que pasa

Honestly, I wasn't surprised this was going to happen – that the original intention to have unrestricted internet access in China during the Olympics was an incredible notion and would soon be overturned.

I must admit though, that I don't know what the big deal is.  Perhaps it's because I come from a country where the press serves the government and there’s censorship, so you could say I'm already used to such "oppression" and "limited rights".  But I don't feel particularly oppressed, ignorant or feel that my rights have been violated.

I can see why China feels that it must control the internet, but I am not condoning it.  I just don't see why the foreign press seriously thought they would have unrestricted internet access in the first place; and second, why they think that they shouldn't be subject to the nation’s laws, including the rules and regulations of the internet. 

Isn't it conventional wisdom that "In Rome, do as the Romans do?"  You wanna get into somebody else's territory, then you should be prepared to play by their rules.  Welcome to China.

Right, on to the second part of my Japan trip – Kyoto.  Gaijin is the Japanese word for foreigner, which I totally was.

Shinkansen is FREAKIN expensive
I paid 13,000 yen for an unreserved seat in economy class, one way.  Took 2.5 hours to reach Kyoto.
I wanna say that the Shinkansen really no big deal, you can't tell how fast it’s going (i.e. super fast), but apparently, that’s why it's such a big deal.  Oh well, I always thought the idea was to watch things zip by until your neck hurts from trying to turn so fast...

Anyway, just like the other time in Hong Kong, I tried to get a free upgrade to a really nice cushy seat in the best class cabin by just walking in and plonking myself down – to get my money's worth, you know.  But unlike Hong Kong, somebody actually reserved this seat and conductor actually comes by to check if you’re in the right cabin, so I had to change seats two times.

Japan summer sizzles and burns
Joy was complaining that it was really hot, but I kept insisting that it wasn't as hot as Singapore.  I had to eat my words when I arrived in Kyoto (and also when I returned to Tokyo on the last day).  It was ridiculously hot and humid.  It's like this wave of hot air smacks your face as you exit any building and hugs you tightly as you move around the day.  I was burnt lobster red, and even had a mild heatstroke at some point.

Thank goodness when I arrived, people were handing out fans for promotional material – it became one of my top four most treasured possession.  The other two were my cap, passport and wallet. 

Word to the wise, don't go to Japan in the summer.  If you must go and you don't like caps, use a wide-brimmed hat.  It's rude to use umbrellas - take up a lot of space on the sidewalks and poke other people’s eyes.  Wear a cap even if it doesn't feel hot because you'll feel the heatstroke later. Expect to be sun-burnt.  Drink lots of water, don't worry there are vending machines everywhere.

Kyoto = shrine/temple heaven
May I just say I have never been to so many temples and shrines in my life before, nor have I seen so many buddas before.  Although I don't subscribe to either Buddhism or Shintoism, I wanted to see what the temples and shrines were like.  Some were actually quite nice, and every shrine does have its own feel. 

I actually found a shrine that was supposed to be the place where people (including professionals) come to pray to the "soccer god" for blessings.  Actually, the "soccer god" has evolved into a "ball-sports god" because people left baseballs, volleyballs, water polo balls and tennis balls there too.

The night I arrived, there was this shrine festival going on.  This procession of men (old men, young men, even kids) were along the shopping street and they were chanting "wakoe wakoe, wakoe wakoe..." while they danced/jumped vigorously, and carrying this throne/altar thingy to their destination.  They came really closed to me and it was almost like they were a possessed mob.  Gave me goosebumps.

Getting lucky
I actually said to a friend, "Hey, let's go geisha-spotting tonight, we might get lucky!"  Only after I said it did I realize what I had implied, sigh.  Anyway, we got to see two geishas get out of a taxi to go for dinner and the next day I saw another two posing for some photographers.  One of them smiled back at me when I grinned at her. 

Apparently geishas and maikos (girls training to be geishas) are far and few between so I'm glad to see some.  I have to say, I thought geishas were supposed to be slim (like Zhang Ziyi in the movie) but I guess that’s not always the case.

One day pass bus cards – learn from my mistakes
In Kyoto, you can pay 500 yen and get a one day pass for unlimited rides for all flat-fare buses in the city.  This will pretty much cover any tourist destination and is a pretty good deal so long as you take more than 2 bus rides.  But it's not that easy to get, because nobody taught me how to get it! 

