Into the Black City

 My last spring break as a teacher (at least for a good long while) is over.  On one hand, this means that I won't have to experience the way a week can stretch infinitely at the end of a quarter while you pray you survive long enough to be free of the children for at least a few short days of travel.  On the other hand, it means I'm going to be too broke to actually have a few short days of travel...unless I break my piggy bank.  This is something that I'm trying to avoid, but after a year Stateside I may be desperate enough.  I have hope that Minneapolis will be lively enough to keep me from noticing all the places I haven't gone.

Ever since the Evil One moved to Armenia I've been intending to go visit.  After all, we were practically neighbors...or so I told myself.*  I was aware, on some level, that it was trickier to get to the other end of central Asia than I was telling myself, since Her Evilness and co. came to visit two years ago, but you have to actually EXPERIENCE it to realize the truth.  I've said it before.  I'll say it again, especially since it may be the last time I do so for two years: getting there is NOT half the fun.  See, flights into Yerevan are sporadic.  What the Evil One did - and what she suggested to me - was to fly through Istanbul into Tblisi, which is in Georgia.  Four hours away from Yerevan.  Which either meant another flight - if there was one when I needed it (there wasn't) or ground transportation.  She suggested a taxi.  I said a bus was fine (I am not living on a state department salary, after all).  And then she booked and paid for a taxi anyways, and had it take me directly to Gyumri - the first place that I mentioned wanting to visit - and met me there, claiming that it made it easier for her (because it did - no worrying about me while also avoiding a 8-hour drive round trip).

I was struck pretty hard through the drive by how similar Georgia (and later Armenia) felt.  Topographically as well as the nature and some of the buildings gave me the impression that Mongolia and Greece got together and had a love child, then gave it to Russia to raise.  My driver rushed along nice, smooth roads til we got to the border crossing - I think my fifth time crossing by land.**  Since these days we mostly travel internationally by plane, it's easy to forget that you typically have to pass immigration twice - as a departure and as an arrival - but it was kind of a trip to be dropped off by the driver, walk through Georgian immigration just a few hours after they stamped my passport at the airport, drive over a river, get out and walk through Armenian immigration with my luggage, because this time I also had to go through customs.  Not my weirdest land crossing, but definitely interesting.

The taxi made a brief stop for food (ie, snacks) and the bathroom just past the border, and then we wound through a canyon pretty much all the way to Gyumri, another 3 hours.  The views were stunning and bleak by turns - I would have loved to make the driver stop at several points for photos, but since he was getting paid as a taxi driver, not a tour driver, I went easy on him.  

Finally I made it to the old town, where the Evil One had booked us into the Grand Apricot hotel.  She and her spawn came out and retrieved me from the driver and escorted me along a walking street before giving me the "grand tour" of my hotel room, which had been ransacked for pillows by the Lesser of Two Evils.  After a short break, we all went out wandering.

The Armenians are amazing stone workers, and if I'd had more time, I would have taken her Evilness up on the offer to find me a carving class to take.  Instead, I just had to admire it and take photos ad nauseum.  The stone many of the buildings and carvings are made from is called tuff, a kind of sedimentary stone made from volcanic ash.  Apparently the city planners of Gyumri - formerly known as Aleksandropol - had an emo streak, because they primarily used the black tuff for their masonry.  And since I have a bit of an emo streak myself, of course I loved it...now I just have to figure out how to work it into a piece (maybe embossed paper???)

My first morning in Armenia I woke up bright and early for the thing that had brought me to Gyumri - dolls.  Of course.  The Family Evil slept in while I walked past churches to buy a loaf of bread and sit in the fresh morning air eating a snack, then wandered the rest of the way over to Naro Dolls.

It was a little off the beaten track, but 100% worth it!  I loved meeting another craftsman - she hand sews and stuffs the dolls, using some cloth accessories as well as the painting.  She even had a "big sister" doll based on the same design that I chose, which I really loved.  Although it was different from the dolls I usually make, it was fun and I learned a new technique for the hair that I might have to try with my own dolls someday.  And her hospitality was so sweet - when I told her I didn't drink coffee or tea, instead she brought me a cup of water in one of Gyumri's special crafts - a metal cup that sings!  It was a pretty long workshop, and by the time Anahid (as Evil named her) was finished, it was about lunch time, so I got to try my first lavash, too, and it was delicious.

Finally I headed back to the hotel to force the sleepyheads to get moving.  It was Evil's birthday, after all, so even if a lie-in was called for, we definitely needed to go see something.  We discussed what we should do next, and after wandering a bit ended up at the Black Fortress.

Once upon a time, of course, it was an actual military fortification.  The hill it sits on gives a strong advantage, with views of the countryside (ie, the Turkish border) all around...not to mention a lot of steps, if you count that sort of thing.  But these days, it's used primarily for performances.  I checked out the acoustics, much to the mortification of the Lesser of Two Evils, who refused to sing songs from Frozen with me, even though we were about the only people there.  As we were about to leave, the caretaker came and offered to show us the museum, as well - apparently it kind of opens on an as-needed basis.  We also got a nice view of Gyumri's Mother Armenia statue.

And that was about it.  The next day, we visited the Museum of the Two Sisters - an art museum showcasing the work of two women from Gyumri - and stopped at HayAr jewelry on our way out of town, where I got to buy a beautiful pomegranate necklace made of recycled bullet casings.  Then we were on our way to Yerevan.

*Yes, we physically lived closer to one another her first go-round - her in India, me in the Emirates - but Mongolia and Armenia feel closer on a mental level.  Yes, my brain is a crazy, crazy place.

