Endia

Well, I made it out alive.  My overall impressions haven't changed in the three-odd weeks since my last post, and as always the bulk of my experience in terms of raw details is best captured in my photos, so this will cover the broad strokes and additional impressions of my final days in this vast, strange, awful, marvelous country.

Delhi

Arriving in Delhi, a fight almost broke out between two autorickshaw drivers over which of them I'd agreed to have take me to my hostel.  Violence was narrowly avoided.  This surreal experience gave weight to what I'd heard about Delhi being made up of rootless people engaged in desperate mercantilism, but the following five days, happily, didn't reinforce this view.  Certainly there were hawkers and cheaters about around the guest houses, but no more than in other Indian cities I'd been in.  By happy coincidence, I got into the city just in time to attend Comic Con India, which was fun.  I also spent the my last evening in the city with an Australian expat friend I'd made in Varanasi, drinking beer, talking about comics and watching (and making fun of) The Wrath of Khan.  Not exactly an authentic Indian cultural experience but a nice break from the near-constant novelty of travelling.

Photos:
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10152276025245879.1073741852.514945878&type=1&l=328c7f5573

Rishikesh

I'd heard about Rishikesh from one or two other travellers as being a much-needed respite after the frantic chaos of Delhi, and though I didn't find Delhi as bad as they seemed to, I still figured it would be worth visiting.  As it turned out it's a small city remarkable mainly as a nexus of yoga and meditation practitioners and Hindu gurus.   The upper reaches of the Ganges flow through the town, and it's surrounded by forested mountains inhabited by peacocks and large monkeys.  The scenery is quite beautiful, and in fact reminded me a lot of BC.  But unless one is planning to stay for weeks or months to study yoga or meditation, there isn't much to do here, not even any real hiking trails to which I could find reference.  By the second day I was ready to leave, and would have, had I not then come down with a flu that kept me in bed for most of the next three days.  As India goes, it was a decent place to recover at least - peaceful, but a bit chilly.

Photos:
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10152301270235879.1073741854.514945878&type=1&l=120dbd68e5

Jaipur

This was the only city in Rajasthan I visited, and I was there for not quite two days.  Like Agra, it's full of gorgeous heritage sites, the best of which in my mind was Jantar Mantar.  As a physics geek, for me this collection of preindustrial astronomical instruments had special appeal.  Though I'd seen pictures before arriving, I was stunned for a moment or two when I first entered the complex and saw it for myself.  That each of its towering buildings was in fact a functional machine for studying space made them more wonderous than any of the larger and more ornate temples and palaces to be seen in India.

Have a look!
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10152301295420879.1073741855.514945878&type=1&l=b1cdc4751d

Mumbai

The most populous city in India, and the first place where I did any couchsurfing.  Anu Sharma, who put me up (and put up with me) in her home for six days, was a great host with a lovely home.  She generously let me stay the full six days I was in Mumbai instead of the two originally agreed upon when my follow-up host cancelled on me.  A large chunk of my time here was spent reading research papers and communicating with professors at various universities about potential graduate appointments, but the time I did spend in the city was fascinating.

I wrote in previous posts on this blog about the economic disparity evident in Singapore and Kuala Lumpur, but they were paragons of egalitarianism next to Mumbai.  The city contains forests of high-rises and a fairly active nightlife, which I got to experience first-hand thanks to some contacts made through couchsurfing.  One particularly avant-garde skyscraper I saw, according to a native friend, was occupied entirely by one billionaire family as their downtown home.  They'd had it built for the purpose.  Meanwhile, some 9 million of the city's inhabitants - three times the entire population of Vancouver - live in the sprawling slums that occupy the larger part of the city's area, and which are visible almost everywhere outside the core affulent region.

I've also never been on a train as packed as the local trains in Mumbai in the morning, unsurprisingly given the city's general overcrowding.  At every stop, the crowd on the platform begins shouting and pushing into the train, compressing the already-squished passengers still further until there is hardly enough room to breathe.  Riding these trains, one gains a deep and nuanced understanding of the spectrum of body odours of the modern Indian city-dweller.

One thing that surprised me were the many cross-dressing beggars who inhabit the city.  I'd observed this phenomenon nowhere else in India.  They wear saris and head-wraps but make no effort to disguise their deep voices, and many have highly visible stubble on their faces.  A Russian expat friend explained that they form a community in the city; that transgendered people come to Mumbai to join them and to make money to afford castration operations; and that some of them make tens of thousands of rupees per month from begging (a substantial income).  I wasn't sure what to make of this in the context of India's quite conservative culture, but they were so common and so flamboyant - and apparently so successful - that I suppose they must be generally accepted by other Mumbaians.