The first time, I threw my 500 yen fare down the coin collector machine and then indicated I wanted a card, but the bus driver was unhappy because he did not get to see how much I paid.  I think he asked me if I paid 500 yen, to which I nodded my head.  He decided to give me the benefit of the doubt and gave me my card.

The second time, I decided to ask the driver for the pass card first, he took it out and then pointed his open palm to the coin collector machine, so I dropped my money in.  WRONG.  You’re supposed to put the money in his palm!!!  How would I know right?  If you want me to put the money in your palm, then don’t point to the machine!  Place your open palm OVER the collector, not in a place where it could be mistaken for pointing to it!

Anyway, I think I damaged the reputation for all asian looking gaijins in Kyoto.  Sorry guys.

Asking for directions to non-tourist destinations is like charades
I'm pretty good with a map, really.  But without a map, my sense of direction is pathetic.  Without a map and any language ability, I'm even worse.  Thank goodness when I wanted to look for something that was not on the map (like UniQlo & Muji shops, or Krispy Kreme), I was at least with a friend who could speak a smattering of Japanese.

The trick is to ask the right person.  This meant scanning the crowd for someone who looked (age) and dressed like she would know the brands so that they could point us to the shops.  Then you say the brand, or point to the logo on the shopping bag (from our intended destination), and a series of hand actions that indicate "Big (as in large shop)," "Time (as in how long does it take to reach)" and "Far?" and then confirm the directions with a series of jerky hand motions.

Sightseeing recommendations
Within Kyoto itself, you should go to Kiyumizudera temple, Nijo castle, Kinkakujin temple, Maruyama Park at least. 

Don't bother with the Imperial Palace, it's not worth it because you only get to see the exterior of the buildings and you have to go there one day in advance to make the reservations.  Oh, I also set off the alarm when I lept across the drain to walk next to the castle wall so that I could walk in the shade because the heat was unbearable.  Guess that's not allowed, haha.

Nara – day trip, take a half day hike there.  Lots of deer, you can go up and snuggle one of them I think.  I got as close to patting some and stroking their ears.  Has a few UNESCO Heritage sites, apparently this place is rated #2 in scenery after Kyoto.

There are also some walking tour routes in Kyoto city you can take, which can be quite nice if the weather is good.  The information is readily available at the Kyoto City Tourism Info Office located at the Kyoto station.  You can also get bus route information there too. 

I think about 3-4 days in Kyoto is good.  Took an overnight bus back to Tokyo which was much cheaper (4,200 yen) and managed to sleep pretty well too.  Kyoto really was quite okay.

Heath Ledger did a fantastic job with The Joker, I’m impressed!

This movie was very enjoyable and worth my time and money, perhaps even better than Iron Man.

Must see on big screen, the bigger the better!

Ok, sorry if I seem insensitive, but this girl's name is really funny.
But it was so bad that I support her for fighting for a name change.
She won by the way.

If you're planning to climb Mt. Fuji in the summer and you're planning to spend a night at one of the cabins for a night, here's what I recommend you pack:

- Winter jacket (for strong winds and cold weather during the night and when ascending to the summit)
- Ear warmers & scarf, thermals/long johns (unless you're really resilient)
- Cap (provide shade under sun, block face from flying sands, keep head warm)
- Extra T-shirt and long sleeve shirt (layer as you go up)
- Wet wipes
- 2 litres of water
- Energy bars/snickers/beef jerky/biscuits
- High altitude meds (you don't realize you need it until you start feeling really sick, by which time it's too late, you can't turn back)
- Headlight (for lighting the way when you climb in the dark)
- Extra pair of thick socks
- Cash 2500 yen (5x100yen for toilet, 2000yen for buying a hot meal and drinks - you appreciate the hot food and basically become price insensitive at that point. there is no free hot water available in the cabins)
- Cards/book (something to entertain while resting at cabin)

Optional: camera, ipod, sunglasses

When you start at 5th station, wear long pants (i.e. cargo pants/jeans), hiking boots, t-shirt. cap to start.

Accomodation: I think it costs 6000yen to stay a night at the cabin - that's excluding the 2500yen cash you should bring for toilet and food.

Notes:
I've heard of people starting at the night (~10pm) and then making their way to the summit by sunrise (~430am) but I think that's too tough for anyone who's not trained or fit.  We started at 1245pm and reached our 8th station cabin at 5pm-ish.  I think latest you should start is 2pm, reach the cabin around 8pm, grab a hot meal, rest/sleep and then leave the cabin at 130-2am to ascend to the summit (~2-3hour climb because of the jam in human traffic, dark and narrow conditions and low oxygen level)

If you don't make it to the summit for sunrise, don't worry, you'll be able to see if from anywhere on your way up from 8th station. 

