Ten Commandments of Travel (with a mate)

According to Jim Klima, on the "Travels with a Spousal Unit" site, there are some rules when traveling with your mate. For your edification, they are listed below...


Ten Commandments of Travel (with a Mate)

1. GOOD, BAD AND UGLY. The best experiences, the worst debacles and the most unforgettable moments happen serendipitously and cannot be planned, anticipated or avoided. Spurn thy mate's desire for hotel reservations, a fixed itinerary or an automatic transmission.
   
   
2. VAUABLES. Safeguard thy most precious possessions (flyswatter, ear plugs and universal sink stopper) even from thy mate. Store photocopies of important documents such as passport, airline ticket and credit cards on thy mate's body. Also memorize, repeat memorize, thy mate's PIN numbers.
   
   
3. MATESHIP. Thou shall not abandon thy traveling companion in spite of loud snoring, racist or sexist remarks or contagious disease. Should thee become separated from one another by a rampaging mob, insane vehicular and animal traffic or a frantic toilet search, return to the point of last eye contact.
   
   
4. TRANSPORT. When traveling by air, spend the night before sleeping in the airport lounge. When traveling by sea, always purchase tickets for deck passage. When traveling by bus or train, try to get a seat. Chain up thy luggage and drape thy mate over it.
   
   
5. EATING AND SLEEPING. Rotate food and lodging power (where to sleep and where to eat) on a daily basis. Decision-making (or getting even for thy mate's stinginess, eccentricity or poor choices) works best if applied unilaterally without regard for thy traveling companion.
   
   
6. HEALTH. The "healthy" one makes the decisions for the "sickie" who must obey even if it means abandoning the dream of a lifetime (crawling toward Everest Base Camp while spewing all over the track). Offer no sympathy for diarrhea--happens to all travelers. Tell thy mate to go with the flow and remind him or her that a proper loo is in the mind (and hamstring muscles) of the beholder.
   
   
7. SANITATION AND HYGIENE. Losing thy sense of clean is inevitable if thou are traveling right. Overlook thy mate's aroma du jour and wear only black skivvies. If thy mate's standards for sanitation and hygiene are not flexible (and comparable to thy own), thy trip is doomed.
   
   
8. SEX. If thou want sex on thy trip, bring it with thee. Life does not imitate the movies, romance novels or thou's horny dreams, especially for Americans, well men at any rate…ok, me. Keep close watch on thy mate around Italian men.
   
   
9. FUN. "You're young, you're free, you're on the other side of the world. For f**k's sake, have some fun!!!! Travel mantra observed on the bulletin board in a London hostel (the four exclamation points are theirs, not mine). Equally applicable to the young at heart.
   
   
10. ABOVE ALL ELSE. Disregard thy mate's worries, objections or nightmares and adhere to the Lonely Planet guidebook motto: "Don't worry about whether your trip will work out, just go."
    

China Trip Updates and a Great Movie Trailer

I am gradually getting to updating the posts made during May's trip to China with pictures that are now on the Flickr site. So far, Days 1-3 have been updated with some pictures.

In the meantime, while surfing around our old blog home Boots N'All, I found a link to a documentary called "A Map for Saturday" about the phenomenon of RTW backpacking. If you've never had the experience of backpacking around the world, it gives you a taste of what you're missing. A young lady sums it up this way: "It sounds like one big, long holiday, but you've got to meet people, you've got to find someplace to live, you've got to communicate in a foreign language."

So true...and to me, some of the best reasons for traveling.

MAP FOR SATURDAY is the product of a year’s travel through 26 countries on four continents. Emmy winning producer Brook Silva-Braga left his cushy gig with American TV network HBO to travel the world with five pounds of clothes and 30 pounds of video equipment.

The barebones production set-up yields an intimate window onto the world of long-term, solo travel; moments of stark loneliness and genuine revelation.

During the year, two-dozen solo travelers intersect with Silva-Braga, helping tell the story of the place they’ve met and the experience they share.

The film lands in Australia at mid-summer and in Nepal on the eve of revolution. There’s the challenge of Vietnam’s absurd traffic and Europe’s steep prices.

