The Fabulous Life of Ponteuf

Turning Over a New Leaf

We’re driving around New Zealand in a CampaVan. The odd thing is - we like it. A lot.

I’ll let that sink in for a minute before I continue.

Renting the campa was a whim. (Oh, and the campa thing, ending in “a” rather than “er” – it’s a Kiwi thing, and it has stuck. Our campa is a Cruiza, and now everything we see is ends in “a.”) Mike suggested it, and I agreed, perhaps more out of perversity than anything else. If I’m cool on camping, he’s always been positively ice cold, and I suppose part of a marriage is taking an odd schattenfreude in your spouse’s folly. I have a feeling he possessed similar motives, but in an odd reversal of the Gift of the Magi story, our mutual inner snickering brought us both happiness.

Traveling in New Zealand has probably elicited a few snickers from those who know us, anyway: we’ve never been outdoors/adventure travelers. I like wilderness, but I’ve always had difficulty spending my limited travel time on seeing the vast expanse of anywhere when a European city whispered seductively. New Zealand, particularly the South Island, is not a place for museums. Or towns. Or people, really – but we have seen copious amounts of sheep and not a few farmed venison. It is, however, a wonderful place for campas. The activities and scenery that are worth the hassle are almost always remote, at least in hotel terms; tiny little towns plucked from the past don’t bother with Hiltons. A map and a sense of adventure, tout the travel guides, are all you need to experience New Zealand. Those, I say, and a campa.

There’s a snugness to the whole existence; I’m a large and ungainly snail, but I always have a place to sleep. Carrying your bed on your back means that plans can change, new roads can be taken and nothing is set in stone, flexibility I’m not used to but that I enjoy immensely. Not sure how far we could make it one night and headed west, we rechecked the maps and distances as the sun slipped away and found a dot with a camper symbol and a few choices for morning. An hour and only six cars later, we arrived in Reefton, a wide spot in the road that in its heyday boasted the first permanent electric power in the Southern Hemisphere. Cold and clouds and rain and a town closed tighter than an oyster would have been a nightmare without the campa – we just sailed into the motor park, confident that we could settle up for our site in the morning.

I’m regressing to playing house, or perhaps I’m just remembering the family cross country trip we took when I was seven, complete with two dogs and a cat in a camper shell on the back of Bob’s yellow Chevy Luv pickup. Living the campa life feels like a game, everything in its place, each morning a new adventure. It’s all just so cozy; I like cooking breakfast out the back tailgate, feeding the ducks the heel of our loaf of bread. When we stop to look at something, I can pull a drink (or maybe some local cheese) from our compact fridge, and if only Mike would let me, I’d take a nap on the back couches while we cruised down the road.

The problem with napping is that I would miss the scenery, and just a few hours of it clarified why so many people come to New Zealand, and why so many more talk about it. Unlike perhaps anywhere else I’ve been, the beauty here surpasses description, leaves promotional photos in the dust. The mountains really do rise up to touch the sky and the coastal water really is a stunning blue that gives clarity to the term aqua-marine. Like so many other countries where rain is more than an occasional fly-by-night guest, the fields and slopes and peaks of the South Island are painted with more variations of green than a California girl knew could exist. If Crayola made a 64-pack of just greens, they might be getting close.

And the sheep! Oh, the sheep. Prolific little cotton balls, they dot every open green space, proving just how high the hills are by their minuscule profiles as seen from the road. With far more sheep than people, the land proves just how awe inspiring it can be without our mucking about and putting up buildings; it is easy to see why NZ was chosen to be both Middle Earth and Narnia – it has an otherworldly quality that can’t be manufactured. Add in the odd bird cries and you feel that you’re in a new, untouched land, rarely trod upon. When the first Europeans arrived, the forest came all the way to the shore and the calls of the multitude of birds was so loud they couldn’t hear each other speak. A landmass that developed only two mammals (bats, both), New Zealand spent its bounty on birdlife in abundance. The Moa Hunters traveled across the South Pacific in open canoes, against all odds, navigating by the stars and ending up in this strange paradise full of fanciful plumage and flightless birds. It doesn’t feel so long ago, really, when the road strays into a bit of forest; nothing’s changed.

We drove for hours and saw only a few tiny towns, a handful of cars, a few hikers – and this was along SH1, the main (and in most cases only) route around the South Island. The towns are a journey of their own – if someone told me that we’d transported back sixty years, I would have believed it. The architecture isn’t anything special (in fact, it has the distinct look of American 50’s prosperity building about it) but the atmosphere: slow, gentle and friendly – is. Everywhere we went, people talked to us, asked about our holiday, gave suggestions, all in the most genuine fashion imaginable. We talked to strangers in pubs, in grocery stores, on the sidewalk – I felt as though I’d dropped into a Southern Hemisphere Norman Rockwell painting.

