the hollywood north report

Truth, lies, and the Japanese language

2012-01-25T21:33:00.005-08:00

The Japanese language is a beautiful, maddening thing. Because it's more polite to speak in an indirect way, words become unhinged from their meanings, serving as signposts to the deeper subtext.

You have to learn that "maybe" usually means "absolutely not" or that "thank you" is a rude way to respond to a compliment. Politeness requires that you reply to a compliment by firmly denying it. Besides everyone knows that a compliment in Japan is not meant to be taken at face value. What's important is the subtext. A compliment is a foot in the door, a conversation starter, a way to express kind feelings. If, for example, you can string a few sentences together in Japanese, you will consistently be told, "Wow! Your Japanese is so good." The person saying this knows it's a lie. You know it's a lie. But you also both know the purpose of the lie is to foster friendly feelings. The words are fake but the kindness is genuine.

And while the dishonesty and restraint inherent in this style of speaking can be frustrating, it makes for a fluid, creative way of communicating. Japanese is dynamic in a way that English is not. English communication takes place on the surface -- what you see is what you get (unless the person is lying, of course). Words are not used as signposts to guide the listener toward a deeper meaning. Words are used to directly express what the speaker is thinking and feeling. English speakers define "good" communication as being clear and unambiguous. We chastise politicians for the way they speak because they carefully chose their words to dance around the subject, never confirming nor denying, using vague terms to avoid saying what they really think. Our politicians are masters of the polite Japanese style of speaking.

I'm equally fascinated by the way Japanese businesses appropriate English words to sell their products in a Japanese way. A billboard for a coffee company that reads "Good coffee smile" cannot be taken literally nor is it meant to be taken literally. The words allude to the way coffee makes you feel. "Good coffee smile" is a paradox: it makes no sense and yet it makes perfect sense. It's poetic. (Of course, this misuse of English can also be hilarious.)

Another one of my favourite differences between Japanese and English is the use of sound symbolism. In English, we limit onomatopoeia to words that refer to sounds ("oink" "bang" "pop"). But in Japanese, there are mimetic words for things that don't make noise, like glitter (kira kira) or slime (neba neba). Procrastination has a sound (guzu guzu), as does a dress covered in sequins (pika pika), as does a basket full of fluffy kittens (fa fa).

Its fluidity is what makes Japanese beautiful and its ambiguity is what makes it maddening. It's difficult to know what people are really thinking, which, in turn, makes it difficult to form close friendships. How can you get to know someone without open and honest communication? My closest female Japanese friend is a woman by the name of Sachi, who, upon meeting me for the first time, blurted out, "Wow! Your Japanese is terrible."

Popcorn (a haiku)

2012-01-19T17:28:00.001-08:00

pop pop pop pop pop
pop pop pop pop pop pop pop
pop pop pop pop pop

Heated maxi pads (and other ways to stay warm in Japan)

2012-01-17T23:46:00.007-08:00

Winter can be particularly cruel in Japan, a land without central heating, insulation, and double-glazed windows. Paper-thin walls and flimsy windows conspire to let the cold in and the heat out. As a result, an entire industry has sprung up around keeping people warm indoors.

Winter in Japan is all about the heated toilet seats, canned coffee, high-tech underwear, hot water bottles, space heaters, heated carpets, electric blankets, hand warmers, fleece blankets and, my personal favourite, the kotatsu. There's nothing more snuggley than a kotatsu (a kotatsu is basically a coffee table with an electric heater screwed to its underside. A big, fluffy duvet goes between the frame and the table-top. You sit on the floor with your legs under the table and the lower half of your body covered by the duvet, which traps the heat from under the table. It's a lovely womb-like contraption.)

This year, there is one more way to stay warm in Japan: heated maxi pads.

The thinking behind this product is that warming up your crotch will also warm up your core. Sort of like peeing your pants but without the odour and wetness.

