Traveling without Reggie February 29, 2008

Those of you who have pets (and even some of you without) understand that finding someone to take care of your pet while you’re away can be (a) challenging (b) difficult (c) a pain (d) expensive (e) a nightmare.  If you have a dog or cat, it may be as easy as boarding them at an overnight kennel club, but again see: (d) expensive.  I associate the cost of pet care most closely with the cost of parking my car at the airport: it’s something that I have to pay for locally (rather than while I am vacationing), and can sometimes be avoided.  But avoided at what cost?

I have an African Grey, Reggie.  He’s smart and fun and clever and a real treat to have around (most of the time).  He laughs when I laugh, he plays with me, and he’s a real joker.  As an example, when I bought him his first kladder, a wooden toy that is a bunch of ladder rungs strung together that hangs from the top of his cage, he took a month to chew the rungs to bits from the bottom up, leaving the top rung only on which he began to swing upside down from.  So I bought him another kladder and replaced the one remaining rung.  He immediately chewed the second rung from the top and let the whole thing fall to the floor so that he could swing upside down as he had been before.  I hadn’t yet learned, so I bought him another, and he did the same thing.  He clearly wanted his upsidedown swing, and I was not going to foil his efforts.  Clever bird.

Aside from many, many other advantages I attribute to Reggie, having a parrot has a clear advantage over having a dog or a cat: I can leave him alone for up to 5 days.  “Five days!  That is cruel!”, you say.  “I am a vet,” you say, “and I do not endorse that!”.  Well, given that I don’t do it but maybe once a year and that two of those days are usually half-day-travel-days and that I can leave him enough food for three weeks, easily, that he won’t eat all of, and that this has been successful with every parrot we’ve ever had, I don’t feel so bad.  But five is my threshold.  Give me a six day trip, and suddenly I have images of poor Reggie being friendless, lonely, and probably initiating some bad habits while I’m away (i.e. feather plucking).  So I have to find him a friend.

In finding Reggie a friend, I have to consider that most people don’t know anything about birds.  And that most people don’t board birds the way they board cats and dogs.  Most importantly, though, I also have to consider the old saying “people don’t like taking care of other people’s pets while they’re on vacation”.  Well, okay, it may not be an old saying, but it’s a true statement nevertheless.  Luckily, I don’t have to do this very often (see: the controversial “leaving for up to 5 days”, above).  Since I don’t want to transport all of Reggie’s belongings to someone else’s house, I have to find someone who is willing to visit him daily, to feed and water him, and maybe talk on their phone for a while because he likes people talking on the phone.

I try to find friends within a few miles, but I quickly run out of friends that way.  So then, since I live close to work, I try to find work friends to stop by on their way home.  But they hate that, too.  It’s never convenient to break your daily routine to take care of someone else’s pet (see: “old saying”, above), no matter how many goodies you bring back for them.  I have been lucky enough to find a Reggie-sitter in the past, but I am looking to this Japan trip and wondering “who can I get a favor from this time?”  Poor Reg probably won’t get his tickles or head scritches for a week, but at least he might get some cellphone action.  Stay tuned to find out who accepts the favor!

Tomorrow I will talk about traveling with Reggie, a totally different experience, painful and interesting in many ways.

A Rainy Ski Trip February 21, 2008

I survived skiing this past weekend.  I did not find the “lodge” with the fireplace, and I left my knitting/book in the car about a mile away, anyway. So I skiied. I did not run anyone over. I was only almost-run-over twice.  But it started raining (fairly steadily) on Sunday around 2:30. Which was okay because I was pretty much done by then. And if “pretty much done” wasn’t good enough, the cold rain, leaving me wet and frozen in the snow, sealed the deal. A lot of crazies, Numero Uno among them, continued to ski in the rain. And when we left around 4 or 4:30, there were actually people coming down from the parking lot to start skiing. In the rain! Suckers!!

