Mongolia

All I have to say about China, today, is that the post office makes you fill out forms in triplicate, won't accept green-colored ink on your letters, rips open your packages unexpectedly, and has an assortment of reading glasses available in the form-filling-out area.  Annoying, annoying, more annoying, and completely adorable.  I left feeling both stressed and giggly.  I loved it!

Something else I like is my friend Lollion arrived this week.  As a Korean-American, she speaks not a word of Chinese, but at dinner, in cabs, in the street, people look to her to explain my mangled Chinese.  "Ta bu shi zhongguo ren," I interrupt.  "Ta shi hanguo ren."  I nod, sadly: "Ta bu hue shuo putonhua."  And then, self-critical: "Wo hue shuo, keshi wo shuoda bu hao.  Wo xue xi."  I think this impresses them.  It impresses me!

Abyhow, this Saturday morning, I board a train with Lollion, and my friend Amanda, and ride thirty-odd hours to Mongolia.  Apparently it's a country that eats only strewed meat and yak yogurt, and Lollion's a vegan.  Everything I've heard is: "she's in trouble."  There's nothing vegan there.  Also, yaks and horses are apparently a part of everyday life, their hair used for everything.  I'm hideously allergic to horse and yak both.

This trip is going to be remarkable.  I expect some pained, fun anecdotes!!!

Hakone, Japan

After the insanity of Tokyo, I really needed a break.

So, on the advice of a stranger, I bought a 3-day pass to Hakone.  And what a break it was.  A mountain town an hour from Tokyo, there's almost nothing to do here.  No madness, no crowds, and certainly no stress.  Just groups of old ladies in hats, taking a midweek break from the city.  

I'd climb on and off a rickety train that ran up the mountain, wandering aimlessly in little resort towns.  The best word for the area, really, was delightful.   

One stop had a huge sculpture garden in rolling hills, with a Henry Moore piece that made me cry.  A Picasso Museum left me unimpressed, save for a painting on ceramic of a boy's head...  but it was Picasso in the Japanese mountains.  That alone gave it cred.

Stopping at Miyanoshita, I found a gorgeous tonkatsu curry at the Fujiya Hotel.  The pickle selection?  Incredible!  The tonkasu?  Perfect.  The views of mountains from the century-old dining room made up for the fact that they didn't have chopsticks.

After the train, you'd  switch to a cable-car, which slowly carried you further up the mountain.  

It ended at a cute bubble ski-lift, The Hakone Ropeway, which carried you over the top of the mountain, to an incredible sulphuric hot-water area.

Sulphuric steam billowed from the ground along little paths.  80 degree streams trickled down the mountain.

A series of buses had driven crowds directly here, so for the first time, there was something approaching a crowd...

Now, the resort's primary claim to fame is eggs, hard-boiled in the volcanic water.  The shells come out black, and the insides apparently perfectly cooked.  And legend has it that each one eaten adds seven years to your life.  (Old ladies crowded around, shoving the eggs in their mouths, dropping black shell to the ground.)  Egg-y things were everywhere: egg sculptures, egg paintings, there was even a Hello Kitty, dressed in a black egg shell, to pose with.

I watched, sad and left out.  I can't eat eggs.  (I did at 大 Sushi, and regretted it.)  

But you know what I can eat?  Azuki ice cream!!!  All of Japan is flooded with red bean treats, and, on a cold volcanic afternoon, this was a real reward.

A second ropeway led back down the other side of the mountain, offering a gorgeous view of Lake Ashi...

...where a gargantuan Pirate Ship met us, and took us to the other side.  Yep, a Pirate Ship.  An incredible, cheesy, terrible plastic reconstruction of a pirate ship, loaded with a booty of retirees and awed schoolchildren.  "Sailing" across Lake Ashi, with this photo-snap-happy group, it was just about the most fun I've had in Japan.

From the boat's deck, I saw a shrine, off in the distance, at the water's edge.