**I've also crossed US-Canada in 1989, South-North Korea in 2007, Greece-Turkey in 2008, and China-Nepal in 2013

Unfinished Business

When I first decided that I would go to Kyoto yet again for this fall break, I may have questioned if there would be enough to keep me blogging.  For the record, I didn't really care if there wasn't - a week of relaxing and catching up with the Kawaii Kingpin was more than enough justification to scrap my half-baked plans of going up to Tohoku - but I was at least acknowledging the possibility.  After all, this was going to be my fourth trip to Kyoto.

However, as I sifted through websites last week - it takes real effort to avoid work as thoroughly as I do, but I'm proud to be able to say that I rose to the challenge - my doubts proved to be unfounded.  After all, there was still unfinished business from my last two trips.  First and foremost...in fact, coming in at #1 in my top ten list of justifications to come back to Kyoto...was the Kurama Fire Festival.  After a full day of shopping in Osaka two years back I was in no state to be jammed into a train with a bunch of tourists, but I felt like this year I could suck it up.  Alas, it turned out that I'm missing it again.  When typhoon Jebi blew through last month it knocked down a lot of trees so they called it off this year.  I'm writing this off as a good excuse for the next trip, when hopefully I'll be able to afford the doll dressing workshop at Ando Doll Shop.

Yeah, that's a thing, and being that weirdo you know who is interested in dolls (or, more precisely, in learning how to improve my dolls), I really wanted to do it.  Sadly it just will not fit into the budget.  On the bright side, I'm getting to see all sorts of traditional dress firsthand.

Fortunately there were other festivals I ditched two years back.  I had to - there were so damn many that choices had to be made.  The Kasagake Shinji, for example.  This is a ritual featuring horseback archery at one of the most out-of-the-way shrines you could imagine, Kamigamo Jinja.  I'm exaggerating a little here, but when I told the Kawaii Kingpin where I was yesterday his response was, "Holy moly that's far."  On the bright side, this meant that it wasn't nearly as crowded as it could have been (as you'll read by the end of this post).

Now just for the record, you should be aware that horseback archery takes a while to get exciting when it's conceptually coupled with a ritual.  There was some processional stuff, leading up to the shrine proper, where there were purification rituals, and then there was MOAR processional stuff, coming out to the field that stretches between the first and second torii of the shrine.  Meanwhile, I was sitting in the sun roasting.  I mention this so that you know I'm not exactly anti-ritual.  Without the ritual part, I'm not sure if there would be a need for the archery part...but when you're melting because it is NOT this hot up in Yomaha, all you really want is to cut to the chase and see the damn archers hit some damn targets.

Which, eventually, they did.  Last fall I got to see Yabusame, a different kind of horseback archery, at a festival at Tsurugaoka Hachiman-gu in Kamakura.  The differences, as far as I could tell, were that for 500 yen I got a front row seat.  Seriously, they are different things - I think this had something to do with hitting a target on the ground, but my position a year ago didn't exactly lend itself to the finer details of the art.  This year, on the other hand, I was in a perfect position to be amused by the fact that one horse seemed to have some bowel issues (hey, when you gotta go, ya gotta go) or another was temperamental - the English-speaking announcer mentioned that he was from Hokkaido, and since I have yet to go to Hokkaido and my body of knowledge is based on the anime Golden Kamuy and A Wild Sheep Chase, by Haruki Murakami, we'll leave it at that.

I also ditched the Jidai Matsuri two years back.  I was shopping.  There were too many people.  These things happen.  Since I've been torturing...I mean, challenging...myself with more and more intricate designs in my dolls (and maybe I'm ready to try some bijinga portraits with my nihonga paintings...don't ever let anyone tell you I'm not a masochist) I thought it might behoove me to do some studying.  The name roughly translates to Festival of Ages and celebrates Kyoto's 1000 years of history as the capital of Japan.

Now, I could have bought seats for this one, too, but after the previous day's torture by sunlight your resident vampire blogger found a shady spot sitting under a pine tree across from Heian Jingu. (Also, the seats today cost more than yesterday).  I was pretty sure I had it figured out, and when FINALLY the first part of the parade made it to the shrine, I just got up and stood behind the seats.  Hell, I even let two little obaasans stand in front of me...it was an awesome day and I was feeling generous.  Also, they were both so much shorter than me that it actually didn't matter, so why not?

It was about 2:15 when the lead part of the parade got to us, and I had heard that the whole thing took about two hours.  There were gaps between parts, which was nice because it gave me the opportunity to go back and erase some of the photos, but after standing on my feet I decided there was a better way...to travel back through time, so to speak.  So when the next gap came to us, I rolled out in the opposite direction.

It's possible I missed some good shots that way, but I can't really regret it.  Watching the procession this way kept it interesting and got me to the museum I was hoping to make it to before any of the other tourists could get there.  It also allowed me to lurk in the shade, so hey, no spontaneous combustion for me today!

Sadly I don't know Japanese history nearly as well as I should to appreciate the Jidai Matsuri fully.  Names and dates and dead people just don't really hold my interest.  But as I watched the people of today walk down the street in shoes of yesterday, which seem like more trouble than they're worth (seriously, those straw sandals looked like hell, and the course of the procession wasn't exactly short), it wasn't hard to get a feeling for the scale of this city's history.

Finally two mikoshi came around the corner of Jingu Michi and Sanjo.  Apparently the first and last emperors to reign from Kyoto are enshrined in Heian Jingu and this is their yearly opportunity to get out and see how much everything has changed.  As they moved on toward the shrine I began to walk down the street.  If I could rewind the last two years I still wouldn't have missed out on my personal shopping tour, but I'm glad that I got the chance to see it this year.  And with that, I'm going to bed.  I have an early roll out tomorrow if I'm going to do what I think I'm going to do.

