Home

Advertisement

compadres [entries|archive|friends|userinfo]
Annie in Japan

[ userinfo | livejournal userinfo ]
[ archive | journal archive ]

Study study study... [Nov. 12th, 2009|10:43 pm]

maikeru_desu


Hi lj. As anticipated, I haven't been able to update you so frequently since coming to Tokyo. It's not because I have nothing to say. Work continues to be happy, great and stimulating. There are about five to six teaching related entries currently floating around the nether regions of my brain. In Miyagi I'd have popped them all out last month, but recently my writing energy has been devoted to homework. So while I'm on top of all that at the moment, why don't I take this chance tell you a bit about the program?

( +Please (NSFW?) )
linkpost comment

The Salty Stinger [Nov. 9th, 2009|10:58 am]

rhiow44
Ashen gray skin like burned charcoal. Sunken eyes. A sloppy bright red dress. She took another long, angry drag from her cigarette.

"You complain and complain, 'There is so many mosquito here!' How you think is for us? Damn right there is many mosquito here, and only one of you! You would no believe the competition; is crazy. We swarm, we swarm, we swarm, and for what? For small chance at bite your leg. I want bite, my sister want bite, crazy Gemina across pond want bite... we all want bite. And you? You no want bite! We in somewhat disagreement, no? 'Oh, my leg itch!' Well, small matter to me - otherwise I no eat; my children no eat. You so selfish, you know? I can no go other place; there no food! Can no move in with parents - they die yesterday; I die tomorrow. So it goes. And so we wait and we wait and, finally, you walk by, but so fast! My vision, not so good. Must fly in circles, find where you smell. Try land, hang on, bite while you walk. Is so hard. You no appreciate.

Even reason no matter to you - I go buzz buzz in your ear, 'Hey look, we make deal. I take little your blood; you no need so much. I bite clean, no itch. Win, win, yes?' No, you smack yourself in head. Silly silly. I bite anyway, make much itch. Bite again, again. You want listen now, yes? Ha! Too late. But short victory - soon I crush, or die anyway. So it goes.

"You think times rough for you? Recession? No matter have job, no have job, you still just hop in car, drive to food store, drive to restaurant... no even have to leave car, you so lazy! And still you complain, 'Oh, my life so hard! I no have job for have money buy new TV!' Sit around eat potato chip, have job or no. What difference? Try chase your food around as it want crush you before you take bite. Settle down for nice meal and BAM! You dead. And wind - don't get me started on wind! As if our life not hard enough already. You try grow up in stagnant water. Is not so nice.

"But you no think. You never think. Always me, me, me. Only one that matter. Well, I tell you what -think next time you see mosquito. We all have trouble. Yours not so bad."
link2 comments|post comment

Fire in the Sky [Nov. 7th, 2009|10:58 am]

rhiow44
Best. Fireworks show. Ever.

I was skeptical at first. From the moment we arrived at the MRT exit, amid a sea of people flowing endlessly onto the continuous line of shuttle buses with animated fireworks marquees, I thought this couldn't be worth it. It took our bus almost an hour to crawl less than a dozen blocks through the mounting traffic; when we finally arrived, still two blocks away from the waterfront, the roads were clogged with thousands of people, all pouring toward the only two entrances to that area of the park, divided from the city by a (and to all appearances useless) huge concrete wall. If that were enough, each entrance consisted of a single door scarcely wider than the sliding door to our balcony. It was like trying to squeeze a watermelon through a keyhole.

Inside the park was not much better; it was barely recognizable as a park, so thickly was every surface covered in people, sitting, standing, jumping up and down. I have never been somewhere that felt so ridiculously crowded. The arteries of traffic were clogged down to little tiny cracks where people could only move one at a time, in only one direction. Almost a half an hour and some five-hundred meters up the waterfront, with no sign of a thinning crowd, we squeezed into a tennis court where we could at least sit down.

My interpretation of the event had included food, of some sort, but on our first sortie, it appeared that, for once in the history of all events in Taiwan, there was an absence of food vendors. That, of course, would have been impossible occurrence, and we eventually located the small oasis of stalls down-river, their competitors having apparently already packed up and left. Strange. You see so many random cart vendors along the side of the road, even in places where there is little to no traffic, and yet here, with at least 10,000 people and no other recourse for hunger, there were only a handful of stalls, each with lines stretching at least a dozen back. Those lines were not, however, anything compared to the lines for the single-stall toilets which were several-dozen long, and moving at such a pace that I think it would have taken at least thirty minutes to get to the front. By then, the fireworks were to start in fifteen.

