Tabbed Putty

What more do I need to say?
It's a fantastic useful tool.
Can you tell I'm working right now?

Hippy Skirt!

I have this skirt that I completely love (No, not that one pictured.)
It influenced me to make a similar one out of cotton (using fabric I already had!). The final product is pictured on the left.
In the process I learned how to correctly do shirring (pix). I only had to tear out the top shirred part 4 times before I figured out how to do it right. I was quite frustrated until I remembered that I have this sewing book - purchased for me in the 80's when I was just starting my sewing interest. It's an artifact from the past, much like my Betty Crocker cookbook that's in the 3 ring binder.
The steps for making this skirt was 1-serger the tiers, 2-gather each tier onto the one above it, 3-then add the rows of shirring to the part that sits on your waist or hips. When I was done sewing it, I dyed it some fun colors. This was a fun project. It brought back memories of my tie-dying days. (Did you know there was a time when I was making around 3 thousand t-shirts [and other items] a summer? - I basically made all the tie-dyes that this relatively large craft/fair vendor sold. As a result, I'm a pretty good tie-dyer - I have lots of experience, though it's starting to get a bit rusty now.)


This first picture is after I was done sewing it - and about to dye it.
Here's what it looked like after dying it, but before it was finished fixing.
And here's the back of the finished skirt. The first picture in this post is the front.

Japan: Day Whatever. The Wrap-up

This is the message the TV in my hotel room flashes at you for a second or two after you hit the power switch and before it shuts down. It's not nearly the oddest pseudo-English that I've seen here, but it seems like an appropriate goodbye to my trip to Japan.

After I finish writing this, I'm going to start packing up for the trip home. I actually get to arrive in SF about 7 hours before I leave Japan. I think I'm pretty ready to be back in the US. I've enjoyed being out here, but I'm pretty ready to be home.

It wasn't the trip that I expected, hoped for, or even feared, for that matter, but it was definitely a worthwhile experience. Here are some quick pros and cons about Japan:

Pros:

1.) Nobody is going to jack your shit. This was really nice coming from the Bay Area where if you don't have something nailed to the ground, you shouldn't be surprised if it's gone in 15 minutes. Part of it is the police presence everywhere, but I think a large part of it is cultural. Using a simple cable to lock your bike to an object is considered overkill here.

2.) Dressing skanky is in! Spikey heels, fishnets, short skirts, and other sorts of streetwalker fashion are in and totally socially acceptable. And that's just in the afternoon. When the girls party, it's more extreme. I went to club and it was like Burningman, except the girls weren't so dusty (no nudity though).

3.) Being a foreigner makes you a minor celebrity wherever you go. I'm used to not being noticed in public back at home, but here I get a lot of stares or at minimum looks. That's not to say that all the reactions are positive though.

4.) Clean toilets everywhere! And you don't have to be a customer. Except for the rare pit toilet experience (Japanese-style), I was more than happy with the quality of the restrooms.

5.) The Japanese will eat anything. I got to try some weird shit that was actually pretty good.

Cons:

1.) I would place the culture at maybe 1950's level for racial tolerance and general misogyny. Japanese women seem to be treated pretty poorly. My friend Sly is constantly being hassled by the police.

2.) People need to chill the fuck out in the train station. People are rushing and pushing for no good reason. And the dirty looks if you have any baggage get pretty old.

3.) Speaking of dirty looks, people will talk shit about you openly just because they assume you don't know the language. Which in my case is true, but you can often get enough just by tone of voice, stares, and occasional pointing.

4.) Everyone smokes.

5.) The messed up English really got to me at one point. Sometimes it's funny, but I actually got angry when I saw a sign for the "I'm Corporation." You don't have to use English for everything, especially if you have no idea what you're saying. Everyone loves the way the English language looks.

6.) The Japanese will eat anything. Who the fuck intentionally orders gristle?

Day 8 in Japan

Howdy folks. Today I'm in Himeji and I'm feeling pretty tired. After leaving Tokyo by Shinkasen, I biked from Onomichi to Imabari (1 day), Imabari to Takamatsu (1 day, but I cheated by taking a train), and from Takamatsu to Himeji (1 day with two ferrys). Riding has been fun, but way harder than I expected. The Bike Friday is slower than my Trek on it's own, but towing something like 40 lbs in a suitcase makes it REAL slow. The first day was a pretty ride though, although adjusting to riding in a foreign country was tough. I had a hell of a time finding the start of the trail, wasting over an hour and a ton of energy climbing up hills trying to find a way onto the bridge. At one point, I almost rode over the bridge on the highway. I gave up that and took a ferry across and eventually found the trail. I lost a lot of precious time and even more precious daylight. Well, there wasn't much daylight to be had anyway. There was a typhoon off the coast, so it was rainy the whole time. It was a warm rain, so it was tolerable, but still not as nice as a sunny day. It was a nice ride, but I was a little too tense about reaching my destination.