We’ve been spectacularly lucky with weather all fall, but a Kiwi spring had other ideas for us, and we saw more rain than we had in the rest of the trip combined. I’d been waiting to see the Southern Cross – in the few times we’ve dipped below the Equator, it has either been too cloudy or the wrong time of year to spot it, but here in crystal clear and so-far-south New Zealand, I knew it was up there. Walking back to the campa a few nights ago after a brief rainstorm I glanced up and gasped – there, in all its glory was the Southern sky, unfamiliar enough that, as in Africa, I felt like an explorer of the old school. The stars glittered and flickered in a bottomless blackness and there was the cross, five stars complete, lighting the way for all of us in our own small canoes.

Forward All Mail

We’ve stumbled into an alternate reality. In this charmed place, Seattle has the sunshine of Los Angeles – without the fog. Beach communities feel like small town America, Orange County has all its beauty without a plastic culture and a two million dollar minimum bet. Water is everywhere, spectacular views can be had for a few dollar ferry ride (or a free walk along the water) and the gelato tastes like it does in Italy. People are absurdly friendly, little girls wear knee socks and sun hats to school and people steal away from the office in the afternoons with beach towels and surf boards.

I’d tell you where this charmed place is - but of course, then I’d have to kill you.

There’s an ease here that I’ve never felt in an American city, a lack of hurry and stress, even among the business people streaming out of the office buildings downtown to eat lunch along the water, all take out sandwiches and flip flops and sunglasses. Monday, Tuesday – the beaches are full, the small bars along the sand filled with everyday people toasting the setting sun. Ferries crisscross the giant harbor, sailboats flit along the surface of the clearest city-near water I’ve ever seen. Even at the quay in the middle of town I can see right down to the bottom, past the flourishing seaweed towers and flitting fish.

Alongside the ferry today was a flotilla of seagulls, diving and bobbing over an unusually rough patch of water. As we lumbered closer I could see that the turmoil was fish, boiling, fins and tails occasionally braving the hunters above to break the skin of the water. Reminded of the stories of fisherman in American harbors two hundred years ago, I elbowed Mike, but he was already staring, mouth open as I’m sure mine was – not just at this bit of perfect nature but also at the thick green brush on hills sliding into the water, sometimes broken by a fingernail of sand, sometimes hollowed into a perfect bowl of a sailboat harbor. Beautiful. No wonder the people here all look healthy and contented and unruffled - they live in a hidden Eden, so far from everywhere else that no one would think to look for it here. Like California divested of her bad habits and in seclusion so they can’t find her, this place just might be the holy grail of good living.

Too bad, isn’t it, that I can’t tell you where it is?

Incense and Sugar Cane

Stay in South East Asia long enough, and you’ll be forced to come to terms with sweat. Like your hair or your breath, sweat (your own) is a constant companion for all but the blissful moments between showering and leaving the air conditioned sanctuary of the hotel. Walking outside is stepping into hot steamed pudding, air so thick it has a personality and a presence. The heat varies from sun to shade, from burning to merely roasting, but the viscosity of the air never falters and woe be to the visitor whose pores don’t immediately open for ventilation. I’m never sure what is the least comfortable: the glistening, damp clothes slickness of walking outside, the clammy stickiness after five minutes in air conditioning or the tacky post sweat of the end of the day. Showering is the only solution; alternate hot and cold water and lots of soap followed by a rough towel manage to push the streets and the crowds from view.

The heat isn’t the only thing that overwhelms. Bangkok is a city of constant motion, of taxis and bikes and people and push carts and tuk tuks, all fighting for a place under the mixed blessing of sky train tracks overhead, providing shade, yes, but also trapping the fumes of every motor. Sukhumvit Road exists in a time vacuum, traffic as heavy at noon as it is at midnight, people as thick at six in the morning as at six at night. Early evenings the food carts appear, cafes spring up on sidewalks and the som tum woman makes the rounds, calling for customers as her baskets balance a double load of papaya and spice across her slight shoulders. Darkness sneaks in down the alleys, then retreats in the face of advancing neon, taxi lights flash, horns honk. The purple and blue tuk tuk hangs out at the 7-11 corner near the sleazy bars down the Nana Soi, the girls in barely there skirts eat hot dogs on sticks and chat lazily.

