From the Grounds of the First Temple I Visited in Chiang Mai #4

From the Grounds of the First Temple I Visited in Chiang Mai #3

From the Grounds of the First Temple I Visited in Chiang Mai #2

From the Grounds of the First Temple I Visited in Chiang Mai #1

Usually when I'm on one of my conference trips I don't have the time or energy to take many photos. Yesterday, however, we rented a tuk-tuk and took a spin around Chiang Mai to check out some of the sights. I snapped a few hundred shots in the space of a few hours, so it's going to take me a while to sort through them all. Also, since I'm not really into travelogue-type writing, I'm not going to waste time boring you with details about temples (the names of which I don't remember) or other places. Post titles will probably be the only informative thing you'll get from me, but I will add that all posted pictures were taken in the city of Chiang Mai itself.

I guess I should also add that I fell in love with Chiang Mai. I quite seriously can imagine myself disappearing from Miyazaki one day, never to be seen again, and appearing in Chiang Mai with a new identity. It won't happen. But I can seriously imagine it.

I'd very highly recommend Chiang Mai (and Thailand more generally--just try to avoid the airport in Bangkok... well, that's probably not realistic; still...) to anyone who's never been to Asia. Seriously.

Anyway, some pics...

Manila

So, I arrived in Manila a couple of days ago. I haven't taken many pics, but posting even what I have taken has become a hassle because this work-supplied, Windows 7 machine doesn't seem to like GimpShop. It's not so much that I want to edit the pics, but I generally set my camera to take photos in the largest possible parameters and then scale them down. I can't do that right now.

Manila is a bit more intense than I remember from my last visit. Or Malate is, anyway. Yesterday, just after I arrived, I was walking down the street and a couple of prostitutes approached me. I'm no prude, but I'm not the type of guy that negotiates with prostitutes in broad daylight in the middle of the afternoon. Hmm... Well, you know... They were both quite attractive, and I suspect they were both ladyboys, but "I'll do anything you like for 500 pesos" spoken out loud in the street as people are walking past is probably not the best sales pitch one can direct at a middle-aged guy with a family.

Later, in the evening, things got even more intense. There were very aggressive touts/pimps every 10 meters hawking their "wares." One guy actually followed me for a couple hundred meters yelling, "We got young girls for you! They'll suck your cock and lick your ass!" The details were, I guess, a nice touch; but fuck, what an asshole.

Seeking a bit of refuge from all of that I went to a nearby mall. I was hungry. I' d hoped to get dinner at a local restaurant, but I was tired and was growing annoyed by all the people aggressively trying to sell me stuff or ask me for money. It's especially grating being asked if I want to buy Viagra at a rate of about once a minute while I'm at street level. Do I look like I need Viagra? And worse, does everyone assume I'm here to have my way with the local women (or, worse still, the local kids)? What the fuck are all the other white guys doing here, anyway?

I figured the mall would be a bit more sedate. There was a place--not in the food court, but an actual restaurant, that was advertising "a taste of New Orleans." "Heh," I thought to myself. (Yes, I really do say "heh" in my head.) The food was actually pretty good, but I was somewhat surprised to "find out" that Caesar salad, onion rings, and fish 'n' chips were actually "Cajun" food! (Guys--you know who you are-- help me out here.) My meal, as tasty as it was, was not without an honest-to-gosh moment of utter dismay. I asked for "petite" orders of salad and onion rings, but when they arrived at my table there was enough food to feed 3 or 4 people. And my order of fish 'n' chips was gigantic. There was no possible way I could eat all of that food by myself. This would never happen in Japan, and back in Canada (and probably the States) nobody would blink about just chucking my uneaten portions into the garbage.

