Why would you stand there, anyway?  Pray for the service to resume like the Indians danced for rain?  Or talk to other equally clueless passerbys to get some insights?  The New York-trained commuters are so used to seeing service disruptions that we’d turn around and start heading toward the next optimal means of transportation before we even think of complaining.  That’s what I did.  Oh, except that I was so new to San Francisco that I had no clue what other means of transportation there were.  I walked along the one and only line of BART in the direction of home.

I realized that something was up.  First there was a single file of about 20 armored and armed cops marching on Market Street.  Then there were some police motorcycles, and a whole bus that said “police service”.  Then I came across three guys wearing the kind of creepy clown masks that you typically see bank robbers with machine guns wear in the movies.  They had a protest sign, but I was too far to read it.

So I Googled the news.  Apparently there was a big protest going on that forced BART to shut down all of its stations in downtown San Francisco.  And I was walking toward the center of it.  Hmm.  Alright.  I stopped, and considered going all the way back to the office.  Then the station near me miraculously opened one entrance, so I got in, jumped on a train, and got home.  Nobody was on the platforms of the next few stations so I assumed they remained closed.  The one by my office also remained closed for at least 30 more minutes, because BART kept announcing it.  Guess I was lucky.

And what was the protest about?  Let me attempt to summarize:
(1) cop shot a homeless man with criminal records who was attacking people with a knife
(2) people protested (1) in BART stations, organizing disruptive and dangerous stunts via cell phone
(3) BART cut off cell phone service in its stations temporarily to deter (2)
(4) An organized effort led by Anonymous now protested (3)

WHAT THE FUCK?  Is my IQ not low enough to understand the logic here?  Thousands of hard-working commuters could not go home to their loved ones at the end of the day, because some teenage girl wasn’t able to txt her bff on the BART?  Complaining is one thing but making a front page-worthy protest out of this?  When was the last time a New Yorker protested not having cell phone service on the Subway?

San Francisco is surely holding strong onto its hippie reputation.  And my once-in-a-blue-moon chance to go home early was ruined.

This was my very first time.  Prior to the visit, most of my knowledge about this chain establishment had been from South Park depictions: (1) its food makes you super constipated, and (2) it’s run by an army of white people with a plot to take over America for China.

But that sort of “reputation” apparently did nothing to deter its business.  In fact, this particular restaurant has always been one of the most popular in Central New Jersey.  We waited in line for 45 minutes.  By the time our beeper went off, I think they were handing out 2-hour wait notices.  All this quality time spent there made us extra observant of the atmosphere:

One diner finished his business and exited the dim restaurant in a power suit, dark sunglasses, a pink tie, and a pink handkerchief.  That was a bit overdressed for any meal… let alone at a Chinese TGI Friday’s on a Saturday night.  Well, at least nobody would wear that kind of thing to a real Chinese restaurant.

More Indian people were waiting in line at the entrance to this PF Chang’s, than all the Indian people I had seen in any Chinese restaurant in the past 20 years, combined.  I had wondered for the longest time why no Indian (including anyone who appears to be of West / South Asian descent) appreciated Chinese food… well, there they were.

When we finally got seated, we sat next to a Caucasian family who was sure having a good time.  The six adults and three children had managed to drop under the table the following: five pairs of chopsticks, one “training wheel” chopstick, one fork, two spoons, three straws, one paper napkin, two clothe napkins, a bowl worth of rice and food, and various liquids.

2011 has been a year of Asian-American awareness.  Having already caused controversies were Amy Chua’s Tiger Mother and Wesley Yang’s Paper Tigers.  Without getting into the details, both articles discussed ways and challenges for traditional Asian cultures to fit into the white male-dominant American society.  One of them leans more toward tradition and the other leans more toward change, but both of them have been highly criticized.

Now, dining at PF Chang’s caused just as much complex as reading those articles.  Many of us have the reflex to discredit “fake” Chinese food whenever we spot it.  I’d go as far as not using chopsticks at a place that sells beef & broccoli, because it really is “American” food and a fork would be more appropriate.  Do I want my culture associated with panda bears, terracotta warriors, and a plate of colorful sauces on the table?  Not really.  But on the other hand, what’s wrong with an evolving subculture that reaches out to accommodate people outside our community?  Isn’t it better to invite them into our world with a highly modified version of kung pow chicken, than to shut the door and have a stinky tofu party among our own kind?