The most fun parts about this weekend were hanging out with Numero Uno, eating at an Eat’n'Park (a restaurant chain new to me — we both ordered fish’n'chips. And holy crap that Eat’n'Park had some tasty water. Numero Uno and I both commented on it. I do not know what they do to their tap, but yum.), and eating chocolate cake in bed at the Days Inn (we transported the cake from Valentine’s day). Numero Uno accidentily got chocolate icing (in no small quantity) on the pillows. He’s not allowed to eat in bed at home. We wondered what the maids would think. With only a few channels on the tv, we fell asleep watching a lady get lectured on why she shouldn’t own a goat as a house pet. The camera man filmed a close up of the goat’s butt while it pooed all over the rugs. Hilarity.

Skiing, The Third February 15, 2008

If you know me, you know the indoors and cement-city-blocks are way more my thing than the traditional out-of-doors.  This weekend, however, I am for the third time ever, spending my days whooshing down a mountain in Pennsylvania.  I will most likely break a leg (on the green slopes) and have to be rushed to the hospital, so you can find me there on Monday.

The first time I skiied I was 20, and I went with my friend, Lindsay.  She came up to Massachusetts, and we drove to Stowe, VT.  On our drive to Stowe, we stopped at Montpelier, where we tromped through 2 feet of snow in the dark up to the Capitol building.  That?  Was Awesome!  Also, there is apparently no food in Vermont, not even a fast food restaurant, so we did not get anything to eat for the entire drive.  I remember being particularly hungry.  In Stowe, we stayed at a little motel and went to the slopes about a mile away during the day.  The first day we got our rental skis (her first time skiing, too) and decided we should rush immediately to the green slope.  Whoosh!  I think I did a 180 and I know I lost a ski a few times up the hill from where I fell (on my back).  I ran over a small child — he was okay, and when his dad flipped him over (he was face-down in the snow) he was laughing.  Then we took a lesson.

The lesson was practically on flat terrain, but I managed to fall multiple times.  Wielding the long sticks attached to my feet was not particularly easy given my coordination.  But we were taught the “pizza” move, and after the hour lesson, surely we were geniuses, we thought.  So we whooshed down the green slope again.  But this time the “whoosh” took forever because we were going side-to-side.  Forever.  By the end of the day, I was exhausted and never wanted to ski again.  But I couldn’t sit in the lodge, because there was no lodge — just a cold, boring cafeteria.  So I was destined for the ski slopes again the next day.  And a-skiin’ I went!  It was better than the day before, but I was all kinds of sore.  I think it was that afternoon that we toured the Ben and Jerry’s factory, an event which should not be missed.  And the next morning, I believe we skiied again.  Too much skiing, too much falling down.

Two or three years later, I went skiing with my friend, Rich.  Rich came to visit me in Western Mass, and we woke up early on a Saturday to go to a little ski resort about 40 minutes away.  The instant I woke up, I knew I didn’t want to go, after all.  But we got in the car and went.  Rich, a good skiier, gets mad props for staying with me all. day. long. on the green slopes.   I didn’t really fall, but I can’t have been very fun to ski with, either.  Then something went wrong.  We started on a green slope, but we must have taken a wrong turn, because suddenly we were on a blue slope.  And it looked to me like a 90degree drop.  Holy. Crap.  There were trees very close on either side of us.  I kept thinking of Sonny Bono and how I did not want to run into a tree.  So I essentially freaked out and walked down the hill.  I think it was one more green slope that day, and that was it for me.  I haven’t been skiing since.

But this weekend, I will ski because Numero Uno likes to ski.  Lindsay thinks I will be able to take the blue slopes by day three.  I don’t buy it.  More likely I’ll run down three small children, one adult, and a snow mobile.  The snow mobile will land me in the hospital.  But at least I will have an excuse for not skiing in the future.  Get back on the horse and try again?  I never liked that horse in the first place!