Fresh off the Boat

After hitting temples and wandering the shopping streets of Matsuyama, I was ready to take my last ferry across to Hiroshima.  Usually being a resident foreigner works against you - we can't get the #-day JR rails passes, for example - but when I got to the port I was pleasantly surprised to get my ferry ticket to Hiroshima for almost half the price.  I cringed when she flipped my passport to the back where my visa was, but she gave me the foreign price anyway, and pretty soon I was sitting in comfort looking out over the open sea.  Of all the forms of transport I've used during this trip, I think the ferry was my favorite, leisurely floating over the water, up on the deck where you can feel the wind, or seated inside on a couch at a table.  This time, I worked most of the journey in my sketchbook.

I hopped my first streetcar right after getting off the boat.  This is a big thing in Hiroshima - they have all sorts of old streetcars, which they buy off other cities.  It's kind of like a moving museum.  I was glad I got on at the first stop; by the time I hopped off it was so crowded I had to body check a few people to get off, and I was right next to the door.

I scanned the area close to my AirBnB for restaurants while I was on the ferry, and found a Turkish place, at which I arrived perfectly in time for dinner.  Probably I'm a heathen for not looking for a good Japanese restaurant.  Hiroshima is famous for their okonomiyaki, and I made sure to eat some the following evening before getting on the Willer Bus back to Tokyo.  But I love Turkish food and I owe a lot to the Turkish community in Japan, since they're sort of the reason I have a job, so I ate at Karsiyaka.

After stuffing my face with iskander kebab and hummus (I stopped short of the baklava...barely...) I started walking to my AirBnB, just on the other side of the Peace Park.  I passed an Animate along the way, making a note to come back and check to see if they had any good swag.*  I was feeling giddy - I had one more day of vacation, we'd just been paid - when I came to the river and found myself facing the Atomic Bomb Dome.  I was steps away from ground zero.

The building before me reminded me of the old, crumbling churches you sometimes see in paintings, complete with a churchyard full of tombstones: the rubble from the blast serving as an additional reminder.  One of the things I love about anime is the way it offers us an alternative reality - not just an escape, but a different set of possibilities.  In Naruto - which I reference fairly often but it is just that good - the evil ninjas set out to create a weapon so bad that it will force everyone to make nice (nevermind all of the people they have to kill along the way).  Naruto - who has literally lost everything - manages to come out of his rage and talks to their leader, and convinces him that causing more pain won't bring peace, but rather will just continue a longstanding cycle of revenge and hate.  It's a pivotal moment in the series.

The real world might be a better place if anime was a religion.  Probably a creepier place, too, but although there are at least a couple of things about Japan that drive me crazy, the creep factor is actually negligible.  I feel far less skeezed out by the otaku in Akiba than by the gaijin in Roppongi...but maybe that's because they're my kind of people...

The next morning I got up and went to Miyajima - the temple group with the floating torii.  One of the things I read reminded me to be sure and check the tide table, but ain't nobody got time for 'dat - another typhoon was headed that way, so as soon as I got up I headed out.  I didn't beat the rain, but I hoped it might scare off the tourists.  It didn't, but I think it might have put a dent in them when it started raining in earnest.  Unfortunately, the day before the sole started to separate from the upper on my only pair of kicks, so my enjoyment of the shrine with fewer temples war marred by even squishier feet than at the beginning of the week.

(For the record, I am still wearing those shoes half the time.  It sucks, but they're the only Chucks I've got right now, and I'm too busy - read: distracted - to buy new ones.  I very nearly ordered the Hoozuki No Reitetsu sneakers I found on pre-order at Animate after I got back, but they won't really help me now, not to mention I can paint my own for cheaper and I'll like them much better...)

I sat on the...porch?  Dock???...of the shrine for a while under the eaves of a pavilion painting the torii and watching the tide roll in.  With it came the scent of the sea, the saltiness of things living under the water.  It gave me shelter from raindrops, but when it began to rain in earnest the flood of water creeping along the plank toward the sea pushed me off.  I got up and explored the rest of the area, watching the creepy deer and purchasing a couple more ema for my collection.  And then I went back into Hiroshima. After a week of constant motion, I was pretty much done.  I parked in Starbucks for a while to type, went after that okonomiyaki I was told I had to try (meh.  I liked Osaka's better...), and tried to stay out of the rain while waiting for the Willer Bus to take me back to Shinjuku.  I don't feel like I really did Hiroshima justice, but I think that's okay.  I think it just means I'll have to come back, and I'm totally okay with that.

*I seem to do that with every one I pass.  It's ironic, because Akiba is a straight shot up the Keihin Tohoku line, but I'm my mother's daughter after all, and I can't tell you how many times she dragged us through random Wal*Marts we passed on vacation...

Nightwalker

I wanted to do all the things, visiting Korea this holiday.  I really did.  I looked up performances I hadn't been to, sights I hadn't seen...but it turns out that what I really want from a visit to Korea is time with my homies, shopping, and walks down memory lane.  Yesterday, for example, I had one definite goal:   to cook Azhaar dinner that night.  (When I mentioned this to my Dark Lord and Master, he asked why.  Considering the number of times I made him dinner when we worked for GDA, he should have already known the answer, but I explained it for him anyways).  Before that, though, I had some free time, so I went back to Dongdaemun to find that fabric I needed.  When I finally located it, I grabbed lunch, and by the time I was finished, I decided that I had neither time to hike Namhansanseong or to go to Heyri Art Valley, so instead I caught a taxi to Itaewon to find ingredients.