PF Chang’s is as Chinese as Taco Bell is Mexican.  What’s harder to understand, for the more conservative of us, is that there’s nothing wrong about it.  If we want to break through the barriers of tradition and move beyond the passive, obedient, piano-playing math nerds that we’re known for, perhaps we should embrace the same kind of evolution that PF Chang’s applied to its food.

This evening, I went to CVS and picked up a box of (the CVS generic version of) DayQuil.  Upon check out, the cashier asked me for my birth date.  Somewhat stunned and confused by the inquiry, I held back and paused for a second.  Then I saw the piece of print out in his hand that read “preventing teen cold medicine abuse” while he explained, “it’s a New Jersey law thing.”

That’s when it clicked in my head, “oh wow, I didn’t know you could get high on cold medication…”  I was intrigued wondering how it would work and what it’d feel like.  People talk about substance abuse all the time but I didn’t know DayQuil could be abused so bad that there needs to be such a regulatory hassle to intervene.  Then I wondered if this law actually prevented any abuse, or did it educate more people about this drug’s “alternate use”.

I am part of the blame for this depression – although I try to sneak in some festive Chinese elements like a red shirt, I plot to appear at work as “normally” as possible.  Not gonna make a big deal out of it, just like how millions of other Chinese people will not take the day off or close their businesses to celebrate.  Unless you’re “in the know”, you would not even realize that the most important holiday to 4 million people in America has just gone by.  We kinda treat it like a big secret.

When I see the Japanese and Koreans put on traditional costumes for holidays and ceremonies, and when I see the Jewish observe their Sabbath ritual on a weekly basis, I often wonder, what the hell are we doing for our Chinese traditions?  If anything should be embraced as the Big Deal, shouldn’t it be the new year for the 1.3 BILLION people on Earth?  Unfortunately, it seems to be our cultural trait that we do not insist on sticking to our cultural traits.  We adapt and evolve, just like the essence of Darwinist survival.  We cook colorful General Tzo’s Chicken for stupid white people… heck, we make sushi and tacos, too!  We’re proudly Chinese by blood, and we don’t need anything superficial to prove or reaffirm this identity.  Or maybe we don’t even care?  It’s hard to say.

So it goes back to the Chinese New Year, the most glorious and festive holiday that somehow people don’t take as seriously as Cinco de Mayo.  I hate being reminded how pathetic we are toward our own selves.  What the hell.  One day, I’m going to change this.

Hong wasn’t so lucky.  Like the snow plowers, police, and emergency workers, hospitals were expected to stay open even if radioactive meteors were falling from the sky.  We went out late Sunday night to plow out our cars, in the middle of the blizzard, so she could have an easier time getting to work in the morning.  Fine crystals of snow never stopped falling into the parking lot, for the whole hour when we let winds up to 65 mph slice our faces open, but it was still fun to hop across knee-high piles and to see the artistic sand dunes on each car.

The greatest thing about not owning our place of residence was that some other poor men had to stay up all night to clean up the driveway.  All we had to do was digging our own cars out, which “only” took an hour at night and 30 more minutes in the morning.  Good thing we did the bulk of the work before anything melted or re-solidified, so our cars looked almost as clean as garaged, and our parking spots were the cleanest in the community.  Then it pissed us off that a black Chrysler SUV, who drove away in the morning leaving a foot of snow in its spot, decided to take one of ours in the afternoon.  So before Hong could get home from work, I had to shovel out another spot and secure it for her.  Inconsiderate bastard!

Balcony

Attempt to reach the gym

Bikes

I was barely able to open the gym door wide enough to squeeze myself in

Pool closed.  Okay.

After so many days of gaming, I didn’t mind returning to work on Tuesday.  I overestimated the cleanup progress, however, and was surprised by the amount of snow left on the busiest state highways.  This was my car’s first snow, and my personal first time having to commute by car in a post-storm mess.  The mentality and obstacles were quite different from the New York lifestyle – I was glad not having to jump over black slushy puddles any more, but the new challenges could be more life threatening.

The left lane on the Turnpike was like a Russian Roulette – the majority of it was clear, but a few scattered stretches were definitely not safe to drive on.  Picture this: I was traveling at 65 mph on the healthy looking asphalt pavement.  All the sudden there was a sheet of white stuff under my tires, and before I could react, the thin sheet became half inch of bumpy snow.  To make matters worse, a big van insisted on traveling alongside me so I couldn’t switch out of the left lane.  For the sake of physics education, I wondered what would happen if I stepped on the brakes.  But I wanted to live to write this down, and just let Vehicle Stability Assist do its wonders while watching its signal blink violently.  Thank goodness for these electronics.