Olfactory overload – there must be a durian cart nearby. Yes, there it is, piled with spiky stink bombs, a few halved to display the wobbly alien pod flesh and spread the sickly sweet odor. Durian smell wipes out everything else near it, proof positive of its power – exhaust and gas and damp gutter don’t go down without a fight. Through the middle of all this taint drifts the unmistakable hunger of meat seared on a grill, fat dripping into hot charcoal. Through all the food and the grease and the city stench, suddenly, a thin cloud of incense, a touch of the Buddha from somewhere else. Neon falls away and I’m transported to a temple, gleaming gold, glittering turquoise, pale stems of lotus leaves, wreathed in sideways dancing smoke. Another step and it is gone, vanished like the tail lights of the sky train curving away above us, a momentary respite from the jumble of citrus and spice spitting away on the cooking meat.

Blindfolded and click three times transported to anywhere in the world, I’d always know when I had landed in this particular segment of the Asian landmass that steams constantly but never goes dry. Cambodia, like Thailand (like Vietnam, and Singapore too) left us gasping, slick with sweat and sticky with smell, of cooking fires and rubber, spices and slowly moldering leaves. These smells exist elsewhere, of course, but the thick air here mixes them in a signature scent, impossible to ignore once smelled, as though it has passed through the sinuses and into some dark recess of the brain, forgotten in dry air but revived upon return to its source. Fingers sticky from sugar cane juice, pale green and sweet, so sweet, I feel the sweat drip behind my knees, generously salt my cheeks. Pungent and overpowering. Food, drink, air – just being here. When I’ve showered tomorrow in Australia, scrubbed the last trace of sweat from my scalp and sent my clothes to the laundry, South East Asia will still be with me, lodged inexorably under my skin.

One Night in Bangkok

With apologies to Murray Head

Bangkok is notorious for sex tourism. One look at the beer gutted, graying van-dyke, sneaker wearing American guys walking shiftily through the airport makes that amply clear. Looking for something exotic, something they can’t get at home – maybe just looking for some semblance of clearly past virility engendered by lithe hands, some confirmation of masculinity that I can’t understand.

One Night in Bangkok and the world’s your oyster - The bars are temples but the pearls ain't free

I can understand hiring a sexual partner for an hour, for a night – regardless of own desire to participate. What I can’t get my head around are these men on day tours, seeing the sights, shopping the markets, all with a tiny Thai “girlfriend” clinging to their side. Hiring a girlfriend, especially one that doesn’t speak your language very well, makes considerably less sense to me than paying for a blow job. Looking for sex? Looking for companionship? Clearly indulging in a fantasy that this sex is something more, is the smoke and mirrors for him, for her – for us?

You'll find a god in every golden cloister - And if you're lucky then the god's a she

As I’m not the target market, I suppose I’ll never understand, but any casual observer with a marginally functioning brain knows that you’re paying her to be with you, dude, so it isn’t that impressive. As I lack the equipment and the mindset to be male, I don’t understand the import placed on having a hot woman on the arm either, but the amount of effort these guys make to be seen with these women illustrates the value of the image to them.

Tea, girls, warm, sweet - Some are set up in the Somerset Maugham suite

I’m sure there are places where a tryst can be prearranged, just like a limo from the airport or a tour of the floating markets. For the successful business man with limited time, these services must make the most sense: dinner and, um, a movie are all they have time for, and a quick fifty slipped to the hotel security to get an unregistered guest into the room. For the less affluent and the less busy, the bars of Soi Cowboy and Nana and Patpong are the places to go. I hear women there can do things with ping pong balls that defy both nature and gravity; I admit to curiosity. If a sex show is all a guy is after, a cover charge and a drink can produce a level of titillation unattainable at home.

One night in Bangkok makes a hard man humble - Not much between despair and ecstasy

The streets that line the underbelly of Bangkok can be found anywhere – Nana meanders off Sukhumvit halfway between the JW and Mike’s favorite tailors. On a Saturday night, the place is hopping, and it was the best place for us to go in search of snacks and fruit carts. I admit, too, to a certain curiosity about the whole transaction. In Amsterdam the red light district announces itself with showpiece windows and neon rouge; in Kyoto a street bisected (oddly enough) by a canal advertises S&M on small lettered signs. In Bangkok, the signs are the women themselves, tiny enough that their skirts amount to a handkerchief and their hair makes more of an impression than they do. High heels, halter tops and bored faces roam the streets, sit on stoops chatting and fill the open air bars.

