Month: August 2004

Itinerary:  Narita-Nikko-Sendai-Northeast Coast (Matsuhima-Shizugawa-Taro-Kuji-Mutsu)-ferry from Oma to Hakodate-Toyako-Sapporo-Asahikawa-Sounkyo-Ikeda-Kushiro-Akanko-Mashuko-Otaru-Niseko-ferry from Hakodate to Aomori-Hirosaki-Morioka-Hiraizumi-Ichinoseki-Utsunomiya-Tokyo Akasaka

Favorite roadside attractions:

• 70m-high statue of the Buddhist bosatsu Kannon in Kamaishi on the NE coast of Honshu
  
• Snow Museum, which could easily have been designed by Liberace, in Asahikawa (Hokkaido)
  
• two enormous Japanese Cranes having a late lunch in a farmer’s field on the SE coast of Hokkaido then taking off, circling, and landing in another corner of the farm; there are only about 800 of these birds on the planet
  
• underground public aquarium in Kuji, the Mogurampia, built into a coastal oil storage facility

And now onto some themes that recurred in my mind…

This trip impressed upon me how deep is the Japanese love affair with concrete.  They’ve really become the poets of this most modern of building materials where a guy such as Tadao Ando can find many peers.  Some of the most beautiful minimalist artworks were the concrete mesh nets that stabilize hillsides.  These comform to the waves and bumps of the hill and are anchored by enormous pins of steel or concrete.  The mesh size is about 6′.  My favorite concrete building was the Iwate Museum of Art in Morioka.

The overall security of Japan presents a startling contrast to the U.S.  I didn’t notice it that much on previous trips, all of which were before September 11, 2001.  Except in Tokyo and on the Shinkansen (bullet train) there doesn’t seem to be any thought given to terrorism or even crime.  There are hardly any foreigners in Japan to begin with so a group of 19 Saudis wouldn’t have been able to go anywhere without being watched.  There are no ID checks even on the Shinkansen.  You can park your car at the airport curb, even Narita, and walk away for 10-15 minutes without anyone complaining.  You don’t see gun-toting thugs near public buildings.  People carry $1000+ in cash in their wallets without a second thought.  Every car has a $2000 navi system ripe to be stolen and yet there aren’t car alarms.  Luxury hotels don’t bother with electronic key cards.  You can eat in almost any restaurant (except the ones listed in Lonely Planet) and not get food poisoning.  The Japanese can even enjoy the rich social life described by Paul Theroux in Africa without worrying about dying as the AIDS infection rate here is around 0.02% (source).

America really is the land of luxury when it comes to space and consumerism.  From my house in Harvard Square I can drive 20 minutes and get to miles of trails through semi-rural woods, lakes, and farms in Lincoln, MA.  To get similarly away from it all in Japan would require flying to Hokkaido, renting a car, and heading into a national park.  Real estate prices here remain savage, a good warning perhaps to Americans as we head for a population of 420 million in the year 2050, nearly all of which will be concentrated on the coasts.  A CD is $22, a DVD is $35+.  For a tourist here only a few weeks it isn’t so bad.  Your wallet suffers death by paper cuts ($4 for parking at a temple, $8 to go in, $40 in expressway tolls to get to the next temple) but you know that you’ll be heading home soon to your spacious apartment and nearby Walmart.  The Japanese just have to resign themselves to being bled for the rest of their lives.

The Japanese are able to overcome almost all of their natural limitations with hard work and competitive drive.  The Olympics are going on right now and the Japanese are currently in third place for the number of gold medals, which is remarkable when you consider the lack of genetic diversity in the population.  Craftsmen in various small towns could get by selling average-quality goods to average tourists but instead work late nights to win competitions.  Shamisen players compete and at concerts the people sitting next to me would periodically whisper “Grand Champion” when a certain artist came on stage.  A chef in the tiny provincial town of Ichinoseki could have had a nice little rice dumpling restaurant but instead worked like a demon until he became famous throughout Japan for making the best rice dumplings (he spoke pretty good English too but I learned of his fame only from other tourists).