And immediately I knew.  I had to take this photo. (Which looks remarkably PhotoShop'ed when so small, but it ain't compositionally altered. Click on it for a slightly larger version...)

Hakone: the perfect salve for a post-Tokyo decope.

Sushi To 大 For

(or, in Japanese, "Sushi to Dai For."  Get it?  Haha.  Oh, I'm a cut-up.  Like the fish!  Pow- I'm on a roll!  No, the fish is.  Yuk-yuk.)

Aaaaanyhow.... Japan, for many tourists, is all about monkey-staffed izakayas, maid-served mcnuggets, and a miracle fruit that turns a lemon into a peach.  But, surprising to some, there's a little more depth to this country's epicuriousity.  They've got sushi, here!  Buckets of it!!!  And I've been doing my best to research this wild raw fish craze that's sweeping the island nation.

Early Tuesday morning, on barely three hours of post-monkey-bar sleep, I rolled out of futon, pulled on some clothes, and groggily hailed a cab.  "This had better be good," I thought, as I asked the driver to take me to Tsukiji Fish Market.  Damn, it was.  

Now first, Tsukiji Fish Market is a sprawling maze of warehouses.  I didn't get a map, and had no idea where to go -- Japanese men in boots and bloody aprons ran left and right.  They jumoped out of the way as tiny trucks and massive crate-lifters ploughed through, honking madly.  4:30am, and everyone was in a crazed rush.  I didn't know what to ask for, so just followed the first white person I saw, running down an alleyway, dodging workers, to catch up.  And as they entered a huge warehouse, filled with rows of massive tuna, I knew they were on to something good.  Cos I love tuna!!!

Dudes in jumpsuits were marching up and down the aisles, spraying the frosty fish with water, then painting huge red numbers and scrawls on their bellies.  A gang of old fellows followed, scrawling in notepads, crouching down for a peek, a sniff, and sometimes even slicing off a thin slice, discretely taking a bite.  Real nice, old dudes.  I wanted some.

Finally, at about 5am, the bidding started.  A smiley, rosy-cheeked fellow stood on an upturned crate and shouted real fast, rolling like a Kentucky auctioneer on too much jank, while a crowd of old guys discreetly made bid signs.  It was Sotheby's for tuna.  It was awesome.  

After the first round of auctions, I couldn't take any more.  Watching these old guys sneak those tastes of o-toro had me hopping mad -- mad for sweet raw fishy meat.  So I walked a block, paced a line of sushi shops, and saw that most were empty.  Not too surprising -- it was 6am, after all!  But outside one stood thirty hungry people.  This was "大 Sushi."

"I waited for two hours yesterday!," one foodie proclaimed, "And I'm back today!"  "This is the freshest sushi there is...  I've been dreaming of this meal," Natalie piped in.  All I could think was "I'm having sushi for breakfast?"  

A Japanese woman walked outside, asked if we wanted to pay $30 or $50.  "$50," I boldly proclaimed, as she walked back inside, leaving me in line for another hour. Finally, I was able to enter 大.

And it was amazing.  Worth every minute of the wait.  Toro from the heavens.  Sawara of the gods.  Ama-ebi that puts hair on your chest and a smile on your cheeks.  And then there was Uni.  A fish I abhor.  An ugly hack-colored food of Satan.  This uni?  This uni made me love uni.  This uni put Nobu to shame.  This uni I adored.  

(Note: I was far too mesmerized and sushi-mad to take a photo of 大's uni.  But this, from a meal a few hours later, is a rough approximation)

Now, not every piece was amazing.  The anago was so terrible that instead of butter, it tasted like burned rubber.  The below piece, a pile of baby shrimp, was interesting, but not tasty.  When 大 succeeded, though, it was (some of) the best sushi I've ever had.  

A second contender for the "best sushi ever" award was a few hours later, at Midori's Ginza branch.  (Ginza Subway, Exit C1, walk through the food court, and it's sitting under the JR line tracks.)  Natalie, who I'd met that morning, urged me to go, and, judging from Midori's 30-minute queue, outside in the pouring rain, the Japanese liked it too. 