So I made burritos, and they turned out well, but I wanted to do a little more with my night, so I told Azhaar that I was off to Siloam Sauna, straightened up my crap, and off I went.  Halfway to the bus stop, though, I started thinking that maybe I should go for a wander.  One of the things that I love about Korea is that you can feel perfectly safe walking around in the wee small hours of the morning, pretty much anywhere.   So when the bus stopped just on the other side of the tunnel, next to Namdaemun Market, I hopped off.

Namdaemun was one of the first places I went in Korea, although at this point I can't explain why.  Besides the shopping in the market itself, there are tons of arcades around the area, selling everything from craft supplies to antiques, and all sorts of cool-looking ties.  During the day it's great, but at night, Seoul really shines (see what I did there?)

Actually a fair number of shops were closed by the time I got there (8:30-ish), but it still had that feeling.  I've read articles about words we don't have in English, such as schadenfreude (taking joy in the misfortune of others), but one word I haven't heard of in any language would deal with a visceral feeling - that doesn't actually align with any of your senses - invoked when standing in a place of your memories. Places like Namdaemun or the fifth floor of the fabric market, have the same feeling to me - a guaranteed hope that you can find anything.The giddy excitement of the hunt.   I'd describe it as the way scents can take you back, except it's not about scent.

It was nice to see Namdaemun's actual gate again, as well.  Namdaemun and Dongdaemun were originally gates on the old Seoul city walls...the south and the east, respectively.  During my last stint in Korea, an old dude burnt Namdaemun down in protest, and I hadn't seen it since it was restored.  

I headed down into the arcade to keep on my way to Seoul Station - there's so much traffic in that area that you can't just walk across the street.  Being from a small, midwestern town, there were many things I hadn't really experienced til I came to Seoul - like Thai food, or homeless people in the subway.  When I used to meet friends to go to Siloam, it seems like they were always lying in the corners of Seoul station.  Last night, though, there was an entire camp in the arcade next to Namdaemun.  And I'm saying this not because I felt unsafe - uncomfortable, yes, but if you don't feel uncomfortable when you are face to face with the imbalance that results in others having very little when you have just about everything you could need, there's something wrong with you - it was one of those little myriad changes I picked up on - overall the topography of the city is the same, it's just the faces of the places that have changed.  Or in this case, I guess the face remains, but the geography has changed slightly.

I passed through Seoul Station, walking by where the Bennigan's we met up in used to be, and came to the top of my stairs.  Almost every time I go to Siloam, ever since the beginning, I've slid down the railing on these stairs.  It is the perfect width, the perfect angle - you can get a pretty good slide going but still have control of your speed.  I love it.  At the bottom, I walked forward a block, crossed over to Siloam, and spent the next several hours casting off my UB grime.  I even slept in the oxygen room.

These may not have been amazing new experiences, but to me it was the perfect way to end the day.

Kyoto Light, Kyoto Night

As I began typing this, I had one day left in Japan, and I found myself wondering if it was a mistake to come.  Not because it was a bad experience, but the opposite - it has been a fantastic week.  Even if I haven't been here that long, I have a feeling of belonging.  It is not all jaw-droppingly beautiful landscapes and temples.  Taking the bus to Roketsu to make my noren, I had to admit that the buildings squashed in side by side were not the most aesthetically pleasing thing I'd ever seen...and yet, I love them, too, love the feeling that you could wander down a different cramped alley every day for a year and see something unique every time.  And if you wanna stick with temples and shrines, there are more than enough to keep you going for a good long while.  As we were walking through Sanjo my second day here, we passed two or three moderately large shrines.  Right in the middle of a shopping area!  It seems like most of them have some sort of festival at some point.  That afternoon when I'd gotten back to the house, my host Taka-san heard drums, and had me come to the window in the second floor of the house to watch a procession walk past.  That is the sort of sight I think I could watch all the time and never get bored.  In Kyoto, I'd have the chance to find out.

Take, for example, the Funaoka Matsuri.  Northward and west of the imperial palace is the Kenkun Shrine, which is where Oda Nobunaga is enshrined.  Oda Nobunaga is the warlord who essentially united Japan, bringing the Warring States period to an end.  I'm not much on history, although with several thousand years of it, I find Japan's much more interesting than America's.  However, I've been watching an anime about swords that have been turned into young men (yes, I know it makes pretty much no sense, but they're cute sword boys and I've watched enough anime at this point to be able to overlook most of the homoerotic overtones).  Their purpose is to protect the time stream from being changed, and in one episode they go back in time to make sure Nobunaga's assassination actually takes place.  When they were reminiscing about him, they didn't seem particularly fond, but at the end of the episode they were all kind of nostalgic.  I'm telling you this to give you some sort of background...if you really want some hard facts, you can wikipedia it.  Suffice it to say that he's kind of a hero.

So it's fitting that there's a celebration of his accomplishments and contributions to modern Japan.  It wasn't as crowded as the other two festivals I made it to - a little more solemn, too.  The whole thing was in Japanese, so I only had a vague idea of what was going on, but it was very interesting.  The ceremony started with music on traditional instruments, their cries sounding like heartbreak.  There were prayers - fortunately I go to church often enough to recognize an invitation to stand and bow your head, whether I understand the language or not - and various offerings where brought into the shrine by the officiators.  Then there were the performances.