Economically this is a country that should be nowhere.  Japan is famously lacking in natural resources and space.  The nation was closed to the West and modern technology until the mid-19th century.  Japan lost more than 3 million people and nearly all of its physical assets during World War II.  Yet by dint of nearly every worker trying his or her hardest the country is almost as rich as the U.S.  An American engineer working for a Japanese automaker has been over here for a year.  The mechanical engineers working for his company back in the U.S. are among the best, brightest, and hardest working American engineers.  “I hate to admit it,” he said, “but the guys here in Japan are even better.  They’re older and they know more and I thought they they would slack off but they work even harder and are more dedicated to getting it right.”

Most disturbing part of the trip:  watching an old movie of an Ainu (the native people of Hokkaido, related to Mongolians) community event in which a bear was chained to a pole and then shot with arrows.  The bear would roll around trying to get the arrows out and then would be shot some more.  Maybe not that different from the bullfights beloved by Spaniards but just horrible to see.

Best hotel room:  Akasaka Prince Hotel, 18th floor, sweeping corner windows, comfy sofa underneath the windows, huge bathtub, architecture by Kenzo Tange, across the street from the 400-year-old Japanese garden in the New Otani Hotel, adjacent to a public park with koi pond, and 2 blocks from the Suntory Museum of Art (fantastic Daimyo show right now).  All for $115/night thanks to (a) being on my own (double rooms are often simply 2X the price of a single), and (b) orbitz.com.

Best hotel surprise:  Hotel-onsen Kanyo in Shizugawa on the NE coast of Tohoku.  Stopped the rental car at sunset to tank up and asked the gas station manager where to find a hotel.  He said “just one kilometer farther up” and an enormous concrete hotel appeared.  The staff spoke not a word of English, the room was Japanese style, the hot spring bath was outdoors, and the pool was big enough to swim laps.

Memorable scenic views:

• Mashu-ko, a crater lake in eastern Hokkaido.  In general the Japanese have heavily developed their seacoast (“the sea is where you go to get dinner”) but left lakeshores alone.  This lake is a lot like Oregon’s Crater Lake but not nearly so high in elevation.
  
• the city of Hakodate (Sapporo) from the top of the ropeway (cable car) and also the surrounding mountains and coastline at sunset
  
• cliffs and rocks of Rikuchu-kagan National Park, a not-very-developed coastline in NE Tohoku
  
• cliffs in the Geibikei Gorge (near Hiraizumi) viewed from the flat-bottomed boat while beautiful koi swam alongside and begged for food from the tourists
  
• various spots along the highway in Daisetsuzan National Park (Hokkaido)

Places in Japan that I’d like to visit next time:  Nara, Shikoku, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Okinawa (plus repeats to Tokyo and Kyoto to see friends and familiar sights–see http://www.photo.net/travel/japan/ for some snapshots from earlier trips)

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After nearly 2000 miles of driving the rental car here in Japan I’ve passed quite a few electronics and household goods stores, my favorite being a chain called “Big House”.  This has gotten me thinking that it would be fun to buy a super high tech toilet seat with at least 10 buttons labeled only in kanji.  After I install this at home it should give friends something to think about.  I know that some simpler “washlet” seats are marketed by Toto in the U.S. to U.S. specs.  But these have labels in Roman characters and English explanations.  I want it all to be in Japanese.

One thing really troubles me, however…  line voltage here is 100V.  The electronics in the highest tech seats might have a switching power supply and therefore be indifferent to our higher voltage of 117V.  But the washlets also contain a water heater, a fan, and maybe some other stuff that is run directly from the AC power.  Will it fry if I plug it into US power?  Have any of the readers tried this?

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I’ve long been curious to visit Africa as a tourist.  Theroux’s Dark Star Safari seems to have some practical value for trip planning.  Theroux reports the following facts relevant to the sightseer:

• travel by road is extremely slow and uncomfortable
  
• conversations with typical Africans can be interesting but only for guys like Theroux who speak several local languages
  
• interaction with Africans can result in severe illness and/or becoming a victim of crime

Why not address these issues by renting a small airplane?  Here’s my tentative plan for a beginner’s trip to Africa:

1. fly to Cape Town, South Africa and spend a few days poking around what sounds like Africa’s only livable large city (learn something about the old colonial culture in its last bastion)
   
2. during the time in Cape Town pick up a South African pilot’s license so that I can legally fly a South African-registered airplane
   
3. rent a workhorse of an airplane such as a Cessna 182 and load it up with bottled water and packaged food
   
4. fly over all the interesting landscape, stopping only at public airports and exclusive private game reserves with their own strips
   
5. venture onto roads and into towns only in thinly populated and orderly regions (Namibia?)
   