Booking Hotels in Japan February 13, 2008

We booked our hotels last night. I’d say all-in-all, we spent 5-6 hours researching hotels and locations before we could pick. We decided, though, that even before we had figured out what we wanted to see in Japan, we needed to book hotels. Because apparently hotels for April book up very quickly. It’s not just that the weather in April is supposed to be fantastic, but starting 29 April is “Golden Week” where everyone in Japan is on vacation for a week (this happens again in October under a different guise). But just like everywhere else, when you get a week off of work for free, why not take a week of vacation time and make it two weeks off! Or a month! So, anyway, April is part of vacation month, and the crowds abound!

The schedule is that we will arrive at Narita around 4pm and we will have to stay one night in Shinagawa at the Prince Hotel (it doesn’t make sense to go to Kyoto that night). Shinagawa is a Shinkensen stop, so we will take the train to Kyoto early the next morning and stay three nights at a hotel in the center of everything. The morning of Kyoto-departure (probably) we will see Nara and catch the train back to Tokyo where we will stay 4 nights in the Shinjuku district.

We really like to save money, but we’re also realistic about what it costs to stay in hotels overseas, especially given that we wanted to stay places central to the subway and action. (my first choice hotel is the one from “Lost in Translation”, but it worked out to about $650/night… Holy Crap!) Most of the time that we spent “researching hotels” was really spent figuring out what district or area to stay in. Wikitravel.org and tripadvisor.com were both helpful in the quest. In Tokyo, it turned out that there are three fun districts (maybe more) where we would have considered staying: The Ginza district (but it seemed like a place business people being wooed and wooing clients stay), the Shibuya district (seemed to have fewer hotels, and better to visit than stay in), and Shinjuku (like the Times Square of Tokyo). Kyoto is small enough that we felt comfortable picking a hotel right smack in the middle of town (on a subway stop, so we don’t have to carry bags far). It’s about a mile from all of the attractions in either direction. But the bus system there is supposed to be great, so it all works out, anyway. So we picked “Good” locations and “mid-range” hotels.

After comparing and recomparing prices of the hotels we liked best, we booked two of the hotels on travelocity and the third on its own website, where their price was better.  Funnily enough, we got a huge discount for staying long-term (3 nights is apparently long-term) in Kyoto.

With the hotels booked, we can move on to the sight-seeing agenda! I was reminded yesterday that while thinking about temples and shrines, do not forget about just walking around experiencing this culture that is so foreign to me. Stopping in stores to wander around and look at stuff and stopping in restaurants to pick up a foreign snack. And certainly do not forget to pick up kitschy Japanese souvenirs! Oh, I certainly will not forget to do THAT!

Experience Tokyo! February 10, 2008

Sumo.  These guys eat a lot of rice.  They have public tournaments around the country multiple times each year.  Unfortunately there will be no tournaments while we are in the country (boooo!).

Kabuki.  This has become kind of a tourist thing, given that the locals don’t go out to Kabuki every weekend.  But it’s a type of traditional Japanese theater, a theater of the masses, rather than of the kings.  The plays are about history, morality, and love.  Men play women because women were outlawed long ago from performing in the theater.  There are performances in the Ginza district of Toky and they come with English-speaking headsets, to explain what is going on.

Harajuku.  Also the name of Gwen Stefani’s backup dancer group,  this is a place in Tokyo where people dress up like anime characters and the cutesy, all-too-modern, breaking-with-the-norm look that Japanese school-aged kids sometimes take on.  Much like the dog statue (waiting for its dead owner to return home for 15 years) elsewhere in town this seems like a popular meeting place for people to see and be seen.

Tokyo Metropolitan Government office building. On the 45th floor of this buildling (Tochomae subway stop) is a free observation deck with a better view than those you have to pay for, and on the 1st floor is a tourist information booth.

Pachinko.  This gambling game was “invented” by a ball baring company that had over-manufactured barings one year and didn’t know what to do with them.  Brilliant!

Tsukiji Fish Market.  This open air fish market is open every morning starting at something like 3am.  If you get there by 5 or 6, though, you’ll be fine.  It’s closed on Sundays and every other Wednesday (or so).  They have all kinds of fresh fish in their original form, including octopus.  I think this will be REALLY, REALLY fun.  And there are no doubt the most-fresh sushi places around right there at your fingertips.  According to National Geographic: “Tsukiji is a fish market in the sense that the Grand Canyon is a ditch…”  Niiiiiice.

