Spring Cleaning

I just cleaned the everliving shit out of the kitchen and dining room. I cleaned things I think have never been cleaned. It took me the better part of 2 hours, but it's not even noon now and I'm pretty much finished, so it feels good that I got something that significant done with so much left in the day. I might cruise out to Ueno to check out the cherry blossoms if I can be bothered getting dressed and heading out there, or if I don't get sucked in to cleaning more of the house.

Cleaning is infectious to me, once I start in on something, I can't just leave some parts undone. Cleaning one thing highlights all the rest of the stuff that's filthy, so I just kinda end up doing everything. Cleaning the kitchen made me look at my room, which was ransacked and sterilized not even a week ago and think how dirty it's getting, I suppose I'll be doing some straightening of that later too.

The weather today is fantastic, it's sunny and warm, and I can feel that spring is really here, summer and the oppressive heat isn't too far off if this kind of day keeps up. After all these cold nights, it's weird, I know my body is adjusted to it, even though in my mind I can't wait for it to be stupid hot all the time. Right now, this weather, exactly how it is, I think is the perfect weather. I can leave all the windows and doors open, I don't have to adjust my clothes at all, and there aren't 8,000,000,000 insects trying to make homes of every nook and cranny and square inch of open air.

Having the house to myself like this, I should be having company. It would be the perfect time to housebreak a girl, if on there were, ya know, a girl for me to housebreak. Saki's waiting for me to make a move, that much is clear, and now that she's moved back to Kashiwa, well, I think it's time for me to just man up and do something about it. That'll be fun.

K, I gotta call Jenn and finish cleaning.

Hershel, David, and a House Full of Love

I woke up this morning to the sun beating down on me through the sliding glass doors of my room. Of the three nights I've slept in my bed since rearranging my furniture this has happened twice. The time was around 6:40am.

It's not that I don't like being woken up by the sun, the same thing happened when I had everything set up how it was before, but I more or less moved my pillow to the exact location where the sun first enters my room after cresting the rooftops of the surrounding buildings. There's no real way to avoid it, shy of closing my blinds, which I'm reluctant to do because I do, in fact, rely on the sun to wake me up.

This morning, however, I wasn't so thrilled to be woken up so early. I wanted to sleep for as long as I could. Last night was yet another, and hopefully the last, night of drinking in a streak of occasions that spanned about 5 days. My body is somewhat less than amused, and is doing what it can to exact some sort of revenge, or at least recovery.

Saturday night was Natascha and Sammy's official going-away party, where the students would have a chance to say goodbye to them and wish them well. Much drinking was called for, schmoozing and practicing of Japanese was frequent and sloppily done. Karaoke came later, but after about 2am I had to catch a cab home, due to a shift swap with Allen that put me at work the next morning at 10:50am. Needless to say I was tired the next day, and popped a Genki Drink as soon as I got to work.

Genki Drinks would be the focus of that day, as I had two at work, and at least another 3 later that night in an attempt to keep it going longer than my body was really prepared for. After work I went home, changed clothes and went to Moriya to Greg's house to meet up with Pam Pam Pam who flew all the way out here for a visit. It was really nice seeing her again. We all, of course, went out for sushi, and then went back to Greg's house for a long night of drinking. Long as in, say, 4am by the time the energy drinks were no longer doing anything whatsoever to keep me awake and we all crashed shortly afterward. Catching up with Pam was nice, she had a lot of really nice things to say to me, mostly about how much she was amazed to see me actually happy, and content with my life, something which I admit, in her time knowing me, she's basically never seen.

Pam and I go back about 7 years now, so she's had a lot of experience with me, and saw me at a lot of different phases in my life, none of which, come to think of it, really involve me being true to myself or having healthy relationships with people. A lot of it involved her and I at some point butting heads, and eventually pushing each other away. So when she told me that it was a shock to her to see me how I am now, "Dave, you look really good now", lalala etc, I knew there had to be some truth to it. But really I don't ever think about it anymore, because the life I left behind when I came here is more or less dead to me, it's a memory that exists only when it's brought up. I've separated myself from it, so hearing her bring up the reasons she and I had a falling out came as a surprise to me, because it had been so long since I had considered it, or it was of importance.