Beyond clichés of shagging backpackers and dubious self-discovery, Silva-Braga finds a hidden world of long-term, solo travelers. At times lonely and difficult; more often joyous, and always adventurous, A MAP FOR SATURDAY completes an around the world trip in 90 minutes.

Our first plug

As a way of breaking up the daily commute (about 2 1/2 hours on the road coming and going), I listen to a lot of different podcasts. The daily favorites are politics or tech related, but I have to say that I look forward to the approximately bi-weekly installment of Mark Peacock's Travelcommons Podcast. As he says, it's more about the journey than the destination.

In an entry a couple of weeks ago, Mark discussed the proliferation of local eateries inside of airports bringing regional flavors and favorites to travelers who may just be passing through. You can now find barbecue and burger joints, and a number of micro-breweries in almost any airport now.

When we lived in the Washington DC area, one of our favorite places to eat was 5 Guys, an incredible greasy burger place. We didn't have enough time to hit it last July when we were in town, but to our gastronomic delight found they had opened up a franchise inside Reagan National Airport.

Well, I remarked on our find in the comments of Mark's entry, and this week, Sand and Tsunamis made the big time with a mention in his podcast. While he was in DC recently, he went to find it, only to be denied because the restaurant wasn't in his departure concourse.

This may be Sand and Tsunamis' 15 minutes of fame, so go check it out. While you're there, take a listen to his other entertaining and insightful podcasts. We've had him on our favorite links section for a while now.

Packing Light

In all the traveling I've done, I like to think that I've been able to pare down to the absolute necessities. Apparently, I still have a long, long way to go.

Tim Ferriss, author of book The 4 Hour Work Week (and blog of the same name), took a trip to Maui back in the Summer, and managed to travel with about 10 pounds worth of stuff.

Take a look at his site, and in particular, the short movie outlining some of his packing strategies (namely, clothes that pack to small sizes). Very cool...

Flashback to the Empty Quarter, 2004

I was rooting through one of my old hard drives for pictures to post and came across this small movie from my trip into the Empty Quarter in 2004. I've been meaning to upload it to Youtube, and finally got around to it.

For the full story, click here or on the title above.

Baseball Been Berry, Berry Good to Us...

About a week ago, we went to see one of the last Yokohama Baystars games of the season. Though not big sports fans (other than Sumo of course), we still enjoy going to live baseball. Something about sitting in the stands, eating hot dogs and drinking beer makes for a fun day. There's a game on, you say? Those guys down there running around and stuff? I guess that's ok too.

Melody recently started a blog of her own, and she posted a good overview of our experience. It's something different than going to see the Orioles at Camden Yards. They still had hot dogs, and beer, though...so it was a good time.

Baseball teams here in Japan aren't usually named after cities like in the US. Instead, you have corporate sponsorship, and some (at least to gaijin like us) strange names. Like the Nippon Ham Fighters who take their name from a meat packing company. That would be like having a team called the "Hormel Deviled Chickens" in the US. Then there are the Chiba Lotte Marines, named after a brand of chewing gum. Do you think that anyone would root for the Wrigley "Big Reds?"

While there are the usual team names like "Giants" and "Tigers" you also see teams of not so typical team mascots such as "Carp," "Swallows" and the aforementioned "Ham Fighters" (though I bet you could get your butt kicked by a ham if it was big enough and swung by one of the Giants).

Besides the names, there are a few other differences, such as the teams have cheerleaders that come out in between innings to root the players on. Also, there is the fact that you DO NOT cheer for your team unless they are at bat. You'll get dirty looks...trust me. Even then, you have to stay with the approved, programmed cheers (none of which we knew) and say them at the same time as everyone else. It was sort of like going to Mass when I wasn't yet Catholic...everyone around us knew the right things to say. Since we didn't, we just clapped and whacked our little plastic bats together in time with everyone else. Still, a lot of fun was had by all.

Check out what Melody has to say about it. Here. And for more information on Japanese Major League Baseball, go here.

Oh yeah, the Baystars won, 6 to 4. Take that Chunichi Dragons!

