We went to Yokohama to visit an old high school friend of my mother’s, Kazuko Yamamoto. Our bus arrived in Shinjuku station, early in the morning and Kazuko was very worried about us encountering a homeless person there. A homeless person. One. Coming from the USA and recently from Indochina this was quite a perspective shift. We mentioned all the stray animals in Europe to Kazuko and she said that there are no stray dogs in Yokohama. I believe it.

By now we had a sense of what it means to be a visitor in Japan, but the Yamamotos generosity was still surprising. We just wanted to drop in and say “hi” for an evening, but they effectively captured us. The Yamamoto’s tried to put us up at real hotel for a week. We haggled it down to two days as we had a plane to catch and Tokyo to explore on our own. The moment we were in Kazuko’s presence we could not pay for anything: food, train tickets, even a newspaper. We had to be very careful about even intimating wants or needs lest Kazuko suddenly inconvenience herself to provide it for us.

Mr. Yamamoto works from 8am to 1am (!) most weekdays as a manager at Fujitsu. Their daughter Maya lives at home and works the same schedule at the same company. Their other daughter Yuka, is in University studying Chemistry. Kazuko works more reasonable hours as an English teacher, but does all the housework. Although Americans work longer hours than the Japanese nowadays. In Japan the long hours are spread throughout the economic classes more evenly. Japan is like 80-90% middle class.

We got guided tours of the Yokahama bay with slidewalks and modern architecture, Yokahama Chinatown, and Kurakuna, Tokyo. The Yamamotos also took us to Mr. Yamamoto’s father’s house in the middle of a US Navy base. The house stood inside a little bamboo wood dotted with fruit trees shielding it from the Navy trailers. It was a nice old traditional house with tatami inside and a traditional garden. I’m still not sure how Mr. Yamamoto Sr. saved his house, its the only one there. It sounds like he was a royal pain in the ass to just the right people.

Photos of Yokahama and Kunakura.

We had a great time with the Yamamotos even while trying to dodge their generosity. But eventually we struck out on our own to set up camp in a very poor area of Tokyo…

Kyoto is the old capitol of Japan where the nobility built castles and numerous temples. Through green bamboo forests you can catch glimpses of old Japan surrounded by a restrained modernity. The architecture is careful and tasteful and traditional. Its a bit like an austere Europe done in dark cyprus instead of ornamented marble. Wood, paper and stone provide their own natural detail if lit and arranged properly. Much of it is set up to look like it wasn’t arranged all.

We got to walk around the traditional entertainment district on Coming of Age Day when all the twenty year olds dressed up in kimono and went out on the town. We even bumped into an apprentice Geisha.

We were able to stay in a traditional dwelling while in Kyoto. Japanese homes are constructed post and beam with sliding rice paper walls. Tatami mats cover the floor and “outside” is just a gradual succession of increasingly open walls. The sliding walls mean you can reconfigure the interior rooms to fit your whim and makes small houses seem deceptively large. This design is meant to air out nicely in the summer. In the winter it meant huddling around kerosene space heaters.

We spent a long time just shuffling around temples in our socks going from one grey stone and green bamboo setting to the next. Walkways in the gardens turn into stepping stones to force you to slow down and notice a detail and then twist about to show you something else. One technique is to frame a garden with the larger landscape around it. Mountains overshadowing bonsai messes with your perspective.

Most religions attempt to inspire divine awe in their followers by building big stone and glass buildings. Shinto plops a temple down in the middle of a spot of natural beauty and lets creation speak for itself. But then of course the monks are Japanese. So they tweak the hell of the area with meticulous millennium long gardening plans. Nature is grand, but everything can be improved.

There are more temples and shrines then you could ever possibly visit in Kyoto, but some people try. Surrounding the temples are religious pilgrims in traditional attire that travel from temple to temple on foot, waving their hands in prayer seeking enlightenment through repetition. Also surrounding the temples are ridiculously fit guys in traditional garb that will haul you up temple hills in a rickshaw for a hefty fee. After hanging out with struggling cyclo drivers in Vietnam it was very strange to see these well fed guys just getting in a good workout on your yen.