Monday I had the day off, but my bike got impounded, so I stayed home after returning home and tore my room entirely apart, took everything out, cleaned, threw stuff away, sorted things, and did my laundry. Hangover days are good for cleaning, I find, because you can just go into complete zombie-autopilot and get a lot done without realizing you've been working. Not only that but you get it done a lot more thoroughly, or at least I do. When I'm good and hungover, I clean meticulously, and I'm willing to throw things away that I could reason keeping otherwise, and would, since I'm a packrat. Too many years playing video games where every item with which you could interact or add to your inventory had a use in advancing the plot. I took the opportunity to rearrange my furniture, something that I find really difficult, as I always try to find the optimum configuration for things whenver I do it the first time.

Rearranging one's room is quite the task, because it completely changes your concept of a place, and a place as personal as your room affects your concept of reality, that whole Feng Shui thing. So this cleared out room I'm in, freshly cleaned and rearranged, makes me feel like I'm in a new place, it's warmer, brighter, and I've centralized my bed, a typically feminine thing, which has put my head, as I mentioned, directly in the path of the early morning sun. But the room feels cleaner, clearer, and bigger than it did before. I attribute it to the cleaning more than anything else. As one accumulates garbage, trinkets, and scraps of paper that eventually clutter up the surfaces of a room, I feel like they suck the light out of a place, make it darker, saturated with the essence of everyday life, and slowly becomes more a lair than a room. In this way cleaning and rearranging renews a place, and breathes life into a place that has become stagnant no matter how long you leave the windows open.

Tuesday after work I went to a houseparty at Christian's place, where we all drank and mingled, and a couple of the J-Staff came so it was alright. Bryan, Ty, Steve, Natascha and I all had to catch last train so we left before 1am, and Ty Tascha and I cought a taxi from Kita Kogane. When we got back to our place, Ty said goobye to Natascha, and on the way into the apartment, Ty and I had one of those odd, surreal conversations about how that was the last time Ty would probably ever see Natascha ever again.

Wednesday after work was Natascha's actual, chill, small group going away party at Bora Bora in Kashiwa. I gave her her gifts, signed her and Sammy's books, and didn't really talk to either of them that much. I talked to Anna and Jenny more than anyone else, but this I'm ok with because I wanted her to go and talk to as many people as she could and be happy and all that. I know that we'll all see each other again when I return to America, so it's not a big deal, and though it may be a while, maybe a few years, it's not goodbye. There were a lot of people there that she may never see again, and I figured it would be best just to leave her to say goodbye to those people rather than wonder why she's not paying any attention to the group of us at our table. Eventually, the time came to say goodbye, and we hugged, said a few words about how it's not really goodbye, and I made my way home via taxi with Charlie, drunken Jenny, Anna myself and....one other person. Lol...one other person, who I can't recall. Oh, Alan, I think. Yea, Alan.

So, yea, lots of drinking. The reason for the title of this entry is that Thursday morning my roommates left to go to Thailand, so I have the place to myself. It feels very lonely, just Hershal and me being here for a week. The love/hate relationship between me and my cat is the bit about it being a house full of love. As in, I chase my cat around all day trying to get him to stop doing things. But I still love him. That sorta thing.

Temporary Post Title 1

I'm so leet it hurts. Actually I'm a huge nerd, but whatever. Rasi(the rogue) took this of my character the other night, must have been right after our failed Black Morass runs.

Anyway, in other news, my bike got stolen last night.

RIP "The Death Trap"

Unimpressed

I keep reading books about people growing up, finding partners, having families, growing old and dying. I keep seeing it in movies, and so many other places, and it's no wonder really, it's just about everyone's life.

I've always known I want to be a father, but, as time goes on and as I continue to be single, with no real prospect or hope of that changing, I must remark on my feelings on the matter. See, as far as I'm concerned, one's life ends after childbirth. After that, one must become mom or dad, and who you were prior to that more or less ceases to exist, and is replaced by a benevolent will that seeks only to ensure the success and well-being of one's offspring. In that respect, I also feel that one must accomplish in life all those things that one truly wants prior to childbearing, which frankly, for me, is a lot, albeit poorly defined.

I think part of the reason I'm so relationship averse is that this eventual relinquishment of self for the benefit of one's children is the most concrete and real proof of one's mortality, something which I continue, even at 24, to be reluctant to admit. I'm not ready to accept that I'm going to grow old and die, no matter what I do or think, and I'm certainly not ready for my life as I know it to be over, though what I stand to gain by remaining single really doesn't seem that profitable at the rate and direction I'm going.

There are just so so so many things that I want to do with my life, and I feel like getting married and starting a family is giving up on my hope that there is something greater in this life for me than to doom myself to death. Maybe this is the juvenile part of my ego talking, the selfish part of me that wants to keep on living no matter what, but this frustrates me, because biologically speaking, it seems as if my desire to stay alive is far greater than my desire to reproduce, which would be the ultimate biological purpose of our being here.