Photos:
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10152303194580879.1073741856.514945878&type=1&l=e7a03bfc6f

Final Impressions

I don't recall mentioning this previously on the blog, but one thing I noticed throughout the rest of Asia was that in the static ads I saw for clothing and other fashion items, the models were almost invariably European in appearance.  Very few ads had models of the same ethnicity as the people being advertised to.  This apparently top-down enforcement of a Euro-centric ideal of beauty was unsettling.  India, happily, was an exception.  Most of the models pictured in Indian fashion ads were Indian, though predominantly on the pale end of the Indian skin spectrum.

More broadly:  I had a rough idea of a schedule of things to do when I started my month-and-a-half in India, but by the time I was half-way through the items in that plan I had just one week left in the country, so I had to drop most of the later destinations.  I kept hearing from other travellers about other destinations along my route, and usually decided to spend a few days checking them out.  Makaibari Tea Estate, Bodh Gaya, Khajuraho, and Rishikesh were all places I hadn't heard of before arriving.  One thing every traveller I met seemed to agree on was that India was packed with far more places to see and things to do than could possibly be done on one trip.  A Brit I met in Kolkata said it best: India is an acronym, standing for "I'll Never Do It All".

I think this is to do with the fact that India isn't really one country.  It's dozens of places with distinct cultures, histories, and languages, all lumped together as a single political entity.  And while my feelings about the country were conflicted, I find that despite myself I'd like to go back someday, to see things I'd missed and revisit some things I didn't.

I'm writing this post from Turkey, where a new wave of anti-government demonstrations have kicked off at about the same time I arrived.  Antalya, the town I'm in, seems unaffected, though there was a very peaceful and orderly march two days ago.  Most of my time here will be spent trekking, and it will probably be a month or so before my next post.  Until then, thanks for reading!

India

Long gap since the last post.  I've been in India for nearly a month now but haven't yet brought myself to take the time to write about it, partly because I wanted to wait until I had uploaded some photos to go with the post.

So - What to say about India?  I'll start with immediate impressions.

There are low standards of quality of all things - the pervasive attitude seems to be, why do better than just good enough?  Sheets on beds are rarely fully dry; toilets don't work properly; easily fixed problems like broken bathroom fixtures or loose door hinges are left to decay or given jury-rigged fixes, and get steadily worse.  Trains usually run hours behind schedule.  People urinate and defecate on the sidewalk.  Garbage is thrown into the street or the river, the nearest possible place that its owner can not have to immediately deal with it anymore.  Animals flourish in cities and towns as a result - cows famously, but also stray dogs and large monkeys.

Thieves, cheats, schemers, of all ages, predominantly male but not entirely.  Is this true of Indians generally?  Or is it only a property of those who gather around travelers, drawn to the easy money promised by naive people with fat wallets?  One cannot generalize from this self-selecting sample to the whole, but at the same time I have not encountered this in other countries to nearly the same extent.  What about Indian culture makes this kind of exploitation so common?  Does it share a common root with the widespread corruption in the country, itself stemming from the culture of "backsheesh"?  Or could it just be a product of India's exceptional poverty?  This doesn't seem right - I don't think India is really any poorer of a country than Ghana, where I recall the scammers were considerably fewer.

The food is generally very good, and very cheap.  When I leave it's going to be tough not being able to have Indian food for every meal of every day.

But all of these are minor factors, the kind of things which after a week one stops noticing much, and which then fade into a kind of third-world background noise.  So what are the more enduring impressions, the things that matter?

The one thing I really hate about India is related to the pervasive cheating I describe above.  The 99 people who approach you to get money from you make you suspicious of the one who genuinely wants to get to know you.  And the 98 of those 99 who try some scheme or want to grossly overcharge you harden you towards of the one honest businessman in the bunch.  If all one hundred were cheaters I wouldn't mind nearly as much.

On to more positive things.

For many Indians, just seeing and meeting a Westerner is a strange and marvelous thing.  Everywhere one goes one is stared at by half the strangers they pass; many smile, many others just look shocked.  Some want pictures with you ("Proof that I really saw a white guy!"), while others are happy to just take pictures of you as you pass, without asking - though I've only seen this happen to women travelers so far.  Some people, charmingly, want to add you on Facebook after five minutes of broken, language-inhibited conversation.