Jet City Jimbo

A few years ago, when I first started getting interested in adventure travel, I found a website with some great travel writing kept up by a guy dubbed Jet City Jimbo. Nee Jim Klima, he and his wife wrote about their various travels, cleverly entitled "It will be so awful, it will be wonderful." They took trips in a huge truck with Dragoman, one of the oldest overlanding companies out there. (I went with Encounter Overland to Morocco in a similar truck...an incredible experience) Their stories were some of the most incredible accounts of adventure travel I've read. For instance, it took them over 30 days to cross Zaire (back when it was Zaire), and they spent much of that time mired in mud on the main highway across the country. In another account, they almost died in Nepal during a flash flood...reading this gripping story will give you shivers.

Unfortunately, a few months ago, I tried to get back to the site, and found it down. Through some sleuthing around on Google, I found another blogger who wrote about Jim, and mentioned that he was sick with cancer. Well, tonight, I got a subconscious prompt to check again, and found the site back up and operational, but with a caveat that Jim died in May. It was quite sad to find out...almost like I'd lost a travel partner. I learned a lot about independent travel from their site. Jim's wife is keeping the site up as a fitting memorial to his life.

Check it out. You won't be disappointed.

Rest in Peace, Jim...

Sumo Fun

Last weekend, we went with our friends Ginny and David to the Sumo Tournament going on in Tokyo. This is one of the classic things that you must do when living in Japan, and it did not disappoint.

As we arrived, the Kokugikan, where the tournament was happening, squatted over the skyline like the sumo wrestlers it contained. The excitement of finally getting an opportunity to see these gargantuans (to quote Mama Boucher from The Waterboy) up close was building. Several were hanging around the station, as if they were waiting for someone. Melody tried to get me to pick a fight with one, but I decided to wait until later.

We walked down the street to the front of the building, festooned with banners of the different wrestlers, and ran into (literally, almost) some of the junior Rikishi coming out from a side door after finishing their matches. Despite Melody's urging, I still didn't succumb to the temptation to take one on. I used to box in college, you know. I got a D, but at least I didn't have to take it in summer school. That would have been bad. Not only do all your friends leave, but you get to stay and get beaten up. Every. Single. Day. But I digress...

We all got out our tickets, which David (AKA Young David to tell us apart) had gotten through the Japan Tourism Bureau, and walked up to the ticket collector. He ripped off one end and pointed to a door on the garishly painted front of the building, while saying something about the number two. Eventually, we figured out that we had to go to Tea Stall #2, since we were occupying one of their booths.

The stadium is pretty much like any other, except that the lower deck is filled with small square cubicles about 5 feet by 5 feet square, into which you sit four Japanese or 2.892 Americans. It's something like one of those things used for veal calves that PETA is always complaining about. And all this for a mere $400 or so. The four of us were led to our box by a fellow carrying a pot of tea, one of the perks of having the box. You could also order bags of food in the form of o-bento boxes, yakitori, beer, and of course, more tea. The only problem was that, when you had to go because of all the tea, it required pretty much everyone to move around to allow one person to leave. And, your legs fell asleep. But still, I'd do it again...it was all part of the experience.

Since we arrived relatively early and while the lower ranking rikishi were fighting, there were very few spectators. Over the course of the afternoon, however, and especially later in the afternoon when the big names were out there, this would change, becoming pretty much standing room only.

For a great primer on Sumo, to include reviews of the most recent tournament, go here. The sport is a lot more than just two big, fat behemoths shoving each other around. Some of them were amazingly quick and nimble.

At about three PM, the juryo division started. This is the division in which you start to see rising stars, such as the Estonian Baruto, who had a lot of fans, including this one lady in a box next to ours, enthusiastically cheering him on.

At about 4 PM, the makuuchi division began their procession, each wearing their elaborately designed and expensive (over 1 million yen) sumo skirts. Don't go up and tease them saying, "Nice dress...your sister know you're wearing it?" They will take offense.

After each team (east and west) came in and performed the entrance ritual, it was time for the Yokozuna, or highest ranking rikishi, Hakuho, to make his entrance and perform the Yokozuna dance. There are currently two yokozuna (both Mongolian), but Asashoryu, was recently caught goofing around with some kids playing soccer while home in Mongolia. As he was excused from the upcoming tournament for an injury, it was an instant scandal resulting in his suspension from this and the next tournament. It affected him so badly that he reportedly is having something of a breakdown. Not what you'd expect of a guy who regularly faces and wins matches with 200kg angry men.