Having said that though, my previous entry is about how absurdly bored I am, so it's kind of contradictory for me to moan about not wanting to give up this life I have for myself while at the same time complain about not having anything meaningful to do. But it's how I feel, and I have a right to those feelings.

Again, it all comes back to this feeling I have in my gut like if I settle down, so to speak, that I'm giving up on my dreams. Somehow, for me, being in a relationship, getting married, all that jazz, represents an admission on my part that there's nothing else out there and that I should just be content to grow old and die without putting up a fight, the whole, having kids is taking a stand against the inevitability of death thing aside. In terms of allele frequencies, that argument is all well and good, but my consciousness doesn't rest in my alleles, it rests, I dunno, wherever it is consciousness rests, and that part of me will die with my phenome.

Which leads me to the whole, soul/life after death thing, that I still have a hard time with. If I have an immortal soul, what part of me is it exactly that endures past death? If I were to subtract from me all those things in my personality that have changed since I was born, and will have changed by the time I die, and leave me with the essence of all that has remained constant, what exactly is that? Is it enough to constitute an entity in and of itself, such that I would, after death, remain aware and capable of experiencing some sort of reality? If I knew there was something else, I would willingly participate in the cycle that nature has set up for me, I'd think of it as an enjoyable experience worthy of participating in, and jump right in, but instead, we are born into a reality that provides no such assurance, and forces us to chose to live a life according to mere speculation, at the end of which none but ourselves ever get the answer, should we be even lucky enough to be aware of what it is after the fact.

There are too many religions in the world to make me think that any one of them is THE right one. If any one of them really did have the answer, an answer that was bigger than life in some real way, the others would have given over long ago. But that's not the case. The fact that religion pops up wherever humanity does doesn't tell me so much anymore that they're all pieces of the same puzzle, it tells me that the search for life after death is a part of basic human nature.

In 24 years of being manifest in this reality, I've learned the rules, the limits, more or less, of what's possible and what's not. I'm slowly coming to accept that magic does not exist, will not exist, nor has it ever. It's just not phsyically possible. Not on this Earth.

Anyway, I could go on like this forever, pretty much, so I'll leave it at this: I feel like accepting reality is giving up. I feel like participating in the natural cycle of things is accepting it, and thusly giving up. I feel like the reality into which we are born sucks, it's boring, and increasingly less fascinating as time goes by. There's not a lot left to discover, and that partnered with the suckiness I've discovered so far, makes me all the more reluctant to accept that this is all that's capable of being. Basically, I resent that I've been born into such a crappy, limited, painful, meaningless and, though at times entertaining, largle unimpressive world, and I'm just not willing to accept that's all there is to it, much less work to perpetuate it and thusly impose this worthless reality on others.

Boredom and Loneliness

I'm bored. Blogging while bored is usually an excercise in futility, but it seems lately that I have a lot more free time now that, well, I've once again plateau'd in the game I play. There's really nothing I can do with an hour or so before going to bed, so I just kinda quit and have nothing to do. I hate being idle, I hate the feeling like I've got energy and time that's being used for absolutely nothing, not even to accomplish something as intangible as in-game progress.

I've got this odd, sinking feeling like my life is becoming stagnant, despite all my travel. I don't really do much outside of work, and I'm certainly not in a relationship, so, a lot of my time is spent, well, killing time. I should take studying Japanese back up, I'm sure I could learn a lot from it, but Greg has my texts, so I can't really do that.

Natascha is leaving next week. Everytime it crosses my mind it leaves me with this awful empty feeling inside, even though we're not a couple or anything, it's just to have yet another person leaving, especially one as close me as her, just resonates too much with that feeling I always get that no matter what you do in life, at the end of it you're always alone. I know a large part of that is the life I've chosen for whatever conscious or unconscious reasons, but all the same it's still a solitary life I lead.

Again I come back to my having an absurdly high threshold for what's exciting or worth doing. Hanging out with friends is fantastic and all, but what does it really accomplish? Other than strengthening a friendship, it's really not a whole lot. So you go and hang out with your friends after work. Sweet. We hung out, had a few drinks, chatted, pickled our livers or made our lungs bleed, caught up on gossip. Wow. As a highly trained monkey in space once gestured to the panic striken and overly worrisome control crew of his voyage back on Earth, "big fucking deal".