The best experiences I've had with people have been in public transit, specifically while riding trains and waiting in train stations.  Mass transit throws people together who otherwise would probably have no interest in one another.  The person across from you on the train isn't there to sell anything, they're there to get somewhere just as you are, so when they try to start a conversation, you know they're being genuine.  And Indians are more friendly and outgoing to strangers than people anywhere else I've been*, so there have been a lot of great encounters.

There is a pleasant, mildly comical rhythm to daily life in the cities and small towns.  Clusters of ragged-looking old men sitting around drinking chai, chatting and joking with each other.  The streets populated by both people and all manner of animals living, if not in harmony, at least in a kind of hierarchical equilibrium based on grudging mutual respect.  An unceasing background noise of honking horns from autorickshaws and motorcycles (cars aren't very common) as jams form and unform in the absence of anything resembling traffic lanes. Paintings of Shiva and other deities hanging in almost every room.  Sadhus on street corners.  The occasional cacophony of a nighttime wedding party, drummers and horn-blowers leading a groom on horseback and a procession of relatives and lamp-bearers.  Fun stuff.

Particular observations about the places I've been...

Kolkata

Exploring a city neighborhood in the morning; a market consisting of blankets spread out on the sidewalks along a street; vegetables, poultry, nine-inch prawns with whiskers still twitching.

Tremendous air pollution.  Spend twenty-four hours in Kolkata and when you blow your nose it will come out black.

Astonishing poverty.  Anywhere you look, in every nook and cranny, someone has taken up residence.  Elsewhere as well - homes made of plastic sheets stretched over bamboo frames.

The most memorable thing I saw in the city, more than the stately old British graveyard, was the "trash mountain" of the municipal dump, the subject of a recent documentary; a toxic, smoking five-kilometer-long wall of garbage inhabited by a community of trash pickers.  I was literally dumbstruck for about twenty minutes after seeing it up-close.

Photos: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10152257978435879.1073741846.514945878&type=1&l=895d5ad110

Makaibari Tea Estate

Leaving Kolkata, a homestay at this tea estate was the next stop.  Emotionally worn by the often grim spectacle of the city's life and trying to get over a head cold, this turned out to be a perfect remedy.  High in the mountains in the Darjeeling region, far from anything resembling a major city, surrounded by spectacular scenery and genuinely friendly people, this was probably my favorite experience in India thus far.  For the whole stay I ate authentic Indian-Nepali home cooking which was taken with lots of tea grown almost right outside the door, all generously prepared by the mother of the family I was staying with.  I learned about the tea-farming business, played soccer with the local kids, and was taught to play carrom (badly) by my host family's son.

Photos: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10152258009175879.1073741847.514945878&type=1&l=9e6315fea8

Bodh Gaya

Cool temples, nice vibe; more relaxed than big cities but more energetic than Makaibari.  Coming in to town I saw an elephant going down the road with some crops and a man on its back, but I was on the back of a motorcycle so I couldn't take a picture.

Photos: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10152258027010879.1073741848.514945878&type=1&l=f6c29a046f

Varanasi

Varanasi is a sacred city in Hinduism due to its location right on the river Ganges, itself an object of reverence.  It's considered highly auspicious to die in Varanasi, and if one's body or ashes are put into the river it supposedly gives one's soul a direct path to Nirvana.  Consequently, there are lots of temples along the waterfront, and at two spots, bodies are burned on funeral pyres out in the open for all to see (though not to photograph).  The burning goes on night and day without ceasing, and hundreds of bodies are burned daily.  Lots of weddings are also held at the waterfront, with all of the pomp Indian weddings are famous for.  The whole cycle of life is thus brought together here (or nearly - I didn't see any births).

While the narrow streets make avoiding underfoot garbage and feces a constant effort, it's still a beautiful place down by the water, and I spent a good week mostly just drinking it in.

Photos: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10152258050330879.1073741849.514945878&type=1&l=8b629ac02f

Khajuraho

Decided to make a quick stop here after hearing about it from a friend in Varanasi who was going this way.  Lots of temples covered with intricate carvings illustrating deities, animals, and sexual positions - often all three at once.  Worth seeing.  Couldn't say much about the town itself, except that I lost my passport and it was found by one of the guards from the main temple, who got it back to me.  Lucky break.