There were four performances this year.  The first was a singing/dancing performance which - if I understood it correctly, was a variety of Noh, followed by a masked dancer performing bugaku (my knowledge of Japanese culture is not so extensive as to pull that out of nowhere...I used Discover Kyoto's website for my crib sheet).  The third was - I think - a geisha dance.  It was a graceful series of movements set to music by a lady - albeit an older one - in a gorgeous kimono, at any rate.  When she finished, branches were presented to VIP audience members, who presented them at the shrine, at which point the ceremonial part of it seemed to be over, although we had one final show - swordsmanship, with wooden swords.  The "winner" of the bout demonstrated his real sword on a rolled tatami mat, which lay before the shrine in three neat pieces when I got up to take a look.  And that seems fitting for a warrior's shrine.

Nights are generally downtime or shopping time when I travel.  It's been nice catching up with the Kawaii Kid on some of those nights, and at first when he told me he'd have to cut our Friday night meet-up short, I wasn't exactly thrilled, but we had a good chat and I was seeing him the next day...and then I realized that now that I was free, I could go up to Kodai-Ji and see the autumn illumination.  I really, really love the Japanese sense of aesthetics.  Sit under cherry trees watching the moon through their petals?  Sounds like fun to me.  In the fall, they kind of do the same thing, except with the changing colors of the leaves, and they call it momiji.  I may be missing the best part of it (again, WHY do I have to go home???), but Friday night the first temple on the schedule lit up their grounds, which they will continue to do til the end of November.

I love visiting temples at night.  They just have a different ambiance than during the day, as if the youkai are out to play.  Kodai-Ji was no exception, even with everyone wandering up and down the paths.  Even with the light show in the Zen rock garden....

Actually, I'm pretty sure I spied a few demons in the actual light show.  I'm not much of a fan of them, but I've got to say, this one was very well done...at one point, the light transformed the sand in the garden into rippling water, and the gate turned to gold.  It was genius.

The most magical part, though, was the reflections of the trees on the water.  More than anything I wanted to see it in a week or two, when all the trees would be on fire and the air just a bit chillier, but the words of Frost echoed in my head: "The woods are lovely, dark and deep, But I have promises to keep,  And miles to go before I sleep."  There is still a lot to do before I bid my current school goodbye.

However, it is possible that my subconscious is neither a fan of Frost or else just didn't care, because it may have tried to sabotage me into actually staying this morning.  When I finally went to bed last night, I set my alarm for 6:30.  For some reason, the last time I looked at the flight schedule I scrawled into my travel journal, I locked onto my arrival time in Incheon (11:20), thinking it was my departure from Osaka.  When my alarm when off, I asked myself if I was feeling too lazy for one more walk - I never made it onto the Philosopher's Path, or got further into Fushimi-Inari-Taisha than the first knot of tourists.  And then I looked up my e-ticket, just in case...only to realize that my flight left at 9:30.  From Osaka.  Which was an hour and a half away.

From thence proceeded a string of profanities that probably woke up everyone in the house as I stripped and redressed in a panic, shoving my pajamas into my soon (I hoped) to be checked luggage - but I'm calling it payback for the snoring from the next room.  Blondie was right when she said that you can hear everything through traditional Japanese walls.  I clomped down the stairs, threw on my shoes and socks, locked the door and dropped the keys in the mail slot, as Taka-san requested, finally walking around the corner and on my way.  And then I realized I'd left my iPad on the counter.  For one moment, I thought, "Forget it - I don't like the darn thing anyways!" but that seems wasteful, even for me.  I got back to the door and was wondering how loud I would have to get to wake someone up when I realized that I was able to get the keys back - they hadn't slid all the way into the mail slot, and retrieved my technology.  A quick walk out to the street and a moment of panic ensued when I wondered if there were even any taxis on the streets at 6:50 on a Sunday morning, since that was my plan...spend a gajillion yen on a taxi, rather than miss my flight.  Fortunately the very kind driver who picked me up a minute or two later convinced me to take the airport limousine bus, and even though it seemed to be the slowest thing on the road, somehow I made it with just enough time to check in, get through security with the help of the very kind Korean air agent, and get to the gate before boarding.

Considering the number of mishaps I've had this week, you may be thinking, "Wow, what a gong show!  No way I'd travel with you!"  (Unless you're my dad, in which case you are probably thinking - for neither the first nor the last time - "Get your head out of your ass!")  But for the record...well, you're not entirely wrong.  I'm not usually quite this bad, though, and at least now you know that it's possible to get from Kyoto to Osaka and on your flight in less than three hours.

Tilting at Windmills

Oh yes - the fire hair happened.  :-/

Becky is dicking around, taking two days to finish a single post, so I'm hijacking her blog.  My name is Peppermint.  You may remember me from such epic adventures as when we hiked to the Tiger's Nest in Bhutan, or the time we went to Hakone in Japan, but I haven't actually made the blog since she wrote about Flat Stanley (yes, I thought he was "pretentious," as Becky wrote, and a few other more choice words that she didn't.  She's not the only one with a colorful vocabulary, believe me).  And that kind of pisses me off, because I've been on all the trips.  I even went with her and the shitty brats to Istanbul.  But did she let me take part?  No.  I assume it's because she thinks she's too mature, but with as much time as she spends watching anime, she's only kidding herself.

Anyway, sorry, let me move on and tell you about our day trip to Zaan, the whole reason for my long-overdue guest post.  Yesterday Becky was trying to figure out what to do with herself for the next three days.  I kept telling her she had to get out of the city, because Amsterdam is fun and all, but there's only so much secondhand pot smoke you can breathe before you get high for real (although I wouldn't be surprised if she actually didn't mind the smell.  You should hear her complain about her cigarette-smoking neighbors at home, but has she voiced a word of complaint in Amsterdam???)  She was fixated on Delft and possibly a further trip into Belgium, because she's obsessed with her family history and whatever, but she found out she could do a tile-painting workshop at Royal Delft (the last of the historic factories) if she emailed in advance, and you know she's a sucker for that shit.  So finally - FINALLY - she listened to me when I asked, "Hey, you daft bint, what else is Holland famous for?  Like in that Monet with the tulips?"  It's windmills, in case you're a little slow.  Holland is famous for windmills.  And tulips, but it's the wrong season for that.  After a quick chat with Google we decided we were heading for Zaanse Schans.