I'm going to miss Natascha a lot. She was pretty much the only person I've never minded just hanging out with. Time spent with her is time well spent, and it's going to be hard to find someone else like that, if I ever do. There aren't too many people like her out there, though I can't decide if that's good or bad. The argument goes both ways.

So anyway, I'm bored. I'm bored, and what's worse, I'm indifferent about it.

Beijing - China (Day 5)

Day 5: We slept in after a rowdy night of horse races, and when we got up, decided we should cruise out to the Lama Temple, where we walked around taking pictures, and Buddha drained Sammy's camera battery cause you're not supposed to take pictures of the inside of the shrines. We ran into a couple of horny Tibetan monks, who we got our picture with. I got new camera batteries, and Sammy and Seska bought gifts for people back home.

Siggie and Alex took off that day, and so did Nathan, all hopping on trains to take them whever they were going, the Germans to Vietnam, where Alex is starting a job (apparently he speaks fluent Vietnamese as well as English and German), and Nathan to, hell, who knows. I don't even think Nathan knows.

When we got back, we went to the acrobat show, which turned out to be over already, and got to watch the Kung Fu show instead, featuring the life of Kung Fu master Kong Kong, and was pretty badass. Also, we got the best Engrish business card of all time, from Liu Yi Lin, a "World queer unique skill artist society member director". Apparently he was at the "CCTV 2003 Chinese New Year get-together - Specially invite underwrite hatch master", whatever exactly that means.

We went back to the hostel, drank, went to bed. This apparently is a highly abridged version of our day. Thus ended Day 5.

I'm An Old Fart

It's official. The first time, I thought it was a simple mistake. The second time, I laughed at the irony, but now that I've gone all the way to the train station, and sat there for 15 minutes only to realize as the train is arriving that I'm missing some important item and had to go back home, basically ruining my plans, I know there's a pattern. I'm going senile. At 24.

Meh, I guess I should have seen it coming.

I left my house the other day at 12:45 to catch the 1pm train so I could go to the bank, wire home money, then go to the midori no madoguchi to buy my bus ticket to Kyoto, but, when I got there, I had missed my train by minutes, must have come at 12:58. So I waited it out, realized at the last moment that I didn't have my passbook or copy from the last time I was there to use as a template, and had to go back home. Oh well, I still had plenty of time. So I caught the next train, and got to Shin Matsudo to find out that my next train wasn't for another 15 minutes, thusly putting me in Kashiwa and thusly at the bank a whopping 20 minutes early. I waited as long as I could in the line, but people were moving monstrously slow as could have been expected, and though I did get a smile from the cute girl that works there, a smile doesn't send my money home and I had to take off to catch my bus to work for my 3:10 start.

So, since I didn't get the bank done, I figured I would stop by the midori no madoguchi after work to at least get the bus ticket part taken care of so I could at least say I got SOMETHING done that day, but when I got there, I discovered that I have to wait until the 20th to buy my ticket. The website says to make sure you get your ticket 1 month in advance, it failed to mention that you can't actually BUY the ticket until 1 month prior to your departure. So I got nothing at all done that day except for leaving the house an hour and a half early and enjoying time outside.

K. Now that alone might not be enough to convince you that I'm an old fart (the forgetting stuff constantly, in the exact same situation over and over), but this should:
I found not one, not two, but 5 or 6 completely white hairs just chillen on the left side of my hair today at work. There's no pretending, they're there. I mean, I know that I'm not a little kid anymore, but for fuck's sake, I'm only 24. I'm not supposed to have peppered hair quite yet. Dad told me I'd be going grey by 35, but this is ridiculous. It's not like I lead an entirely stressful life anymore, if anything this is the most relaxed period in my life since before we moved from Texas, so it has to be genetics at play. Yikes. I hope to God that the other genetic hair-related curse that runs in my family (male pattern baldness) doesn't kick in early as well, if at all. My cowlick's been particularly pronounced over the last few months, and I'm constantly wary of my hair thinning, which makes it all the more fun for Rie, my hairdresser, to make comments about it. Richie, my 25 year old bald friend, assures me I'm doing fine. Whatever.

I'm an old fart. I'm senile and am going grey. Sweet action. Lol.

Interlude: Travel Plans

I'm taking a break from recounting my trip to China to write about current events. In case you hadn't noticed, the dates don't line up on my entries about China, and I am in fact just writing in retrospect whenever I have a chunk of time, and it's taking me a little while to get around to writing them all out.