Photos: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10152258095155879.1073741850.514945878&type=1&l=a5d654f5ef

Agra

Agra was another one-day stopover so not much to say.  The Taj Mahal is worth the hype, and the Red Fort is very cool too.  Photos of this will come later.

That's all for now.  I'm in Delhi at the moment, and tomorrow I'm going to check out Comic Con India, which by total fluke I arrived just in time for.  Thanks for reading!

* With the arguable exception of Japanese girls in Roppongi clubs, but that's a different story :P

A Slice of Thailand - Bangkok and Chiang Rai

Though I hadn't originally planned to stop there, I had heard from one fellow traveler that flights were generally cheaper out of Bangkok than Kuala Lumpur, and had been told by another about a set of bizarre art installations in the far northern city of Chiang Rai.  So I booked a flight to Kolkata out of Bangkok and, after spending New Year's in Penang, I boarded the International Express overnight train to the capital city.

I spent just one evening and the following day in Bangkok, but it turned out to be a much more eventful stay than I'd anticipated.  At the hostel I met a German expat named Frank, a friend of the hostel's owner.  In addition to being agent of Interpol (so he claimed, and he *did* have a badge), he was a chess grandmaster (though he no longer competed) and former world Tetris champion (though I'm not sure this title existed before 2011).  Having lived in Bangkok for twenty-five years, he had an intimate knowledge of the city.  For 200 baht (about seven dollars) each, he took a few others and I on a tour of some strange and little-known sites, expounding upon them in his thickly-accented English and peppering his expositions with ribald jokes.  Afterwards I put his claim of chess mastery to the test.  We played twice, and while I'm not an especially skilled player, I've never before been crushed so completely and rapidly, so by the end I was ready to believe him.

The next evening saw me piling into a double-decker bus for an uncomfortable overnight ride to Chiang Rai, where I spent five days.  The White Temple and the Black House, documented in the second photo album below, were macabre and spectacular, each in a very different way, and worth seeing if you find yourself in Thailand.  I also joined a group of other backpackers to take a one-day Thai cooking class taught by a local, who took us around the market to buy ingredients before teaching us to prepare four dishes, all of which were delicious.  I'm not sure how much of it I remember but afterwards she gave us a link to her website, which has the recipes.

Finally returning to Bangkok by another, slightly more comfortable night bus, I arrived at the airport at six in the morning and passed the eight hours until my flight in watching Thais and tourists swarming through the vast check-in hall, a surprisingly calming pass-time.

And that's Thailand.  My photos from Bangkok are here:
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10152193367715879.1073741844.514945878&type=1&l=32ef579ec6
EDIT: And here's the Facebook album for Chiang Rai:
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10152255734305879.1073741845.514945878&type=1&l=af185953fb

Next time: Kolkata, and maybe some more of India as well.

Malaysia

Malaysia gives a sense of being in the middle of rapid but uneven development.  In every major city, there are modern high-rises and shopping malls standing within a hundred meters of rows of colonial-era shop-homes fronted by open sewers.  The contrast is most striking in the capital of Kuala Lumpur.  Like Singapore, Kuala Lumpur is a highly stratified city, but while Singapore's lower-class and wealthy districts are separate and hidden from one another, in Kuala Lumpur the two are everywhere interwoven, and one can't seem to get away from either.

But while there are visible economic tensions, there is much to love about the country as well.  The old colonial districts of Melaka and Georgetown are beautiful despite their age, and mostly still serve as the homes and workplaces for the residents of the cities, nodes of a local economy largely unconcerned with tourism.  There is also a vibrant culture of street art particularly evident in these colonial areas, most famously in Penang but also evident in Melaka and KL.

Also like Singapore, the country is extremely ethnically diverse.  Wherever I went, there seemed to be almost as many Chinese and Indians living and working as there were Malays.  This has the happy side-effect of making Malaysia's cuisine marvelously diverse as well.  This is similar in many ways to that of Singapore, but with more traditional Malaysian dishes in evidence, and a much bigger culture of street food (I suppose selling food from a cart is probably illegal in Singapore). Georgetown in Penang is best for this, with dishes I've seen nowhere else as well as many of the best examples of national favorites, like Cendol, a shaved-ice dessert with coconut milk, red beans, and green rice noodles.