And I haven’t even gotten to the temples, gardens, and shrines yet!

Japan Trains February 9, 2008

The Shinkansen is the super fast, bullet train in Japan.  Superman couldn’t catch this thing.  And what’s more, there are a ton of them.  From Tokyo to Kyoto there’s one leaving every 8-10 minutes.  In order to ride it, you have to buy a ticket (of course) which should be easy, but it’s not.  On top of the base fare to get from here to there, there are all sorts of “extras” to choose from: reserved seat, unreserved seat, fewer stops, more stops.  They all have different fees, and the charts are somewhat confusing to a layperson like myself.  Luckily for me, the American, I have one more option: the Japan Rail Pass.

The Japan Rail Pass (JRP) is a 7 or 9 day pass that you can buy to ride almost any train in Japan unlimitedly for its time period.  The catch is that you must, must, must buy this ticket in a country that is not Japan.  Did you catch that?  You have to buy it before you get there from one of their listed travel agents.  Don’t forget or else you’re out of luck.  Once you get to Japan, you can activate the JRP for its specified number of days.  So that you don’t have to worry about activating the card while you’re stressing over finding a train going to your destination, you can even pre-activate it for days in the future, as in “start this 7 day pass in 3 days”.

The JRP costs ~28.000Y and the exchange rate is about $1=106Y as I write this, so an easy estimate is to just divide by 100Y to get $.  As far as I can tell, the JRP is not good for the city subway, but it is good for the train between Tokyo and Narita, which is usually ~3.100Y each way.   The round trip ticket Tokyo-Kyoto is ~27.000Y, so that extra trip to Narita makes it worthwhile.  It’s even more worthwhile if you take a day trip to Nara or Hiroshima from Kyoto (we plan on going to Nara).  But you can’t take the express train, called the Nozomi, on the JRP, so beware.  I think the Nozomi only accounts for a small fraction of the trains, anyway, though.

The Tokyo subway system seems to work a lot like the DC metro system: at the end of your ride, you find out if you’ve paid enough based on where you got on and off.   So even when you can’t find a ticket machine in English before your ride, you can pay the least fare possible and if you paid too little, just fork over the rest as you leave.  I like that system.  Of course, I also like the Boston way of doing things: flat fare all around!  At least that way there’s no fear of getting trapped in the metro station with too little money…

Finally, when traveling between Tokyo and Kyoto, try to get seats J-H on the train for an excellent view of Mt Fuji.  You can get off at the Mt Fuji stop, but I think it’s another 2.5 hours to the mountain, itself, and then another day to climb.  Most of the climbing is above the tree-line, leaving you with boring old rock, so perhaps seeing the mountain from a distance is really for the best, anyway.  If climbing is your thing, though, they say the sunrise is the best part, so an overnighter would be required.

Learning Japanese Tradition February 8, 2008

I’ve learned a lot in the past four days about Japan and its customs and traditions. These traditions are in place to make society a better place to live, and for the most part I agree with them, though I am certainly not used to them. I will go through some of the ones I find more interesting here, granted they’re only interesting to me because of the strange culture in which *I* live — the US!

Shoes. Of course we all have heard that you do not wear your shoes in a Japanese house or restaurant (or perhaps any establishment?). But what I didn’t know is that they provide communal slippers in many places, restaurants especially, so that you aren’t wandering around sock footed. Part of the reason for not wearing shoes indoors is because if you’re sitting on the floor, you wouldn’t want to sit in a muddy/grassy/wet/dirty footprint, right? So there are communal slippers. And you put them on at the door and leave your shoes. If you do end up sitting on the floor, like in a restaurant, you take off the slippers and place them beside you. Put them back on when you get up! And if you go to the restroom (the toilet!) you will be putting on special toilet slippers, leaving the room slippers outside. Do not wear the toilet slippers out of the toilet. This is a major faux pas, almost as bad as…

Nose blowing in public. Is a no-no. A major no-no. Sniff all you want, but God help the person who blows his nose in public! I actually like this because there are too many people who are just not polite when they blow their nose.