But, I'm not in Japan or Canada or wherever. I'm in Manila where little kids come up to you making gestures towards their mouths. I can't throw this food away. I can't. (I suppose there's some sort of criticism that could be leveled at me for feeling the way I do about this, but I really don't give a damn.) I apologized to the wait staff, explaining that if I'd known the orders would be so big, I wouldn't have asked for so much food. They offered to put it in a doggy bag, but because I was staying in a hotel that wasn't really an option. One waitress suggested that I take the doggy bag outside and give it to the first kid that approached me with the hand-mouth gesture. A ray of hope. "Do people sometimes do that?" I asked. I was assured that there was nothing strange about doing it, and that they thought I would be a nice guy if I did it. I wasn't honestly interested in looking like a "nice guy." I just didn't want to be a "bad guy."

I have to tell you that I went through a few changes as I walked out of that mall with my doggy bag. One of them: "Well, look at you, going out to feed the poor kids of Manila." Fuck. As I exited the mall I stopped for a minute and had a smoke. Then I made my way to the street. I stopped for a moment as some cars passed. Just as I was about to cross the street, a little girl, about 6 or 7-years old, filthy, no shoes, tugged on my arm. When I looked down at her she gestured towards her mouth. I handed her the bag. "There's good food in there," I said. She smiled and said "thank you." "No," I said. "Thank you".

Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park: Memorial Tower to the Mobilized Students

Sunflower Kirishima: Bon Voyage!

For the first leg of the trip we took a few weeks ago we had to take a two-hour drive to Shibushi in Kagoshima in order to drive onto a car ferry (the Sunflower Kirishima) for an overnight trip to Osaka. It's actually possible to take a similar ferry ride from here in Miyazaki, but that ferry was booked solid when we (i.e. my wife) were planning the trip.

This was the part of the trip I was looking forward to the most. I really enjoy being out on the water, and this was my first overnight trip on a ship since crossing the Atlantic with my mother when I was about 2 or 3 years old (we were going to live in Germany for a few years). It's not possible for me to become bored while traveling on water. I wasn't bored this time.

The Sunflower Kirishima is a pretty big ship, and we had our own private room. Just like in Titanic! I joked to my wife. I wandered around for hours, smoking cigarettes and taking pictures. That's what I call "relaxing"!

Later in the evening I wandered down to a common area where there were vending machines and a smoking room. The vending machines served beer and shochu. (Have I ever mentioned what an absolutely civilized place Japan is?) I smoked some cigarettes and drank a couple of beers between my wanderings of the outside decks. Each time I came inside to get a beer I noticed a couple of older Japanese guys sitting by the vending machines drinking and talking. About when I had decided to get my last beer and make my last rounds of the ship, I returned to the vending machine area. After getting my beer, I glanced over at the two Japanese guys, who were still there drinking and talking. As soon as they noticed me looking in their direction they motioned for me to go over and join them. Now, normally I'm a bit reticent about getting into conversations with Japanese people I don't know, mainly because of the horrid state of my ability in the language. One of the wondrous properties of alcohol, however, is that it allows one to wax loquacious in pretty much any damned language you'd care to mention, so I went right over and plonked myself into a chair...

We must have talked for a while (about what, I don't actually remember), because the sun was coming up as I stumbled back to the room where my wife and daughter were sleeping. I vaguely recall (probably a dream?) some angry words from my wife. It seemed that I had no sooner put my head on the pillow when my daughter was shaking me, saying, "Wake up Daddy! We're in Osaka! Let's go have fun at Universal Studios!"

Yes, I thought to myself. Let's go have fun at Universal Studios...

Miyajima (4): In the Morning

Mountain Pirates

Seen at Irori Sanzoku in the Shimonoseki region of Yamaguchi Prefecture on our recent trip. We had some incredibly delicious grilled chicken at an outdoor restaurant in a mountain forest. Avast!

Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park: Cenotaph for the A-bomb Victims

Miyajima (3): At Night

Guze Jibo Daikannon

On the final leg of our trip last week (Fukuoka to Miyazaki), we passed through Kurume in Fukuoka Prefecture. We were tired and didn't really have any time for sight-seeing because we had to pick up the dog when we got back to Miyazaki. My wife was driving and I was basically zoning out in the back seat when something caught my eye and got me to yelling for my wife to stop the car, now! This is what I saw:

My wife muttered a kind of "oh yeah... I forgot about that," in Japanese (she'd briefly lived in Kurume a long time ago) and, as I mentioned, we didn't have time for a real visit, but I did jump out of the car long enough to get these pics.

I later found out that the statue in the above pics is, at 62 meters, among the tallest in the world. It's of a type of Buddhist artwork generally known as Kannon (personifying compassion), and more specifically Jibo Kannon ("compassionate mother"). Apparently Kannon is generally considered male among Buddhists in India, Tibet and Southeast Asia, but feminized forms became somewhat common in China and Japan from the 11th-12th centuries. In Japan, the feminine form makes Kannon more compatible with Shinto, in which reverence for the female element has a long history.

There's also an interesting side note to this. The image of the "compassionate mother" and her baby also has a long tradition in Christian iconography. In Japan, during the Tokugawa (Edo) Period (1603-1868), there was a ban on/persecution of Christianity. During this period hidden Christians began disguising statues of the Virgin Mary as Kannon. These became known as Maria Kannon. [There's more info at the links. Dig in!]

Anyway, the next time I go to Costco in Fukuoka, I'll try to make a side-trip and see if I can get some better pictures of this statue. After all, there's more to life than just buying stuff...

Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park: Children's Peace Monument

Miyajima (2): In Black and White

Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park: A-Bomb Dome

We went to quite a few spots on our recent holiday, and I took a crapload of pictures. It would probably take me a couple of weeks to write about and post all the pics I'd like to, but I've decided against doing any kind of running, blow-by-blow kind of travelogue. Instead, I'm just going to jump around and post stuff as I feel like posting it--pretty much randomly. When I'm finished with everything, anyone who wants to put the pieces together can just click the tags at the end of individual posts. This also lets me post about other stuff as it happens along.

On Monday of this week we visited the Peace Memorial Park in the city of Hiroshima. It was my second time there, and I've also visited a similar memorial in Nagasaki a couple of times. (I assume that I don't have to explain the significance of these places to anyone, especially today.) Visually, there's a real contrast in these two cities. Hiroshima has a real "modern" look to it (I don't mean that as some kind of sly joke BTW), while I imagine Nagasaki doesn't look so different than it did 65 years ago. And, although this is nothing more than a personal impression, the cities, their people, and how they've dealt (and continue to deal with) the singular events that took place at the end of WWII have a character of their own. Nagasaki strikes me as a much more easy-going place that seems to have come to terms with the past--at least as well as could be expected of a place that was destroyed by a nuclear bomb, and still has people there who remember it. Hiroshima on the other hand still seems still to be grappling with the past. It has adopted a somewhat political anti-nuclear stance and has made the eradication of nuclear weapons its mission. Again, these are just the impressions of an outsider who has spent a bit of time in both places.

I'm not personally very big on dwelling much on the past. What's done is done, time to move on, blah, blah, blah. That's my regular schtick. I do think, though, that there are devastating events that need to be "remembered". Back in Canada, every November when Remembrance Day rolled around, there were always people whining about the "old farts" putting on their old uniforms and medals and telling their old war stories and making a big deal out of the past. But anyone who's ever sat down and spent a few hours with one (or more) of these "old farts" and listened to some of their stories soon realizes one thing: these guys don't "remember" these events; they can't forget them. Listening to some guy tell you about how, when he was 18, he was pushed out of an airplane in the black of night, with bombs exploding around him, bullets winging past him, his friends screaming, while he's heading down towards fuck knows what kind of even worse horror--listening to this you begin to get the picture. I can only speak for myself, but this kind of "remembering" has a lot more impact than some prick in a suit on the TV telling me that "war is bad." No fucking shit.