Zaanse Schans is this beautiful little tourist trap of a historical village that fucking looks like Rembrandt or Vermeer would have painted if it they had time.  Some genius looked around in the last 100 years and said, "Where have all the windmills gone?" and decided it would be great to preserve Holland's industrial past.  Yep, I said industrial.  All those windmills weren't just there to look pretty (like your mom*) - they actually milled shit, thus, industrial past.  There's a pretty awesome museum that explains the whole history of Dutch milling and production, but Becky just breezed through it.

See, she gets so obsessed with taking pictures and having all the experiences - and breathing the air.  To be fair, the air was gorgeous.  I mean, Amsterdam smelled pretty good, especially after four years living in Ulaanbaatar...bikes instead of cars and the delicate aroma of hashish?  I could get used to that!  But Zaan smelled like motherloving CHOCOLATE.  When we left the station and the scent of the cocoa plant hit us, Becky started feeling nostalgic for the coffee roasty smell of a Kansas City autumn, but I told her to shut her mouth because this was, like, a million times better.  A town that smells like chocolate?   Sign me up for that!**

In the great tradition of historical towns, there are workshop demonstrations you can watch.  By the time they were ready to get started, unfortunately a shload of tour buses had rolled in, primarily populated with Chinese people, so you can imagine how well that went over with Becky, if you've read this blog for any length of time.  She would not be deterred from the clog workshop though, which I have to admit was kind of fun.  Becky got matching clogs for herself and her niece, the Princess (Bunny and Dirt Devil are likewise sorted - at this point she just needs to purchase something for Monkey, so if anyone has any ideas...)

We had a good stroll through the village, checking out the different shops (and by checking out, I mean eating free samples of cheese - it's a good thing Becky's slightly lactose intolerant or she'd be constipated.  Not that I can blame her - the Netherlands do have some deelish cheeses).  There was a weaver's house, which showed us how sailcloth was made, and the dairy, of course, and a chocolate shop, and other houses, which I guess people actually live in.

Finally we headed out along the canal toward the windmills.  We had a freebie for one of the mills, that came with the admission to the museum, so I told Becky I wanted to go to "The Cat."  They all have names, you see - the Spotted Hen, the Four-Leaf Clover - and it should be obvious that we would go there.  Fortunately, the Cat turned out to be a paint mill, so we both won.

She's been in super art teacher mode this whole time, only you haven't heard about it because she's a lazy ass.***  Someday she might tell you about the demo she saw on paint mixing in freaking REMBRANDT'S HOUSE.  But for now, suffice it to say that Rembrandt didn't go to the local Dick Blick and buy his paints nicely packaged in metal tubes, he bought pigments and then mixed his own paints, which were stored in a pig's bladder (a dead pig, that is - it might get a little messy to try and use a live one...)  The Cat was a mill that prepared and ground the raw materials to create those pigments, and it was pretty awesome.  Much more interesting than a wood mill, or a grain mill, or any other kind of mill, really.

We walked past all the others and took a ferry across the water to a less touristy but every bit as pretty street.  All the houses had their backs to the water and were in the Zaan style, so it really had a beautiful feel.  We stopped along the way for lunch, then went back to the station to get the train back to Amsterdam.  It was a nice way to spend the day, but I'm glad we did it on our own instead of getting on one of those stinky tour buses.  The roundtrip fare to Koog-Zaandijk (where you get off the train) was 11.60 euro, in case anyone is interested.  And THAT, Becky, is how you sit down and write a blog.  (mic drop)

Becky's notes (because she can't just let me do this):
*Peppermint doesn't know how to make your mom jokes.  They are supposed to be insulting.  (I do too - telling someone that their mom is only pretty and serves no other purpose IS insulting.)
**Can you imagine?  You'd be hungry all the time!  You'd never lose weight!  (And the irony is, apparently she's never going to lose weight anyways, so what's the problem?)
***Not entirely true - I had an IB workshop for three of the days.  (Whatever.  Remember how many hours you spent in that PCbang across from Monumental Paradise in Kathmandu, trying to catch up your posts from Tibet.  I don't want to hear it.)

All that Glitters...

They say that all that glitters is not gold.  As an art teacher I've got enough experience with glitter (which never, ever goes away) to know the truth of this saying.  However, I also know that nothing has quite the same glow to it that gold does.  And across Mandalay and heck, let's go ahead and say it - all across Myanmar - you will see gold glittering.

Enough gold to draw the attention of a dragon (AAGH!  HOW EXCITED AM I TO SEE THE FIVE ARMIES IN THE NEXT DAY OR SO WITH DOUGIE-POO?!?)  Kristen had a philosophical disagreement with all this gold, but who am I to judge...I belong to a temple-building religion and they don't come cheap.  On my final day in Myanmar I decided I needed to visit one more of these temples, because at the Mahamuni Pagoda, they did a special ceremony every morning - the washing of the Buddha's face.

