In Japan, people hate:
Stealing. You can leave you purse on a table in a nightclub and wander away for 45 minutes and it will still be there when you get back.
Wearing short sleeves
Their teeth, they always cover them when they laugh. People say this is because of some ancient tradition but really it's because it's snaggletooth city.
Eating in public
Talking on cell phones in the subway]]>
So as you can probably infer, Tokyo is complete sensory overload. The vending machines have TV screens and shout at you. The giant screens on the buildings that are just a few feet apart are playing different advertisements, loudly. Arcade games beckon you from six-story game parlours in high-pitched, improbable voices. Women stand outside stores with loudspeakers, trying to cajole passerbys inside. The street cleaners play "itsy bitsy spider" to warn you of their presence.
Tokyo is the most amazing city I've ever been to, it's a complete mind-fuck. I spent my first two weeks in Japan there and had to pry myself away to try and see some more of Japan. I've been hiking, I've seen temples, I've seen shrines, I've eaten ramen. And then, I rested.
Now I'm in Yufuin, in the middle of nowhere. During my explorations today I did not find anyone that would cop to knowing English, including any of the guests at my hostel. I spent the day watching the leaves change color, which is a major draw around these parts. Oh, Japan.]]>
Last summer Bla and I wanted to go to the Tsukiji fish market. The deal is you have to go at five in the morning if you want to see men shrieking at each other over tuna the size of 5th graders. The night before our planned visit we were perched in a bar called 'Ghetto' in the Golden Gai--a bar that could seat only four people and that was owned by the star of a Japanese action film who also owned a restaurant called 'Horse' that only served the flesh of that mighty beast--we realized that we'd be fools to leave and try to wake up so early. We'd have a much better chance of staying awake with our new friends at Ghetto and going straight to the fish market from there.
Of course we hadn't considered the effect of the fish market on our compromised systems--compromised by Japanese action film stars teaching us exclamations in Japanese accompanied by shots of soju. Needless to say, the visit was terrifying and exhausting, and we hopped back on the train around 7 or 8 to finally get back to our hostel and go to sleep. Of course we hadn't realized that this was rush hour and the train would be absolutely, horribly jammers. Despite the stories of women getting groped on such trains, the other passengers gave me and Bla a wide birth. Reeking of ghetto, soju and salmon, I can't say that I blame them.]]>
Two weeks ago I had a brilliant idea that I was going to avert jet lag by waking up 20 minutes earlier every day before I left, with the end goal of being up by 3am for the few days before I left. This would be another example of my attempts at self-improvement through unrelenting self-abuse. Obviously, the plan did not go as hoped, despite me programming my ipod to play Bobby Brown "My Perogative" at full volume in the early hours of the morn. The best I did was waking up at 4am. That night I fell asleep at 7:30pm, and is if to mock my attempt to violently wrest control of my own circadian rhythms, slept for 12 hours.
So despite the plush reclined seat, a couple of valium and some bubbly (only after the sushi, miso soup and soba noodles, of course), your valiant hero tossed and turned for hours before drifting off and dreaming of frequent flyer miles.]]>
The other said, "Well, it will be a great conversation starter...like, so, you here for the weekend, mate?"
I had made a well thought out and very conservative list of items to bring. At T-24 hours I started panicking and adding things willy nilly. I need to bring a thermometer, right? I'm not playing Russian roulette with my health, here. I've brought at least 8 or 9 over the counter remedies for various ailments that I like to diagnose myself with frequently, and another 3 or 4 under the counter medications to help me "chill out." In the last few hours I added a self-help book, a polka dotted tank top, a collection of gummy candy that looked like pizza, a grimy white t-shirt, compression bags, hair serum, nighttime moisturizer (to compliment the daytime moisturizer, body lotion and hand lotion I already have) and a guide to reading menus in Japanese. I had to sit on my bag to get it to close.
The plan had been to "travel light" but by the time I made it to Paddington Station I knew that I had royally fucked up. Once I boarded the Heathrow Express I sat down on the floor and unpacked my entire bag. "Be ruthless," I kept muttering to myself under my breath, trying to avoid the stares of the businessmen wondering why I was counting and recounting my underwear and talking to myself. "Be ruthless." By the time the train pulled up to Heathrow I had filled one of the compression bags up with items that I had ruthlessly abandoned and made a solid commitment to myself to divest myself of even more of my possessions on arriving in Tokyo.
One of my friends was trying to understand why me, of all people--me, who considers a trip to the mall a sacred journey, me, who thinks of bric-a-brac as a fundamental human right, was even bothering to try to travel light. The only reason I can give is that I like challenging myself. I like putting myself in situations that I find very difficult, like Thanksgiving dinner with my family. I have a believe that the more excruciating I deliberately make my life, the better a person I will become. And this is why I have packed this child-size bag. ]]>
The thing is, I am fairly certain that I hate traveling. I really like having my own space and my own things and my own sheets and my own pillow. I also know that this trip is going to be very difficult for me. I plan to spend 3-6 weeks in China. I don't like spending more than 45 minutes in Chinatown. It seems that me and the Chinese have very different ideas about personal space, for one. So I'm not sure exactly how I will handle this extended trip. Probably the same way I deal with my trips to Chinatown--with a snotty look on my face and trying to fit as much food in my maw as I possibly can.