After China we were expecting a continuation of Tea Heaven. But the Japanese drink so much American style coffee it actually took us a while to find a tea house. When we did, it was very upscale joint. Quoth Mandy: “This tea had better have been shat out by unicorns. For this price you could go to China, buy great tea and have a lovely holiday.” Which is, I guess, what tea merchants do.
Nenjo Castle is right in the center of Kyoto surrounded by gardens. The Shogun had the palace inside the castle equipped with “nightingale floors” so you’d know if ninja were sneaking around the joint. The floors sing when you step on them. Its not squeaky at all, it sounds like a chorus of tiny violins every time you move. Its an impressive blend of aesthetic and security. The rice paper walls are elaborately painted with phoenix, tigers and trees.

We loved Kyoto. Mandy keeps saying she wants to move to “Kyoto, Vermont.” Unfortunately we had to pace ourselves and do a lot of half days so that Mandy’s evil Chinese cough didn’t turn into a flu.

Photos of the pretty city.

We wanted to take the bullet train to Yokahama (2 hrs!), but though an interpreter we found an overnight bus for much less…

Japan is supernaturally clean and polite. In our plane trip from mainland Asia we were magically transformed from being some of the tidiest, most respectful people around for miles into obviously the most slovenly and rude.

I’ve met clean and polite individual Japanese before, but a whole society of this behavior almost defies believability. Even the machinery is very polite. Little animated people bow at you every time you use a public phone, ATM, or kiosk.

A girl accidentally stepped in front of me in a queue one day, realized what she had done and jumped back a mile: “Gomen! Gomen! Gomen-nasai! Gomen!” with repeated bows. Another girl briefly touched my hand in a train station and did the same thing.

The Japanese were extraordinarily helpful. We had to be careful how long we spent looking at maps in public. People would go far out of their way to help us out. Once a woman biked all the way down a hill, gave us unnecessary directions, and then biked all the way back up. Concerned that you won’t be able to navigate the subway, people will offer to go hours out of their way to guide you and “make sure you arrive safely.” For Buddha’s sake, its Japan! What could happen?

I don’t think you can properly appreciate how cleanly the Japanese are without being surrounded by it. There’s a national obsessive compulsive…habit, lets say, regarding tidiness, dirt and germs. Everything is always being polished, swept and arranged. Its very rare to see anything larger than a cigarette butt on the ground. We saw someone spill a soda in a public park in a poorer part of Tokyo. They immediately got down on hands and knees to clean up their mess with napkins while their companions ran for more cleaning supplies.

There’s no vandalism. Public machines go unmolested so they don’t need to be fortified. Graffiti is pointless what with how often everything is cleaned. When a train reaches the end of the line, white gloved and masked sweeper teams rush in. Blue collar workers wear white gloves. Truck drivers too, that steering wheel could get filthy. Doilies cover the seats in taxis. Rubbish collectors jump off the truck wearing white jumpsuits with white gloves. Its like a 50’s science fiction movie.

Just before supper the Japanese shower, soap and rinse. Then they climb into a short, deep tub to soak. Climb out, rinse again and your done. I must get myself a Japanese washroom.

I personally hope that Japanese politeness and cleanliness spread like a virus over the globe. Okay, that doesn’t seem likely. The Japanese had to be instructed with the nasty side of a 3 foot razorblade over many generations to train these habits into them.

We never got in contact with the people we know in Osaka and Kobe, so our first stop in this country was the old capital, Kyoto.

What’s stunning about technology in Japan that everyone possesses the very latest gadget. The same thing also seems to apply to public infrastructure, but the Japanese are so cleanly that even things from thirty years ago appear brand new.

Everything that can be is automated. Traditional Japanese doors are sliding screens, so modern doors are all powered glass sliders. There’s a couple of vending machines on every city block that sell beer, cigarettes, hot canned coffee and electrolyte drinks. How long would an unattended beer machine last in Europe or America? If you wander around enough you can find machines selling batteries, books and even stranger things. Public toilet seats are heated and have several touch-pad controlled bidet settings. The bidet extends on a delicate little robotic arm. They are always immaculate, vandalism does not exist.

Mobile phone culture in Japan is completely pervasive. Everyone does everything with their phone and has for a long time. Everyone totes about a tiny transforming toy with thumbprint security that’s also a PDA, 2 megapixel video camera, photo editor, MP3 player, email client, web browser, bluetooth and IR remote, GPS with map, and radio. I’m sure I left something out. Oh yeah: videogames, chat clients, and barometers. This year’s phones will have bone-phones for quiet conversation and payment chips for use at the store. Half the people in any train are absorbed with their phone’s non-voice features. At temples most people took photos with their phones. The serious photographers unfolded shiny digital tubes that looked like space weapons.

