Wally Nes’ Blog

So, the Koreans won’t tolerate me for more than 3 months. We therefor headed to our old flame: Japan. We would land at Kansai airport, and Koya-san, an old destination of ours, is just a couple 10s of km east of there.
Unfortunately, there’s also some mountain stuff in between there, so we had to go to Osaka before we could go down to there. Which made our very efficient flight/travel plan somewhat less efficient.

We flew from Inchon airport with an overbooked plane. This cause many many problems and resulted in us getting businessclass seats.
Karmarific. Lotsa legroom, good service. I can get used to that.
Then there was the trainride. Nice view, good on time and it was just past nightfall when we were dropped off by our accommodation by the free bus. The free bus was free because we only had big bills and the bus didn’t accept those.
Youth Hostels are the same the world over . . . . or are they

Real rice paper walls though, which meant that we could hear the neighbour snore as well as in any dormroom the world over

Last time I went to Koya san it was packed with tourists, but last time had been a weekend. Turns out that even in summer Koya san is all but deserted by tourists during weekdays. If you ever visit this place, go on a weekday. Serene mountain monasteries come off better without crowds of tourists.

The first day we went for a hike in the peaks surrounding the temples. As women weren’t allowed in this very sacred site this was as close as female pilgrims could come to this place fro centuries. The hike started pleasantly



But it’s important to remember karma can be a bitch.
First there was a bit of this:

And then there was going down the mountain as fast as we could hoping lightning wouldn’t strike us or too near us (It didn’t oblige on the last bit) and definitely not getting the camera out for it would drown. While initially pausing for the storm to pass on the very top of the mountain, I said it would likely stop the moment we got down.

This . . . is my sock

We took off the sock, the moment we got back to civilization.
As you can tell, the rain had stopped.
2 minutes before
This is a book we borrowed for the trip

One which we will certainly replace for the owner btw.
There were 3 books in the bag at the top of the mountain.

Next time we go hiking, we’re checking weather reports.
And so, the next day, with reports indicating mostly clear skies, we set of on Saturday to hike from Koya-san to kudoyama.

A very pleasant hiking experience at times

with many bits of wildlife on the way down



And at least 3 snakes and many many spiders which didn’t make it to film.

The trail we walked has been hiked for many many many years. Centuries even, which makes the path somewhat . . . .well trodden and slightly eroded at times


It was usually well cared for

Though not always kept to its original purpose

Usually dangerous to get off the path

and many many other things. I’ll leave you with a link to the album.

We arrived after 9 hours of hiking at the bottom of the hill with just enough cash left to buy tickets to Osaka.
Last time we were in Japan we had bank cards and mobile phones which all worked there.

This time we spent 1 hour walking around after bank closing times looking for an ATM to accept our damn foreign cards already. Citibank Japan didn’t accept citibank Korea, and from there on it was an uphill struggle getting anything to accept our Dutch/French cards.

We eventually got cash, a place to sleep and the first restaurant we walked into was a damn Korean restaurant. 3rd one did the trick though and we fell in to an exhausted slumber.

The next day was spent in Osaka, lounging and getting back to the airport. Where we were told there were no seating arrangements, but there were problems with me entering Korea. Eventually they did let us on the plane, but we were removed from our bulkhead seats because we had seat 20. Karma was back with a vengeance.

We arrived just fine and I’ll leave you with a picture of one of the things that makes Japan great:

A wasabi kitkat.

And just in case Sarah reads this blog:

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Quote of the day:

What in the world was running through that warped, evil scatological mind of His when He robbed old people of the power to control their bowel movements.

- Yossarian

After our first installment the impact didn’t just stop.

#1, Sitting.

Sitting is hard. Most of us have been spoiled with chairs growing up and even those of us that have know of the uncomfortable chair and all the different forms and guises it comes in.