This was the moment we'd been waiting for. All (almost) the famous rikishi I've been following since becoming interested in Sumo when I arrived in Japan were beginning their bouts. My favorites include Kotooshu, who has sort of become the David Beckham of the sumo scene and is one of the potential yokozunas of the future, Iwakiyama, an average fighter, but charmingly funny looking with his smushed in face, and Takamisakari, whose antics pre-fight have garnered him a respectable following as well. The Russian brothers Roho and Hakurozan, and the Georgian, Kokkai, were also in this group.

The bouts were exciting, and I paid extra attention to Takamisakari's, and his entertainment factor. Sure enough, the crowd really got excited when he started pumping the air, getting himself fired up to compete. Unfortunately, it wasn't enough. Our friend Harumi's "boyfriend" lost...He was fun to watch, though.



The other exciting bouts, though all disappointments because they all seemed to lose, were Iwakiyama, Kokkai, and Kotooshu. But, all in all, despite that, it was an incredible day. Even the really, really, drunk guy who almost voided on my leg while at the urinal next to me just was part of the overall excitement and experience. As always, we enjoyed our time with Ginny and Young David. We had a chance to catch up a little bit on David's trip to China, a month or so after mine. He did some volunteer work with a travel company called Earthwatch, and worked in a small village in Inner Mongolia. Sounded like a great trip, and he's posted some pics at their Flickr site...check them out.

As we walked out of the Kokugikan in a crush of people, we got delayed for a short period, as the Imperial Princess had to leave first. It turns out that she's a big sumo fan as well. As we walked back to the train station, I took one last look at the building as it shone in the night. We'll do our best to get back for the next one.

FASCINATING ARTIST

 

Our friends Ginny and Daid (parents to Sinatra the cat seen in an earlier post) introduced us to a weblog called "Dooce" that we've really come to enjoy.  While surfing around there, though, I came across another site, showing some artwork by a guy named Brian Dettmer who does "Book Autopsies."  Basically, he carves away portions of the book to reveal words and pictures inside.  It's the first art that has made me say, "Wow." in a long time.  Check it out here. 

http://centripetalnotion.com/2007/09/13/13:26:26/

Back in the USA

I took a week and a half long business trip back to the US, escorting some Japanese around Atlanta and Washington DC. I got back to Japan last night, and am struggling with the jet lag.

Flying out, I upgraded to business class using some of my United miles. United's had a rough summer, but overall, my experience wasn't too bad. For some reason, when trying to arrange my flights to, from, and around the US, I was unable to get a direct flight to Atlanta, or back from DC. Delta flies direct, but apparently, there are no government fares for those legs. Which meant that I had to spend an additional 3-4 hours each way traveling to or from an intermediate stop.

Atlanta's airport doesn't seem to have changed since I used to fly in and out on a regular basis. In the past, it has not been uncommon to see someone I know while there, but this time, no luck. There were, however, a lot of soldiers transiting to and from the war zone. It was great to see the reception they were getting. The USO has a big operation there, and had folks personally greeting all military members as they came up the escalator from the arrival areas. There was a large crowd of people all waiting to pick up arriving passengers, but they all clapped when a soldier would arrive. It was nice to see, considering all the supposed "support the troops" crap you hear about whenever you turn on the TV or radio news.

DC was great...Had a chance to catch up with cousin Tim, and several other friends not seen in far too long. I also introduced my Japanese friends to several different types of foods, including Ethiopian and Lebanese at a couple of our favorite restaurants and old haunts. One night, I took a few of them up to Baltimore where we saw Ft. McHenry and ate supper in Little Italy. So, they got a bit of American culture along the way, in addition to the series of meetings that we went to.

It was a long, 13 hour flight back from Dallas yesterday, but a couple of Krispy Kreme donuts prior to the flight made it almost worth the stop. It's just nice to be home again, trying to sort out what emails are important from the junk...I think I've got about a 20/80 ratio there. Just part of the fun...