Again, uni that made me gaze lovingly at the sushi chef.  And ローストビーフ?  Maybe not entirely traditional -- but a slice of raw beef, roasted atop the rice in front of you -- definitely worth it.  And the taste?  So fresh and bloody and juicy.  Mmmmmm!

 

Mostly, though, I found myself on a dark tuna rampage.  Over the meal, I ran through every tuna on the menu.  I didn't even think to take photos as I plunged into the maguro, the "tuna pickled soy sauce," the broiled fatty tuna, the broiled medium fatty tuna, the "best of medium fatty tuna," and even the "best of fatty tuna."  And a half-dozen others.  It was like an orgy of tuna on the table, as the chef handed a piece over, I picked it up, flipped it with my fingers, dabbed it lightly in (wasabi-free) soy, and popped it (whole) into my mouth, savoring and smiling and offering a grand "thumbs up" or two to the waiter.  "Oishii desu ne," I would call out when my mouth was free.  I loved it.  In Beijing, sushi was inedible and frozen.  Here in Japan?  So perfectly fresh.

The most divine piece, though, was something I've never seen before.  I found it in Hakone, a small mountain town.  (Across the road from 7-11.  Sliding slat door, with no windows.)  Maybe the piece was called Namaji Rasu, and maybe it's called Shirasu.  But either way, it was incredible, deliciously sweet, and so unbelievably weird.  Tiny fishies, with big eyes, piled into a rolled piece of nigiri.  So entirely straight-from-Star-Wars, and so one-of-a-kind.  The chef had passed it to me as a gift, after seeing my love for his work, and once he discovered I wasn't Russian. 

Oh, I do like the food here....

Tokyo, Part Two

Tokyo isn't just a collection of weirdness -- there's far more. History, culture, temples, museums.

But the famed Asakusa Temple was buffered by blocks of "traditional keychain" souvenir shops, under assault from an ugly hoard of tourists, and hidden behind a mask of white scaffolding. The Shinto Shrine in Yoyogi Park meant you had to fight the crowds of the park. And I quickly paced through the prized Edo-Tokyo museum, really appreciating it only for the fact that it kept me out of the rain.

No, the charm of Tokyo, for me, is the new, the odd, and the terrible. Like this McDonald's statue that bears an uncannily likeness to Michael Jackson....

Weirdness. I came to Tokyo for three pilgrimages. The first, a trip to Miyazaki's Ghibli Museum, left my cheeks wet with tears. The second, lunch at a Miracle Fruit Cafe, had me giggling aloud, the juice from an inedible umeboshi plum running down my chin. And the third? It was to be dinner at an izakaya tavern, waited on by monkeys. Monkeys. Not guys in monkey suits, or hirsute fellows, but real, honest-to-xxx monkeys. This was probably a PETA nightmare, but it was also something I'd never heard of elsewhere. Plus, monkeys are totally awesome!!!

But instead of being in "North Tokyo," which I'd heard from the Internet rumors, it was far north of Tokyo. The "short train ride" turned out to be two hours from Shinjuku. And from there, another two hours of walking through ramshackle neighborhoods, fields, along highways. I carried a useless map, and asked directions every ten blocks, miming a monkey carrying a tray of sake to help explain what I was searching for. Ominous clouds hovered overhead, threatening rain, but I kept pushing on.

Finally, after four hours of travel, tucked away down a dark, residential street, I found the Kayabuki Tavern.

And it was weird. Not awesome, not great, not especially fun -- just weird. I think I'd imagined a crowd of drunk salarymen, faces blotched red, downing shots of sake and telling loud bawdy jokes. The monkeys would push through the crowd, clutching bottles of sake in their hands. Maybe, just maybe, they'd even understand Japanese -- enough to take an order for Asahi vs Sapporo.