All the best and enjoy your climb!

P.S.  If you hate downhills, beware the EHOD (see my last post) and mentally brace yourself for a 4-5 hour descent...

I had a fantastic time in Tokyo hanging with Joy, Seng and Jukebox.  I don't think we were in Tokyo city proper, but that was just fine, I was just there to chill.  Didn't go shopping or even step into Shinjuku or Ikebukuro - will do that on my way back. 

Just followed along with whatever Joy and Seng had on - which was quite a bit actually.  We went to Joy's kids' club, camping with their neighbors, hung out/had meals with their friends, and climbed Mt Fuji.  I didn't have a camera but you can ask Seng if you wanna see pics, or maybe I'll try to copy some from Seng and upload them here.  

Anyway, here are some highlights from my time in Tokyo. 

City mouse proclaims captured trout "so fresh!"
As part of our camping trip, Joy and Seng's neighbors brought us to this small artificial pond en route to our log cabin.  Basically the owners catch rainbow trout and throw them into the pond and you use these bamboo rods with fishing lines attached to catch the fish using salmon roe as bait.  The pond has quite a lot of fish so technically, you can't possibly not catch any. 

But of course yours truly tried three times with no success - those sneaky fish had figured out a way to eat my bait without getting caught on the hook - and I was starting to worry that I was a total loser.  Finally, after a positive demo from Taka (neighbor, Japanese male) and moving my bait to a "high traffic zone", I caught my first fish.  Determined to prove that it wasn't just luck, I caught a few more. 

There was this particular one though that just kept twisting and flipping as I pulled it out of the water. It seemed extra energetic and so I (obviously a city mouse here) exclaimed, "Hey look at mine! It's so fresh!" Yes, yes, I know, Jukebox was also wondering how my fish could be any fresher than the rest of the fish that were also captured alive.

Anyway, we were so amused by the entire experience, the girls were squealing and shouting, I think the neighbors were probably laughing at us secretly.

Smoked fish speaks to catcher: "Hello Joy, you catch me!"
We had a really good barbecue at the log cabin. Taka smoked the fish - it's the first time I've seen it done like that. And the fish were super yummy, and yes, so fresh!  Anyway, we had all eaten our fill and there was one fish left.  This was Joy's but she has some issues with eating animals that she has seen alive prior to them being served on the plate.  

We tried to reason with her that this was her share and that the fish was really delicious but she was having none of that.  Then Taka suddenly used his hand to mimick a fish talking and made a squeaky voice, "Hello Joy, you catch me!" which had me burst out laughing.  Because Taka seems to me like a man's man kinda person and I certainly wasn't expecting him to be funny like that.  We started to add on in our squeaky voices, "Eat me! Eat me! I'm yummy!" but that didn't do anything except tickle me even more.  (In the end, Jukebox, Seng and I ate up the fish - wasn't going to let something so good go to waste)

This still tickles me when I think about it.  I don't think my description does justice to how funny the moment was.  It's one of those things that you have to be on-site to watch to realize why it was amusing to me.

Jukebox discovers new superpower/ability
It seems that some are more blessed than others, and some have stranger gifts than others. Jukebox is called Jukebox because she knows almost every song you can think of.  She has this amazing storage of song lyrics and melody and can probably identify any song within 5 seconds of hearing any part of it.

On this trip, we also realized that she can sleep anywhere anytime - sometimes in this strange Spiderman position, like she's scaling a wall or something.  She can even sleep a good 2 hours in the cramped and poorly ventilated cabins of Mt. Fuji where Joy, Seng and I were barely able to catch forty winks.

I'd like to see the writers of Hero or 4400 write in a character with her superpowers/abilities, it'd be interesting to see those in play in the plan to save the world.

5 minutes of sunrise
Just when I thought we were going to miss it, we managed to hit Mt. Fuji summit right on time to see the sunrise.  It was gorgeous. Most definitely worth the climb.  Watching the ball of bright chrome yellow quickly break through the clouds and head on up and looking around the surrounding peaks of nearby mountains peeping through the sea of clouds quietens you as you take a moment to ponder on the beauty of the things Papa has made.

It felt great to have made it to the top, and I was all ready to say that I had conquered Mt. Fuji, except that I was only halfway through.  The worst was yet to come - EHOD.

