Drinking and driving

I don't know where else I would see this.

Soda Blues version 2

I don't know when to stop. 

Bento Box #1

Food for a train.

Bento Box #2

The saga continues...

Bento Box #3

The saga ends with desert.

Tokyo Metro Map

Print one out before you come. They are hard to find in English.

Wafting through Hong Kong

So now I've been to China.  Or at least a bit of China.  Hong Kong specifically.  KL was there for work and I had nothing to do so after a moderately priced ticket was found, I hopped on a plane and flew the 4 hours it takes to go from Japan to the Motherland of all Asian languages.

There are stereotypes about China and the Chinese.  Some of those you may have heard before, painted with that unflattering, broad brush of ignorance: that the Chinese are a loud, rude, spitting, smoking, pushy, yet somehow an extremely entrepreneurial people.  I, unfortunately, have to agree, especially coming from Tokyo, Japan.  If you paint with that same broad brush in describing Japan, you would say the Japanese are a stoic, busy, quiet, respectful, harsh, and extremely organized people.  They don't really talk when they walk the streets of the city.  The Japanese subway has got to be the quietest metro system on the entire planet.  There are signs on all the trains telling you not to use your mobile except in assigned spaces at the ends of a train-car.  It is not that way in China.  The Chinese talk, yell, laugh, complain, cough, and generally make as much noise as possible at all times.  Don't go for the solitude. 

 

I got off the plane and KL was waiting for me.  What a sight for sore ears.  She spoke English to me!  I have not yet found the beauty that probably resides in the Chinese language.  It's a hidden beauty… deeply hidden.  There are gargantuan amounts of "tsu schwan, tings zows, and ching dows".  It just doesn't sound "pretty" to my Anglo ears. 

 

As for the industrious stereotype of the Chinese people… well, it does seem like as a whole, they are always on the make.  They will make money… period.  Do not underestimate them.  It seems like the country already makes all of the world's goods, and they want more.  Now to get themselves up to the top of the world in manufacturing, they have let the natural beauty of their land go to shit.  Absolute shit.  Hong Kong does not see the sun anymore.  I never saw it during my four days there.  Not a peek.  What you see on a supposedly sunny day is a lighter grey sky.  Possibly a thinner amount of smog, but there's always the omnipresent smog hiding the sun.  And my, oh my, do they ship.  On the wonderful airport express metro you go right by one of the shipping centers.  That port has more goods in one place than I have ever seen in my entire life:  stacks and stacks of orange, red, and green metal containers waiting to be loaded on an endless line of cargo ships. 

 

After the easy and smooth ride of the airport express (I think Hong Kong's metro is the easiest to use that I have ever encountered… in the US and abroad.  Just a wonderfully designed and executed mass transit system), we hopped into a taxi.  They look much like the taxis in Japan.  They are Toyotas and you don't open the door, the cabbie opens the door for you.  But once you are in the car, you see the difference.  White gloves do not adorn the hands of these men, and there is crap everywhere inside these cars.  I would gladly eat off of almost any surface in a Japanese taxicab.  I shudder to think the last time the Chinese taxicabs I rode in were cleaned.  And they are not comfortable.  For some reason the same car in both countries ride very differently.  You feel a bit pampered in the Japanese taxi.  I felt a bit carsick in the Chinese taxi.  There is more movement… like you're riding on broken shocks or the seats have broken springs. 

 

Fighting back the nausea, we finally made it to the hotel.  Locals don't stay at this hotel, I'm told, because it is next to a funeral home.  I don't mind the funerary proximity as long as the bed is comfortable and price is right.  But I did find something that I do mind: the smell around the hotel.  Or should I say, stench.  Exiting the jolting cocoon of the cab, the scent of Hong Kong hit me.  Do you like Chinese food?  I do not.  I will not eat it in a house.  I will not eat it with a mouse.  I do not like the food.  I do not like the sight.  I do not like the texture.  But what we're talking about here is the smell.  The sickly sweet smell of sauce sloshed on, in, and under food that has been seared, baked, and usually fried.  That is the first thing you notice about this particular aroma.  Hold that thought of all the good smells you’ve encountered in a Chinese restaurant and then move that smell into the category you reserve for "old" odors.  The saucy smell of this city has been sitting out in the open, hot, and humid air for quite awhile.  It's like what happens when you forget about fast food in the backseat of your car and let it sit there baking in the summer sun for hours.  That type of aged and mushroomed fragrance is the base of all sniffs your proboscis shall sniff in Hong Kong.  But it’s not french-fries that begin this perfume; it is the aforementioned whiffs from food prepared by and for a Chinese population.  Now add garbage and pollution from this people-packed place.  The holy triumvirate of fetid odor.  It does not go away.  This bouquet is the exhalation from the city of Hong Kong. 

 

Right, so now we've covered what it smells like.  Not pleasant for me, but you may love it.  We'll move on to the sights of the city.  Hong Kong is not the paradise of Asian architecture an Anglo brought up on Kung Fu movies would expect.  In fact, I don't know where that place is.  I have not found it except in celluloid.  Hong Kong looks like Chicago.  There are huuuuuuge housing project / Cabrini Green-type buildings rising all over the place.  And they are either grey, brown, or horrible faded pastel greens, pinks, blues, and yellows.  I later found out each apartment in said homely edifice is worth about one million US dollars.  I am not shitting you.  Hong Kong is made on and of money. 