One night in Bangkok and the tough guys tumble - Can't be too careful with your company

Thai culture is accepting of what is loosely referred to as the third sex – most usually in the form of men dressing and acting as women, sawasdee-ka’ing their way through life. We spotted a few of these guys on Nana, and they were stunning in a “pay a few hundred bucks to see the transvestite show” kind of way. Mike wanted to find a spot of the street and watch to see how many guys picked up what they weren’t looking for, a little bit of Lola in the far East. I couldn’t help staring, and I was lacking both desire and alcohol, so I can only imagine what the tourists with motive thought.

I'd let you watch, I would invite you - But the queens we use would not excite you

If you didn’t know anything from anything, you’d think you had stumbled into dorky white guy paradise. In all the bars there were at least three women for every guy, and they surrounded that dismal collection of guts and fanny packs like flies to honey. This was no simple book and go station – multiple empty glasses line the counters and tables in front of the “couples.” We waited for grilled meat skewers behind a mismatched couple, she speaking Thai to the vendor and giggling, he keeping a firm and possessive grasp around her waist, noticeably tightening as Mike approached. In one bar a man leaned across the table getting a back massage from two impassive women. Unlike Amsterdam where looking outweighed buying by 100 to 1, Nana was happening. On the Thai faces, nothing; on the white faces a mixture of excitement and smug satisfaction.

I can feel the devil walking next to me

I was not popular on Nana soi. Those looks of satisfaction slipped quickly into guilt and annoyance and rapidly into anger as Mike and I walked down the street. I wasn’t staring, but I was looking into the open bars, were no more private than shaded patios. My expression wasn’t condemning, but my presence was. I’d found them out, ruined the illusion - that made me public enemy number one. Was it simply that I was white? That I reminded them of home, of a wife or a daughter or even a sister? Perhaps they knew that a woman, looking on, saw through the ruse. While Mike might be envious, indulge in the fantasy of a sexy Thai girlfriend coming on regardless of dollars or baht, I was going to see the transaction for what it was immediately. Their eyes followed me as we passed, and if there was an uncomfortable edge to walking that street, it wasn’t the sex being sold, it was the enmity I felt directed my way by so many male eyes. Ruining an illusion is no way to win a popularity contest, even when the illusion is solely in the eye of the beholder.

I get my kicks above the waistline, sunshine

Happy Thanksgiving

Have some turkey for us - we'll toast you some New Zealand beer from our CampaVan. ;-)

Neither Fish nor Fowl

Hong Kong, that gloriously acclaimed meeting of East and West – it just didn’t light my fire. Maybe I’m jaded. Maybe, spoiled by the bizarre glamour of Tokyo and the brash striving of Shanghai and the surprising solidity of Beijing, I’ve come to Hong Kong too late. Too long British to be truly Asian, too essentially Asian to be truly British and too built up to be as down at the heels as it appears at street level, I never got a good handle on Hong Kong, I never saw the appeal.

I owe it a disclaimer, of course – we weren’t there but 48 hours, a mere pitstop on our southward trek from the formality of Japan to the all out chaos of Bangkok. In that way, it was a timely stop; the glittery glass buildings stretching up to the sky crowd hungrily on limited land, packed with high end shopping of the platinum-card-only variety while the streets outside and in the alleys leading up to the Mid-Levels are smudged with grime and pushcarts. Narrow double decker trolleys hurtle along the neon streaked streets; crossing to Kowloon produces the street peddlers and pushy salesmen we’d left behind in Shanghai, as though Kowloon side, closer to China proper, allows that case of fake watches while Hong Kong Island looks down her formerly British nose and sniffs.

The indoor malls are packed with the kind of goods that start at four figures. The commerce palace attached to our hotel, reflecting money in every direction, had more designer goods than I’ve ever seen in one place…but no one was buying. In Tokyo, at least, people were clearly wearing the couture. Here the marble floors echoed, monotony broken by gawkers, locals heading to the food court and wealthy tourists spending Hong Kong dollars on what were clearly not the bargains they had once been. Mind the gap, please. Lorries. Pret a Manger. The British hangover is in full force, with more signs in English than anything else. We ate dinner at a well recommended restaurant, The American Place, that could have been any banquet hall Chinese at home. The food wasn’t bad, but it confirmed our growing suspicion that we just don’t like Cantonese food and drove us to Pret a Manger the next noon for lunch.

We found ourselves making more comparisons than discoveries. The buildings scale the side of a hill as they do in Monaco – but without the beautiful water of the Mediterranean. There’s a jungle like quality to the foliage as in Singapore, but without the extensive lush parks and public spaces. The alleys and lanes untouched by western brands have the same frenetic quality as in Shanghai, but without the old Chinese buildings and tea houses. Hong Kong was a long list of similarities falling short, and the three economic powerhouses of the east seemed, to us, to be a timeline of progress: Hong Kong was what Singapore is and what Shanghai is striving to be.