My driver from the day before told me he would pick me up at 4am to take me there.  It's funny that I keep getting up early - traveling is not exactly a relaxing time for me like it is for other people.  We got to the pagoda around 4:30, where he had me wait to be let in by the gate, where people were selling flowers and snacks to give as offerings during the ceremony.  There were plenty of mosquitoes and they all seemed to think my ankles were a great place to grab a snack.  At 5 they opened the gates and let us in.  My feet (bare for the last time!) were struggling after I spent a good long while wandering around on them the previous night, so I did not hot-tail it down the corridors where vendors would be hawking their wares in a matter of hours, but I was close enough to the front of the pack that I got to sit in the women's enclosure (behind, of course, the men's section, but since I could still see just fine we'll let it pass.

After sitting for another half hour (in which more mosquitoes dined on my sweet, sweet blood), the ceremony finally started.  The monks opened the room where the statue waited and set up a scaffold just in front of the Buddha's chest, then brought in offerings of flower arrangements, which they set up on the scaffold.  Helpers in white robes came in and mixed up the liquid that they used to wash the gold and removed the flowers so that the monk could climb up.  Three sheets of saffron silk were draped around the statue's shoulders, reminding me of a bib, especially with all the food offerings that people had bought, but I attempted to squelch this thought.  Finally, the bucket of suds was passed up and the monk began to bathe the Buddha, gently rubbing the wet sponge over his glowing visage.  The water which ran down and dripped from his chin was caught by the cloth, preserving the gold which covered his chest.  When the Buddha was clean (or as clean as you can be without scrubbing behind those big ol' ears), the monk dried and polished his face, using two or three different cloths to buff the statue until it had a countenance like lightning.

I finally got up and unfolded my legs, stepping out of the little sitting area.  I returned past the shops, some of which were beginning to open, until I made it back out to my taxi.  As we drove back through the pre-dawn streets, I couldn't help but notice who was out at this hour - monks and pilgrims - and contrasted it with the saying I tried to remember about how drunks and whores are the only ones out before dawn.  Meanwhile I was growling with hunger.  I'm so accustomed to the cold that in these suddenly hot climates I haven't had much of an appetite.  However, there's nothing like rolling out at 4 in the morning to make you remember you haven't eaten much since yesterday afternoon.

After winding down post-python the previous day, I decided to go out for a walk and find the Shan noodle shop that Kristen had taken me to the night before.  She and her friends knew the best places for food, and the Shan noodles were no exception, so I wandered over in the general direction and eventually found it for an encore (with the yogurt she introduced me to for dessert).  I decided to go ahead and see the Moustache Brothers show that night, which didn't start til 8:30, but I thought I might just wander til then.  Eventually my feet let my brain know this was an idiotic idea, so I went back to the hotel and chilled for a couple of hours before walking over.

The Moustache Brothers are fairly well-known for their political satire.  Two of the three served prison time for telling jokes in a country that didn't find them funny.  I may not be a great student of history, but I wanted to understand Myanmar better, so I chose to go to their show instead of the puppet show, which I'd been considering.  When I got to the house where they perform, I was greeted warmly by Lu Maw and his niece, Par Par Lay's daughter.  The night's show could more easily have been the Moustache Sisters, since Lu Maw was the only one of the original performers that night - the rest of the ensemble was largely his wife, his granddaughter, his sister.  Par Par Lay died in 2013, and the third brother, their cousin Lu Zaw, was absent.  After the show, I talked to some French people who were looking for a taxi at the same time as me, and they asked what I thought.  I told them I enjoyed it, and then they started talking about how hard it was to understand him and that they weren't sure if it was right for such a serious subject.  Which I guess I can understand, but the fact that he can maintain a sense of humor after all his family had been through instead of being bitter and angry is remarkable to me.  If I'd been going to see a kickass comedy routine, I probably would have been disappointed.  Lu Maw had some good jokes, but I could feel the absence of his brothers...he was one man doing the job of three.  What happened instead was that I got to feel something, a part of history, a subversive agent against corruption, a memorial to a moment in time.

I was going to share a taxi with them, but beyond the fact that they didn't get it, they just stood there waiting when no one was coming, and I'd rather at least be walking in the right direction, so that's what I did.  After about 3 blocks Par Par Lay's daughter rode up and asked if I needed a taxi - the vocation she had chosen rather than comedy.  I was thrilled to have a ride, to get back that much of the sleep I needed before the next morning's early roll out but also to contribute a little more.  Someone on TripAdvisor was disgruntled with the fact that the family sold their services after the show, as if it was a scam, but I was ecstatic.

High Way to Heaven

(Alternate title: Getting Stoned)

So I've got one last post for my trip to Khuvsgul aimag.  See, I didn't go directly from Khatgal to the airport.  I asked my buddies at Garage 24 to help me arrange to have my driver that morning to take me to a place called Uushigiin Uver.  They had no idea what I was talking about, but luckily the driver was in the know. 

What is Uushigiin Uver?  It's part of Mongolia's long and varied history.  People have been living and dying here for thousands of years, and this Bronze Age site is one of the few records of their lives and beliefs.

The driver suggested we leave at 6 a.m., and since my "trusty" Lonely Planet seemed to think it takes 3 hours to get from Khatgal to Murun, I said I would be sure to be up by then - because I sure as HELL wasn't missing my flight!  I was a little shocked when we turned off the paved road around seven and could see Murun in the near distance, but I told myself it was all well and good - it just gave me more time to catch up on the interwebs when I got to the airport.  

Getting there so early had another advantage.  It was pissing rain when I got up that morning, and I made sure to have my raincoat and lens hood handy.  However, by the time we got to the site, the rain had let up and there was just enough light to give it a glowy, surreal quality.