6. return home after 3 weeks

Even in countries where crime and disorder are rampant the public airports are usually very well protected.  Governments like to keep track of who is coming and going, which is essential if they are to maintain their monopoly on weaponry.  In Mexico, for example, even the most out-of-the-way airport is staffed with multiple officials and an Army guard.  I remember landing on a sand-and-dirt runway owned by a litte hotel in Baja.  As soon as I landed three soldiers toting assault rifles came over to inspect the airplane.

One can’t see everything in a first trip to such a big place so why not start by staying mostly 500′ above the heads of all the guys who cause trouble for tourists?  There is always Trip #2 for getting deeper and/or lower into things.

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The worst book that I’ve read during this trip around Japan is William Gibson’s Pattern Recognition.  I finished it only because it is difficult to find English-language books in rural Japan.  I’m confused because I think that I bought it because of some positive reviews in newspapers or magazines and I’m wondering if I missed something.  Here’s the review that I posted to amazon.com:

This is like one of those trashy “sex and shopping” novels but without the sex.  And the shopping isn’t very interesting either, being mostly for stuff that was worth buying in the early 1990s such as a Machintosh laptop computer.  The main premise of the book seems pointless.  Some people make videos that they want to release anonymously on the Internet.  Instead of doing the obvious thing of transferring from camcorder to PC and offering on some peer-to-peer network they hire the one company in the world that can add some coded info down in the noise and then stick the filmmaker’s email address into the footage.  Ignoring the fact that this idea goes back about 50 years, why would someone who wanted to remain anonymous do this?  Gibson never explains that.

The book also talks about traveling to London, Tokyo, and Moscow.  None of this seems relevant to the story, all of which could just as easily been set in Indiana.  Maybe putting it in enabled the author to deduct some airfares and hotel stays.  There is a lot of stuff about brand names in the book, some of which might impress a peasant who had recently moved to Shanghai to work at Pizza Hut.

Any fans of the book want to educate me as to what I missed?

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Theroux’s Dark Star Safari, summarized in an earlier posting, made me think about Africans and foreign aid.  It seems that there is no reason to feel sorry for Africans, despite their living in material conditions that would upset a middle-class suburban American.  It is true that an African life is shorter than an American or Japanese life.  Yet if the purpose of life is indeed the pursuit of happiness the Africans are at least as well off.  Most people in most rich societies spend a great deal of their time working at jobs that they don’t enjoy, all so that they can spend a few hours per week having fun.  What is our Western definition of fun?  As portrayed in films and beer commercials, “fun” for the American male is hanging out with friends, drinking beer, and having sex, preferably with a series of different young women.  African guys manage to engage in these activities nearly every waking hour by Theroux’s account.  And even the old guys manage to have sex with lots of young women because so many of them start working as hookers from age 14 on up.

Partying hard and dropping dead from AIDS at age 40 doesn’t sound ideal.  But it is really worse than sitting at a desk until age 70 processing insurance forms or programming in C?

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Just as Japanese society is more intricate, if less varied, than U.S. society, the topography of settled Japan is more intricate than the U.S.  Where we would say “this area is too broken up by mountains and inlets so we’ll build towns elsewhere” the Japanese don’t have that option.  The result is an amazing number of bridges and tunnels.  I have driven through more tunnels in three weeks and 4000 km. here than in my previous 24 years of driving cars.  If you’re a fan of civil engineering you’ll giggle with childlike wonder every 20 miles or so as you come across a new suspension bridge, elevated road, or new tunnel.