In Korea, luckily, we’ve not had any run-ins with these uncomfortable chairs. One comes to our place and will notice we have no chairs. No furniture of any kind actually*.
This is what makes sitting hard. We have no chairs, so we sit on the ground. But we work/play/lounge/watch with laptops. which we precariously balance on different parts of our anatomy.
There’s the knee-hop, which is comfortable, but not very stable
There’s the doggy style, which is very stable but results in significantly less screen time for the “dog”
There’s one leg out stretch, which isn’t stable but can easily be held in place with one hand and has a low maintenance threshold.
There’s . . . well, you get the pictures, a hundred different ways in which laptop operating can be accomplished.

When sitting in unusual positions it has happened to all of us that blood flow gets cut off. We’ve all stood up to the feeling of millions of little pins and needles shooting through our veins. If we were lucky we’ve never had to get up to a completely non-responsive leg followed swiftly by an amusing (hopefully) and not too painful (again, hopefully) crash to the ground.

So why do I mention this . . .  well, it seems knee-hop is very comfortable . . .
But only until you try to get up.
You’ve had sleeping legs from sitting incorrectly?
You’ve had sleeping arms from your partner lying on your arm while hugging them?
Execute the knee-hop incorrectly and have a sleeping penis!**

Also, turns out that the knee-hop puts my belly in contact with the audio plug opening bits, putting me under constant low-voltage

#2, Jaded

We’re it.
I see people’s reaction to stuff here and it’s 7 kinds of awesome.

Look, look, look. They make plastic versions of their food so you can see what you get!!!!!!
Japan had that.

DAYUM, would you look at the way that girl is dressed??????
tbh, it’s just short. It’s not even any kind of crazy.

OHmahgad, the subway is so clean and it runs on TIME!!!!!
OK, admittedly, that is kinda nice. But they don’t run as often as the Tokyo network. And not as on time as the Swiss.

Fashion victim hikers
I’d be shocked, but only mild amusement fills me as Europe/America has its share of couples with matching bikes and *shiver* anoraks.

The food, it is so exotic
Really? I mean, we’ve lived in other places in SE asia, it’s just rice, little vegetables, meat/fish and hotsauce. Lotsa hotsauce.

None of the women here EVER go out in public without make-up
Yeah, but at least some of em don’t wear heels. You’d never see a Japanese woman without foundation either. In Korean faces it’s just easier to see as the heads don’t wobble so much.

Men here wear shiny suits
A friend of mine got married in one of those.

#3, The bread.

Korea, Korea. You’ve come from pretty basically a 3rd world country, earning less than €1,- per capita on average, to what you are now in only half a century. On your road here you’ve had help, you’ve had examples, you’ve had role-models.
You’ve learned so much from the Americans . . .
Including those thing you really should have asked to the French or the Dutch.
I have it on some good authority your cheeses are bad duplicates of American cheese . . .  BAD duplicates of what are already considered bad cheeses.
And the bread . . . your staple for that is based on wonderbread . . . really?

What we won’t suffer for our lifestyle. Wonderbread . . . .

#4, We’re getting fit.

Well . . . fitter. I haven’t gotten all my sport moments planned in yet, but I went from living in Holland, with a verticle gradiant of some  0.004, to living some 100 metres vertical above our metro/bus station. We travel back and forth to this bus/subway station once a day, sometimes twice.
Raphaëlle also experiences this, but she refuses to write funny blogposts about it. Though she uses a few choice words with me to describe it.

#5, Our English, it is improving.

Which might be considered odd. In Japan we were surrounded by the Japanese and the Japanese fiercely adhere to Engrish.
The Koreans aren’t any better or worse than the Japanese in this, or at least, not that we can tell. Slightly different accent, maybe a bit better/worse at the language itself.  The T-shirts are about as funny/comprehensible. Yet, here . . . our English improves.

