Hong Kong | Day 3

Today we went to Victoria Peak, to which we floated across the bay on none other than the Star Ferry--which was really nice. The trip across the harbor takes only about 10 minutes, if not fewer, and costs like 14 HK dollars, which is only about $2 U.S. Victoria Peak isn’t the highest in Hong Kong, but it offers an incredible view of the city from the top. To get to the peak we took a quaint little trolley car, which, at times, felt like a rollercoaster chugging to its summit. The trolley seemed to travel straight up--I could feel my spine digging into the wooden bench we were sitting on. When we got to the top, I was a little disappointed to find that the spectacular view was, of course, accompanied by another shopping mall. In fact, many of the tourists at the peak seemed to have made the climb specifically for the shopping, if not to grab their token snapshot of the cityscape down below.

After this sadly generic experience at the famed Peak, Abby and I made our own way down, purchasing sandwiches for a picnic at a nearby vacated park (in which I fell asleep for who knows how long), and then we hiked the entire 500 meters back down to the bottom. Just before reaching sea level, we came upon the island’s zoo and botanical gardens. We took a rest near a playful leopard before sauntering through parts of the gardens.




Our knees were creaking by the end of it, so we went to a fancy-pants hotel for hot chocolate and tea, then went for a stroll through Central haphazardly looking for some restaurant, but instead we found a nice place to drink wine and watch a cute and scuzzled mamma dog dart around for scraps of food. It was around 9 when we realized we hadn’t eaten dinner yet, so we headed over to this great restaurant nearby, whose light fixtures were made of old bronze bird cages (like the ones we saw at the Yuen Po Street Bird Market). I can’t remember what we ate, but it was really good. We stayed drinking Tsing Tao beer out of bowls until they were closing up.





1 Comment for this Entry

Val
The first picture is great...I think it DOES give some sense of what you saw....Whoops, I wasn't there! That was a cool shot of the restaurant, too.
Wednesday, January 24, 2007 - 00:46 AM

Hong Kong | Day 2

Last night I took a bus back to the airport to meet Abby. It was nice reuniting after about a month and a half since our last rendezvous in Nagano. Our first night at the Chungking Mansions in Hong Kong was surprisingly OK, despite the shady characters loitering in the entryway and the back-alley dildo shop that doubles as the hallway leading to our hostel (there are at least 30 different hostels all competing with one another in the Chungking complex--we’re at the Oriental Pearl--which looks more like a housing project than a guest house).




[ Top to bottom: view of other rooms from our room’s window (lilies courtesy of Abby); view of our cozy room at the Oriental Pearl inside Chungking; Chungking “lobby,” which hosts a multitude of Indian restaurants, outlet clothing stores, and sex shops; and the Chungking Mansions, in all its full-frontal glory, from out on Nathan Road ]

Today we slept late. We ate muffins and drank coffee for breakfast on a bench overlooking the harbor, which reaches out toward Hong Kong Island (We’re on Kowloon). Rustic fishing and cargo boats putter back and forth, and at one end of the pier is the Star Ferry, which you can take between Hong Kong, Kowloon, and other outlying islands such as Lantau, where the big buddha, Tian Tan, resides in the Po Lin Buddhist Monastery. The Star Ferry operation is kind of legendary in itself having been used to evacuate residents of Kowloon during the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong.

Around noon we met up with my friend Robert, who happened to be in Hong Kong around the same time as us. Robert’s from Greenbay, and he and I met as fellow classmates at a weekly Japanese language course in Chicago. Robert--who also teaches English on the JET Programme--is one of the most genuine, stand-up fellas I’ve ever known; sadly, however, he was placed in a prefecture far south of mine called Shimane, which rubs up against the Sea of Japan and is pretty close to Hiroshima. Straightaway, the three of us went for a great dim sum feast at the Jade Garden, which looms over the sunny bay on Kowloon. The place was packed. We ordered a ton of food and lingered for over an hour.