Being illiterate is a serious impediment to navigation when you know where you want to go and robs you of the opportunity to decide whether or not a previously unknown roadside attraction is worth the stop.  Even with limited Japanese, however, asking directions is very effective.  One hundred percent of the time the person whom I stopped either knew where the place was or was able to figure it out after consulting a map.  Not once was I given bad directions.  Twenty five percent of the time the person asked would take a detour and lead me to the destination.  Twenty five percent of the time the person asked would produce a map or atlas, mark it up and give it to me (scored a complete 100-page detailed street atlas for the island of Hokkaido in this manner–sadly all in Kanji except for a few route numbers but subsequently very useful).

Gas costs 2X as much as in the U.S. but the rental car is nearly 2X as efficient as my minivan so the cost of a fill-up is about the same.  The price in Japan includes two attendants who pump the gas, clean the windows, walk into the street to stop traffic as you’re leaving, and bow from the waist as you drive away.

Japan essentially has no highways–imagine California with only I-5 and a few spurs.  This is one of the world’s most densely populated countries with  approximately 335 people per square kilometer, about the same as Israel, and more than India’s 320 per square km.  For an American, coming from a country with 31 people per square kilometer, it is hard to understand how these folks get by with a network of 2-lane roads and a couple of arterial 4-lane expressways.  Even when a local highway goes through a town that is mile after mile of fast food, supermarkets, Vegas-sized pachinko parlors, etc. it won’t get widened beyond 1 lane in each direction.  This plus the heavy traffic results in ridiculously low average speeds, much lower than the 40, 50, and 60 kilometer per hour limits that prevail on most roads.

Such roads as the Japanese have are the apotheosis of that type of road.  It might be a shoulderless 2-lane road but it is the best damn shoulderless 2-lane road in the world.  Despite winter freezes you will never drive over a pothole.  Overhanging poles with arrows point to the edge of the travel lane so that the snowplows can be exact.  Solar panels in those poles charge up batteries all day so that they can flash with LEDs at night, reminding drivers of where the curves lead so that you don’t have to watch the white lines in your headlights as carefully.  Every curve is signalled with strange white patterns painted on the pavement as you approach the curve.  If a curve is sharp there will be a sign telling you exactly how sharp, e.g., “R=100m”.  If a brief section goes uphill you will be told exactly how steep, e.g., “grade=3.6%”.

Given the excellence of the roads, the heavy traffic, and the low speeds one can’t help wondering how the Japanese became the world’s best engineers and builders of high-performance cars.  A 1935 Hudson Terraplane would be more than adequate for getting around Japan.  Even in Hokkaido there would be no way to stretch the legs of a Mazda RX-8 or Honda/Acura NSX.

Drivers here are highly skilled (number of accidents or fender-benders observed: 0) but not especially observant of the official rules.  The speed limit on the mostly empty toll expressways is 80 kph but plenty of folks go 120 or faster.  People try not to be the third car through a red light.  Parking is simple.  You stop the car wherever you feel like, turn on the hazard lights, and walk away.

And the last thing that I learned about driving in Japan… When the policeman waves you over to the side of the road and says “Speedo” he is not interested in seeing you change into your latest European-style swimwear.

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This is a book report on Paul Theroux’s Dark Star Safari, an account of his 2001 journey, overland by public transit, from Cairo, Egypt to Cape Town, South Africa.  This was an interesting book for me because I’m currently planning a few trips to southern African.  Theroux writes with a certain amount of authority because he worked as a teacher in Africa during the mid-1960s.  The words below are summaries of Theroux’s 485-page book, not opinions of the author of this blog (who has only once visited Africa and then only to Egypt). 

Black Africans are very comfortable leading a life of subsistence farming and frequent casual sex with lots of different partners starting at about age 10.  They are basically quite happy and unmotivated to change this lifestyle, which makes sense because, at least in the villages, it is a great lifestyle (especially for the men, who get to spend all day every day drinking beer with their buddies while women work in the fields).  Black African governments, however, are not happy watching their subjects dig potatoes in between bouts of lovemaking.  This is not because they have anything against subsistence farming or sex but rather because it is difficult to tax subsistence farmers or 14-year-old working girls.