When I made it to Newark alive, my dream to keep the car somewhat clean was completely broken.  Raymond Blvd, one of the most important roads in New Jersey’s biggest city, was in a worse condition than our apartment parking lot.  The small areas that resembled shoveled road surface were covered in black slushy mud, and the densely packed layer of snow at the sharp turn is almost guaranteed to become ice by tomorrow.

That was a hell of a u-turn

This was meant to be a three-lane road (note: 2-3 blocks long of trucks and cars were idle blinking lights on the right side, not sure why)

This was meant to be a three-lane road plus sidewalks

Do not kill the pedestrians buddy

This parking lot attendant hollered business while shoveling out an entrance for his customers.  Then he helped pushing the customer car into the lot.  What awesome service!

This was a lot of accumulation for a covered parking garage

After checking out of the hotel, we locked our luggage up in a convenient coin-operated locker at Shinjuku Station.  This was the third time we used this service to avoid dragging heavy suitcases around – every train station we went through in Japan provided this service, although it wasn’t very cheap.  Seriously, though, NYC should learn to do this.  Many times in the past five years I had wished Penn Station or Grand Central or a large subway station in NYC would have lockers for short-term use.  I wonder how many people insisted on driving into New York just because they needed some place to leave a backpack while going into a party.

We wandered around Shinjuku all day looking for green tea Kit Kat, something both our sisters loved.  In the process, we also did a third set of photo booth pictures, and ate a bunch of yummy stuff.

Finding breakfast in Shinjuku was pretty difficult, provided that we didn’t want to end the trip on a low note with fast food or a convenience store.  We ended up finding, as you might have guessed, a 24-7 establishment mostly suitable for 2am drinking and 5am sobering attempts.  We had so much cash Yen left (ha, rich kids!) that I decided to get the biggest thing on the menu… a chicken hot pot in a clay pot!  Hong ordered some tempura and chicken skewers, which was another big thing in Japanese cuisine that we hadn’t gotten to try.  We sat in a cute wooden “booth” that had barely enough seating area to fit two butts and a bag.  The food was fantastic.  In fact, it was among the best meals we had in Japan.  This fish-eating ethnic group could really cook chicken, too!

Lunch was conveyor-belt sushi, for the third time.  We had decided that anything disguised as sushi in the US was no longer edible, so it was quite reasonable to have our last sushi in a really long time.  We found this place on the business district side of the train station, and felt cheated after walking in because they had nothing running on the conveyor belt.  Perhaps it was too early and they didn’t want to have raw fish running around the room without enough customers?  For a second there, I was upset having to order directly from the chef.  However, it turned out to be quite an experience even without the conveyor belt fun: for example, watching the chef “grill” the unagi with a hand-held high-power gas torch.  Impressive stuff!  I got my typical squid and a plate of three-colored tuna (from regular to fatty).

Then, the curious side of me kicked in.  I braved up and asked for a plate of raw Japanese beef.  Seeing me being foreign, the chef offered to have the beef grilled.  Heck, I didn’t want to pay big bucks for raw beef and end up getting a steak!  But I still requested one of each so I could make a scientific comparison.  Holy cow this beef gave new meaning to “holy cow”!  The smooth fatty beef combined with the mysterious bbq sauce (they must have added cocaine in it to taste so good) just melted in my mouth and coated my tongue with a heavenly blend of flavors.  There was not a hint of funky smell like supermarket meats.  The grilled one had a nice toasty surface but the raw version went down even more joyfully.  This plate turned out to be the single most delicious item I had had in Japan!  In comparison the o-toro was just so-so and the squid wasn’t even tasty any more.  Arg!

After the last crepe, we left the city on Narita Express, toward the airport.  The last train ride in Japan was quite fancy!

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Lastly, here are some interesting pictures from the trip:

“Going to sleep in front of the store is strictly prohibited.”

No idea what this was but it made me laugh every time I saw it.

If I was remotely willing to drink Pepsi, I’d be very curious about this Mont Blanc flavor.

Trust me.  It’s a great view.  I’m not certain how far it is though.  And I don’t know how to spell “m”.

Fresh produce is now available at your local subway station.