After the glorious dim sum feast we took the subway up to the Mong Kok area, where we fumbled our way first toward the flower market, which was this incredible complex of small shops mingled with outdoor flower stands (there were people straight-up selling armloads of plants on every corner). Abby bought lilies from one of the street shops to spruce up our room--the nice smell they added to our place seemed totally anachronistic to the atmosphere, but was lovely nonetheless. Eventually, the flower market led us into the Yuen Po Street Bird Garden. This is difficult to describe, but picture a beautiful, lively aviary at some well-intending zoo--now picture all the colorful birds in cramped, brass cages. That’s basically the Yuen Po Street Bird Garden.










Kind of a depressing place. So we took off in search of some fruit and a nice park in which to have a rest. We bought oranges and an unfamiliar pear-like thing and hung out here until evening:




Around the corner some men were involved in a pretty intense game of table tennis (literally lunging into the table and cracking the ping-pong ball every few minutes).

Later we ate chinese noodles, “greens,” and drank cream soda at some streetside noodle joint. There was a slew of cats playing in the window of a loft above where we were sitting. Then we wandered through the Temple Street Night Market, where Abby and I bought mid-century Beijing posters advertising cigarettes and cosmetics in the most ridiculous manners. Here’s Robert and Abby at one of the markets trying on crooked spectacles:


Then--yep, it never ends--we went for an overpriced drink at the top of the Peninsula hotel, which offered a nice view of the bay. At this point we had been joined by a fella named Todd whom Robert had picked up at his hostel. He was from Brooklyn, but was living in Russia working as a journalist. (He was only in Hong Kong long enough to find a travel agent who would sell him a cheap ticket to Thailand.) Later we four bought ice cream from a truck and strolled the boardwalk past midnight.


1 Comment Manage Comments for this Entry
Val
You really pack a lot in a day!
Wednesday, January 24, 2007 - 00:39 AM

Hong Kong | Day 1

It’s Christmas and I’m alone, eating corn soup with rice and vegetables in a greasy diner in Kowloon, not far from the Chungking Mansions where I’ll be staying for the next seven days with Abigail (who hasn’t arrived yet). Chungking is the notorious “tourist ghetto” of Kowloon, the dregs of the Tsim Sha Tsui neighborhood, which, on its own, is a sort of hellish parade of both the money-laden big-spenders and the desperate and derelict. Arm-in-arm they shove their way up and down Nathan Road.

So far my impression of Hong Kong is one of pleasant surprise: It’s easy to get around here, it’s absolutely beautiful (the city’s inlaid with harbors and surrounded by mountains), and, best of all, Hong Kongers speak English (and that’s a vacation in itself). Everything about this city seems to be in opposition to Japan--especially in regard to people and culture. People here are noticeably more curt and straightforward. The intense formalities that are so commonplace in Japan (e.g. grocery store clerks in Nagahama offer 90-degree bows when simply handing me my change) aren’t so apparent--if around at all. The people in this neighborhood are boisterous and assertive, they haggle adamantly for lower prices in the shops, and businessmen (like hotel managers and tailors) are out on the street snatching passersby by the arm. It was a little jarring at first, but it’s actually totally refreshing coming from a country like Japan where not much seems real.

Right now, in the restaurant, one of the servers is lingering near my table after having set down a cup of hot water (just boiled clean) and bashfully wishing me a Merry Christmas. It feels awkward being away from my family in Michigan this time of year, but, in a sense, it’s afforded me (or forced me) to reflect on my current state of dislocation. Still, I don’t feel I have any concrete, steadfast reasoning for coming to or staying in Asia, but, wandering Tsim Sha Tsui today, I felt relieved by my navigational ineptitude. I ended up in Kowloon Park, where locals form cliques around ghettoblasters and dance haphazardly in the shadows of the spotlight flooding a massive fountain, the centerpiece for all this activity.