On the topic of food, the fruit in Malaysia is also very good.  Though not the most flavourful I've ever eaten (that honour still goes to Ghana), the variety is unmatched.  I actually discovered a new favorite fruit at the roadside markets here, the mangosteen, a largely-seedless, easily-eaten fruit that tastes like a combination of a mango and mandarin orange.

The countryside in Peninsular Malaysia is beautiful.  Much of it is flat farmland or palm plantations, but as you head north you begin to see massive, sheer-sided stone hills jutting hundreds of meters up out of perfectly flat surroundings.  The Cameron Highlands is a particularly beautiful area, high in the rainforest-covered mountains, and its altitude makes its climate a welcome respite from the sweltering equatorial heat of the rest of the country.  I found that taking inter-city busses rather than trains gave the best views.

For more detail, I will as always direct you to my photo albums:

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10152150647895879.1073741842.514945878&type=1&l=6a9a2c6c78
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10152187924925879.1073741843.514945878&type=1&l=1875559549

I'm writing this from Chiang Rai in Thailand, a destination that I hadn't considered until about a week ago, and I'll be flying to India in less than a week.  Thoughts on Thailand will come next, so stay tuned.

Singapore (and a bit of Guangzhou)

After another fun week-and-a-half in Tokyo, the time came for me to leave fair Nippon and journey onward to Singapore.

My flight included a layover in Guangzhou, a city I'd never heard of before arriving, but which I learned was the third-largest city in China.  The airline put some other travelers and I in a hotel for the night, but as we arrived late in the evening and returned to the airport early in the morning, I sadly didn't get to see any of the city.  My sole experience of China was of the airport and what could be seen beyond it through the glass walls of the terminal complex.  

From this vantage, I witnessed urban China's legendary smog, and it was as bad as I'd heard.  As the sun rose the brown morass turned it into an angry red ball, dim enough that I could comfortably look directly at it.  The only other time I'd seen the sun look like this was near a forest fire in the interior of BC, when a thick plume of black smoke passed in front of it.  Later, as my plane lifted off and circled over the city, I could tell the skyscrapers were not far below from their apparent size, but they appeared only as barely visible outlines in the smog.  Near the end of the initial ascent, I saw a clear horizontal line cutting across the entire sky - thick brown below, crystal blue above.

My first sight of Singapore as the plane descended was of its futuristic downtown core and the bay just beyond it, where dozens of huge tanker and container ships were idling.  This fit with most of what I'd read about Singapore's wealth and its status as major international business hub.  Not long after landing, though, my impressions changed dramatically.  Beyond the core, much of the city is comprised of residential towers built by the government's Housing and Development Board, most of which resemble Soviet-era apartment blocks with brighter paint jobs.  85% of Singapore's population lives in these "HDBs".  It was in one of these that I spent my six days in the city, in the apartment of my friends Anita and Elliot, where they generously provided me a couch to sleep on (if either of you are reading, thanks again!).

Anita and Elliot were my guides around the city, and I wouldn't have had nearly as good a time without them.  They showed me around Little India and Arab Street, and a mostly-abandoned Chinese theme park called Haw Par Villa.  We went on runs through the jungle that still covers parts of the island, and they brought me to an underground comedy club where comedians from each of the island's sizable ethnic groups (Chinese, Malay, and Indian) showed off their startlingly racially-charged material.  Together we went to the Jurong Bird Sanctuary, which was not bad, and the Singapore Zoo, which was great.  Most of the zoo's enclosures are designed with no fences or cages.  Instead they have dry moats of width and depth calculated to be just beyond the leaping and climbing abilities of the animals within, allowing unobstructed views for visitors.  

They also gave me some glimpses of the absurdly-rich parts of the city, such as one weirdly Americanized area filled with newly-constructed restaurants, bars and clubs populated almost exclusively by white people.  The most impressively opulent sight of all was the bar in the lobby of the Parkview Hotel.  This cavernous, moodily-lit Art Deco space was dominated by a wall of liquor bottles several stories high which stood behind the bar.  The bartender, a young woman in an early-20th-century cocktail dress, wore a harness which was connected by cables to a motorized rig that hung from rails embedded in the ceiling.  She used a remote control for the rig to fly around the wall's surface retrieving bottles.

