wind blows. But when it's still (rare stolen moments, but still) it's actually not bad at all. Alas, tourism requires that I be outdoors for hours at a time, and frankly by the time I get in, I'm frozen through. Which is where I'm at right now. Brrrr...a cup of tea, a blanket, and my hot water bottle aren't even putting a dent in it...

Anyway, the night after I went to the Great Wall, I was feeling full of initiative, so I went to see a Peking Opera. It was awesome. Or at least I liked it. There weren't many people there, and several of them left after the first number. It's not for everybody, I guess. But I thought it was great. The costumes are really flashy and the music is noisy and full of percussion clanging away like a kid who got into the pots and pans. Bang bang bang bang bang!!! Gong! Tiny little bells! Now back to banging! It's just as ear-jarring as it looks in writing, but somehow it fits. The action itself is really formalized. Lots of posing and posturing with formalized recitation, interrupted by the occasional song or spectacular martial arts smackdown, sometimes for no apparent reason. And the drag queens! Did I say drag queens? I mean highly trained men acting in the female roles with falsettos more convincing than any soprano I'll ever pull off. The lady boys of Southeast Asia would be eating their hearts out if they could see the fabulous outfits these men wear and the elegance with which they comport themselves...As you can tell, I thought it was all marvellous. Maybe I'll track down some more tonight if I can bring myself to get out from under my blanket again.

Yesterday I went to the Temple of Heaven which was cool, but would have been more enjoyable without my Siberian friend the wind. But I love Chinese parks. When I arrived (at 11AM on a Thursday) the park was filled with interesting characters. A guy with a mic and mobile amp singing away while a bearded guy flitted around like a bird. A group of people waltzing in an open square, people singing all manner of songs to the elderly folks who get together there to play cards and mahjong and all kinds of other games. And my personal favorite, the pickup opera chorus. Apparently people just kind of come and go as they like, bringing their own music or looking on with someone else, singing lively operatic choruses (in Chinese, none I recognized) while a guy with an accordion played along. As I wandered around, I ended up walking behind this tenor with a lovely voice who was still singing softly to himself as we walked under the cedars. I don't know if he realized I was listening, but I enjoyed the walk a great deal.

The temple itself was great, but not as impressive as the hype would lead one to believe. Maybe it would be cooler if I could feel my face and fingers, and I could have paused and found things to like. I know that the artwork decorating the place was well worthy of greater study, but I couldn't stand in one place for too long - had to keep moving to keep the blood flowing. I'm sure the place was quite impressive when the emperors came to make their dramatic firey sacrifices to the god of heaven. And the gardens must be exquisite in their season. This just wasn't that season.

After that, I went to the pearl market next door and checked out the stuff there. Most of the market isn't actually pearls. Just the usual tourist junk, but the top floor has some serious bling. I did some significant bargaining over a few trinkets - guy wanted 180 Yuan for a snow globe. That's almost 40 bucks US. "Very cheap!" he told me. Perhaps if the thing had been encrusted in the pearls upstairs. Clearly he has a rather skewed notion of what cheap is...

Today was the Forbidden city and Tienamen Square. First I went to see Chairman Mao. It's quite the experience. You go in there and there's a giant statue of him in his chair, and there are literally hundreds of flowers at his feet. Then you pass into the next room and sure enough...there's Mao...under glass...creepiest thing I ever saw. Even creepier than the mummies. At least the Egyptians stashed their eternally preserved sovereigns tastefully out of sight...

The Forbidden City is amazing. I wish I'd taken more pictures, but I couldn't get my fingers to work and I kind of gave up for all but the most spectacular sights. The place is a labyrinth of amazing luxury. But same as the Temple of Heaven, I couldn't fully enjoy it because I was so cold. In the end, after 4+ hours, I had to give up and head home. My brain was just numb. I'll have to come back someday and see all of this in summer when I can actually think about something other than how cold I am. Lucky for me Japan will be warmer. I think tomorrow I'll just admit defeat and do some indoor museums. No sense seeing the Summer Palace in the dead of winter just to say I saw it.