It wasn't like that. Instead, I arrived to an empty bar. The owner, Horu, offered me "chicken oiru," and proceeded to cook up a pan of chicken and oil. He disappeared out back, and after fifteen minutes of crashes and bangs, pulled out Fukuchan, a tiny monkey dressed in a matching checkered Izakaya suit, a chain hanging around its neck. I suddenly realized there would be no monkeys carrying bottles of sake -- this was a barkeep who owned a pet monkey.

Fukuchan was there just to entertain. He danced on command and did flips on command and bounced balls on command, looking anxious and scared the whole time.

Sometimes he just looked depressed, or would hide behind me while Hiru shouted for him.

It was sad. I wanted to leave, but also wanted to see where the night would lead. After four hours of travel, I thought, there must be some peak. There wasn't. I remained the only customer, all night, drinking beers while Fukuchan climbed on me and picked at my scalp. After a few hours, I had Hiru call a cab, and then paid double to take the bullet train home.

Tokyo Part One

To be honest, I came to Tokyo for only three reasons. Each had been percolating in my mind, independently, for years. Each seemed to be something I needed to do. Each of these demanded a pilgrimage. And each of these would be difficult.

I first read about The Ghibli Museum in a New Yorker profile on Hayao Miyazaki, one of my favorite filmmakers. A legend in Japan, he's created a number of gorgeous, meditative animated masterpieces -- Spirited Away, Howl's Moving Castle, and Ponyo are my three favorites. They're slow, weird, dark, and scary. Most of all, they're films about awe. Awe for the protagonists, and for the audience as well. The Ghibli Museum is his own tribute to his work and his inspirations.

Like any good pilgrimage, it wasn't an easy journey. Tickets could only be bought, in advance, from Japanese-language ATMs in Lawson's Convenience Stores. It took an hour to find a Lawson's. And then thirty minutes to work out how to buy a ticket. Then another hour to get to the suburb.

I needed a break. I needed sustenance. I needed some kobe beef.

Some girl had told me about a little shop, so small only a dozen customers, maybe less, could fit inside, with some of the best kobe beef you could find. One stop before Ghibli, I hopped off the train, and guided my way through alleyways, by intuition, straight to Satou. And what a find! Meat so tender, oozing with sop-worthy juices, every bite a dream.

The Satou waitress had forced a large paper apron on me, which -- alongside the instrumental version of "Chim Chim Cher-ee" playing softly, I felt a little like a character in One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest. But the two chefs slicing and frying meat inches away from me were nothing like mean ol' Nurse Ratchett... maybe more like sweet Mary Poppins. Satou was glorious.

Thus far, the best meal in Tokyo.

Another "best meal" contender was Toraji Param, a Korean hormone restaurant on the 500-something-th floor of some fancy Tokyo building. As the elevator flew up the 5000 flights, my ears popped. At our table, floor-to-ceiling windows showed off all of Tokyo. It was jaw-dropping, to put it mildly.

And then the food came. And my jaw dropped again.

Before this meal, I'd never heard of "hormone restaurants," but it's a new Tokyo fad where every part of the animal is offered on the menu. You want to try delicate, thinly-sliced, cow's diaphram? We got it! And it was TDF. So amazingly tasty.

We had a series of other oddball parts of the animal, but nothing made me cry like the diaphram -- so delicious!!! Except, maybe, the bowl of raw beef with an egg yolk on top. OMG YES!!! Even their $8-a-slice premium-grade kalbi didn't meet this perfection.

You might think it a bad idea to eat all these weird and raw meats. I did, too. So I found the world's only Parasite Museum here. Sadly, everything was written in Japanese, and I couldn't find a single employee to translate. Just an unlocked door, and room after room of parasites, and no people. Even the gift-shop was empty... parasite key-chains (real parasites!) stood waiting to be sold, but I left them there.

But back to Ghibli! I really can't describe it well. It was incredibly magical. It was weird, and odd, and, like his movies, filled with awe. There were physical animations (using times strobe lights) that made me giggle with joy. Everywhere, drawers to be opened, keyholes to be peeked through, doorways too small for adults to climb through, exhibits hidden away. Nothing was explained -- they only said "Let's lose our way, together." I lost my way. It was like Willy Wonka and Dave Eggers opened a place of curious glee together.