I'd heard of deer stones before.  There are lots of stone records around Mongolia (including the balbals and petroglyphs that we saw in Bayan-Olgii), but deer stones are a little different.  They serve as burial markers, and the deer from which they get their name are the means by which the spirit is meant to make its way to the afterlife.  The site at Uushigiin Uver also has some sacrificial altars, and is probably the best collection of the stones in Mongolia (which - according to Lonely Planet - has 500 of the world's 700 stones).  There are fourteen here altogether, with the last one having the face of a woman (that apparently birds get a kick out of crapping on).  For me, this lonely, ancient place was the highlight of my time in Khuvsgul.  I guess it's the artist in me - I've never been much of a history buff, but the fact that people made some kind of tools and carved beautiful things 4000 years ago?  When their lives were otherwise so primitive?  I can't even imagine living here without heat* come winter, let alone creating beautiful things by hand when all I've got to make them are bronze tools.  I can totally admire them for it, though.

*I am talking, of course, about real heat, that comes in a nice piping hot radiator which I don't have to put any effort into, and hell, don't even have to pay for. 

On the Road, Off the Road

There is little I dislike more in life than pooping outdoors.  I grew up on a farm, and I can cope with it, but while 6.5 years of living in Asia has resigned me to peeing over a hole, I have yet to take a poo over a squatter.  Luckily, for me regularity means once every three days, so when I disappeared with my book into the lovely flush toilets at the Blue Wolf ger camp in Olgii, I figured I'd dodged that bullet again.

I did not poop behind these rocks, but it would have been a good place, if not for the snow.

But here's a little fact for you: nomadic families have milk running through their veins instead of blood.  Okay, not really, but the way that they put back milk tea would convince you otherwise.  Since it's rude not to drink, I've perfected the art of pretending to sip politely.  It's a double strike-out, when you're Mormon and lactose intolerant.  However, since I'm only mildly lactose intolerant, I make up for it by eating plenty of bread and cream.

Note: eat enough fresh cream, and you won't make it three days without pooping.  I'm just saying.

Not a house.  More like a barn.

Engrish, Geek, and I decided since we weren't coming back to UB until Thursday that we should get out into the countryside and take a stab at seeing Tavan Bogd, Mongolia's highest peak.  Canat, who owns the Blue Wolf, told us we could stay in tents at base camp, or go up a different valley and stay with a nomadic family near the glacier, which we would climb in order to see the mountain.  A couple of us (not to name names) were a little afraid of staying in tents up that high in October, so we went with the second option, and it's all for the best.  The snow that you see in the top photo blew in on us the second morning we were out, and we couldn't see the other side of the valley, let alone Tavan Bogd.  And from what we heard, the people who did go for the base camp all ended up staying in the same family's home - the woman we talked to said there were already 8 tourists hunkered down when she got there.

So we had a great trip, and except for eating more cream than I should, staying with families was great.  You have a little more space in a house than you do in a ger, and that's a wonderful thing.  The first family that we were with had the most laid back cat I have ever seen in my life.  Their two daughters manhandled it a LOT, and it just went along for a ride.  They also had a young goat which spent most of its time tethered to a corner of the "kitchen counter."  I'm sorry for the lack of pictures, but I kind of hate taking photos of people's homes.  I feel like it's an invasion of their personal space, and since I want to be a good guest, no pics for you.

We made the trip out there in one afternoon - leaving around noon and getting to the house just as it was getting dark.  One LONG, BUMPY afternoon.  We'd joked with Enkhe, our driver, about bringing us out here if our flight was cancelled, and he said that it would have been the Land Cruiser's last journey.  Having been over those roads now, I believe him!  Geek and Engrish seemed to fare alright, but my back was all kinds of strained and I had bruises from being jostled against the car door. We were in a Russian van that had 6 seats in the back, so we had plenty of space, and windows enough to enjoy the view.  During the journey I became convinced that whoever designed the Russian tank must have also had a hand in the design of the Russian van.  Those things are unstoppable.

Since we missed Tavan Bogd, you may be thinking that our time was wasted.  First of all, spending time in the countryside is never wasted (for me, it helps me to appreciate UB a little bit more...Engrish, on the other hand, has a more authentic appreciation for its charms).  But even if you hate fresh air and blue skies so bright they hurt to look at, you probably can't help getting excited at petroglyphs.  The petroglyphs scattered across the Altai mountains are one of Mongolia's three world heritage sites, and some are as old as 11,000 years!  You don't need to be a history teacher (Geek) or art teacher (me) to think that's fascinating!

I mentioned the Kazakh cemeteries yesterday, but I didn't mention another memorial: the anthropomorphic stone statues called balbals left behind during the Turkic era.  We read about them in Lonely Planet and Canat promised we'd be able to see one, but explaining what we wanted was a little difficult even with Engrish's mad Mongolian skills.  In the end we got there with, "It's a rock with the face of a man."  You can see our cook on the left and our driver on the right.  We weren't sure what we were getting ourselves into, hiring a cook, but it turned out to be one of the best decisions of our trip.  Jemisbek produced the most delicious meals, and I swear he must have worked with foreigners a lot, because he didn't cook a single thing that we were hesitant to eat.  The pinnacle of our experience was besbarmak, or Five Fingers (because that's how you are supposed to eat it), a Kazakh dish of boiled mutton, potatoes, carrots, and this scrumptious steamed long pastry-ish roll thing that had cabbage and onion inside.  The last day of our trip, after our world class driver took us through a pretty strong river, we stopped by the river and had a picnic, with the food - which was delicious - cooked on the spot by Jemisbek. 

Total inclusive cost for the three of us out in the countryside: $550.  That included our driver, our gas, our cook and food, the border permits, some money for the families with whom we stayed, and I'm sure something else I'm forgetting.

Total value of being intrepid, outdoor-pooping explorers: priceless.