The white Fedex guy is so hot, every kid wants an action figure of him.

Stoned bear.

Funny ad for what I assumed was acid reflex remedy.

1. About 80% of the things ever said in public areas went “[something something something]maaaaaaaaaaaaas” or “[something]seeeeeeeen”, and most of them were in annoyingly cutesy-wannabe high-pitch female voices.
2. All the Japanese words that I knew well, i.e. names of places, were pronounced nothing like what I imagined.  For example, Harajuku actually wasn’t “HAA RAA JUU KUU”, but instead “hala JUU KOO”.  And I still couldn’t say it like the train announcement said it.

The Meiji Shrine in Harajuku was our first stop of the day, after a smokey breakfast at an European diner that wasn’t very good.  This was the shrine for Emperor Meiji, the dude with the Restoration that propelled a country forward like nobody else in human history (per Dr. Boyer’s World Regions class).  Before coming to Japan, a coworker kindly warned me not to visit the war shrines worshiping the “criminals”, and I wondered if the Meiji Shrine fell borderline into that category as he made it possible for Japan to bully the rest of the Orient.  Now, standing at the entrance looking into the forest entirely made of privately-donated trees from all over Japan, it was difficult to not be impressed by the respect and love this guy had.

Structure-wise, it was just another Shinto shrine with no particular architectural marvel.  However, this place was filled with not only tourists but also locals who actually came to worship.  We spent the majority of the visit watching family after family dressed in traditional outfits, and even spotted a wedding photo session.  The kids were all so well behaved that we wondered whether they were born mute and inactive.  Some white people followed the Japanese rituals at the shrine, but what good would it do to pray to somebody else’s god?  Remember Americans: Emperor Meiji probably won’t smile upon those whose air raid in WW2 destroyed his original shrine!

Driven partly by curiosity and partly by the desire to piss off the Whale Wars crew, we made a detour to Shibuya for the famous whale restaurant.  Upon discovering that we weren’t Japanese, the startled waiter tried very hard to communicate that they specialized in whale by both pointing at and attempting to pronounce the English spelling next to the cash register.  Made me think that it must have upset some tourists who ignorantly wandered into this place before.  Made me want to eat it even more eagerly.  Since this visit was about a unique culinary experience rather than a delicious feast, I went all the way Japanese and got a sashimi set course.  The meat was dark red in color like beef that had been frozen for too many months, and everything it touched got a bloody stain.  It was tougher than all kinds of fish but not as chewy as octopus/squid.  There was no significant smell or taste, unlike what I imagined, and the experience was roughly as (un)delicious as tuna sashimi sold in the US.  I couldn’t quite say whether I liked it or not, which was sad given this being my first time eating uncooked red meat.  Hong wasn’t as thrilled with the idea of eating a truck-sized mammal so she only got a plate of fried whale.  It was also kind of bland in taste.  The small restaurant had a very elegant setup, though, with elevated stepping stones in the narrow hallway.  If we ever come back again, I’d order a la carte and try the skin, the heart, and the testicle.

Painting: samurai slaying a whale.  Reminded me of Old Man and the Sea.

After hopefully grossing you out, we went back to Harajuku with high hopes to witness some cosplayers and gothic lolitas, who, according to travel guides, always overrun this neighborhood on Sunday afternoons.  We saw none, and the few rockability dancers at the Yoyogi Park entrance didn’t count.  It was disappointing, but the shopping crowd on Takeshita Dori were all dressed in a visually appealing fashion, enough to make Hong want to follow.  While she shopped, someone in the store saw my VT TKD sweat shirt and came over to say hi – another Hokie close to my year.  As we struggled to figure out whether we might’ve had a class or club in common, we realized that we were both in Japan for honeymoon, and both leaving tomorrow.  Obviously, he was also in the store because his wife wanted a piece of the Harajuku fashion.  What a coincidence!  And what power the Hokie Nation has to bring people together!

Spot the Power Rangers

While enjoying the famous Harajuku crepe, we heard two brief clips of modern Japanese songs.  That was the first time in the entire week that we heard anything other than American top 40 or depressing old school Japanese music.  And I thought j-pop was popular throughout Asia?

Next up was Omotesando Hills, a high-end shopping mall built on a slope and had a multi-level, sloped interior.  Like many other establishments throughout Japan, it had been fully decorated for Christmas despite still having patrons in short sleeves and mini skirts.  We quickly walked through it and continued onto Kiddy Land, their equivalent of Toys R Us.