The pads use the same technology as disposable hand warmers. A thin hand warmer is attached to the underside of the maxi pad, which produces heat when the iron inside it is exposed to air. The manufacturer warns against sitting for extended periods of time while using the pads (to avoid burning your lady bits). And even though they're maxi pads you're not supposed to use them when you're on your period. They seem to be getting good reviews from the Japanese ladies but I think I'll stick with more conventional ways to stay warm.

Old-school quote of the day

2012-01-11T18:05:00.004-08:00

You develop an instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world, and a compulsion to do something about it. From out there on the moon, international politics look so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say, "Look at that, you son of a bitch."

-- Edgar Mitchell, Apollo 14 astronaut, People magazine, 8 April 1974

How to cure a cold for less than $1

2012-01-08T19:01:00.006-08:00

The quickest way to kill a cold is to drink home-brewed ginger tea. I don't know how it works or why it works. All I know is that it works. Period. I have been using this recipe for about six years now, and it has blown the cold out of my system every single time.

All you need is a huge chunk of ginger (the bigger the better), half a lemon, some honey, a medium-sized saucepan and about 1.5 litres of water. Start by peeling off the ginger's skin and then slicing it into thumb-sized strips.

Fill a medium-sized saucepan to the brim with water. Add the ginger slices. Crank up the heat as high as it will go and bring the water (with the ginger in it) to a boil.

Once it has reached a roiling boil, turn the heat down to medium-high and let the ginger boil uncovered for 15 to 20 minutes.

You might want to open a window while you're letting the ginger boil because the air inside your kitchen is going to get pretty spicy. In the meantime, slice half a lemon into three pieces. This recipe yields about three large mugs of tea, so you'll want to squeeze the juice of one lemon slice into the mug each time you refill it.

After 15 minutes of boiling, turn off the heat and pour the liquid into a teapot with a strainer. If you don't have a strainer, you can just scoop out the ginger slices with a spoon before pouring it into a teapot or a mug. This recipe ends up making enough tea for one teapot plus a mug. So I just fill the teapot to the brim and then pour the rest into a large mug. Add about two teaspoons of honey and the juice of one lemon slice to each mug. Do not share. You must drink all three mugs for optimal cold-killing results. Best enjoyed in bed or bundled under blankets on the couch. (Caramel waffle cookies are optional but highly recommended.)

A red, orange and yellow Christmas

2011-12-25T19:27:00.012-08:00

A lifetime of Canadian Christmases has conditioned me to think the only thing that should be hanging from the trees this time of year is icicles or twinkling lights.

It seems wrong that Kyoto is in the last blush of fall when trees back home have been bare for months. It's beautiful but it doesn't feel like Christmas.

Kyoto is a little bit like Vancouver. Both cities are surrounded by mountains where, if you get up high enough, the rain is replaced by snow. Still, there's something unnatural about walking through dry city streets and then arriving in a winter wonderland after an hour of hiking up the side of a mountain.

It's autumn at sea level and winter at elevation. Two seasons for the price of one.

Deconstructing Durban

2011-12-18T22:36:00.019-08:00

I spent the past two weeks in Durban, South Africa, at the United Nations climate change conference. I think I have recovered from the sleep deprivation, the over-caffination and the general frustration enough to put my thoughts into words.

I want to talk about what it was like to be at the conference. And I want to talk about the youth delegates, whose energy, enthusiasm and optimism blew my mind on a daily basis. But, before I do that, I want to talk about the outcome of the conference. To get the bad news out of the way first.

Durban was an incredibly complex and difficult meeting. In the end, all we got was a vague document called the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action. It's not a protocol or a mandate, just a "platform." It's too soon to tell if that's a good thing or a bad thing. If governments decide they want to raise the level of ambition on climate change, the Durban Platform can be a tool to set us on course. We now have an agreement to negotiate an "instrument" with "legal force." Governments can, theoretically, design the new instrument to match up with the deep emission cuts the IPCC indicates are necessary to avoid the worst consequences of climate change. The negotiations on the new instrument will determine if we are serious about solving climate change or not. So it's difficult to label Durban a success or a failure; it's what happens next that really matters.

That's the big question, what happens next? Will new negotiations actually result in real emission reductions or will it be too little, too late?