Anyway, in the meantime, I just booked my hostel in Kyoto for April, a whopping $40 for 2 nights. I decided I only need two nights there because I'm gonna be taking an overnight bus there, which will put me in Kyoto at 6am on Sunday, so I'll have all day then, then Monday, and check out Tuesday, but be there all day as well, taking the overnight bus back to Tokyo to arrive back in town early Wednesday morning to go to work that afternoon. That means that I only need to arrange one shift swap, and only have to endure a half day at work when I get back. I think I'll be able to manage that, even after the shit sleep one gets on a bus. I know I'm going to be tired, but whatever, I've been tired before, it can be done. Can't possibly be worse than going to work the morning after E, which I know can be done, however zombified.

I figure with three full days, and only travelling by myself, I can bust out all the stuff I want to. I mainly just wanna see the gardens that I studied when I was in college, the temples and flowers are secondary. And since I'm travelling by myself, I don't mind staying in a shithole, regardless of if it turns out to actually be one, because I'm tough like that, and all I need is to be able to get back there and be able to sleep at all whatsoever.

I knew coming into this crazy travel year that I was gonna have to do some of it alone, and I'm ok with that. There are some cases where I prefer to do it that way. It gives me a good time to reflect on things, and really appreciate it on a personal level. When I was in Italy there were days where I never spoke a words except to order food, and really, that's ok with me. You learn a lot about yourself when your entire dialogue is internal. It gives me a sense of accomplishment to know that I've navigated an experience entirely on my own.

On a related note, I've decided to clear July from my travel schedule in order to go to Thailand with Greg in August. That means I'll have a month for people to come visit me during the summer when hopefully the rain season will have ended, but that means I'm going to have to try to do both Awa Odori and Thailand in the same month. Hopefully that will work out, since I'll try not to take any vacation days in July, and just use them in August instead. This is more feasible now that I know I won't have to take any vacation days to go to Kyoto. So we'll see how that works out. I'm gonna try to get Shane out here in July, if I can get him away from his roadshow schedule.

Also, Mauro Picotto rocks my socks off.

Beijing - China (Day 4)

Day 4: Our trip, to say the least, was fateful. That was the word that really epitomized our journey. Our trip to the Great Wall was made possible by a misdial on the part of the staff, who, after cancelling the trip to the Secret Wall part of the wall due to a lack of interest, called our room instead of Siggie's to ask if we wanted to do a regular, MuTianYu Wall trip. They said 2 people, and Sammy corrected with three, thusly filling the trip. So basically, we stole Siggie and Alex's place in line when they called the wrong room, and got to go with a group, maybe even got to go at all, thanks to it.

We had to wake up at 7:30 to be out the door by 8:30, and when we woke up, we were surprised to see, after several days of rain and snow, that it was perfectly cloudless and sunny outside, a perfect day. So we got in the van along with 7 other people and sat through the slowest imaginable drive out to the Wall, which involved a lot of trying to sleep, and a whole lot more weird ass Chinese talk radio. Seriously, Chinese sounds exactly like how we make fun of it. I couldn't help laughing every once in a while in between clenching my jaw shut to avoid cracking my teeth going over huge ruts and cracks in the road.

The Wall itself was awesome, aside from the peddlers there harassing us constantly to buy whatever it was they were selling. The whole trip is organized to put you right in the heart of them to encourage you to buy stuff, but knowing that coming into it made it easier to ignore. We took a chairlift up to the top of the wall from the base, and got our first real, "Here I am on The Great Wall of China" pics, which have always been a goal of mine to have. The Wall is amazing, it doesn't really occur to you until you see it winding around out of your view, and then finding it again on the horizon to either side of you continuing on, just how big that wall is. Thousands of miles of wall, just going on and on and on.

We climbed a lot of steps that day, up and down, taking pictures left and right with Sammy and Ceska's cameras since of course my batteries died moments after arriving on top of the wall, and the batteries that I had so fortuitously found on the ground the night before weren't strong enough to actually take pictures with. After finally reaching the end of the section we were on (there was a barrier preventing us from continuing to a section of wall that had no guard rail), Ceska and I of course continued further to the top of the ridge, where we were just awestruck by how amazing the view was. You can literally see everything from up there. It was hard to have to come back down. I wish I would have had a little more time to just sit up there and contemplate for a while.

But, having said that, climbing back down was fun, and once we were where the chairlift dropped us off, the best part of the whole trip began. This deserves a line of its own.

ALPINE SLIDE!!!!!!!!!