In the evening, we returned to Shibuya.  In front of the train station was Hachiko, the famous statue of the loyal dog.  Finally seeing it was like, eh, so ugly.

There was also the world-famous five-way intersection.  When the light turned, pedestrians poured into the intersection from all directions, going in all directions.  Outside Japanese TV, this was likely the most chaotic scene one could see in this country.  It was scary even for a couple used to navigating through Times Square and NYC Chinatown.

Since we have both become hardcore fans of Japanese dessert, we decided to have dinner at Sweets Paradise, an all-you-can-eat dessert restaurant.  It wasn’t entirely dessert (how gross would that be?), but the cakes, pies, and shaved ice condiments did occupy the majority of the food counter.  There were also so-so pasta, good curry, and delicious soups that we warmed our tummies with.  Like all buffets, the food quality was below par but the pig-out component was awesome.  We noticed yet another Japanese-styled attention to detail: the restaurant prepared both warm and chilled plates for your needs for different types of food.  Dang!

Three train stations later, we returned to Shinjuku.  The last stop before bed was the 45th-floor observatory in a Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building right across from our hotel.  The north tower was open tonight and the observatory was fairly crowded.  However, reaching it was a bit awkward by traveling through the creepishly dark and quiet skyscraper neighborhood.  Although the observatory was completely free, the majority of the floor was filled with gift shops and the southeast corner with the best view was blocked by a cafe.  Interesting business concept!

It was disappointing, though, that there wasn’t much to see because only the Tokyo Tower was adequately lit.  Unlike Manhattan that shined and sparkled, Tokyo simply went dark at night.  Even the nearby spaceship-like Mode Gakuen Cocoon Tower was in the energy-saving mode, and we could barely make out its outline due to the close proximity.  Couldn’t really blame the Japanese for saving energy and preserving the Earth… but it was kinda lame…

Today’s destination was Odaiba, an artificial island in Tokyo Bay that had been developed into a vacation hotspot.  We took a train to Shimbashi first, and transferred to a special tram on rubber wheels that took us across the famous Rainbow Bridge.

We were short on Yen this morning, and started quite an adventure.  Our hotel had a very cool currency exchange vending machine, but it had the stinkiest rate since we left JFK (didn’t I say it was American-like?).  Then we found a large post office offering this service, but the banking section was closed on weekends.  The PO directed us to a nearby bank that did business on Saturdays but wasn’t gonna open for another hour, and we didn’t feel like sitting around for that long.  So when we got off at Odaiba and spotted a large hotel, I was overjoyed that it was willing to exchange money for us despite not having us as a guest.  I’d have been a lot happier though if we didn’t walk by a freestanding currency exchange counter in the mall, five minutes later, that offered a better rate…

The three entertainment complexes at Odaiba were named Aqua City, Decks, and Pallette Town, and were the majority of attractions.  Two of them were on the shore facing Tokyo, and provided great view of the bay, Rainbow Bridge, and the knock-off Statue of Liberty.

(that’s right… a Statue of Liberty!)

Pallette Town was perhaps the most interesting of them all, complete with a ferris wheel, a Venice-themed shopping mall, and Mega Web, a huge Toyota museum.  Mega Web not only had a collection of most vehicles in the Toyota family (except the Lexus LF-A), it also had some concept cars, an auto-drive track, and a motor sports course.  Too bad we didn’t speak Japanese, or we might’ve signed up for some of those activities.

(it’s okay to keep a dog in your bag like those silly New Yorkers, just make sure we can’t see it!)

Our lunch was at a tonkatsu specialty restaurant.  While I wasn’t a big fan of the Japanese fried pork cutlet, they served thed most delicious salad that I’ve experienced.  It was as simple as thin-sliced cabbage topped with a citrus-based sweet dressing, but it was likely the only raw vegetable that I’d happily eat for a whole meal.

Dinner was going to be at Little Hong Kong, two entire floors within Decks decorated like the 1950s HK and filled with supposedly authentic Cantonese restaurants.  However, the plan was messed up by the large dessert that we ate in the late afternoon.  We’re in Asia now so it’s not unmanly to say this… I LOVE THE DESSERTS HERE!  Back in the US I usually labeled myself as disliking sweet stuff, but this trip made me realize that the fact was that American desserts suck!  Parfaits in Japan were especially amazing and I cried for them on a daily basis.  So when we came across this gigantic parfait complete with an ice cream cone, a pudding (flan), and a pineapple slice, I knew we weren’t leaving the country without it.