It's easy to feel pessimistic about international negotiations on climate change. Each meeting seems to follow the same pattern: all talk, no action. World governments have been talking about climate change for 20 years with very little progress. Trying to get 194 countries to move together in the same direction on climate change feels less like building consensus and more like herding cats.

Complicating matters is the fact that climate change comes with a time limit and the window to stabilize global temperatures is closing. The International Energy Agency has shown that CO2 emissions in 2010 were the highest on record; and they're still rising. Every year we don't deal with it, the problem just gets worse. And at a certain point, it will be too late to fix it. There will be too many emissions in the atmosphere and no way back to a world that isn't buffeted by uncontrollable, catastrophic climate change.

Scientists have been telling us increases in global temperatures must be kept to no more than two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. In order to limit temperature rise to two degrees, the IPCC warns that global emissions have to peak by 2015 and then drop to 50 per cent below 1990 levels by 2050.

But the latest science from the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research suggests that two degrees is no longer the threshold between "acceptable" and "dangerous" risks but between "dangerous" and "very dangerous" climate change. Scientists there are now looking at 1.5 degrees as a safer target. That means cutting global emissions at least 85 per cent below 1990 levels by 2050.

We are nowhere near that. The Kyoto Protocol contains targets that are far too small to achieve any of those goals. Under the Kyoto Protocol, developed countries are supposed to cut their greenhouse gas emissions a mere 5.2 per cent below 1990 levels by 2012. That's not going to happen.

Part of the problem is that negotiations are complicated by fundamental differences of positions, which have yet to be resolved. Countries will have to find a way to work through several key differences, including differences of historical responsibility, differences in development and differences in geographic vulnerability to climate change. International cooperation on deeper emission cuts will be impossible unless these differences can be resolved. Compounding the problem is a lack of political will to do what is necessary to tackle climate change.

Which is why Durban -- just like each and every climate conference preceding it for the past two decades -- was an incredibly complex and difficult meeting.

A snapshot of the Durban climate conference

It's worth mentioning what it's actually like to be at one of these United Nations climate change conferences. The scale of these meetings is so big that critics often deride them as a traveling circus. (I don't like the negative connotation but it's not an entirely inaccurate description.)

Since 1995, representatives of countries from around the world have gathered at the annual Conference of the Parties to hammer out the details of international action on climate change. For two weeks each year, thousands of negotiators, politicians, heads of state, journalists, celebrities, business leaders, academics, youth activists and environmentalists converge in a frenzy of activity. Because there are so many high-profile people in one place, security is always a big concern. Passing your bag through an X-ray machine and walking through a metal detector become as much a part of your daily routine as brushing your teeth.

The security checkpoints, scanners, X-ray machines, fences and road closures make you feel as if you are entering a gigantic hermetically sealed bubble when you walk through the conference doors. And, in a way, you are. You are entering a universe unto itself with a language unto itself. Everyone at the conference speaks in abbreviations: CDM, JI, REDD, SBSTA, SBI, AWG-KP, AWG-LCA. The numbingly dull list goes on and on (and we wonder why we're not winning the hearts and minds of the general public).

I would hate to be one of the thousands of journalists covering the conference. The whole thing is so confusing and difficult to understand that I wouldn't know where to begin. How they manage to distill it down to a succinct sound bite is beyond me.

That's not to say the journalists don't struggle. I saw a journalist crying in the women's washroom during the first week of the conference.

"It's really hard to know what to write or how to put it all together," she sobbed.

It's too bad Bill Clinton turned the expression into a cliche because there's no better way to describe it: I felt her pain.

The conference was held inside the sprawling Durban International Convention Centre, which was unremarkable as far as convention centres go. Still, Durban wins points for its creative space-saving techniques. The underground parking garage was transformed into makeshift offices for the UNFCCC, as well as the American, British and Canadian delegations. It was an airless, windowless, oil-stained, concrete wasteland.