My mental image of Hong Kong, an exotic outpost of glorious Britain where 007 heads to the Bottoms Up club and into the darkness of the harbor, followed by sinister cars and doe-eyed women in silk slit up to their waists – how could it still exist today? I know better, really, but I still expected the glamour to rise up, shimmering, from the harbor or dark alleys, a whiff of something more exotic than fumes and money. Instead, I found a city too Western to be exotic, and too mundanely modern to be exciting. For thrills, I think I’ll stick to Shanghai.

Anyone Wanna See Japan?

Photos are posted. Beware the Inari, he's known to possess humans by climbing under their fingernails. Give him an offering of sweet sushi and sake, please.

(Art)ifice and Aesthetic

Japan is not pretty. There’s really no other way to put this, but it is true. Tokyo is downright ugly as a city, and Kyoto isn’t much better. The cities and towns that we flew through on the Shinkansen didn’t have any noticeable charm, and with the exception of a few blue fish scale style roofs, all the buildings carried some tonal quality of gray. The landscape might have been nice, but it was hard to see beneath the sprawl and telephone lines and industrial plants. We did pass a patch of rice fields between the airport in Narita and Tokyo – the bright spring of the rice plants, spindly against cocoa soil, was a cultivated contrast to the thick forested slopes of dark green and black that rimmed the small fields. This was pretty, an encouragement to slip away from the cities next time and head to the most remote area we can reach without speaking Japanese – I do think that the islands have a beauty of their own, but with some 70% of the population clustered around the main corridor (through which we admittedly traveled) it isn’t easy to spot.

None of this is to say that the Japanese aesthetic isn’t exquisite, I’d venture to say the most refined I’ve ever encountered. They’ve made an art of simplification, stripping down all excess until the essential core of an item is reached. Perhaps this is why the buildings have no style and are nothing more than concrete boxes – they fulfill their function in that way, and no additional decoration is considered necessary. I’d prefer to think that, honestly, than to just consider them ugly postwar shells, but either way I have no doubt that the interiors are perfect, spare without being empty, quiet and calm.

There was an ikebana show at the swanky department store in Kyoto yesterday; in the midst of shopping mania, impeccably dressed older women in suits and heels lined up to view the creations, some carrying their own, carefully wrapped in patterned paper, for entry into a judged show. Often no more than a few twigs and blooms, ikebana is emblematic of the pared down aesthetic that rules in this obsessively private and formal culture. At first glance, it appears both casually arranged and too simple to be worth any time, but if I force myself to look deeper, I see that every bit of every twig has been maneuvered and set just so, every blossom turned the most pleasing way, and I understand the care taken with small things, the immense attention to detail that could slip by unnoticed. The gardens take this to a new level; once I pushed past the (American?) need to categorize, label and move on, I found the gardens to be endlessly fascinating. I could have spent hours gazing out over a lily pad pond, hearing but only glimpsing the cleverly hidden waterfall at the back and watching the lazy movement of the koi.

If shopping is the national mania (and there’s plenty to suggest that it is), the packaging of the goods takes the aesthetic sense to a new level. Each item is carefully wrapped, sometimes twice, before going into a bag. Often a gift card or other trinket is carefully laid in the bag as well and the entire thing will always be sealed shut with a bit of tape or a fancy sticker before it is handed over ceremoniously. We bought four perfect cookies from a very high end shop in Kyoto. Each was wrapped in its own individual cello-bag and taped shut before going, in color coordinated order, into a longer bag and finally into a tissue lined carrier bag with a small ice pack. Four cookies cost us 720 Yen, and I’m fairly sure that at least half of that cost went to support the packaging and the close to ten minutes it took to wrap those poor cookies up. In each individual plastic package of the small cakes we bought in the Tokyo station we found a small package of silica gel as well.

Food, especially sweet or specialty food, is always sold in large packages, ready for gift giving and wrapped two to three times, and any purchase triggers the question “is it for a gift?” The wrapping isn’t less beautiful if you say no, but it may only be three layers instead of four, and almost always indicates a different sticker on the package. Paying is a ritual in itself – money is handed back and forth with both hands, if it is touched at all – often it is laid (with both hands) into a tray lined with nubbly plastic and moved between the cashier and the purchaser without obvious contact. This small transaction is emblematic of the rituals that seem to surround all contact in Japan: extremely formal and rigid, and polite to a fault. I’ve learned to not take my money and turn away until both the cashier and I have completed two rounds of domo arigato, gozaimas and bows. If I do, I feel odd and the cashier looks confused.