(that’s right… this was the only thing besides the Kinkakuji getting three pictures posted )

We took a brief morning walk to Higashi (East) Honganji, a Buddhist temple around the corner.  That and Nishi (West) Honganji took up significant space on the map and were set symmetrically in central Kyoto, a feature reflective of Kyoto’s design basing off an ancient Chinese capital.  I love grid systems that have a logical pattern.

Shortly afterwards, we boarded Hikari 510 toward Tokyo.  The ticket office clerk, ticket gate lady, vending cart lady on the train, and the ticket officer on the train were all extremely polite.  They bowed to everyone, kept a constant smile on their faces, handled transactions with both hands, and repeated foreign words that I assumed were “please”, “thank you”, etc.  Not only the Shinkansen crew, of course, but just about every service person we saw so far followed these principals.  I thought about the NJ Transit staff who’d shout “tickets out” loud enough to make babies cry, and the NYC McDonald’s employees who’d hand over your order without looking at you and then let go right before you could reach.  It’ll be hard to go home after this!

Precisely 2 hours and 41 minutes later, we returned to Tokyo Station.  The timely reputation of Japan’s transportation systems was no joke.  We spent the afternoon in Akihabara, the bigger and more intense equivalent of Taipei’s Guang Hua Market.  Being the electronics, anime/manga, gaming, and hentai capital, this place attracts geeks and weirdos from all over.  Didn’t we just see a Gundam Cafe by the train station?  Totally awesome.

But Gundam Cafe wasn’t the popular attraction in Akihabara compared to maid cafes, where girls dressed in French maid costumes did cute things while serving food that probably wasn’t that tasty.  A whole bunch of these girls were passing out fliers on the streets, dressing and sounding cute but could use some help on the face part.  Both of us had enough interest to repeatedly talk about checking out one of these cafes, but conveyor belt sushi and Mr. Donut were just slightly more convincing.

We weren’t really in the market for anything geeky or anime geeky, so the visit was mostly of cultural interest.  Porno manga, for example, was nothing new or fascinating as gay porn manga.  The vast selection of the latter was comparable to the entire shelf of travel books at Borders.

A trip into a big arcade, however, enlightened us.  We tried out the new and glamorous photo machines, and had a blast creating our first set of fobby picture collage.  Guys in the US would be so ashamed even to be seen near these machines, but this is Asia where male and female have equal rights to enjoy fun stuff.

Afterwards, we took a train to Shinjuku and checked into our third hotel.  It wasn’t that far from the station, but we got slightly lost due to the complex street system.  Apparently not everything was on the same x-y plane so it was impossible to locate certain cross streets as seen on the map.  In retrospect, that design made a lot of sense for a busy city’s downtown as it reduced the number of intersections and therefore potential for congestion.  But for two foreigners dragging heavy luggage, heck it was confusing as hell.

Shinjuku Washington was the most “American” among the hotels that we stayed at.  The room was huge compared to what we had seen (you could open both suitcases and still walk to the other side) and the service staff were more “professional” than “nice”.  The room came with an awesome massage chair that took up 1/2 the space that an equivalent thing from Brookstone would.  Unfortunately the layout of the building was super lame and the guy who programmed the elevators needs to be fired.

The evening was spent at Kabukicho, the heart and soul of Shinjuku – at least for tourists who don’t work in the forest of office skyscrapers.  Restaurants, shops, pachinkos, arcades, and the “more fun” entertainment establishments filled this district.  Unlike Ginza, it was freaking hard to distinguish one street from another, and there was no obvious path of exploration to abide by.

Dinner was at a restaurant that appeared like a hole in the wall but actually had five stories complete with an elevator.  Finally for once we got to sit on an entirely nonsmoking floor, instead of the very border of a small nonsmoking section where people had a tendency of seating us.  Hong had a platter of tempura and I enjoyed the best udon dish ever in a firey pot.  I wasn’t too crazy about the concept of mixing miso with hot sauce, but the dish overall was excellent.

Later at night we had dessert at this place called Miami Garden.  Holy f*** it was terrible!  We were impressed to find out such lameness could survive as a business in Tokyo!