I don't know if I have ever mentioned my undying love for the Alpine Slide, but ever since I was a little kid I've lived for these things. I went on a trip to Colorado with my grandparents and family once and all my brother and I did all day nonstop was ride the alpine slides. Best day ever. Anyway, this alpine slide was nothing short of fun-tastic. Best way ever to end a trip to a full fledged Wonder of the World. I came dangerously close to flying off the thing a few times due to some particularly unsafe speeds, but whatever. Alpine Slide. Alpine slide fo life!!!!!

I bought a hat, and we went back. Siggie, Alex, Nathan and we went to the duck restaurant I had scoped out the day before only to discover that it was closed already by the time we got up from our nap. We wound up going to a restaurant near the hostel which was mediocre at best, but we ordered a lot of good stuff, lots of duck, fish, noodles, etc. Good times, even though the food wasn't the best.

When we got back to the hostel, we decided just to chill in the restaurant and drink, and our drinking games got around to me leading Horse Races, which turned out to be an international smash hit. We were so involved and so rowdy, it was great. We had a lot of people playing, an drinking themselves silly, myself included. It's amazing what a little feverish narrating a la an auctioneer can do to what would otherwise be a pretty dull game. You can get a crowd worked up pretty hot that way, as was the case this time around. We met Erna and Barry, folks from Iceland and Ireland respectively, and a couple of really fun South Korean boys who the girls instantly adopted. We also drank with this guy Nathan, from America, who was just hilarious. We didn't go to be until late that night. It was Siggie's last night, so, he and Sammy got a room to themselves to they wouldn't piss off Alex anymore, which was a good call. Thus ended Day 4.

Beijing - China (Day 3)

Day 3: Alex got up early and took off, and shortly afterward Ceska and I dragged ourselves from bed and decided to go to lunch by ourselves to a restaurant nearby that Alex had recommended. After locking up, going to the restaurant and ordering, it finally occured to us that Sammy had no way of getting back into the room, so I went back to the hostel to find that she had somehow gotten back into the room and was in the shower. I told Siggie to let her know that we were out to lunch and that we would be back soon.

Lunch was huge, cheap, and delicious, as was to be expected, and a little while later we made it back to the room to find Sammy curled up in bed watching TV, waiting to see if we were gonna come back so she could figure out if she was gonna have to go out on her own. She apparently got the front desk to let her into the room. Anyway, apparently she had stayed up all night and so she hadn't slept, and I guess we had some kind of miscommunication where Ceska and I thought she wanted to get some sleep, so she wouldn't be dead on her feet later that night, but she thought we were gonna wake her up before we left so she could come with us.

Anyway, Ceska and I took off to go exploring and do some shopping. First we took a rickshaw around the neighborhood which was pretty fun, and walked down our street looking at shops and the like. Then we caught a taxi out to this market we had read about, the Snack Street, but when the taxi driver dropped us off, he pointed to his watch and said 6, which I thought meant it closed at 6, where he really meant it didn't open till 6. So we walked around the markets there, did some haggling, oggled at strange food, and went into a mall thing in a surprisingly upscale commercial district, at lunch at none other than Pizza Hut, and spent some quality time getting to know each other on a somewhat more real level.

On our way back to where the taxi had dropped us off, we saw that all the street carts that were previously empty were now full of vendors selling exotic street foods as it was now after 6. We perused the available options, and before we could decide on something delicious looking enough to buy, we stumbled upon what we had been looking for all along: scorpion. It didn't take long before there was a crowd of people standing around me and Ceska as we debated whether to eat the things or not. For me, there was no question, it was only a matter of time, so I stepped up, pointed to the biggest scorpions they had and waited as he tossed them in the frier, salted them and handed them to me, hot salty and ready to go. I'm in about 50 people's vacation photo albums now, taking a bite out of a whole fried scorpion's pincer.

It's weird when you're psched out about something, you can't really imagine what something's going to be like, but afterwards you see it for what it really is and it all makes sense. Makes me wish I could see things with that kind of clarity beforehand, or at least recognize that moments later I will see it with clarity and try to embrace new and scary things with the kind of comfort that comes with experience, especially seeing as I have a broad range of unusual experiences from which to draw on. I don't know what I thought scorpion would taste like, but it was good. Crunchy of course, since you're making your way through exoskeleton, but, the meat of it tasted an awful lot like chicken (not really true, but good for comparison). It was a lot more crunch than anything else really, and the salt gave it a flavor that was more than palatable. With only a little badgering, far less than I had anticipated, I got Ceska to have a bite as well, and as soon as it was over with she saw it as well for what it was, and was over it just as fast. The centipede I ate directly afterwards was much, much worse, very bitter, and I had to buy some dumplings to get the awful taste out of my mouth. I could have tried starfish, baby shark, locust, or bull's penis, but I opted out. I have a big thing for eating things that would otherwise be able to kill me, and starfist aren't exactly known for being deadly, so it was easy to pass up, at least for me. The shark though would have been interesting.