Ok, can't feel the fingers...no more typing! Time for another cup of tea!

Great Wall of China

Amazing! Amazing, amazing, amazing. I could have stayed up there all day. The weather, first off, was amazingly cooperative, so thank you, sunshine, for making the air warm enough for me to happily contemplate the place. The sky was blue and unsullied by any clouds or ugly smog, for a change, which all the better highlighted the ruggedness of the mountains. The wall itself is a marvel of engineering and resource mobilization. I challenge anybody to look at that thing and doubt the might of old China. It blows my mind that that much stone got hauled up to the top of those huge mountains - for over a thousand miles!!! Mountaintop temples pale before it. Hadrian's Wall cringes and runs away. This thing is huge.
We only had three hours, and I squandered a whole hour by overestimating descent time and going down too soon. It only made my desire to come back someday and walk the length of the wall that much stronger. The area we saw was meticulously restored, and really amazing, but you guys know me. I like my old stuff gritty and ruined. I'd love to feel grass under my feet as well as the stone, and to climb up to the creaky second floors of guard towers that have crumbled with the centuries. By now I've become a bit of a jaded old hand at the wonders of the world, and it's taking more and more to blow my mind, but this is one of the few major monuments I've seen that makes me say "wow, I've got to see more." I can't wait to upload my photos and share the experience with you, but I know my pictures won't do the place justice. All I can say is that as far as the eye can see, the mountains are dotted with regularly spaced guard towers, and the crenellated walls zigzag with the landscape like (to steal a phrase from the signage at the site) a "flying dragon."
Even in retrospect it takes my breath away. I'm so lucky to have been able to see it for myself...

Hello sports fans

Guess who went to the Bird's Nest Stadium today? Me! It was really cool. About the closest I'll ever be to the Olympics, I figure. They had montages from the opening ceremonies playing on all the jumbo-screens, and I couldn't help getting a vicarious rush - how cool it must have been for all those athletes to come into the stadium and see the moment they'd dreamed about since they were kids become reality....
The stadium itself is surprisingly small. Or at least it looks small. From the look of the place on TV you'd think it was colossal, but from a distance it looks really small, and from the inside it's surprisingly intimate. Most of it wasn't open to the public (annoying), but from what I could guess, I bet even the top row of seats had a great view. Nothing looked that far from the field. It was definitely cool to wander around on the field, though, and sit in the press seats. I did my best to ignore the awful Christmas displays that were still up...why can't I escape it??? I go halfway across the world and the tacky sleigh displays and Christmas trees follow me! But I digress. I got to play Olympian for a day!
I didn't get to go into the Water Cube. It was bizarrely difficult to find the ticket office, and by the time I'd found it it was 4:05 - 5 minutes after they sell the last ticket. If I'd taken the short route around the Cube I would have made it (thanks for the great directions, Mr. Guard Guy). Alas. If I have time I'll head back up there some afternoon and check it out.
Tomorrow's a big day, though. I'm going to the Great Wall. I'll be out in the cold for 3 uninterrupted hours. I really, really hope I'm up to the challenge, because if I'm not I'll come back short a toe or something...not good! :) I'm really excited to see it. I'm told the views are spectacular. I just hope I'll be able to enjoy my natural impulse to flee the cold and slow down enough to take it all in.

China hates Arianna Huffington.

Ha. I went to follow a link to the Huffington Post (about George H.W. wanting to throw Jeb into the presidential ring), and the censors blocked it. It was all in Chinese, but I'm sure it was a politely worded statement of the site's political unacceptability or somesuch. Too funny.

It continues to be freezing cold here. Mind bogglingly so. I keep buying up sweaters and long underwear. But I can't buy too many, because it's in the 40s and 50s in Japan, so I can't throw out too much of my warmer weather stuff. Note to self: next time you travel, stick to places that are all experiencing the same season.