Breakfast was at Cafe du Monde, a chain supposedly from New Orleans.  The one thing surprising and annoying about Japan was the smoking at public places, including most dining establishments.  During the course of our brief sandwich-and-coffee breakfast, 5 people had come, seated right near us, and smoked.  Our risk for lung cancer had just gone up a notch!

Then we experienced for the first time the notoriously crowded morning commuter train.  This was Kyoto, not Shinjuku, so it probably wasn’t the real deal just yet.  But the level of packed-ness was already beyond where New York subway riders would shout, “Fuck you, wait for the next train!”  It was so jammed that if you lift a foot up 3 inches and put it down, you’re likely to step on someone else’s foot.  My baby fell victim to that.  My theory is that since Asians tend to be more uniform in shape and size, it’s possible to jam together like sardines.  Americans would have a much harder time maximizing space efficiency, and it wouldn’t be fair to squeeze a 120-lb person into a 300-lb person’s belly fat.

The train took us to Arashiyama, the mountain region west of Kyoto that was more beautiful than I expected.  We walked through the bamboo groove, took a less touristy path through the Turtle Mountain park and down stream along the Hozu River, and over the Togetsukyo Bridge.  Skipping the World Heritage site Tenryuji (another Buddhist temple), we went straight to the Monkey Park.

None of the Kyoto tourism websites bothered to mention the level of physical demand at this “zoo”.  After paying the entrance fee at the single-person booth, it was a good 30-minute hike up the steep mountain before we saw any ape creature other than the two of us.  It was brutal on our already destroyed feet!  But then the park was unlike anything we had seen before… a large gang of wild monkeys freely roamed the mountain centering on a small hut, where visitors could buy snacks to feed the monkeys through the wire fence.  I know Chee Seng would approve feeding monkeys as much as we’d approve keeping a pet spider, but it was irresistible.  It was scary at first to hand-feed wild animals, but their hairy clawed fingers were surprisingly gentle.  We tried to favor the babies, but nobody could win a fight over peanuts against the big ones.  It was hilarious to watch them hitting each other on the head and stealing food from each other’s mouth.  They were also too smart to fall for our distraction tactics.  The experience of seeing monkeys on stairs, benches, and binoculars was definitely worth a few more days of swollen feet.  Where else can you pee in a urinal while a monkey climbs across the window in front of your eyes and two others bounce on the roof over your head?

(hmm… what are these three doing there?)

Returning to Kyoto, we hit up Nijo-jo, a rare castle palace with both defensive elements like walls, towers, and moats, and luxury elements like palace buildings, paintings, and gardens.  The one thing that every tourism website mentioned about Nijo-jo was the security feature: the floor in the palace hallways would make a sound of nightingale when stepped on, in order to warn of potential intruders.  I was highly intrigued because it reminded me of the training scenes in Ninja Assassin.  To my surprise, we were actually allowed to walk on such floors – but it wasn’t always easy to tell apart the nightingale sound by design and the creaking sound of the aged wood.

The remainder of the day was spent in the Kawaramachi/Teramachi district, where the covered shopping arcades, a huge department store, restaurants, and food carts kept us occupied.  We checked out the Benkei Stone, which was briefly mentioned in a Detective Conan movie.  Because our feet started hurting like hell again, we made frequent food stops in order to sit down and rest.  Of particular noteworthiness was the Crepe Ojisan cart and then conveyor belt sushi place where I tried smoked horse meat (nasty).

Benkei Ishi (stone)

Uncooked squid

Smoked horse sushi.  The meat-like stuff and the rice didn’t stick together at all.

Those of you who have traveled in Asia would know how hotels here provide necessities that American hotels don’t: tooth brushes, tooth paste, combs, razors, shaving cream, slipper, etc.  Ours went the extra mile to drop us off a daily package of the aforementioned, new tea/coffee bags, sheets, and towels, even though we put up the “do not disturb” sign to avoid unnecessary cleaning efforts.  That’s the Japanese customer service showing off again.

On the side of our bath tub was a bath meter indicating how much water to fill up given a patron’s weight.  Slightly unintuitive at first, it did make sense that a heavier person’s body would displace more volume, assuming similar human body density, and raising the water level higher upon entering a tub of the same base area.  I tested this out with water filled to the 70kg mark, and the amount was quite perfect.  While enjoying water hot enough to cook ramen (no way in hell would an American hotel provide this due to liability concerns), I wondered how much water a 300lb person should fill since it was off this chart.  Then I realized that the person in question wouldn’t have been able to even enter this room in the first place.