You see, most of our friends are waeguks.
And it seems 80% of waeguks here are either GI or English teacher. For some reason we have yet to fraternize with any American General Infantry types (Though we met an Army wife) which makes ALL our friends English teachers.
They use big words too.
And can explain their proper usage.
Leery, wary with a negative connotation. New word learned.

Now, if we could only get around to doing that with Korean.

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* Written on the day we’re having a closet and a bookcase delivered
** Being of male gender helps with this fascinating new experience.

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Quote of the Day:

I am like a taxidermist, I’ll mount anything.

- T-shirt of woman on my commuter train in Japan

What side of the street do you walk on?

For most of us, that’s answered by a full mouthed ‘Right’. For the right is the only right side of the street.
Or is it? The side of the street on which you walk is a matter of place and time.

When I was a kid I learned basic road safety in the Netherlands. Meaning, you walk on the right side of the road, cars move on the right side of the road and bicycles move on the right side of the road. From the outside in: Pedestrians, Bicyclists, Motorists.
It was on a bike I first broke this rule. I was fast and sleek, neigh unstoppable was I, on my bike, and the traffic rules certainly didn’t apply to I.
I don’t specifically recall whether I got an earful for that behaviour, but I suppose I should have. And it’s strange therefor that the likely culprit of that earful was the man who introduced me to walking on the left side of the road.

You see, when everyone transports themselves on the same side of the road, the slowest transporter (the walker) will have everything coming from behind him at, in some cases, frightening speeds quite close to oneself. At that time (6-9 years old) I wasn’t well known for walking in a straight line, or keeping my attention focused on relevant things (like speeding cars) and would often, unexpectedly, move sideways into the path of an oncoming bike/car. I have never been like this, but there’s a few instances of word-use not fit for my virginal ears done by heavily swerving bicyclists that stand out in my memory.
If, on the other hand, as a pedestrian you walk on the left side of the street you are still in a spot reserved for pedestrians (the side of the road) and you can see things hurtling towards you prompting you to pay attention, where, had they come from behind, they might’ve caused me a nasty little surprise.

In England and Japan (India, South Africa, Indonesia etc), walking on the left hand side of the street, or, as we call it, the wrong side of the street, is normal. The rule even. Well, mostly. I think I’ve mentioned once or twice in conversation (looking back through my posts I see I haven’t really blogged about it.) You see, in Japan you walk on the left side of the street. Cars go on the left side of the street. Bicyclists go . . .  well, there’s not really a set place for them.
Osaka is the big exception. In Osaka they walk on the right side of the street, cars still go on the left hand side of the street though. Can you imagine what that would be like, changing sides halfway through a country? I think there’s a half-British Island which does this somewhere. This causes a bit of a problem, because Osaka isn’t a really clearly defined concept. It just sorta edges out, like so many other metropoli/metropolae/metropoliseses? I lived about an hour outside of what can regularly be considered Osaka, but most of the people I lived with did work in Osaka. Meaning that half the people would walk on the right (those that visited Osaka regularly) and half would walk on the left (regular Japanese). It also meant that when I was hurtling down the hill I would never be sure what instinct would be most prominent in my dodgee. Would it move to the right or left. All in all, people just sorta walked . . . wherever.

Korea now, Korea is an interesting case. Korea drives on the right hand side of the road. But trains drive on the left, as this system was built when the Japanese ruled here. The metro system though, was built with French help, so that’s on the right hand side. Except on those stations where they connect to the railway where it’s left again. So . . . . that’s kinda confusing. The walking though. Walking is done wherever and that struck me as kind of strange. The only place you’ll see indicators which side to walk on is in the subway and it’s on the right. There’s actually a campaign about it now

You see, the Koreans used to walk on the left in the subway and on the street. But then a few years ago the government said that right was the way they’d now walk. So right is the side people now walk on. Except the ajoshi and ajoma (Old man, Old woman) who will damn well walk where they’ve always walked, even if that way was initially beat into them by the Japanese oppressors.
This means though, that as a weiguk (foreigner) you will now, no matter what side of the street you walk on, be walking on the wrong side of the street for someone.