2 Comments for this Entry

kristin
I WISH I HAD BEEN THERE!
Thursday, January 11, 2007 - 04:35 PM

Val
Your photos are beautiful! And it's so fun to read your comments after I now have met you! Val
Wednesday, January 24, 2007 - 00:21 AM

Christmas Eve, Osaka

Despite the incessant muzak renditions of bad Christmas songs that rattle from every shop and restaurant, Japan has failed miserably to invoke any kind of “holiday spirit.” Nonetheless, I’m happy to be in Osaka, where, nearing the end of December, it’s a snowless 60 degrees outside.

Maisie and I spent most of Christmas Eve asleep. But we eventually got out to wander through the city’s botanical gardens and feast on about 12 oranges between the two of us. At the gardens, we visited flora from all the biomes of the world (7?). The Arctic was a real snooze.



Later we decided to tool around on wheels (Maisie on a bike, me on a trash-picked skateboard). We wobbled down some shady lanes and, once again, crossed paths with an unruly pack of homeless guard dogs. There were 5 or 6 of them all huddled together in the center of the street, and this time--no doubt alarmed by the clumsy intruder on a skateboard--they actually came after me. Maisie, saddled high on her road bike, was relatively safe since, as she put it, the dogs didn’t want a “faceful of spokes,” but at least 2 of the mongrels snagged my ankles and chased me to the next intersection. After that I decided I would pack pepper spray whenever out on the streets of Osaka.

Tonight we decided to stay in and enjoy a Christmas-Eve diner of Domino’s Pizza--delivery.

When Homeless Dogs Attack

I celebrated the start of winter vacation by immediately leaving Nagahama. I was even excused from work one hour early (I must’ve looked that bored), so I took that time as a head start, pedaling home with my headphones on, feeling completely elated about spending the next two weeks away from computers, desks, and whiteboards.

Today I’m in Osaka, where I’ll spend the next couple days with my friend Maisie before flying to Hong Kong on Christmas. The train ride to Osaka last night felt much longer than usual--on top of that, the bike trip to Tamura station left me and my luggage soaked and cold as the sky let loose one of the most frigid rains I’ve ever experienced.

Ostensibly, the night was looking up when I approached the station agent in Osaka. I had planned to fib a bit about from where I was coming so as to save a few hundred yen. When I tried explaining to him that I had lost my ticket, but that I came from blah-blah-blah, he blurted, OK, OK, and let me through the turnstile without paying anything. That put me up about 2,000 yen, which was a relief since I wasn’t too keen on paying for a hostel in Osaka and was considering spending Christmas Eve sleeping on an airport bench.

I was meeting Maisie in a neighborhood called “Shinsekai” (which translates as “New World”), where she was squatting in a friend’s apartment while he was gone for the holidays. Shinsekai is where you’ll find Osaka’s heartbreaking zoo, Spa World, and an open-air mall--circulated by a massive roller coaster--called Festival Gates. This neighborhood was formed by Osakans with high hopes for the future of the city, but today the area seems weighed down by an abundance of porno theaters, prostitution, and poor-quality noodle shops. Homelessness is an issue here too.

The walk from Tennoji station to Maisie was a precarious one. We’d agreed to meet beneath the huge, Eiffel-shaped tower near the center of town, but when I set out for it, I could see it, but I couldn’t find a direct route to it. So I ended up weaving my way north and westward, trotting through unlit, narrow streets that bent now and again without warning. At one point I came around a bend (I later realized this road was leading me around the perimeter of the zoo) and was met by four or five pissed-off dogs who were guarding a homeless man’s make-shift residence on the side of the road. My friend Maisie says that many of the homeless in Osaka take in stray dogs to aid as protection from violent teenage punks and insensitive police officers. Makes sense. But this was the first time I’d come upon such guard dogs without having an alternate route available to me. I could only turn back (but I was already running late for the rendezvous). I paused for a second to watch as the dogs chased after cyclers passing by--and even cars!--snarling threateningly. I considered running for it--but then though better of it, fearing that I’d be provoking a chase. Instead I walked straight on with my eyes forward and let the dogs follow me for a good block, all along barking at the backs of my knees. I was scared shitless. When I finally made it to Maisie’s apartment, I found that she kept a metal rod by the door to fend against such quarrelsome creatures in the night.