The Japanese enjoy the best trains in the world. They go everywhere, are fast, clean and whir like electric toys. Major routes are served by bullet trains. Automobiles all have full color GPS mapping devices. Parking garages are all strictly vertical arrangements with elevator bays. Half the bicycles are compact models you can fold up and wear on your back. Taxi doors open with servo motors.

If you’ve ever wondered why Japanese websites take so long to load, its because a 100 megabit ADSL connection only costs $40 a month. This means that the Japanese have high quality movies on demand and high quality video telephone. I hear the Korean government is rolling out 100 megabits free to every citizen this year.

Japan is culturally very far from mainland Asia, it has a lot more in common with Europe. Lots of little specialty stores compete along side big chains and traditional culture mixes with an ultra-modern techno fascination. Japan is very clean, very polite and very orderly. Everyday objects are small and efficient. The flora is similar to that I grew up with in New England. Giant crows were everywhere, their wings make a tremendous swooshing noise every time they flap.

For such a modern society there’s a surprising amount of traditional dress. Women wear kimono and wooden sandals. Older guys will wear kimono, happi overcoat and the skirtlike horseman’s pants. Younger guys sometimes will don a happi coat, pantaloons, and two toed boots.

Japan is incredibly safe, they have no crime. All right, no blue collar crime. Honestly, its no blue collar crime against men. Gender relations are still right out of the nineteenth century and sex crimes go largely unreported. The scope of the problem is evident in the “Ladies Only” train cars that are necessary to prevent molestation. That these cars even exist is heralded as a sign of progress!

The Japanese have toked on the confucian pipe a little too long. The desire to constantly improve (kaizen!) and impose order has led to everything natural being tied up. Nothing can be just left alone. Every tree is bound and sculpted with ropes, sometimes just to change a branch angle a couple degrees. Stone animals guarding buildings are leashed as if they might run away.

Novel sized weekly serial comics (manga) are hugely popular. Schoolgirls in the train station read tangled romances with all the brakes off. I couldn’t read the words, but slice and dice samurai, gangster rape and giant-penis-destroys-Tokyo all seemed to be popular themes. Illustrated expression is not limited to narratives. Lots of instructional books are published this way and little drawn people figured into many forms of public communication. There were lots of public notices narrated by illustrated policemen with big heads and small mouths.

Japanese TV is hilarious. One one station you have a quiz show where an automated crotch smashing machine punishes wrong answers, on another there’s animated drama and on yet another we were able to catch the beginning of the Sumo season. Sumo kicks ass. What could be better than a ten second duel between dumptrucks? We watched highlights every night on TV and wanted to go see it live, but Mandy was too sick.
My favorite TV show was a “reality” obstacle show featuring small children. Mom asks the kids to perform a big task all on their own while they are filmed by concealed cameras. In one scenario a five and three year old had to climb up a hill, get on a train and then transfer to a bus to bring their father a helmet at his job. In another episode, two three year old girls had to go buy diapers from the store in the city. These are huge tasks for such little people and the kids get quite stressed out. This show might freak out Americans.

As we walked over the bridge, China looked like a wilted Vietnamese plant finally getting water. Tall glass, shining steel and strobing asian neon loom over the border. On entry, our bags got scanned with color coded 3D X-ray gear. The cities were clean and investment firms held up by giant stone columns took up entire city blocks. Instantly everyone was bigger, taller and healthier. Most of the vehicles on the broad streets were cars. Cops in white gloves directed traffic that obeyed set rules. Bike lanes, pubic recycling, public toilets, and clean working public transit stopped striking me as European or Asian. Its just anywhere in the world with money that’s not the United States.

There were people with lots of leisure time in urban China. Women seemed assertive. Men were seen playing with their children. Fashion was back. Billboards with half naked westerners selling expensive clothing filled the sky. Everyone had a mobile phone. We saw a girl with pink hair and rainbow colored clothing. Everyone was very friendly, if a little unused to seeing westerners. Being among economic equals again was a pleasant change but there was almost no English, very little Pinyin, and there are so many Chinese characters.

In Kunming we lived and mostly ate in the muslim quarter where there was lots of yummy street food. After being in Indochina our sketchy food detectors were set on high, but everywhere sanitation standards were beyond worry. We sat down at one restaurant and tried to interpret the menu with the help of the cooks and waiters. We had successfully translated several dishes when we realized we had ordered all of them. We ran back to the kitchen, set things straight and had a very tasty meal. The next time we played roulette with a menu we got a bowl of warm water with organs floating in it. We opted for food we could point to after that. The Chinese eat some wonderful things, but they eat everything else as well.