In a small movie theater, we watched a gorgeous scene from Totoro, a wonderful old Miyazaki film distributed by Troma. Along with a room full of Japanese adults and teens and kids and ust a handful of European geeks, I ate it up with such a wild wide smile.

Me and Totoro.

So the first pilgrimage was tackled, leading me to Mission #2: Miracle Fruit!

I'd heard about Miracle Fruit at a hipster science conference in New York a few years ago, and had dreams of them ever since. History: in the 1700s, an explorer moved into a West African village. Everything was great, except the food -- it was horrible! Sour, disgusting, absolutely inedible! After a few days in the village, though, he realized the locals were all sucking on berries before eating. He joined in, and suddenly, this vile meal became glorious! So sweet, so tasty -- absolutely divine! Turns out this berry makes everything sour taste sweet!

In America, though, it's banned. Sugar and confection lobbyists have kept the berry outlawed, leaving Japan to trailblaze with a handful of Berry shops. And, after a few hours of looking, I finally found one.

Hidden on the top floor of Ikebukoro's Sun City Mall, in the back of the terrible Namjatown Theme Park, there's a restaurant: The Miracle Fruit Cafe. For $2.50, they'll sell you one berry.

And to see the effects, you can buy a number of sour-as-hell taste-bud testers. I ordered them all. Lemons, limes, sour candies, undrinkably sour juices in test tubes, weird orange-colored sliced things, and one horrible umeboshi plum.

The umeboshi plum was about the worst thing I've ever put in my mouth. Here, this is how bad it tastes.

Seriously, I'll rather eat durian.

So, nervously, I sucked on the berry for two minutes, picked up a slice of lemon, and cautiously took a lick. "Not bad," I thought. I moved forward to a small nibble. "Wow, this is good." The next thing you know, I'd shoved the whole thing in my mouth, and was chewing away. Delicious!!!

If I look kinda scared, I was. This was the best thing I'd ever eaten!!! So sweet!!! All the taste of a lemon, but the sweetness of an orange. A really, really tasty orange. YES! I chewed away at both lemon slices, the lime, the sour candies, the orange things. The liquids that I'd earlier gagged on were suddenly sweet and delicious!

And, after I'd moved through everything else, I came back to that horrid umeboshi plum. But now, it was heaven. I could suddenly taste all the depth of the flavor, with none of the horror. It was smooth, and complex, and layered. I bit, and chewed, and ate and ate and, and it was gone. I was sad. I'd loved it.

The miracle fruit, just like the Ghibli Museum, was an incredible hit. I didn't care that I'd had to pay admission fee to a theme park to get this berry, or that I'd had to fly to Japan. It was all worth the hype.

Beyond these first two pilgrimages, I've been having a blast exploring the quirk of Tokyo.

Fashion: Pink is everywhere, lace is everywhere, it's the Lolita look.

But the real style de saison is dressing like a 19th Century French Maid. It's weird, but it's everywhere! Even white girls are buying in!

And so, of course, a world of maid-staffed businesses have appeared. They have maid bars, maid cafes, even maid foot massages... I didn't visit any of these.

Well, maybe I kinda did...

Okay, to be perfectly honest, I kinda went to them all.

The opener was at Nakano's Broadway Mall, a haven for geeky hipsters, with scores of shops selling maid costumes, princess costumes, and comic books. On the 2nd floor I found the Maid Foot Massage, probably the worst foot massage I've ever had, but also the most unique. The manager and his girlfriend perched beside Miko, excitedly quizzing me for the whole massage. "Where you come from?" "How did you find this place?" "You like maid?" "You must visit Akihabara," Do-ichi the manager insisted, to eager nods from the two others. "Yes, they have many maids there!"

Akihabara's a seedy world of pachinko parlours, comic book stores, and electronics shops, pretty much a geek heaven. And what's a geek heaven without maid bars? It was there that I found MaiDreamin' and my new pal, Rika.