These conferences are what I imagine being on a cruise ship is like, minus the onboard entertainment (unless you count as entertainment the small contingent of oddballs that always turns up at these conferences -- such as the woman registered as "Supreme Master" or his highness Lord Monckton, who showed up in Durban to stop the Marxists’ wet dream of global totalitarian dictatorship).

Sitting in on international climate negotiations requires a strong stomach, endless reserves of patience and a suppressed gag reflex. In Cancun last year, I watched as negotiations on a draft text to enhance public awareness and education on climate change began with 45 minutes of bickering by countries over the wording of one sentence in the opening paragraph. And this was one of the least nasty, least confrontational negotiating sessions.

It's no secret that certain countries come to the negotiating table year after year to obstruct rather than push for progress. These thinly veiled attempts to kill the Kyoto Protocol have brought negotiations to a virtual standstill. The pace of international climate change talks is now so grindingly slow it's no wonder almost nothing gets accomplished. The Kyoto Protocol is still alive but it's on life support.

And now for the good news

If we want to shift the level of ambition and political will that countries bring to the international negotiating table, we need to ramp up public concern on climate change. Without public pressure for strong action, countries will be able to continue to push for weak targets at international climate negotiations. Ministers will be able to return home from these meetings and ignore the problem until the next summit. Without public support for immediate action, international negotiations will continue to go nowhere and emissions will continue to rise.

Building popular demand for fundamental changes requires all of us to become involved. The good news is that things are already changing, with NGOs, schools and young people leading the way. I met many people in Durban working hard to make a difference. But the ones who impressed me the most were the young people.

The UNFCCC hired me to help with youth-related activities in Durban. My job was to make sure the youth delegates were able to participate in the process as fully as possible. We arranged meetings for them with high-level negotiators. We organized four slots a day for mini-side events. We gave them booths, an office, a meeting room, space to protest, logistical support, and the ability to intervene during negotiating sessions. To its credit, the UNFCCC truly understands the importance of giving youth a voice at these conferences. After all, it's their future that is up for negotiation.

The youth delegates blew my mind on a daily basis. They were an endless source of optimism, hope, positive energy and creativity -- essential ingredients in the shift toward a more sustainable future.

It was a good conference for young people. They got more media coverage than I've ever seen them get before. Three stories stood out for me.

The first was the six young Canadians who stood up during Environment Minister Peter Kent's address at the main plenary and turned their backs on him.

The second was the young woman who interrupted the speech by the U.S. chief negotiator Todd Stern. Security officers eventually led her out of the room but not before her plea for action was met with long, sustained applause from the room full of delegates and negotiators.

The third was the huge protest that went on for hours inside the convention centre on the last day of the conference. Young people refused to move until they got a fair, ambitious and legally binding agreement on climate change. They didn't get what they wanted. But, still, it was an exciting thing to see. You got the sense that they are the front wave of a much bigger movement back home.

Every young person in Durban was there because they care passionately about climate change. Some came to share their views with delegates, others to raise awareness about the work of their organizations through side events.

The UK Youth Climate Coalition, for example, worked hard to let the outside world know what was going on inside the climate talks. They filmed, edited and produced several short videos that they uploaded to YouTube while in Durban.

My personal favourite Shakira's Waka Waka Comes to Durban features young people singing and dancing to the theme song of the FIFA World Cup in South Africa. Because the climate conference was also being held in South Africa, the youth delegates decided to make Shakira's Waka Waka their official song too.

I hate to single out individuals because there was not one youth delegate who didn't impress me. But I think it's important to give a few concrete examples of the kind of work young people are doing.

Like Danae, who is working to engage young people on climate solutions in Mexico. Her project to improve alliances among young people, governments and NGOs won a national award, which is how she ended up in Durban.

Or Anton, a 17-year-old high school student from Germany, who wrote a policy paper on sustainable transportation, which he presented at a mini-side event in Durban. What was I doing when I was 17? Getting drunk, listening to Led Zeppelin, failing math? I had neither the motivation nor the intellectual capability to write policy papers at 17. At this rate, Anton is going to be the Chancellor of Germany by the time he's my age.