After consuming a bland hot-dog and some wilted fries from the stall with the shortest line, I returned with Valerie to the patch of green our group had staked out on the tennis court and the fireworks began almost immediately. I can scarcely describe the show, so filled it was with intricately choreographed bursts of color coming from places all along the opposite side of the river. The best I can do is compare it to a recreation of the Bellagio fountains in fireworks - giant gold ones that lit the entire sky and rattled the ground when they exploded, streams of silver light, red and purple sparks that hung unnaturally in the air like so many fireflies, giant smiley faces and hearts, and many more, some of which I had never seen before; ones that spiraled up violently, or exploded once, then broke apart into smaller fragments that propelled themselves a second time out in all directions.

It was more like a symphony than a typical fireworks show, the varieties of fireworks coordinated and paced into movements much like a piece of music (but not at all like the music that accompanied it which, while pleasant, was not at all audible over the din of the fireworks), painting fiery landscapes in the sky. And, unlike the traditional Chinese/Japanese fireworks show, which comes haltingly in little bursts, followed by long pauses (presumably while the operator searches for a new box of matches), the entire half-hour show was like an extended finale, a climax from beginning to end, the end of which was more a spiritual experience than a spectacle. The show ended with a sustained volley of giant gold bursts and purple, red and green sparks that took up the entire field of vision, tripling the stars and creating a hundred dancing colored constellations. The crowd went wild. And I certainly did not regret being among them.



linkpost comment

The Mosquito Buffet [Nov. 6th, 2009|10:57 am]

rhiow44
Our bus pulled up to the front of the Wenhua campus on Yangmingshan in the fading light of a Friday evening. The international student office had arranged a fascinating event to incorporate celebrations of all the major Western and Chinese holidays. Christmas, Chinese New Year, Valentine's Day, Halloween, Mid-autumn festival - all packed into one, three-hour holi-fest (that's holiday festival, in case you didn't pick up on that).

Of course, like everything in Taiwan, the main focus was on food. In this case, they had set up a self-serve barbecue table, from which we filled out little cardboard bucket with raw ingredients. Three cooks were working two Mongolian barbecues; the line was long and the air was thick with mosquitoes. That was, in fact, the most notable feature of the event - the food was good, the activities were mildly entertaining, but the mosquitoes stole the show. They were not just mosquitoes, they were massive mosquitoes. And they made a truly impressive turn-out for such a small space. Mosquito-magnet that I am, I put on my rain jacket in order to put as many layers as possible between me and them. But they had no trouble biting through denim pants, so, while periodically swiping around my face and neck with the disposable chopsticks I was holding with my barbecue bucket, I was also shifting my legs around to keep them off. It probably looked like I had to pee. And/or was mentally unstable. But even without exposure to such a dense supply of mosquitoes, I manage to maintain a collection of at least ten bites at any given time. I don't know how. I think I get attacked a lot in my sleep. I'm hoping that all this exposure will eventually help me build up a resistance to mosquitoes. Or perhaps I'll turn into the Spiderman's mosquito counterpart. Perish the thought.

Insect infestation notwithstanding, the international office did a wonderful job of putting together the event, and I'm just sad that there was not more interest in the (activities, which may have been more suited to elementary or middle school students) like pumpkin-rolling races, or love-song karaoke (Celine Dion, anyone?). I think most of the students, after partaking in the barbecue, wandered off onto the rest of the campus, which boasts a stunning view over Taipei, especially on a clear night. After perusing all of the activities, I joined the loose group of students at the look-out point on the edge of campus. We spent what was left of the evening there before heading back to catch the bus back down into the city.
linkpost comment

Gluttony. [Nov. 2nd, 2009|11:54 am]

rhiow44
There's no other word for it. Gluttony - the second and most delicious sin, for which the punishment, according to Dante, is an eternity lying in dirty black slush and freezing rain. Small price to pay for a bite of chocolate cake, right? Well, hopefully they'll consider the big picture before throwing me down there because my normal meals consist of unseasoned rice, bland noodles, plain vegetables and oatmeal. But today, Bacchus himself would have given me a tip of his hat, or his grape-crown-thing, or whatever it is he wears. I foolishly scheduled two meal dates in one day (and not four hours from one another!) - one with my dad's cousin's friend Paul, and the other with my Aunt Linda and Marie's cousin, Roger. In my defense, these were dates suggested by the treating parties, so I was reluctant to object.