 

"Sure the outside is ugly.  The landlords don't care about upkeep.  They care about the rent, but the inside is completely different.  You can do whatever you want with the inside of your apartment.  I've been in some really nice apartments over there," our guide explains one night.  And I'm not saying it all looks like that, oh no.  There are plenty of resplendent glass-encased buildings on the shore, great big things that glint faintly in the smoggy day haze.  You just don't appreciate these architectural marvels because they are right next to the structures that scream housing project.  And this city is building on top of itself.  There are roads that corkscrew up and over while others take you just under the shadow of the rising hills.  I fear they would all come a tumblin' down if the plates moved under this city on the sea, just like the massive 7.9 quake did to mainland China. 

 

That night, we ventured out to the streets to see what a bar, bistro, and the midnight ball is like on this side of the Pacific.  Picture Buckhead in Atlanta, River Street in Savannah, the French Quarter in New Orleans, or Sunset Boulevard in LA, and you have a good idea what the "nightlife" is like.  There are quite a few pubs (it was a British colony after all), a few streets full of brightly lit neon bars, several cheesy restaurants, many upscale cantinas, and a few hidden private clubs that contain a hidden fee.  You have to join these places to partake in their beverages or pay upfront at the door.  Very velvet rope-ish. 

 

We had a tour guide who was as knowledgeable as she was beautiful.  She had to "buy-in" to the bar to own the privilege of paying to drink there.  The policy keeps out the riff-raff, and you notice immediately the club itself is dressed to impress.  Dark rich colors are everywhere.  Chairs and couches are decked out in soft felts and strong leathers.  Actual chains hang from the ceilings to metallically separate you from the other well-to-drinkers a few feet away.  There are couches that you reserve instead of table.  And if you so happen to be resting your keister there when the owner of that booth shows up to do their drinking you are requested to move from.  Oh, did I mention there is a fish tank full of sharks?  Yup.  Sho nuff.  Actual living breathing terror of the deeps.  They aren't the great white version, but they're there. 

 

So what do we do in this one name anything-but-a-dive?  We have a bottle of champagne.  Of course.  Don't know if I have ever ordered a bottle on champagne outside of a strip club.  But while the sharks twisted and glared I helped drink that bottle dry.  (I’m talking about the bar in Hong Kong silly, not the strip club)  Finally the pulsating music rose to such a clamor I could not hear or be heard.  So sharks or no, we left for calmer environs. 

 

This bar had green lighting and was plenty ready to pour shot after shot down our eager gullets.  Again, they turned the volume up to 11.  Get it.  It only goes up to 10.  It was 11.  My clothes were literally vibrating as the beat went BOOM-badda-BOOM-badda-BOOM.  To stay in these taverns long when you have already seen the better years of 30 slink away behind you, there is something vital to incorporate… booze.  I found my way to the right liquid volume of alcohol and all of a sudden the audible volume, nor the heat, nor the constant bumping of others, seemed like such a bother.  So Hong Kong's nightlife is basically like the nightlife everywhere.   There are just a lot more “tings zows and ching dows”. 

 

Upon awaking the next… afternoon, I encountered a sight I did not expect.  It was the Sunday habits of the Filipino people who fill the same slot Mexicans fill in the United States.  Filipinos do all of the menial jobs the Chinese don't want to do, so all of the housework, lawn work, etc, is performed by these immigrants, we were told by our tour guide.  And Sunday is their one and only day off.  So they physically litter the streets and overpasses with themselves.  Everywhere you walked the day before in downtown Hong Kong is now awash with Filipinos.  Not walking, mind you. They picnic on the walkways you use to navigate over the busy streets below.  And they come with props!  There are hundreds, if not thousands, of people sitting, eating, playing games, listening to radios, talking, looking over the latest thing they just bought, and they are all sitting on flattened cardboard boxes instead of picnic blankets.  Where did they get these boxes?  I do not know.  I don't know if they brought them or if an enterprising young man sells them at the corner of every picnic sight.  It's like a population of a hundred thousand homeless people exploded all over the downtown area in the space of one day.  Then the next day they are gone.  Nothing is left but the trash.  Oh, and the smell.

 

The rain came to Hong Kong while I was there, water falling from the sky.  In my mind, that water brings a new beginning, everything washed and new again. But not here. In Hong Kong, it was gray water falling from a gray sky.  There did not seem to be the same restorative effects of H bonded with 2 O’s.  KL and I were in a market looking for knick-knacks as the sky opened.  Besides the various assortments of sex toys being sold on the street by 4 foot, 10 inch little old ladies (I am not kidding you), most everything in the market was crap.  But if you look long enough you can usually find that one thing that speaks to you about the place you are, the experience you’ve had, and way you want to show that to other people.  KL found three leather-bound notebooks.  One is a small thought book with a snap and a dragon, one has The Chairman adorning the cover, and the last is the big brother of the first.  I found two lighters.  They aren’t good lighters, but they both have The Chairman and several Chinese characters.  

As the rain came down, I asked how much I would have to part with to take these small treasures home.  “8 dollar.  8 dollar,” is what I was told. 

“Well, how much for two of them?  I’ll give you 12 dollars,” I said. 

He looked at me with a little disgust. “16 dollar for two.  No bargain.  No bargain here.  We no bargain.” 

With an “OK,” I began to walk off.  He came around very quickly.  I don’t know if it was a product of my bold haggling techniques or if it was because the rain promised not many more people would be out today looking for tacky lighters. But he grabbed my shoulder and sighed, “OK, OK, 12 dollar.”  Then he mumbled something that I deciphered to mean, “Asshole,” in whatever language he mumbled it in, and I gave him the money.  I guess it is no surprise that the lighters had absolutely no fuel inside.  Not a smidge.  He was selling me a lighter, not a lighter that worked.  For that I really would have had to spend 16 dollars.