But don't get me wrong, I am really, really looking forward to this. Just the fact that I have the opportunity to do this makes me so happy, and dare I admit, proud of myself. When I was 19 I never would have dreamt that I would have been able to do something like this on my own. I thought this was the sort of thing that only people with rich parents and chaperones were able to do. Six or seven years ago one of my biggest resentments was how little I had traveled, how I hadn't been able to do an exchange program in college or live abroad. And now I've been living abroad for three years, had to get extra pages added my passport and have enough frequent flyer miles to go around the world. And that's pretty amazing. ]]>
Highlights:
I very nearly finished the week off with a McBurger at the airport but backed down at the last minute and took a sleeping pill and a couple of Nyquil instead. This was far more effective, and left me with the same amount of slobber on my face but with the addition of six hours sleep. Back in London, dreaming of double-stuff Oreos.]]>
I've known about hoarders before seeing this show. I used to live in the flat next to one in California. This poor woman was a complete nutcase. We both had flower boxes outside our doors. I filled mine up with herbs and watered them every day and used them for cooking and was pretty pleased with myself for having such a green thumb. She put bark and plastic flowers in hers. The backseat of her car was filled with garbage that obscured the windows and she'd cover it with a blanket, as if the rest of us wouldn't notice.
One time she was locked out her her apartment for three days because a pile of her stuff fell over and blocked the door. Of course she was too scared to call the landlord--if he saw what she was doing he'd have kicked her out--so she sat outside for three days trying to dislodge the stuff behind the door by pushing sticks through the mail slot. Eventually, she got back in. She was completely insane in this really suburban, middle-aged hippie sort of way. She asked that I never knock on her door, but that I call her special voicemail line if I ever needed anything. I suspect she didn't want me to see her "stuff."
I never had any concept of what was truly going on in the next flat over until I saw this show. I had always assumed that hoarders were collecting worthwhile things. For example, my father has a tendency towards hoarding but it's always German antiques and cookbooks. My mother refuses to throw away armchairs that clutter the living room, but from an objective standpoint they aren't junk-heap material. I thought that's what hoarding was--having too many things because they're still nice enough to keep. (I'm consciously trying to not mention my father's collection of phone books). But on Hoarders, people are just collecting garbage. Rotting pumpkins, empty Coke bottles, pizza boxes, scraps of paper, dolls with no heads. It boggles the mind. And what is most unbelievable is how some of these people find someone else that compliments their complete insanity, like the compulsive shopper who is married to a compulsive hoarder. She brings stuff in and he won't let it go. It was really terrifying.
And everyone on the show eventually breaks down weeping because of their "stuff." They don't want to get rid of their "stuff." "It's my stuff!" they wail. "I don't want people touching my stuff!" "My stuff is all I have!" It was profoundly depressing. I saw this on the back of reading an article in the New York Times Magazine, The Self-Storage Self a few days ago, while at the same time waiting for all of the storage companies I called to get back to me with price quotes. I'm going to go travelling around Asia for a while and need somewhere to put my "stuff." And now I'm gripped with fear.
Stuff is one of my obsessions. I wouldn't go so far as to call myself a compulsive shopper, but I certainly love accumulating. Out of fear, I've counterbalanced this habit by being a compulsive thrower-outer. I throw a lot away. I go through my apartment and donate bags to charity. I'm so terrified of being one of these people where their entire lives are controlled by their stuff that I throw things away and get rid of things constantly. I get rid of more than I buy and manage to hold on to the sides. But just barely. And don't ask about the boxes I have in my parents' garage. That's my stuff.]]>
I've long compared my job to an abusive boyfriend. Or like, a really, really cute abusive boyfriend. A boyfriend that's so cute that all of your friends and family are really impressed and secretly surprised that you landed him. And they all tell you that you'd be a fool to dump him because you all suspect that you'll never do this well next time around, and you should really try and make it work and appreciate him more. But in your heart you know that he's actually a really shitty boyfriend and that being really cute isn't quite enough. And that's sort of what it's like to work for one of the top companies in the world. It's not really quite enough. And the fact is, you shouldn't live your life terrified of change--there are way cuter jobs out there.
So I told my boss (and his boss) that I'm leaving to go travel. It's weird how emotional it all feels. My job has been the one constant in my life for five years. I've lived in three countries, the boyfriends have come and gone and I've gotten one meaningless promotion after another. And even though my job is about as empty as a job can be, it was something to hold on to. Because when you are at a loss for what you are doing with your life, having a really cute job is still something.]]>
Over the weekend in London we had the Magic Waves Festival, which was awesome. Straight up slammin' Italo action. While shaking it on the dancefloor, I was introduced to a guy by a friend of a friend. His name sounded familiar, but I didn't have long to think about it. Within moments he was trying to ram his tongue down my throat. As I valiently attempted to maintain my composure, I had a flash. Where had I seen his name before?
The Heart 2 Heart inbox. My first groupie.]]>
I've since found out that all of my English dream boyfriends were actually from Northern England. I am now considering the idea that I may have made a slight geographical mistake. ]]>