So, we're at the park commemorating the first-fucking-time-in-history-ever dropping of a nuclear bomb on people. It has my attention. There are several monuments in the park, and I'll be posting some pics of a few. The one below is of the "A-Bomb Dome." This structure was almost directly under the hypo-center of the bomb when it exploded. It was one of the few structures in the entire city that wasn't completely obliterated. There's also a fairly large museum attached to the park. It's got pictures of stuff that was blown up, it's got actual stuff that was blown up, it's got stuff that people were wearing when they were blown up... I probably could have taken a few pictures if I'd wanted. I didn't want to. There are also a lot of written recollections of people who actually lived through the blast. They all remember exactly what they were doing when hell rained down on the earth. Like the boy who was about to trap a butterfly in his net when suddenly there was a flash... All the rock concerts with all the great bands in the world proclaiming "no nukes" are nothing more than (possibly great) rock concerts. One person listening to one person "remembering" what he can't forget...

Miyajima (1)

Just returned a few hours ago from the trip I mentioned a couple of posts ago. I'm only going to do a quick pic-post this evening because I'm tired and have some beer to drink and am still officially on holiday tomorrow (although I will probably have to go in to work for a bit tomorrow afternoon).

We arrived on Miyajima late Sunday afternoon. This place has been designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and with good reason. It was my second time here, but the first since I've started taking pictures. I quickly became obsessed with it and couldn't stop snapping.

In late afternoon the sun is shining almost directly into your camera from just about any angle (the tides don't help much). I'll post some pics later, but they'll probably be mostly black and whites. At night, well, shots at night are always a roll of the dice for those of us who don't have pro-gear. I got a few that might be OK. You'll see those later.

For the shot below I got up at about 6 a.m. (our hotel was about a 10 minute walk away). There will be more of these coming as well. Anyway, for now, I kinda liked this one:

Approaching Kumamoto Castle

A Diner Somewhere in Kumamoto

PSA: A Message from Transport Canada

I don't know what it's like for Americans on domestic flights, but flying into the U.S. from a foreign country (any foreign country) has sucked ass for several years now. The flights suck, the airports suck, and the security sucks. It's a shitty experience. It's also a completely useless waste of time. And it's only getting worse with the passing of each day.

The War on Terror ended the day it began. You lost America.



"Transport Canada: A division of the US Dept. of Homeland Security." That was a nice touch.

Conference

In Shizuoka for a work-related conference. Wandering around, clusters of gaijin, each doing their dutiful best to ignore the other.

When you register for one of these things they always give you a bag. Kind of like soccer players getting a cap for their international matches. I've been "bagged" several times, but I don't know if this one counts because it's in Japan. The bag usually contains a bunch of promo crap from text book companies and such. I give the pens, notepads, and other useful stuff to my daughter. She seems to like collecting my name tags, as well. (Recently I found one of my conference tags in which she'd crossed out my name and wrote her own above it. This little girl is worth more to me than the entire world.)

I guess I should be careful what I say. Not everyone is as carefree and irreverent about the theoretical underpinnings of their profession as I am. I'm a skeptic, and I'd be a piss-poor one if I didn't put what I do under the same scrutiny as I'd apply to right-wingnuttery, religion, UFO's, ghosts, and my own beliefs about anything, your beliefs about anything, and generally anything at all (well, except the primacy of the Stones).

Some ideas are better than others, but there are a shitload of bad ideas out there.

You might think that someone whose job lets him support his family and drink beer in so many cool places should probably whine about it a lot less. You'd probably be right.

I'm struggling to reconcile the notion of a restaurant/bar with hundreds of beers from around the world with Pinnochio playing on the wide screen. And Tokyo Ska Paradise playing through the speakers.

I once met a guy in a bar who happened also to be an "English teacher." He'd recently got his PhD in EFL or something. It was amusing to hear him tell me how I was "enculturing" my daughter by speaking to her in English (i.e. the idea being that language=culture; I can't honestly imagine a more ridiculous piece of shit masquerading as "theory"). I'd been telling him how I was teaching my daughter to use chopsticks...