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Quote of the Day:

Work is the refuge of those that don’t have anything better to do

- Oscar Wilde

I miss a lot of things about Japan. In an online game I play at my LARP forum I reconnected with Shibuya Crossing.

In case you forgot just how populous Tokyo could be. This one is for you

Tokyo police have begun a week-long crackdown against the twice-daily scourge of gropers on commuter trains.

Undercover teams have been deployed on some lines in a bid to catch molesters in the act on crowded trains.

Last year more than 6,000 people were arrested on suspicion of groping or taking unsolicited photographs.

According to one survey, nearly two-thirds of young women have been groped on public transport. Some train lines have introduced women-only carriages.

Website ‘recommendations’

Tokyo police have begun what is being described as a “groping prevention week”.

There are conspicuous extra police patrols in stations handing out leaflets, and undercover teams have been deployed on trains to try to catch men in the act.

Gropers can be imprisoned for up to seven years in Japan.

Local reports say the police are particularly concerned that gropers are using the internet to co-ordinate their activities and form gangs.

Several suspects arrested in recent months are said to have told officers they had targeted particular train lines because of recommendations they had read on websites.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8254389.stm

for the source.

Japan is a very nice, safe country. But this isn’t one of its better faces.

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Quote of the Day:

“You Christians are so unlike your Christ.”

- Mohandas Ghandi

In today’s society one can tell a lot about a culture by watching it’s TV programs.

I read something to that effect at least. I have also read some studies to that effect. The effects of “Sex and the City on promiscuity of Modern Women” or something to that effect. Also the influence of things like Jerry Springer on your average American and not to mention Oprah. If you want the actual studies: go read a scientific blog or smtgh.

Japan, as with many other things, is a bit weird in this respect. And while I can see certain links between western television and cultural symptoms I have a far harder time with this for Japanese shows. I have given you some taste of Japanese TV already with “Pithagoras suwichi” and the “Algorithm dance” in Wally’s Blog – the Youtube edition. But maybe I should delve a bit deeper into the subject. Now I don’t see the link partly because I don’t understand half of what’s going on, it is true, but also because well . . .

Let me just give you examples and you can tell me why I have a harder time linking Japanese TV to reality

First of all, let me show some of the influence of Japanese TV outside of Japan
The algorithm march on grand scale
OK, if I were in prison in the Philippines I would probably need to find some kind of way to spend my time. And at least they didn’t go crazy with the idea.

I’ll just point you in the direction of some other gems available on Japanese Television.

The Zuikin Girls managed to score big combining exercise and learning useful English at the same time.
Click here or here for a real show fragment. And can you really find fault with their approach? It combines a lot of things popular in Japan. Cute women, exercise, learning English and poor plots. We’re basically only missing the hentai tentacle porn in that show.

A different genre is the gameshow. Now in the west we have such things as the weakest link, wheel of fortune and (gulp) Lingo. Then there is All you need is love, the mega blubber power race and so on and so forth.

The Japanese have this. or this. And there’s this bit for the people who thought the first one isn’t funny enough. Same show.

Sport is important in Japan. Same as it is here but regarding different sports. Well, unless you are American. Seems the Japanese are as obsessed with baseball and golf as you lot are. But there are still significant differences.
as shown here.

Other interesting gameshow topics:
It’s like “wie van de 3″ but different.
There’s also the gameshow where they have to find obscure objects in people’s houses and they get shocked if the other team finds it first. But I need a link to that, can’t find the damn show on youtube.

Educational Children’s TV
Very important that they learn this properly.

OK, all of this is just wacky TV. I’ll admit that. We have plenty of those already, Japan isn’t unique in that respect. Who would, in their right mind, try to extrapolate relevance to society from that.

So I give you

Hard Gay

I dare you.
I double dare you

Analyse that!