It’s necessary to plan for twice as much time as you think you need for any transaction as the pleasantries surrounding even a ticket purchase are long. We asked the Conrad concierge to make us a dinner reservation one night – he and the restaurant had a ten minute conversation before we got to the essence of the situation and he explained that the tatami room was full, could we sit at a table? Manners here take formal beyond polite and into the realm of totally artificial, at least to the outsider, and there is an extreme reluctance to impose yourself on anyone else in any way. In stores, there is always an apology for the time it has taken to package your purchase appropriately, but the understanding is that simply does take that long and the apology is for politeness, just as the acceptance is. 

People here looked at Ponteuf longingly, but we had to approach them before they would talk to us. Once we did there was often lots of giggling and apologies for perfect English, but we rarely had anyone approach us. A candy store owner did, once, very embarrassed. When I left her store she asked if she could one more time, squeeze the armadillo. It isn’t that I find the people cold – they’re not, and more than once we had people offer help or directions, or gentle instruction at a meal – but they are so private that it is hard to see beyond the public mask they all wear. As a brash American, it is hard for me to understand this insular culture, and I attribute some of it to the necessary development of inner life when living in close quarters on a bit of land separated from the rest of the world by cold water. Things are done a particular way here, and always have been: that rigidity is still evident.

While I love the gardens, and I enjoy the temples and shrines (shrines, less formal and more quirky, are always more fun to visit), the “fine arts” of sculpture and painting leave me cold, and I attribute some of that to the rigidity of everything. Artists are never discussed for their talent, only for their skill – the artistic forms are learned. Looking at paintings in Himeji Castle, I had a hard time figuring out which were old and which were recent, so unchanging (to the untrained eye) has been the style. I read once that Western art tells you something while Asian art lures you in, but I’ve yet to be lured by the painting and squat sculptures as I have by the arching bridges and towering red tori.

The aesthetic and the artifice of the culture come together, for me, in a giant big bang when people watching. The men aren’t as interesting as the women - they fall into two categories: salaryman (in rumpled but beautifully cut suit) or effeminate hipster with spiked hair, lazy eyes and very expensive ripped jeans. No, it is the women that fascinate me. The schoolgirls in their perfect uniforms, penny loafers and scrunched down socks, pony tails and pleated skirts – they’re appealingly fresh faced and wholesome. Cute, not a word that I normally find descriptive, works extremely well. Out of uniform, the women seem to fall into three categories, though like the ikebana, there are millions of shades of subtlety within those brackets. Not shades of color, though. Women here wear black, gray, dark brown … or pale pink. The odd blue or taupe floats by, but for the most part, the palette is limited.

The most noticeable are the goth girls, wearing Gloomy Bear and layers of ripped clothes, spiky hair and high heels. On the other end of the spectrum are the girlie girls, silk roses in their hair, crystal necklaces, velvet belts and lace handbags and ribbons around the tops of knee high socks that almost reach pale pink pleated chiffon skirts. The middle range are the glamorous ones, some looking like a slightly young, slightly overdone Jackie O (would she really have worn six strands of pearls?) but still stunning in clothes that clearly cost more than I make in a month. Others in this category are mod, hip glamour, all high heeled boots with Burberry shorts. Rip a page from Glamour or Vogue, add one more accessory, and you’ve got 70% of Tokyo women. Slouchy cowboy boots with pink roses and glitter tassels, paired with shorts and a silk shirt? Tottering high heels with knee socks? If it exists in some high end store, there’s a woman in Tokyo wearing it with something it was never meant to go with – and yet, they pull it off. Maybe all the excess is a release from the severe aesthetic of formal Japan, a freedom from the manners and the rules and the tight sash of the obi – or maybe it is just another mask, another way of making it in a rigid world. We tend to think of dress as personal expression, but maybe in Japan it, like so many other things that Westerners see as personal, doesn’t reach to the real inner self. Artifice, aesthetic – regardless of what any of what I saw actually means, if it means anything at all, it forms a fascinating portrait of a country that may be unknowable, but that I’d like to keep meeting.

Taking Fresh to a Whole New Level

On our first night in Tokyo, we got stupidly lucky. I really didn’t want to leave the Conrad – there was a spa, and room service, and the only Gordon Ramsay restaurant in Asia, and I wanted to stay put. We’d considered going to Disneyland for a few hours, but by the time we got out the door it was clear that we’d spend most of our time in transit, so we decided (or rather Mike decided, and I acquiesced because I knew that I’d later regret staying in) to find dinner and check out Shibuya before succumbing to the bed.