The second day was sunny, but it was a crappy ride. The first couple of hours were nice, through farmlands and such. Like a Japanese Fresno. After that, my trail was on 11, which was a two lane road that may as well have been a highway. Tiny sidewalks and a constant slight uphill grade reduced me to a crawling pace. Eventually I jumped off the road and found a parallel road through town. Realizing I had a good five hours to either Kotohira (which had a cool-sounding shrine that I'll never see) or even longer to Takamatsu, I gave up and found a train to Takamatsu.

For some reason, after the train ride to Takamatsu, everything on my bike decided to break. The rear shift cable was super loose, and I couldn't figure out why. I tried tightening up the cable, but it didn't work. I tightened it up some more, and one of the parts broke. I kicked my bike and my suitcase for a while and then got back to work. I figured out that my rear wheel had loosened, and had essentially come off (!). I was able to get everything set, and was finally able to get going. I decided that I was going to quit the epic rides portion of my trip and try to just enjoy Japan like a normal, sane tourist.

So the ride to Himeji was only supposed to be about 30 miles, so I figured it would be a nice easy ride. I walked through a Japanese garden, had a leisurely lunch and caught the ferry to Tonsho on an island whose name I can't remember. All I had to do was ride around the island to the other port and take a ferry to Himeji. Somehow I screwed up the instructions though, and ended up climbing an endless mountain. Basically about 2800' with sections of 18% grade. Fortunately, I made it to the top before sundown.

People were tripping out that I was climbing the hill (I had no idea how high it was). One couple actually turned their car around to tell me something. At first I thought they were calling me a donkey, which would be weird, but not too unexpected considering the load. I realized that they were saying Mooon-key. I knew that there was a monkey park in the hills here somewhere, but I didn't think that I was going to pass it. I said, oh monkey. And they nodded enthusiastically. Then the guy moved his hands through the air and said "moon-key, moon-key, moon-key, moon-key." Oh, a lot of monkeys. They nodded. They motioned that it was just around the bend. I said thanks, and was glad that I would be able to stop at the park. Well... I saw about 6 by the side of the road, and I cruised by them without any problems. I took a couple pictures while riding by. I rounded another curve and there were way more. Turns out there is a park in the hills, which I passed and was closed, but there was also just a shitload of wild monkeys around as well. They ranged from 1-2 feet tall. As I rounded the next corner, I saw a couple in a car feeding the monkeys. They just cracked the window and pushed out pieces of bread. The monkeys walked right up to the car. Great, they're attracting the monkeys. The couple saw me and freaked out that I was not safely ensconsed in a car. So the street had a bunch of monkeys in it. I think I probably passed about 30 of them. I decided to treat them like any bunch of surly locals in a city I'm unfamiliar with: show no fear, but also no signs of aggression. Rang the bell on my bike so none of them would be startled while i rode by. Just passing through thanks... The monkeys stared at me, but I tried not to make too much eye contact. Finally, finally, I made it to the peak and the ride down was pretty easy. I still had about an hour of riding until I made it to Fukuda, where I would pick up the ferry to Himeji. I luckily made the last ferry (since I didn't see any hotels) and eventually found a hotel.

Today, I finally found an internet cafe, so I have the chance to write some of this stuff down. I'm going to Himeji-jo after this (look it up), and I'll be heading to Kyoto tonight. Hope everything's going well in the US.

Endless Content

I hope Yar's having fun in Japan. I wish I was there. Maybe someday.

My co-worker sent out this blog post when we were email discussing dressing up in costume.
It's funny. It's worth looking at the other posts.

Almost ready to leave...

So it's T minus 8 hours until I'm on a flight to Tokyo. After trying three times, consulting the internet, and trying again, consulting the internet some more, I was finally able to complete a telephone call to Japan. I gave Sly a call to give him a final heads up. That was around 2:00AM Pacific, around 6PM Tokyo time.

I'm attempting a technique to ward off jet lag that my friends Jason and Melissa taught me. Their trick is to act like it is the time of the destination in the airport. So if it's supposed to be late, get ready to go to sleep when they get on the plane, regardless of what local time is. I've set my travel clock to Tokyo time already, but I'm finding the difference is a little too extreme to follow closely. I'll be boarding the flight at 4:00AM Tokyo time, but that means I should be going to sleep around when I plan to actually wake up here in SF. Well, we'll see what happens.

I'm pretty much packed, and I'm a little disturbed by the volume of the stuff I'm bringing. It's really not that much stuff, actually, but it's enough to fill up my bags. Bringing the full bike kit creates some volume that I'm not accustomed to travelling with.

I'm pretty anxious about the trip, but I feel pretty positive about it. I didn't manage to learn the Japanese language in the month before my trip (big surprise), but I feel like I've learned enough to survive. We'll see how it goes, right?

As for posting to the blog, I do not expect any problems getting internet access, but I have no idea whether or not it will be possible to upload photos. Hopefully, I'll be inspired to take photos though, and I'm looking forward to sharing those with everyone. Well, my next post should be from Tokyo. Wish me luck!