Black Africans sometimes express confusion as to how others achieve economic prosperity, particularly the Indians who operate most of the continent’s small shops.  One boatman on the Zambezi relates that his people believe that “Indians [kill young African girls] and cut out their hearts.  Using the fresh hearts of these African virgins as bait on large hooks, they were able to catch certain Zambezi fish that were stuffed full of diamonds.”  A girl in South Africa notes “They say Indians never sleep.  They just stay awake, doing business night and day.  That’s why they are rich.”

Africans are basically incompetent at anything other than having a good time.  They can’t drive.  They can’t prepare a vehicle for a journey properly or change a tire.  They can’t grow food on a large scale.  The smarter Africans sometimes are able to dupe a white person into making something work and then they steal it.  This has been refined to an art in Zimbabwe where the blacks got the whites to set up farms that they could subsequently take over under land reform.  Sometimes a farmer would go through two cycles of buying land, improving it, and watching it get stolen by “war veterans” before giving up.  The whites eventually got wise, however, and moved their operations across the river to Zambia.  The blacks who took over the white farms are unable to do anything other than have sex and farm enough for subsistence.  To avert famine the government buys much of its food now from their former white citizens now living across the border in Zambia.  This generalized incompetence doesn’t keep villagers from having a good time but city life is a challenge because the colonialists who built the roads, sewers, etc. packed up and went home.  Consequently Theroux finds the urban and infrastructure portions of Africa in every way and in every country worse than it was 40 years ago when he lived there.

Foreign aid requires the direct involvement of whites and/or Asians on the ground at every level.  You can’t give aid to African officials because they will steal the money.  You can’t give food to African employees in local villages because they will sell it.  You can’t give food to African parents to feed their hungry children because children have almost zero value in Africa and the parents will eat it themselves.  So you need (mostly) Europeans at every level of the distribution chain right down to the troughs at which the hungry kids will eat.

Foreign aid workers are the most loathsome people on the continent.  They roar around in fancy new air-conditioned SUVs and won’t give rides to travelers such as Theroux.  They aren’t good for conversations in bars, either.  Basically the only thing that foreign aid workers are good for is sucking the initiative out of the Africans themselves.  But they are necessary because no Africans are willing to do the job.  Any African who gets enough training to, say, become a medical doctor, either emigrates to a rich country or refuses to leave the largest cities.  The only people who are willing to work in clinics in villages are white.  Theroux’s favorite stories are when earnest white Christians work for years sheltering and feeding street kids and then get set up and robbed by those very same kids.

Africa is blessed with an awe-inspiring landscape and interesting animals, which are challenging to access due to the deterioration of the road network in the years since decolonialization.  Africa is a bad place for seeing African art; all of the good stuff has been looted and sold to museums and individuals in rich countries.  Touring Africa on a luxury organized tour is a sham.  Those people never get to see the real Africans that Theroux interacts with.  Touring Africa Theroux-style involves dangerous cramped smelly transportation, waiting days for visas or buses or boats, sharing beds with vermin, getting sick, bringing home a stomach parasite that required many months of medical treatment in the U.S., etc.

Johannesburg really is the most crime-ridden place in Africa.  At the very end of his trip Theroux lost all of his baggage that he’d left in care of a top-end hotel for a few days.

Well… that’s how Theroux saw it.  I might post another blog entry with my reactions to Theroux’s text.  Meantime it is off to sleep in my little salaryman’s hotel room in Mutsu, Japan.  This town is at the very northern tip of Honshu and tomorrow I’ll be taking my rental car on the ferry to Hokkaido.  Japan is, of course, a fantastic country for tourism but terribly hot and humid in the summer.  I thought that I would be okay up here in the north but this has been a summer of record-breaking heat and humidity.

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My first 24 hours in Japan included the following:

• a soak in a traditional Japanese public bath


• a swim in a 25-yard pool


• a visit to an enormous Buddhist temple complex that has been an important pilgrimage site for hundreds of years


• a semi-traditional tea ceremony


• walking around three koi ponds


• a meal in a restaurant that has been in the same family and at the same location for more than 300 years

All this without leaving Narita, the town in which Tokyo’s international airport is located!

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