I actually took a guidebook to Tokyo with us, albeit a small, Lonely Planet city guide, but it worked well enough and it listed an Izakaya place under the train tracks that was run by a native English speaker. We knew izakaya, having eaten and loved it in Vancouver one cold Friday night, but we weren’t sure how far we would get with a menu of Japanese bar food without a translation, so the English speaker seemed like a good choice. Of course, the book failed to mention that the Romaji name, Shin Hi No Moto, would not be posted and also failed to give the name in Kanji (bad Lonely Planet) so we walked up and down a strip of what looked like seedy bars for a while before asking a woman in an open shop. Luckily for us, doko is where in Japanese, so it was easy to remember for its similarity to dove in Italian and she walked us down the street to a square of light on the sidewalk flanked with Guinness signs. Ah ha.

Climbing the few steps up, we spotted a white guy, and so knew we were in the right spot. He only had seats at the bar, which became ours for the duration of our time in Tokyo, and in those seats we learned more about sashimi, simple Japanese food and Shochu than we’d ever thought possible. I don’t know if we looked like someone else, or if he’s just kind to hungry travelers, but Andy took us under his wing and fed us. By the last night, I said “sashimi” and he picked out what I ate, which is the best way, I’m convinced, to eat anything new. The food we ate may not translate on paper to anything special, but the simplicity of the preparation, the straightforward sauces and garnishes and the sheer freshness of the fish made everything memorable. Simple salt grilled fish tasted sweet, with the tiniest hint of brine. Tempura’d everything was ethereal, but the lotus root might have been the best, all nutty and firm underneath a cloud of batter. Squid innards doused with sake and baked in tinfoil reminded me of sucking the head on crawfish, but the miso grilled cod stole the show. Buttery and rich, it melted on the tongue – sweet, sour and salty all at once. It takes three days of marinating to reach that stage of perfection, and it isn’t a taste I’ll soon forget.

The first night, we started with sake, but a few inquiries got us a great lesson in shochu. Distilled spirits of rice, wheat or sweet potato, shochu can be drunk straight on the rocks or cut with various sodas or juices. We tried it one night with fresh grapefruit – we were given a bottle of soda water, a grapefruit cut in half and a juicer, and it was good. Good also was the kumquat shochu he had us try, though alcoholics that we are, we both liked the straight stuff. Similar to schnapps, it’s a bracing swallow, and the moment before the flavor hits is reminiscent of the nasty stuff that goes into punch in college, but if you can survive past the shudder, the mellow grape-nut essence of the wheat or the sweetness of the rice comes through. On a more accessible but no less wonderful note was the Cassis and Oolong blend that we drank like water. That’s a drink we’ll be incorporating into our repertoire.

The sashimi, though – I’d wanted to have one very expensive, very good sushi meal in Tokyo, and we had one quite expensive quite good one, but riding in the cab from there back to Andy’s for a nightcap of shochu (and, as it turned out, more sashimi) Mike and I decided that although it was good, it didn’t blow us away. At home, a sushi meal usually has a highlight or two, and the rest of the fish becomes filler. Here, all the fish was as good or better as the highlights at home, and we discovered the pleasures of sardine and different kinds of mackerel. We like that cheap oily fish – it walks a fine line between great and foul, and that excitement is what keeps me coming back to it. At Andy’s, though, sashimi reigns, and the whole fish that came to us on a plate, sashimi artfully arranged along its middle, blew any of the carefully constructed sushi we’d had at the restaurant out of the water.

Stick to the sashimi, Andy told us, and from then on we did. I would at home, too, except there you’re penalized for wanting just the fish, thanks, and nothing but the fish. In Japan, the sashimi is slightly cheaper, a nod to the cost and skill of the sushi chef, the opposite of at home where the cheaper rice lowers the cost of nigiri.

Andy and his chef got a kick out of just how many orders of Budi we placed (this is the king of yellowtail, and one bite will make you forget any hamachi you’ve ever eaten – buttery, rich and almost steak-like, it surpasses any other fish I’ve tried) and I think as a reward for our enthusiasm, Andy invited us to go with him to the Tsukiji market on Friday morning, fish shopping. We like any kind of behind the scenes tour, but this was seriously exciting – Tsukiji is the king of all fish markets, its own city within a city and the hallowed halls of multi thousand dollar tunas. Going with an insider was the best, and icing the cupcake was the fact that he wanted to go at 10am rather than the ungodly 6 called for by Lonely Planet.