Singapore's famous food culture was the highlight of the city for me.  Singaporean cuisine includes Chinese, Indian, English, and traditional Malaysian foods, as well as dishes resulting from cross-pollination of some or all of these.  The best places to eat were hawker centers, open-air complexes with row upon row of stalls selling a tremendous variety of cheap food.  A common breakfast is lightly-toasted white bread spread with kaya (a sweet coconut jam) and sandwiched around slabs of solid butter, served alongside a cup of "kopi", super-strong coffee with pancreas-stomping quantities of sugar and condensed milk.  I wouldn't want to eat like this every day, but still, delicious.  Some other favorites were laksa (rice noodles and bean sprouts in a spicy coconut-milk broth), chicken rice, and fresh-pressed sugar cane juice.

The hawker centers and HDBs represent a far less affluent side of Singapore.  This makes up a much greater part of the city than one might imagine from Western media coverage.  The People's Action Party, which has (democratically) been in power since 1959, has been actively fostering the city's role as a nexus of business and a haven for the ultra-rich, pursuing aggressive urban development.   There were lots of construction projects underway throughout the city, and I was told that a common joke among Singaporeans is that construction of the city began in the 1800s and is still underway.  Certainly life in Singapore is much more expensive than in most of neighboring Malaysia.  With the city's future planned so heavily around the influx of foreign capital, and with the local population in decline (Singapore's birth rate is the second-lowest in the world after Japan's*), I can't help but wonder what role the poorer majority will have in this future.

I felt that six days was enough to see everything Singapore had to offer, so while it saddened me to say goodbye once again to my friends (and to leave behind the food), I was content with the time I'd spent in this strange city which is so rapidly being transformed - into what, only time will tell.

And now, photos.  Here are those from Singapore and Guangzhou:

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10152137238810879.1073741841.514945878&type=1&l=4d8aa2b4d9

And here are those from my return to Tokyo:

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10152137172320879.1073741840.514945878&type=1&l=e0f38231d6

* One last note - the Singaporean government paid the Mentos corporationthis year to put together some propaganda to encourage people to have more kids.  The resulting mess of a music video tries simultaneously to stimulate the viewer's libido, to remind them of their duty to procreate, and of course to sell mints to them.  Its bizarre blend of crass commercialism and appeals to Confucian values make it a uniquely Singaporean cultural product.  If you haven't already, watch and enjoy (or recoil in horror): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jxU89x78ac

More Japan: Kamakura, Kyoto, Osaka, and Hiroshima

Having heard of Kamakura from a fellow lodger at the hostel in Tokyo, I decided to go there before heading to Kyoto.

Kamakura was the capital of Japan during the rule of one of the Shogun governments.  It was selected by these warlords as their capital because it was easily defensible, being surrounded by mountains on three sides and by the sea on the fourth, and these same geographic features mean that the town is surrounded by natural beauty.  Many tourists are drawn by hiking, windsurfing, and the long, sandy beaches; just as many are drawn by the town's many impressive temples, shrines, and other historical sites dating back to the Shogun period.

Japanese temples and shrines all tend to be quite similar to one another, and between Kamakura and Kyoto I managed to see quite enough of them for my tastes.  Nonetheless I enjoyed exploring Kamakura for the three days I spent, and its relative quietude and small-town feel was a nice change of pace from Tokyo.  I'd readily recommend Kamakura as a destination on par with to Kyoto in terms of classical Japanese spiritual sites and Japanese-style natural splendor.

Once my three days were up, I hopped onto the Shinkansen for the first time and headed for Kyoto.  If one is planning to travel around in Japan at all, the JR pass is a fantastic deal.  (More on this later.)

Kyoto, while a significant city in its own right, is much smaller than Tokyo, and its feel is much more laid-back.  Its value as a tourist attraction, like Kamakura's, stems from its abundance of temples.  The most impressive of these, for me, were Fushimi Inari, a mountain covered in shinto shrines with Torii-gate-lined paths leading up to the top, and Kinkaku-ji, a Buddhist temple the outside of which is gold-plated.  The nearby city of Nara, with its friendly (and at times aggressive) deer, is also worth visiting.  As much as I enjoyed them, though, the best times I had in Kyoto were spent singing at Kareoke parlors into the wee hours with a crowd of other backpackers from all over the world.

Osaka followed Kyoto.  Osaka had more of a big-city vibe, closer to Tokyo than Kyoto but with a distinctive edginess to it.  It was for the most part more run-down and seedier than Tokyo.  My hostel was located in a poorer part of town, which seemed to be mainly populated by 'homeless people and retired Yakuza', as one fellow lodger put it.  This is not to denigrate the city, nor to say that it is without more refined, upscale districts.  Indeed, it gave the nightly wanderings through the town with other guests a more adventuresome feel.  Another thing I found was that the residents seemed friendlier and more open than those of Tokyo.  They were more prone to starting conversations with Western strangers.