Bath. The toilet is not located in the same room with the bath tub because this would be gross. I can get on board with this; it’s even appearing in more and more American homes. Cool. Taking a bath, however, is very different than I am used to. You sit on the side of the tub, on a chair, perhaps, and soap yourself down and wash all of the soap off. You’re clean (although I don’t see how you’re clean, really, without a full, long shower). Now that you’re clean and have rinsed all the soap, you can get into the warm tub water and soak. It is soothing. You get out and dry off. The next person (usually a family member) will do the same, using the same bath water once he is clean, too. I think this is originally to save money on heat or water, but you were clean when you got into the tub, so it is presumably still clean water. Maybe not quite as warm any more.

Ryokan. A ryokan is like a hotel, except that it’s more like a B&B, and to get into the nicer ones (which aren’t necessarily more expensive) you need an invitation or introduction by a Japanese person familiar with the establishment. When you arrive, the hostess serves you tea. In the morning you are awoken (around 8, I believe) by the hostess, who serves you breakfast. In the evening, after dinner, the hostess rolls out your futon for sleeping. It’s very traditional. And unless you stay in a ryokan with a private bath, your hostess will schedule your bath time (keeping in mind the toilet is separate from the bath). But keeping in mind what I have said about the bath, above, you will be sharing the bath water with other guests (who you do not know and who may not be Japanese or understand Japanese tradition as well as you do). You should rinse all soap before entering the tub, but to me, you’re still sharing bath water with strangers. There’s something weird about that to me, no matter the “cleanliness” of the person preceeding you. It’s like a pool, except it’s not chlorinated, and what if the person failed to get clean… you can construe all sorts of other issues to go along with this, too!

I have learned so many other Japanese facts, a lot of how-to’s, in the past few days, and I will share more soon. They include things like: how to use the train, (re)filling your companion’s drink, eating at a sushi bar, attending sumo and kabuki, seeing Harajuku, buying electronics,… Look forward to these!

Japan February 6, 2008

We took Japanese last Spring at the community college’s night classes.  We took it because I insisted that I needed to know how in the world those characters made any sense and how the heck this language worked.  It really didn’t have a lot to do with Japan at the time, although I did find the culture very interesting and fun to learn, too.  Also, I just adore Japanese food.  Adore it!

Who would have thought, then, that our trip to Europe in 2008 would be replaced by a trip to Japan.  Not I!  Maybe a trip to Brazil, but Japan?  I had not considered it.  But Numero Uno’s job has agreed to send him to Misawa, Japan, on business for a week.  Rather than sit around moping and wondering why my job won’t send me to Japan (although I admittedly did some of this, too), I booked myself a ticket, too.  We are spending a week in Tokyo and Kyoto in April (when the cherry blossoms are out, I hear) before Numero Uno goes north to Misawa and I return stateside.

I did some research into going to Misawa, too, but there were a few drawbacks that would have made it way less than “Lost in Translation”, and I would not hear of that!  The biggest drawback was that I would have had to rent a (probably stick-shift) car (driving on the left, which is a proven skill of mine now) with an international driver’s license to see much of anything, given that the north of Japan is more spread out.  Though I could have taken a train to place X or Y, it would have been hard to get to the sights at place X or Y sans car, and especially as a day trip.  Or maybe it’s not hard, but it looked hard to me, anyway.  So I am bowing out of that.  Numero Uno will hop on a plane at Haneda while I am hopping on one at Narita.  Then he will come home a week later.

Now that we have settled on a destination, we have to brush up our Japanese skills (murasaki sukiyaki = purple noodles) and alphabet (Hiragana is better than nothing!) and decide where we’re staying and what we’re seeing.  Right now I know there are historic things to see, temples, museums, gardens…  but all I can think of is the giant, early morning fish market in Tokyo that Anthony Bourdain talks so much about.  I have big plans to get up early to see it and to then eat my weight in sushi and sashimi by week’s end.