I checked out some lovely sites in town today. Chinese houses are awesome. I want one. It's perhaps a misnomer to call them houses, though. They're more like compounds. You get a small building with one or two rooms devoted to similar purposes, then some courtyards, then another building. So you might start with a study and storage room for your business, then a courtyard, then your formal living room for visitors, then another courtyard, then your kitchen and bedrooms. I love the eastern aesthetic. Everything has such clean lines. Even the more elaborate things have a simplicity about them, if that makes any sense. None of the busy gaudiness of India or Southeast Asia (also pretty, but differently so). It's so calming. I imagine if I was here in any other season, I could have wandered contentedly for hours on end. Alas for cold.

My absolute limit seems to be 4 hours before I have to thaw out. Even then, I have to take little breaks, like the one I took today to eat a blisteringly spicy bowl of noodle soup. One of the pitfalls at just pointing at somebody else's bowl and saying "I'll have whatever that is" is that sometimes you get more than your bargained for. I could only eat half of it before my lips felt like they were about to fall off. The other folks in the shop got a huge kick out of it, though, so at least it was entertaining.

Well, my train to Beijing leaves in a couple hours, so I should get something to eat and get my stuff together...

Pingyao

Dad, I know you're not sympathetic, but it is freeeezing here. Especially when there's no escaping it. China doesn't believe in heating its public monuments, so if you're going out to see stuff, you're bound to be out in the elements all day. It's pretty gross.

They don't believe in heating trains here, either. It was -5 C on the train the whole way here overnight. The good news was that they gave us nice heavy warm blankets. The bad news was they smelled like the streets of India. But I didn't care. I hid under there for dear life - literally, a girl can get hypothermia hanging out in below freezing places for 12 hours! Brrrrr...Thank heavens for my new wool socks. I also went out and bought some long underwear today, so hopefully that'll do the trick. I am not missing out on the Great Wall just because it's freezing outside.

Pingyao itself is really cute. The old city is just that - really old. The buildings are all in the old courtyard style, and they've all got the classic Chinese roofs with dragons and bamboo-shaped tiles. Very cool. I'd take more pictures, but frankly my camera doesn't like the cold any better than I do. I'll do a bit more exploring tomorrow before I catch my train for Beijing.

I've got bad news for everybody though. China is going to destroy the world. The pollution here is unbelievable. The smog is so bad even in winter (or perhaps especially in winter - they still heat their houses with coal here) in a little town like this, that the visibility is well under half a kilometer. We're talking a pea-soup fog kind of day every day...and it's all poison. I think America could outlaw cars, electricity, and plastic outright and we'd still be in trouble globally. Here's hoping President Obama can generate some serious goodwill on the issue and get some action on the matter, because without China onboard, we're doomed.

On that lively note, I'm gonna go because my fingers are having a hard time typing - it's not much warmer here in the hostel common room than it is outside...those of you who know me well know I'll be retreating under my little blanket with a cup of hot tea and waiting for spring to magically appear...