Ja ne, Kristin!

It’s been over a month since I last sat down to write anything cohesive about recent goings-on. It’s strange, but my life here has actually become quite mundane. Maybe it’s the symptoms of winter steadily plaguing my sluggish town, but I’ve been feeling pretty uninspired lately. I haven’t written anything in months, aside from the handful of jejune grad-school essays (which are completed and finally booted across the pacific).

Kristin left yesterday after a month-long stint in Nagahama. We cooked some incredible meals together and explored Japan as much as possible (though it rained for four weeks straight, and even now it is still raining). We spent her last weekend in Japan hanging out in Osaka, where we crashed with our Ohio-friend Maisie, although she too is only squatting in a cozy apartment in one of the most devastated areas of Japan I’ve ever experienced. I spent Sunday morning wandering the neighborhood (Nishinari) alone, feeling pretty glum about the local quality of life. On the upside, however, we met plenty of friendly stray cats that day as well as a sweet old Japanese couple with a hyper Yorkie named Milli. (That was outside Osaka Castle, which was pretty majestic--although we didn’t pony up the 600 yen to go inside.)

After Kristin’s departure, I sat with Maisie and drank three mugs of hot chocolate before heading back to my wintry city. It was a strange weekend: Osaka’s a massive, chaotic place full of life, but whenever I’m there I feel terribly depressed. I guess it has something to do with the unreasonable juxtaposition of the obscenely downtrodden with the absurdly rich. This phenomenon makes Osaka a difficult city to enjoy, although it’s clearly a unique, creative, happening place. I just can’t fathom spending thousands of yen on shit in Shinsaibashi while the residents of Nishinari are living in tents off the side of the road.

Anyway, here are some hopeful photos of Shiga from Kristin’s stay:







2 Comments for this Entry

Ryan
weird, when i booked my flight Orbitz's description of Osaka was "an unreasonable juxtaposition of obscenely downtrodden and absurdly rich" too... :)
Friday, December 15, 2006 - 02:27 AM

me
Did I steal that?
Friday, December 15, 2006 - 07:51 AM

Hiking with Gaijin!

This is old news! I meant to write in about the English Hiking event one month ago (it took place in early October!), but I guess I got lazy. I’ll make this quick.

On a sunny Saturday in October, I accompanied a group of about 7 Japanese citizens on a stroll through Nagahama. We saw the sights, had some laughs, and afterward had a picnic in the park by the lake, where I skipped stones with the kids. Here’s a photo of the group:
Missing from this photo are the two boys, Matthew and Aran, who were probably running amok in the background somewhere. Here’s Matthew with the peace fingers and his sullen older brother in the background:
Matthew’s hands-down the cutest kid I’ve ever met. He’s six years old, but he speaks three languages (Japanese, English, and Tagalog--his family immigrated to Japan from the Phillipines just after he was born). He was so excited throughout the entire day--never complained once.

My memories of the minor details are a little hazy at this point, but it was nice spending the day with Japanese people instead of the usual just myself or other English-speaking foreigners. The purpose of the event was to acquaint Shiga’s residents with some of the foreigners living among them (spoooooky), and also to give them a chance to practice their English conversation skills.

Here are a few more photos:[Yoko, Aran, Ruth, and Kana]

[Matthew chilling with some tough guy outside the Figurine Museum]

[View of Nagahama Park from the top of Nagahama Castle]

2 Comments for this Entry

Natalie
I love the pic with Matthew holding the Fist of the Northstar's hand. Adorable!
Wednesday, November 8, 2006 - 07:17 AM

brendabrenda
FIGURINE MUSEUM!! I'm leaving the island and moving to your town. Make some space for me in a cupboard.
Thursday, November 9, 2006 - 08:34 PM