When we got back, Sammy was in the room watching TV, and not so happy about having spent the day alone, but, meh, oh well. We milled about the hostel, had dinner, and went to bed early after confirming our spot on the tour of the Great Wall for early the next day. I crashed before midnight, while the girls stayed up talking to hostel folks, and thus ended Day 3.

Beijing - China (Day 2)

Day 2: We got up early and ate breakfast at the hostel, where the food turned out to be surprisingly good, and guess what? Cheap. It was rainy that day, of course, so we set out on our first order of business, acquiring umbrellas, which were readily available just about anywhere on our little shady street of dreams.

We walked around, taking a few pictures and marvelling at what basically looked like the remnants of a bombing that was the surrounding neighborhood. I'm not kidding, there was rubble everywhere, hollowed out buildings off the main alley, filth in the roads, and huge billboards blocking their view, creating the illusion to those not looking closely enough that there aren't ruins just about everywhere around you.

Once we got out of our neigborhood though, and approached Tiananmen Square, things cleaned up a bit. Our hostel, located on the Da Zha Lan Market Street, was just south of Qianmen, the southernmost gate leading to Tianenman and The Forbidden City, so we started there and gradually walked our way forward, stopping to take pictures, and be harassed by vendors hawking postcards and the like. The square is huge, the largest public square in the world, where people come in hundreds every morning at 6am to perform Tai Chi. The weather wasn't so great, a fog surrounded most of the horizon accompanying the rain, so our pictures weren't so super fantastic, but, oh well. The buildings there were huge, and there were military officers and peacekeepers everywhere. We almost got marched over by a squad of troops passing through one of the underground tunnels that lead under the massive 12 lane road that crosses the square.

We entered one of the massive gates and walked around, and slowly worked our way down the gated road leading to The Forbidden City, which, upon long awaited arrival and much walking, was of course scaffolded and the grounds are constantly under renovation, one piece at a time. The City itself houses a great many smaller exhibits, and we got to see many cultural relics and the like before finally getting to the end of the city, ending in a rather impressive walled garden, where I was finally happy. I love the gardens most, despite my appreciation for awe-inspiringly big buildings and ancient architecture. We decided we needed something else to do after that, so we caught a taxi to the mall.

But not just any mall, the biggest mall in all of Asia. It was, needless to say, huge. We spent a good while looking for some place to have lunch among the dozens of restaurants. There was a fashion show, but the real fun was trying to get a taxi back home. One taxi straight refused us, and the other was going to as well, so we talked to the parking guard guy and tried to explain the situation, even though he didn't speak English either. Our map was getting rained on, we weren't getting closer to home, and we all were starting to go into mini freak out mode, until the parking guy finally said something to the driver, we got in, and he started driving.

Turns out why they were saying no wasn't that big a deal. See, the main street leading to our house turns into a one way at Qianmen, and so taxis hate driving down it, because it takes like 15 minutes to drive all the way back around to the main road again. So our taxi driver dropped us off at the intersection and we walked the rest of the way, which wasn't really a big deal, I just wish I understood why they were saying no the first time around, so I could have at least tried to communicate that wherever they could drop us off would be fine.

By the time we got back to the hostel it was cold out. Cold. Really really cold. Sammy was essentially soaked from the feet up thanks to non waterproof shoes and the wonders of capillary action. We got back to the hostel, took a brief nap, and then met up with Siggie and Alex, our favorite Germans, to go out to Vic's Club, mentioned both on our hostel map and in our Lonely Planet guide book. By this time, it had started snowing. Yay snow. Not that it wasn't beautiful, but, it sure was freeeeezing fucking cold. Anyway, we couldn't fit 5 in a taxi, so the three of us went out on our own with the Germans in another.

This was ridiculous. We didn't know about the one way thing at this point, so we thought the driver was going in circles, and it took forever to get to where we were going, and when we were dropped off, we had no idea where we were. The lot attendants had no idea what our map was pointing to, and we got in another taxi that drove us around the block looking for landmarks, and eventually got out right back where we were dropped off the first time, and walked to a hotel, and asked at the front desk, that put us in yet ANOTHER taxi that eventually found Vic's, which of course, was scaffolded and closed, right next to an Outback Steakhouse near Worker's Stadium. We made a mental note that having Vic's and Mix next to each other on the same map was confusing to people. Mix was across the parking lot, so we decided just to go there, hoping that the Germans would find us somehow.