Terra Cotta Warriors

Would you be sad if I said they were an anticlimax? As crushed as I am to say it, I was underwhelmed. Before you get totally disappointed, there were a few non-ancient factors that contributed to that. The first is that they don't heat the buildings that cover the site, so it was freakin' freezing in there. The second is that the buildings basically look like giant high school hockey rinks inside, complete with spotty lighting, so half the stuff was really hard to get a good look at for lack of light. The third was the cold. So was the fourth. The fifth was that my glasses were in the bottom of my backpack, and I didn't want to loudly rummage through my bag and wake everyone else in the dorm (at 9:30 AM...lazy bums!), so even if the lighting had been good, I wouldn't have been able to see especially well.
But the fact remains that they're pretty impressive. The largest of the three groups is about as long as 2 football fields end to end, and although they're not completely excavated, what has been unearthed is pretty amazing. Each soldier is different. Their heights, builds, and facial features are all unique, and I got some cool photos of some different guys. Not only that, but they seem to have different personalities. The self-satisfied general, the intently concentrating kung fu artist, the slightly daydreamy infantryman...it was really interesting to see them all. It really is as if the emperor had his whole army replicated in clay and buried with him.
One of the coolest things, which I didn't know, is that his tomb remains undisturbed to this day. One of the biggest reasons for this 2000 year resting in peace is the fact that the whole tomb is surrounded by a layer of mercury, so if anybody disturbs the outer layer of the tomb they're in for a nasty bit of poisoning. The idea of an undisturbed royal burial anywhere is tantalizing to the Indiana Jones in me.
And speaking of Indiana Jones, my compadre for the day was a German archaeology student, so he was good for information on preservation techniques and stuff like that. His name, significantly enough for my mother's side of the family, is Dirck.
After the warriors we went to the Wild Goose Pagoda, which had plenty of cool stuff to see, but frankly I don't remember anything but the big tall tower and the Vegas-style musical fountain show. And a few very vivid wall artworks depicting the travels of a Buddhist saint through some of the very places I've already visited (namely India and the Middle East). But honestly, even that is not the clearest in my memory because I was too cold to think about anything but how cold I was. Note to self: going from steamy Bangkok to freezing Xi'an is a major shock to the system.
The last fun thing for today was the dumpling party at the hostel. Basically a few of us sat around the table stuffing dumplings together. Despite my best efforts, mine always came out totally misshapen. But when you steam them up, they taste the same, right? We tested that theory after the chef steamed them up, and they were, in fact, quite delicious. I approve. Fun times.
Tomorrow I'll see a few more local sites like the museum, and then it'll be off to a little town called Pingyao, which I've been told by pretty much everybody is adorably historic. A lot of the old town is still intact, so I can go and see what an old Chinese town would have looked like before modern skyscrapers popped up in the middle of them. I'm looking forward to it. And a couple girls who went on the tour today are going there, too, so I may even have someone to pal around with - and they're Chinese, so my language barrier issues may be temporarily resolved! And they're also headed to Beijing after a day in Pingyao, just like me, so I may see them there, too. Life is good.
Off to get something hot to drink to thaw out....

Still loving China so far.

I am loving China so far. People here are amazingly friendly - and it's sincere friendliness. I'll have to preface this whole thing by saying that almost nobody speaks English here. It's the first time in this whole trip that I can't walk up to any old random stranger and assume they speak enough to get me by. I feel like a total foreigner, and I love it. But at the same time, I'm not a target. I'm the only foreigner I see every time I leave the hostel, and yet nobody tries to chase me down and sell me stuff. It's like the entirety of Xi'an could care less that I'm here. I'm not a curiosity, I'm not a walking wallet, I'm just one more person in the crowd. Yay!! The only time people called me out was when I wandered through the Muslim Quarter, which is basically a big market where such things are to be expected. But walking down the street, I'm left alone. Completely alone, in fact, because even the billboards aren't speaking to me - I can't read a single one of them! Occasionally a store will have a sign in Roman characters, but even that is usually just a transliteration like Bei Jin Jie rather than "Noodle Shop."
Anyway, nobody speaks English. At one point I got a little lost and wandered into a restaurant that had a sign that said "Pizza!" hoping somebody spoke enough English to set me straight, and of course nobody did. But rather than say "tough luck," they called an English speaking friend who gave me verbal directions, then they handed me a map (all in Chinese), then gave me gestured directions, and then one of the waiters actually walked me down the street until we were within sight of the first landmark, pointed it out, gestured to the right, and then smiled and sent me on my way. He wasn't expecting a kickback or anything, just a nice guy making sure I didn't get lost again. It blew my mind. Then, when I'd gotten myself way out of town to see the jumping-off point for the Silk Road (which is a bit out of the main center), I sauntered up to the bus stop, now with my handy new map in hand, smiled, and pointed to where I wanted to go. A couple people pointed to some bus numbers, then when one of them arrived, pretty much took me by the arm and put me on it. Such kindness and hospitality blows my mind. Thank you, China!!
And I'm really excited for tomorrow, because guess who's going to go see some Terra Cotta Warriors?? Me!! Can't wait!