At 12:30, We met Paul outside the Yuan Shao yakinikku restaurant near the Songshan airport. He escorted us inside, where his wife and son were already seated. The restaurant is owned by the same person that owns the upscale sushi restaurant that Jeffry took us to and was thus decorated with a similar simple elegance. In keeping with the Japanese tradition of yakinikku, there were small grill-stoves built into the tabletop in front of us. After pleasantries and the whole ordering kerfuffle, the waitstaff brought over baskets of smoldering coal bricks and placed them under our grills.

What followed I would liken to a freight train of meat headed straight for my stomach tied to the tracks, like in those old robber movies. Except that my stomach was not struggling to get away, it was drooling and thinking "beeeef." The first bite was "mmmmm," delicious. Only about halfway through my man-hole-cover sized platter of meat did I slow down and think, "hmmmm." Then the "hmmmm" became an "uuuuuugh" and by the time the second and third courses came out, my stomach was battered and stretched to a bloated pulp. I was thoroughly disgusted with myself; I don't think I have ever eaten that much meat in one sitting. And then dessert came out: brown-sugar panna cotta. I stared it down the way a woman stares down a Gucci purse. I convinced myself that I had just enough room left to make it through, though I was already starting to feel queasy and all the formerly-pleasant lights and decorations around me were beginning to press in as if admonishing me for my decisions.

"This was fun," were Paul's words cuing the conclusion of the meal, and my release from the game of try-not-to-look-as-uncomfortable-as-you-feel. Except that, after a sincere expression of gratitude on our part and a warm farewell, they were headed in the same direction. At the next corner, Paul pointed out the way to the metro. I thanked him, and said goodbye... and then he started walking in the same direction. I had wrongfully assumed that him giving me directions meant that we were parting ways. This was beginning to feel slightly awkward. Finally, we reached the point where they were to turn off, and made yet another attempt at goodbye. Then Valerie's phone rang and it was our landlord, speaking Chinese. We imposed on Paul's son to translate for us before, finally, saying goodbye. I had to go sit on a bench for a few minutes to recover.

It was 2:30 and we were to meet Roger for dinner at 4:30. Valerie and I walked along one of the nearby underground pedestrian malls, stopping just before the food-court area - the sight of which I don't think I would have been able to bear - to do some homework on a bench. 4:30 rolled up more gracefully than I would have expected, and Roger picked us up outside the MRT station. In the car, he was saying how early our 5:30 dinner reservations were. I agreed as heartily as decorum would allow, hoping that we might push them back a bit and give my stomach a little more time to return to normal capacity. To no avail. Instead, after briefly and inexplicably perusing a computer store, we showed up at an elegant but casual Italian restaurant named Grazie. After a glass of wine and some light conversation, I noticed that the pressure against my belt had subsided somewhat and that the thought of eating a few slices of pizza no longer seemed so entirely revolting. In fact, after an (entirely unnecessary) appetizer, I was looking forward to the first pizza I've had in three months with almost as much anticipation as if I had not just eaten an entire herd of cows three hours prior.

I survived - and enjoyed - that dinner; the food was really good and the portions were less epic. I was even able to walk out of the place on my own two feet. In fact, we walked quite far, out to what Roger described as the computer and electronics mecca of Taipei - a Taiwanese Akihabara, if you will. It wasn't anywhere close the real thing, but made an admirable effort, in spite of the rain. We walked aimlessly through the three floors of tiny shops and vendors and I discovered that my once burning passion for technology has dulled immensely. Perhaps that change is commensurate with the thinning of my wallet, but I think it has more to do with a shift in values. In any case, I didn't feel the slightest impulse to buy anything and thus very little motivation to even look.

We caught a cab over to Ximen, which is the hip-and-fashionable district of Taipei, where all the stylish clothes shops peddle Engrish, punk and purses to the with-it Taiwanese youth. There are movie theaters, snack shops, arcades... everything a teenager could want. (There was even a condom shop.) Except that I'm not a teenager anymore, nor is Valerie for that matter. I suspect that Roger didn't really know what to do with us, and he knows that young people tend to hang out in Ximen, so we would probably like to go there. It was nonetheless an interesting visit - quite the opposite of the frumpy part of Taipei that I call home. Roger was very kind and pleasant company. He insisted on accompanying us down into the metro to make sure we could figure out our way home on Taipei's three subway lines. Not entirely necessary, but appreciated; not unlike the copious amounts of food I consumed.