One adventure in Osaka is worth special mention.  There's a local law in Osaka that all foreigners are required to carry their passport at all times, and that if you couldn't show it when asked by a police officer, they could detain you.  I'd heard that this rarely actually happened, so for the first few days hadn't bothered to carry my passport with me.  

Then one night, while walking back to the hostel from halfway accross town at 1 AM, I was stopped by two plainclothes policemen who asked to see my passport.  This was slightly scary, but I figured the smartest thing to do was to be honest and to try to get on their good side.  Swallowing a knot of panic, I cheerfully told them I didn't have it with me but that it was back at the hostel where I was heading to.  They asked if they could come with me so I could show it to them.  I said I didn't mind, but that it was still a long way - an hour's walk, probably.  Hearing this, they called a car from headquarters to drive us there.  We stood around chatting for a few mintues; I asked them about their lives - one of them had studied English on exchange at UBC! - and I managed to impress them with my limited Japanese.  When the car arrived it took us straight to the hostel.  I showed them my passport, they asked that I keep it with me in future, and then they said goodnight.  So because I broke the law, I got a free ride home!  Still, I did make sure to keep my passport with me after that.

Next was Hiroshima.  I only spent a few days here but I had a great time.  Sumo wrestling was happening in Fukuoka, another city not far from Hiroshima, so I made a day trip out there to watch the higher-tier matches, which were quite gripping (ha, ha).  The second day I explored the peace park and attendant museum, and in the evening enjoyed the street food and traditional drum performances going on at a street festival, which by fortunate coincidence was happening over the same three days as I was there.  The third day was spent at Miyajima island with some Australians and an American.  As far as Japanese shrines and temples go, those at Miyajima are the best I've seen so far, better than any of those in Kyoto or Kamakura.

Once again, most of the details of each trip are captured in the associated photo albums:

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10152060702940879.1073741835.514945878&type=1&l=41fedbc7cc

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10152090913085879.1073741836.514945878&type=1&l=d0467584ad

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10152098080900879.1073741838.514945878&type=1&l=bdbb4c573b

Now I'm back in Tokyo for another week, after which I'll be heading to Singapore.  Thanks for reading!

Japan 1: Tokyo

Tokyo is an enormous and highly varied city.  In parts of Tokyo, if you ignore the street signs you feel like you could be in any wealthy Western city.  But most of it fulfills the North Amercian idea of the city as being at once futuristic and anachronistic.  Highrises and animated LED signs are shoulder-to-shoulder with paper lanterns and kawara-tiled roofs.  Simple wooden shrines are nestled in alcoves in the outside of multi-story department stores.

All this is in the central parts of the city, which are busy and crowded.  Yet they contrast sharply with other parts of the city that in many places are just a few minute's walk away.  Cross a bridge from busy downtown Asakusa and you may find yourself in Sumida ward, where the narrow streets are lined with miniature gardens of potted plants and a strange silence pervades.  The hostel where I stayed was situated here.  This contrast, between quiet serenity and riotous modernity, was another of those that characterized my experience of Tokyo.

After a week I still felt as though I'd only scratched the surface of this city.  I'd only seen one or two of the notorious Harajuku kids (though on the street and in train stations I did pass one or two girls in elaborate goth-loli dress).  And apart from walking in on a performance by a local gypsy-jazz duo at the bar near the hostel one serendipitous evening, I hadn't gotten to enjoy any of the city's jazz scene, which I'm told is as vibrant and varied as Tokyo itself.  So I've decided to return for another week once I've visited the other parts of Japan I planned to go to.  I'm glad I held off on buying my ticket to Singapore, giving me the flexibility to extend my stay in Japan.

Am I missing anything?  Hanging around the club district in Shibuya around Halloween was a lot of fun.  Other than that, the specifics of my time in Tokyo are mostly documented in my two photo albums that I've linked below (if you've got me on Facebook you'll already have seen them).

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10152016831060879.1073741833.514945878&type=1&l=2cc81a4379
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10152030145070879.1073741834.514945878&type=1&l=613cd37e93

Next time, my account of Kamakura and Kyoto!