Or Esther, who developed a toolkit on climate change for young people in her home country of Nigeria. Her work took her to rural schools, where she helped set up climate change clubs. She also runs what she describes as the best blog in Africa.

Or the group of kids from South Africa who are leaders of their school's climate change clubs. They spoke about their school gardens, their recycling projects, and their efforts to raise money to install solar panels on their school roofs.

Or Jordan and Curtis, cousins from Nunavut in their early 20s. They came to Durban with a strong message for world leaders: climate change is devastating their northern home.

Jordan and Curtis spoke about how the snow is arriving later and melting sooner in Canada's far north. They also spoke about how melting Arctic sea ice is hurting polar bears, which rely on ice floes for shelter, hunting and breeding. As a result, hungry polar bears have been turning up at the town's garbage dumps in search of food.

The young men have spent time documenting the effects of climate change on their community through films and blogs. Their work focuses on Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit (the traditional knowledge) of Elders. In preparation for the UN conference, Jordan created a film titled Experiences of Climate Change from Inuit Elders.

"I have a grandpa who likes to talk a lot," Curtis said. "We're not scientists but we know our land."

The examples go on and on. If I listed all of the brilliant work young people are doing to draw attention to climate change, I could fill a book. If these are our future leaders, the world is in good hands.

As for me, something wonderful happened on the last day of the conference. I had helped organize a high-level briefing for youth with Christiana Figueres, the head of the UNFCCC. More than 150 young people came out to hear Christiana talk about the status of negotiations and answer their questions. I was up on stage, moderating the event. We were running out of time but Christiana announced that she would take one last question. Neva, of the UK Youth Climate Coalition, was the first person whose arm shot up in the air. I pointed to Neva and she leaned forward to speak into the microphone. She explained that she wanted to make a comment rather than ask a question.

"On behalf of the youth, I just want to thank Sarah for all of the great work she's been doing. We appreciate her efforts." And then the youth delegates raised their hands in the air and wiggled their fingers in silent applause (clapping is so last century). I was so touched I almost started crying.

I gave Neva a hug afterward and told her that her comment was like a knife through my heart (in a good way). All of it, all of the sleep deprivation, the over-caffination, the frustration, all of it made worthwhile by one touching comment. It was nice to be appreciated but it was even better to have spent those two weeks giving love to the youth and getting love back. It was a moment that will stay with me forever.

Toward the end of the conference, many of the youth said they felt like they had been riding an emotional roller coaster. They vacillated between feeling inspired by the possibility of a better world and frustrated with the low level of political will to make that happen. Still, they realize a lot of the work happens between conferences, that climate change is not something the world tackles only once a year for two weeks.

Climate change is urgent but urgency does not mean panic. It means continuous, patient action to change the world, which is exactly what these wonderful young people are working hard to do. And that should give all of us hope.

You can check out the rest of the photos from Durban on my flickr page.

Forward

2011-11-21T23:55:00.012-08:00

Halfway through writing my master's thesis I was struck by a profound realization: I was not writing a master's thesis, I was writing a love story. I was writing about things that mattered deeply to me -- love of nature, love of the universe, love of place, love of community. I'm not sure if there's room for the word "love" in a master's thesis about the current environmental crisis but love is what underpins this paper. It's about the need to touch people's hearts, not just their minds.

I had originally planned to look at how to communicate climate change in a way that motivates people to act. But my heart wasn't really in it. I had no clear hypothesis. Just a vague idea that the way we communicate about climate change wasn't working.

Everything changed six months ago when I took Professor Singer's academic writing class. She assigned us a 3,000-word paper with the freedom to write about anything we wanted to -- as long as the paper was backed by research. At that point, I was tired of writing dry, pedantic reports on climate change. I wanted to write something from the heart; I wanted to write about my love affair with the mountain behind my home. Prof. Singer could have rejected my idea but, instead, she encouraged it. And so I started to go deeper into my mountain.

But it wasn't enough just to research the mountain, I also needed to climb it. To breathe its forest-filtered air. To hear its birds sing overhead. To sink into its mud underfoot. To reach its summit and to see nothing but mountains beyond mountains all the way to the horizon.