How to describe Tsukiji? Pronouced “Skee-Gee,” it takes up a giant portion of the city, a sprawling warehouse of crates and trucks and people and quick little freight loaders that have the right of way. Oh, and fish. Fish like I’ve never, ever seen before. Andy told us that after twenty years, he’s still seeing fish turn up that he doesn’t recognize. The market operates by its own rules, on its own schedule. The fishing boats come in early morning – controlled by only four companies. The catch is sold at auction in the giant sheds that run along the back of the complex – the buyers are the stall holders within the market itself. These middlemen then resell the fish to the restaurant buyers until about 10 or 11 (we were the last of the bunch) and then finally to the supermarkets.

We walked through a maze of aisles and rows, so close to the dripping of melting ice and fish that we had to turn sideways to squeeze through. The floor was wet, the people were wet – and yet, there was no smell of fish in the air. Trays of pinkish red octopi, perfect curled flowers on ice. Whole stands selling nothing but shellfish, scallops still in their fluted white homes, mussels the side of my outstretched hand, spiral shells with funny yellow feelers peeking out the bottoms. One store sold only oysters, one only eel. Scattered here and there were shops that looked curiously empty, save for a lone lump of scarlet fish. Tuna sellers, Andy said.

I’ve never seen such a wide variety of shrimp – from tiny little things to prawns as long as my forearm. I asked about the difference and what it was used for, and Andy plucked one slightly wriggling thing from a barrel and wrenched off its feeler end, handing me the blue and green and turquoise tail, a feathered handle for a curl of pearlescent meat. “Sashimi,” he said, grinning. “Can you handle it?” Soft and slightly sticky and so sweet it tasted like sugar – yes, this I could handle. Talking about uni got us a similar response. I mentioned that I’d had it once when it was semi-sweet and Andy grimaced. “Sugar,” he said. “It should always be like sugar.” Again, this taste was like sugar, covering that off rot taste I’ve found in uni before and converting me from someone who thought sea urchin was foul to someone who would eat it again.

One of his vendors gave us hot canned coffee, another sweets. Everywhere we went we watched Andy inspect the fish, poke and prod at it. We learned the difference between farmed and wild, saw proof that a fresh fish has red gills and clear eyes, wished we could take all of it home. Andy bought four or five trays of an odd, milk white substance, looking like little globules of fat or partially melted ice cream. Shiroco. We had no idea, and he told Mike it was a good thing he hadn’t had it the night before, or he would have served it to him, a taste, he said, of your own medicine. Popular among the Japanese men and with a reputation for “putting lead in your pencil” we were looking at cod sperm sacs. Oddly, we did eat it in Kyoto – a ball of it came on our tempura plate. Not horrible, not exciting, but certainly one for the odd food lists.

Beyond the sheer size of the market and the fun of being there, I think what left the biggest impression on us both was the freshness. A tray of scallops were presented for Andy’s inspection. He flicked them, and they recoiled, twitching. Two pieces of octopus arm lay on a bed of ice. The vendor came over and knocked one with his knuckles and the arm reared up and flipped to the side. Keep in mind that it was in no way attached to the actual octopus! My favorite was the squid. Lying side by side in a Styrofoam tray smudged with their ink, the squid were a dull grayish white, speckled with darker dots. When Andy ran a finger down them, the dots moved and changed position, sparking to life in pricks of green and blue, looking for all the world like fiber optic toys. This was fresh, and the only drawback to it all was the sad knowledge that to be that close to such perfect seafood again, I’d need to fly back to Japan. I just don’t think Whole Foods is going to like it when I flick their scallops.

If there was any doubt at all about the quality of the fish leaving Tsukiji, it was eliminated at lunch. Just a stone’s throw from the giant market shed is a tiny restaurant row. We squeezed into a little sushi place with barely enough room for a counter and 10 seats and three menu items: sushi plate 1, sushi plate 2 and sashimi plate. Heeding Andy’s advice we each ordered the sashimi and descended into sheer gustatory bliss. That was my perfect Japanese meal, and it has been duly entered into the annals as one of the top meals of my life. Thanks to a bit of dumb luck, and thanks to Andy, we took home a priceless souvenir of Tokyo. We will go back to reclaim our seats at his bar and let him feed us again!

China Photos, Posted

There are far too many, I'm sure, but it was hard to winnow them down to just these. Also check the Hotel album for the glorious Conrad and the glorious Toto... and Food for Tako Balls, among other strange and wonderful things. Like, um, World of Warcraft Coke...

Anything anyone wants to hear about? I'm open for new topics...