China has clean, white, modern, herbal pharmacies dispensing traditional Chinese medicine. Their windows showcase giant twisty roots, strange powders and big shark fins. Professional looking massage, acupuncture and reflexology clinics are common as well. There are a couple of tea shops on every block with tiny teapots, big coin shaped bricks of leaf and huge glass jars of loose tea for sale. A nod was all it took to get us sat down for a tasting. Several tastings. Mmmmm tea. We didn’t sleep much after these sessions.

We heard the communists instituted an anti-spitting campaign that was wildly successful. I can’t even imagine what it was like before. The Chinese are constantly coughing with their mouth open and spit like its their job. The whole place is a rhinovirus swap meet. This might have been only a curiosity, except that Mandy came down with a very debilitating cold. Its making exploring Japan a little difficult.

We didn’t get to spend much time in China and we were sorry to give it such short shrift. We were supposed to stay long enough to meet George and her friend Alanna skipping over from Hong Kong and Pippin and Caitlyn traveling over land from Nepal via Tibet. But we had reached the end of our money, so we had to bail. The remainder of our travels have been subsidized by some generous contributors.

Photos of Yunnan.

We had an unexpected layover in Bangkok (Damn, but the Thais can cook!) and eventually we flew into Japan…

Sapa is perched up in the northwest highlands of Vietnam. Peaks loom somewhere above the mist, but you can never tell how high they go. Occasionally the sun finds its way through and big spikes of marble are revealed growing out from the mountain at odd angles. Clouds roll over the cliffs like passing trains, flowing through the bamboo forests and on into town so thick you can’t see across the street. Stone footpaths wind about the heights connecting villages. There’s so much up and down you can sometimes find yourself only a couple hundred feet away from someone on an adjacent hill. Sound carries well through the cold air, so villagers shout messages between the vistas.

Aside from the gorgeous views, the chief attractions of the region are the many varieties of colorfully garbed minority peoples. These hill tribes are very poor sustenance farmers. They are short, wiry, and seem full grown at ten. They have the wide, muscled, almost hand-like feet that you get from carrying logs up mountains barefoot every day. The Zao women can fly past you up a rock face, even carrying their children. In one tribe the women chew a root that stains their teeth completely black. The women of the various tribes trek to Sapa to sell their detailed embroidery, jewelry, hashish, opium, and marijuana. Young girls sell a lot of the crafts. Toothless crones are the drug dealers.

The H’mong girls, in particular, are incredibly aggressive. The touchiness of the Vietnamese is totally eclipsed by the H’mong. Every tourist woman that enters Sapa instantly gains an entourage of adoring H’mong “sisters.” They cling, give hugs and kisses, and play patty-cake, punctuated with pleas to buy from them. Every time Mandy hit the the street, H’mong girls took each arm. While Mandy was plied with affection, I got punches to my floating ribs, shin kicks and bites. The H’mong girls were the first women I ever saw playing at kickboxing in the street. They are deceptively strong for their size. One girl threatened to knife me for not buying cloth from her.

We went trekking to the villages of the different tribes all around the area. Outside a Black H’mong Village we met this guy, Ju, who wanted to play with my camera. He wanted to take pictures of the irrigation system he built out of bamboo and his rice paddies. After fooling with my camera a bit, Ju gestured us down a path to his hut.

We crawled in and huddled around the firepit. With our heads bumping drying corn and the family shotgun, we met Ju’s eight kids and two puppies. Ju’s wife, Ku, cooked rice soup while Ju babbled H’mong at us. He offered us hot water and a strong rice wine. We managed to sign out a rudimentary conversation and then Ju brought out a bamboo water pipe. I accepted a smoke to be friendly, but whatever else was in the tobacco was too much for me and too much for Ju.

He started singing for a while and then crying. Confused and unsure what to do, we were rescued by Mao, Ju’s son. Mao knew enough English to tell us that this only happens when Ju hits the pipe and drink. Ju dragged us out to his anvil and signed as if beating his own arm on it and waved at the world around us. Mao thought it best that we leave, so we thanked everyone and Mandy led me away.

We took quite a few photos. Battered and bruised I fled from the H’mong Mafia into China…