We went in to Mix, which thank God spoke some English, and after dropping off our coats, discovered Siggie and Alex already inside, and we spent some time sharing stories about how ridiculous getting there was. The club itself was sweet, people juggling/spitting fire, lots of space, dance floors, and music, even though it was all hop hop, and we had a pretty good time there. Sammy puked for the first time in ages upon ages after a few too many drinks, and for the most part it was us standing around talking and eyeing the other Westerners at the club. I'll say this now, the Beijing bar scene beats Tokyo's hands down. People actually dance, and have a good time.

After we had enough, around 3:30am, we hopped in Taxis, Ceska me and Alex in one, Siggie and Sammy hooked up in the other. We got back to the hostel, and Alex crashed in our room sexiled, while Sammy and Siggie did their thing back in his room. Alex, needless to say, was not pleased. Thus ended Day 2.

Beijing - China (Day 1)

*phew* Well THAT was interesting. Good, but man, wow. Yea.

Day 1: Met up in Abiko with Ceska and Sammy after my train pulled an emergency stop halfway between stations. There's always gotta be something. We made our way to the airport, and things went off pretty much without a hitch, aside from Sammy and I having to fill out our customs forms like 500 times. The flight was alright, took about 3.5 hours, and before we knew it we were touching down in none other than Beijing, China, at around 10pm.
We had to go through immigration of course, and everywhere there were huge LED signs warning people about things like, I dunno, THE PLAGUE, and how we should generally avoid exposure to dead rats, fecal matter and blood contact. We had the slowest passport control officer of all time, a new guy, and after getting China's official visa mark (a check in ballpoint pen) and a stamp, we were free to make our way around the country. When we got to the lobby I thought they were allowing people to smoke inside the airport until I realized that in fact it was smog. The air was literally hazy, even at that hour. Huh.

We met up with the driver from our hostel, who spoke not a word of English, and did a very good job of ignoring the crap out of Ceska's attempts at Chinese. We loaded up into the shoddiest van/bus thing I've been in since 1986 and embarked on the most ridiculous drive ever into downtown Beijing. The shocks on the van were long since dead, so we felt every crease and crack in the poorly kept sideroads he took to avoid the tollroad highway. Very communist. Want a good road? Pay me. Otherwise take that one we already built 50 years ago and haven't thought about since.

It was hard really to see what kind of city Beijing is, between the fog, nighttime, tiredness, and lack of orientation. All I know is that at some point we turned down the tiniest street imagineable into the shadiest neighborhood imagineable. The van finally sputtered to a stop to allow us out onto the streets of China. In front of us stood Leo Hostel, our home for the next 6 nights.

Upon entering, we were greeted by a young Chinese lady who spoke remarkably good English, but Sammy was having some fatigue-induced comprehension issues, so after paying our remaining balance plus driver's fee and key deposit, we made our way to our room, which was, in all actuality, not so bad, aside from the fact that my bed was of course too short and the heater was somewhat less than effective, and oh yea, almost forgot, the shower/toilet/sink are all in the same space with no divider, and you're not supposed to flush toilet paper down the toilet. Where, you might ask, would one then deposit, er, used toilet paper? Oh, yea, the garbage can right next to the toilet, the one without a lid, so we can look at and contemplate what we've just excreted. The room had no towels and the TV didn't work, but whatever. A room's a room and it was cheap, and such is to be expected of a youth hostel as opposed to a full fledged hotel, which we would soon come to realize would have made our experience in China far less meaningful.

A word about 'cheap'. Before we left, we each exchanged money, I traded 58000 yen and got 3400 RMB. Our room, for 6 nights was a total of 1200 RMB, which works out to about $150. In other words, it wasn't so spendy. But it took us a while to get a feel for the economy, i.e. until we left the room again and went to the lounge area and started drinking. A bin TsingTao there costs 5 RMB. $0.64. So yea. Money wasn't so much an issue.

We wanted to go out and explore a little, but everything was essentially closed down by the time we walked outside, so we spent the evening drinking at the hostel, and within a few minutes we were talking to a group of people and making friends thanks to Sammy's no shame sit down and talk approach. We met Siggie and Alex, from Germany, the most significant mentions.

We crashed out after a little while, and thus ended Day 1.