Completely crowded, MaiDreamin' was full of drunk salarymen, toasting, but also filled with geeky couples on dates, two women and their young daughters, and a half-dozen bubbly Japanese French maids. I was again the only gaijin, and was again treated like a novelty by the maids. (I was the novelty? You're the one dressed from the 19th century, lady!) Pink and frills were everywhere, as were cutesy notes on the walls ("no photos" with a huge smiley-face cartoon), and photos of teen pop stars. When my beer came, Rika insisted I join her in a girly chant before I drink. "Oishii ku na ne," we both shouted, "Mui, mui, mui!" I had no idea what it meant, but with each "mui" we had to make heart shapes with our hands. (David later explained to me it means something like "This tastes terrible! I don't want, I don't want, I don't want!") When my nuggets arrived, we repeated the chant, Rika giggling the whole time. This was like a Japanese Hooters without the strippers. And with French maids. It was awesome.

And I'm not sure who decided to put a big ol' Statue of Liberty here on the Tokyo beach, but someone did. It's disorienting. It's brilliant. The beach only measures ~40 feet. It makes no sense. Crowds of school kids queued up around it. But I didn't come to Tokyo for Americana. I came for pure Japanese awesomeness, so left it quickly.

Kids on the subway this afternoon. Late nights, huh?

Actually, maybe those kids should have stopped at one of the Love Hotels for a little nap! I loved the euphemistic use of "rest" in the prices.

More to come!!!

Sancha, China

What can you say about a six-day yoga retreat, when so much is shrouded in silence and confidentiality?

We stayed up in Sancha, two hours north of Beijing, in the shadow of the great wall.  It's a tiny village -- a New Yorker article claimed there were 150 villagers who lived there, but I only saw five or six.  And the only tourists who make it there seem to be lost Chinese picnic-ers, seeking an open section of The Wall.  (Here, it's closed -- the route up is steep, slippery, winding and confusing, entirely unmarked, and entirely unforgiving.  No souvenir stands, drink stalls, cafes or ancient warrior costumes to pose for photos in.  Just 150 farmers, who work the same Apricot trees and land their parents and their parents and their great grandparents worked.  If you trace far enough, their ancestors were the workers who carried the bricks, and built the wall.)

During the six days there, we'd wake before 7am for yoga, then breakfast at 8, but kept silent until 10am.  mornings were class, studying The Five Elements.  Afternoons were more class, or a hike, and a second yoga session from 4:30-6pm.  From 10pm, it was silence again.

Yoga was incredible.  (Save for a month of daily yoga after Obama won, I'd really never done yoga more than a few times a week.)  Cameron's class was similarly great.  (Initially I'd just been interested to know more about what Aaron was studying in London, but I walked away having bought in to it all.) And our surreptitious hike to the crumbling wall? Outstanding! It really was a treacherous climb, but enough branches allowed us to pull ourselves up the path -- and such an empty, desolate section of the Wall. Gorgeous.

But what I found the most healing, the most cleansing, was The Talking Circle, a nightly ritual from 7-10pm.  We all sat in a circle, with a small stone in the middle.  Everyone would stare at this stone, fearful, nervous, or eager.  Someone might grab it, and talk -- releasing a witticism, a trivial comment, or years of pain and anger.  Thin tears, sobbing, laughter, heartbreak...  so much came out.  

The first rule was that when a person had the stone, they were the only one who could talk.  For as long as they wanted.  No comments, no comforting, no one-liners -- everyone else was to be completely quiet.  And the second rule is that I can't say anything more.  Everything was to be kept to there and then.  I can probably say, though, that I got a little emotional once or twice.  Let's just leave it at that.  The power of speaking things that you didn't expect to say?  It was a healing circle.

I started the trip dubious, skeptical, even a little hateful.  I ended it full of love.  Not necessarily Guyana love, although I was accused of drinking the kool-aid.  Which I kinda did.

Here's some pix!!!