EHOD - Eternal Hell of Descent
If you ask me, conquering Mt Fuji is really a test of willpower.  I don't think you have to be very fit to get up and down, but you must stay the course to finish.  And as far as I'm concerned, the descent is much tougher than the ascent. I can't run down or stride down the gravelly steep slopes zig-zagging down the mountain because I'm not that confident of my footing and I feel like I'll just slip, roll and fall off the ledge 2000 meters down the mountain.

You know how some people belief there are 18 levels of hell, or that hell is like a cauldron of super-hot flames and destruction?  Seng called this a modern form of hell (tongue-in-cheek of course) - they just keep making you walk down steep gravelly slopes that hurts your knees and constantly makes you feel super unsure of your steps.  This goes on for like 4 hours! It was most definitely torturous.

My flight back to Singapore was half filled with Chinese 3rd graders. They were on some program that the Singapore government is running, their bright red t-shirts exclaiming singaporeedu.gov.sg on the back. I dreaded the flight, 50 little boys and girls had the potential to turn the 5 hour flight into a nightmare.

I have to say, it didn't turn out as bad as I thought. Except when they kept exclaiming (in Chinese), "Earthquake! Earthquake!" when the plane was trembling as it took off. Except when they kept going "Woooe... woooe..." whenever we encountered turbulence. Except when they kept calling out "Ah yi, ah yi..." to get the air stewardess' attention (because they didn't know about the call button. Except when they all started requesting for endless refills of coca-cola during meal service. Except when 2 girls cut my line for the bathroom (I don’t care if they’re kids and they need to go, a line is a line is a line! But yes, I let them go in front of me anyway.)

But at least there was none of that screaming or running up and down nonsense. And it was quite tickling to hear them all laugh in unison at the "Just for Laughs Gags" video that was being played. I found myself laughing along like a kid too. And then when the plane started playing "Shaun the Sheep" clay-mation cartoon, I figured I wasn't going to get any proper in-flight movie after all. So I content myself with watching sheep breakdance, watching a sheep play a bouncer, watching another sheep pretend to be Picasso and so on.

I still can't figure out why the cartoon is called Shaun the Sheep, but who cares. Just happy to be home.

I just want to say that I've finally gotten over this crush I've been having for like the past 5 months or so.  For those of you in the know, it was pretty bad at first.  It took me a ridiculous amount of time to realize that nothing was going to happen and that it was definitely one-sided.  But then that's the way crushes are, right?

As crazy an experience having a crush is, it's also very fun.  Makes for great distraction and discussion.  Some people go to the extent of "stalking" their Facebook, MySpace, Friendster pages and so on, but I've yet to go that far, whew.  I always tell myself that one day, I will tell the crush-ee that I had a crush on him but I never get around to doing it.  I may have thick skin, but I'm not gutsy enough. 

Anyway, if you're wondering how this crush came to an end, common sense finally set in and I just got bored of wishing and dreaming about him.  Here's the kicker though, I have another crush! Ok, well, I don't really have a new crush; I have a new friend who looks pretty decent and seems like an interesting person. 

Actually, I just wanted to be able to say, "I crushed a crush with a crush!"
(Forget the English lessons that tell you never to repeat the same word in the same sentence; I think it sounds great, lol)

Ah yes, the things that amuse me.  And yes, it's nice to know my hormones are still raging.  :p

I guess it's kinda clichéd for me to put up an article like this – that marriage isn't for everyone and everyone shouldn't feel like they need to get married.

The article says, "There is... a commonly held notion that to get married is to 'settle down', in contrast to being unmarried suggesting that the latter is to be saddled with an 'unsettled' state of life."

A friend and I were talking yesterday a bit about settling down and I think this quote describes pretty well how we felt.  I've always thought that marriage is very hard work and a big transition. (But lately I'm thinking that having kids is an even bigger change and takes much more effort to cope with.)

I think that it's worth the time and process to find (or wait) for the right person, instead of settling for who you obviously know to be less than the key criteria you really want. Granted, we don’t know who we’re going to meet in the future and it’s very possible that we might never find that "right" person. But when it comes to the human with whom you expect to find rest, comfort and support, I think we should give due respect and serious consideration to nagging feelings (i.e. your gut) that today's decision to get hitched is going to come back and haunt us later.

Have relationships, by all means, because that's how you know somebody. But don't get married until you know you want to come home to this person everyday for the rest of your life, because reversing that decision is very painful and hurtful.