Tomorrow, I will seek absolution in a small bowl of oatmeal.
linkpost comment

Less-than-thriller [Oct. 31st, 2009|12:25 am]

rhiow44
I can't say I didn't see it coming. It happens the same time every year. And Valerie was in the habit of reminding me a few times a week. The surprise with which it hit me, then, was not at all surprise, or rather an entirely intentional lack of preparation. Of the assortment of holidays I take abroad with me, Halloween is very near the bottom - on par with the socks that I use to cram in the nooks and crannies of my suitcase. Easter gets entirely left behind. But I take Halloween with a certain grudging nostalgia, for all it used to mean to me as a child, when I virtually worshiped candy. But at this age, without the candy and the trick-or-treating, it's really just an excuse to have a party, and not the kind of party I'm particularly interested in attending. Copious amounts of alcohol and the anonymity provided by a costume (which is, paradoxically, not necessarily very concealing, in some cases) tend to encourage, let's say, some rather unbecoming behavior. But I think too many years around Isla Vista may have unjustly prejudiced me against the occasion. Since I left, none of my Halloweens have involved wading through tens of thousands of staggering, drunk (and often obnoxious) college students or having policemen confiscate any item that is not physically attached to my person. In fact, there has been practically zero police presence at most of the Halloween events I have attended since I left Santa Barbara. So I think that reflects well on Halloween as a whole and negatively on Halloween in Isla Vista, but I'm sure you could find more than a few people who would disagree on both counts.

In any case, the Wednesday prior to Haloween crept (haha, creep, get it?) up on a still-costume-less me. I would have been quite happy to stay that way through Halloween, but Valerie was very eager to attend a party and I had made some verbal commitments to attending the kickboxing club party that night. After inviting Pascal and Andy, there was no backing out. But there was still the option of putting virtually no effort or thought into a costume (as opposed to past Halloween costumes, which have consumed upwards of five hours of arts-and-crafts time). Thus, I picked up a pair of black dress pants I was already planning to buy for professional purposes, added a black beanie and a black shirt, cut off a strip of the unused portion of our couch cover and BAM, I'm a burglar. But not just any burglar - Valerie dressed up as a cat and that made me a "cat burglar." Ha ha. ha... Witty on the cheap and easy. OK, maybe not so witty, but cheap and more creative than cowboy, which was my other option.

We met Pascal and Andy outside the MRT station and were soon joined by Anders, Melissa, and a growing flock of foreigners. The Taiwanese people were mostly confused, a little suspicious, and only sometimes amused. Mainly the children. There was a little girl on the metro that was giggling herself to pieces at Valerie's cat costume (which was as simple as black clothes, some face drawing and a pair of ears). I can only imagine the kind of attention Pascal and Andy received, impeccably dressed as they were in the attire of the Mad Hatter and Alice, respectively. Pascal's costume was truly impressive, with a home-made felt hat, blazer, over-sized bow-tie, and ridiculous socks, and Andy had the advantage of already being English and resembling Alice.

We arrived at the (relatively) spacious second-floor apartment of our host to find Halloween decorations in the form of ball-point-pen drawings on printer paper, with perhaps a smidge of crayon or colored pencil. Good thing no one was expecting decorations. Admirable effort, nonetheless. Probably more than I would have done. We passed the evening in conversation with some people I knew from the club, a few people I didn't, and, of course, Pascal and Andy. There were a few clever or elaborate costumes, but all small game compared to the standard fare in Isla Vista. The best-costume prize went (rightfully) to the guy who built an entire shower around himself, complete with shower curtain and shower head.

At midnight (when I would have liked to have been on my way to bed any other night), we left en masse for the Indian Beer House, informally known as the dino restaurant, so called for the giant dinosaur skeletons that form the centerpiece of the decorations in the three-story building. It is actually pretty impressive - the walls are all earthen-textured and contoured to give the place the appearance of underground. While it is normally a family restaurant, the place was fully converted for Halloween (although the giant skeletons everywhere gave it quite a head-start) into a three-story club with separate bars and DJs for each floor. With all the loud music, booze and general chaos, it felt almost like an Isla-Vista Halloween, were it not for the large Taiwanese presence among the otherwise expat congregation.

I enjoyed myself until about 2:00, when I was finally tired of the crowds, the loud noises, and the sticky, booze-sodden floor, and just plain tired. Fortunately, that corresponded rather well with our departure shortly thereafter. We caught a taxi home and that was the end of it... for another year.
linkpost comment

navigation
[ viewing | most recent entries ]

Advertisement