The reward for all that effort was not to feel as though I had conquered the thing but to feel humbled by it -- to surrender myself to the realization that we are nothing more than an insignificant speck on a tiny planet in a vast universe whose mysteries we know very little about. But to also feel, with unwavering certainty, that we are connected to everything and everyone.

The more time I spent on the mountain, the more the focus of my paper started to shift. I was no longer writing about the mountain, I was writing about connectedness. As I got deeper into researching this ethos of connectedness, I came across a term I had never heard before: ecological literacy. I learned ecological literacy is about knowing the story of who we are and where we come from. It's about understanding that we are part of -- not apart from the natural world. That we are a species that is utterly dependent on healthy ecosystems for the food we eat, the air we breathe, and the water we drink.

I started to see the ethos of separation as the root cause of environmental problems. Dualistic thinking divided a harmonious ecosystem into separate parts -- human and non-human. It placed us as rulers of an earth whose natural resources existed solely for our benefit.

Thinking of ourselves as being at the top of some imaginary pyramid, with everything else beneath us and of lesser value, is a scientifically incorrect and outdated worldview. It was created at a time when we didn't understand the consequences of our actions. During the Industrial Revolution, we didn't know burning fossil fuels would cause climate change. Ecoliteracy is about the shift to a way of thinking that reflects the scientific reality of the world we live in. It's about recognizing that the earth is an intricate system of relationships that we are part of. It's about moving away from an ethos of separateness toward an ethos of relatedness.

Nature does not belong to us; we belong to nature. That is ecoliteracy.

Without this basic ecological understanding, it's easy to believe the myth that we have absolute control. This delusion can have tragic consequences, as all of us in Japan now know. The Fukushima nuclear disaster exposed the human arrogance that leads us to think we can somehow "outsmart" nature by building nuclear power plants as if they were unsinkable ships impervious to the rumblings of the earth and the movements of the ocean.

Stumbling upon ecoliteracy triggered an epiphany. I immediately knew this is what my master's thesis needed to be about. I asked my supervisor, Professor Gannon, if I could scrap my original thesis plan and start from scratch. She agreed, even though it meant I would have to scramble to submit everything on time. The result is a thesis that is both the culmination of my life and the beginning of its newest chapter.

Becoming ecoliterate

David Orr writes that most people who consider themselves environmentalists tend to share three things in common: 1) They have had experience in nature at an early age; 2) They have had an older mentor or family member who shared a love of the natural world; 3) They later read some seminal book that said clearly what they were feeling deeply but could not express well.

My own story follows the same three steps. I grew up in Canada, born to parents who thought it important to instil a love of nature in their children. Every summer, we rented a cottage on the shores of Georgian Bay where my grandfather was born. Every morning, my dad made us comb the beach for empty beer bottles. When my dad would dig armpit-deep through the public garbage cans, I went silent with embarrassment. But I endured these humiliations for profit-related reasons. The more bottles we collected, the more money we got. Every night, after dinner, we would walk to the local convenience store to spend our earnings on candy. The thing I liked most about these walks was stopping at the pond along the way. The pond was filled with thousands of tadpoles and to me there was nothing more magical than watching a mass of squirming black dots grow into fish-like creatures that would sprout legs and eventually hop out of the pond as frogs. My parents set out to instil a sense of wonder in me and it worked.

My parents nurtured my love of the natural world but it was David Suzuki who made me care about it. I was introduced to David Suzuki during a high school biology class taught by Mr. Ranucci, the man of my teenaged dreams. I sat in the middle seat in the front row of his Grade 10 biology class. They say there are bats sensitive enough to detect the movement of a moth flexing its wings as it sits on a leaf. That was the way I listened to Mr. Ranucci -- like a bat closing in on a moth.

One day, Mr. Ranucci made us read an essay written by David Suzuki about the state of the environment. That essay changed my life. It crystallized my feelings about the natural world and put them into words. I don't remember exactly what he wrote but I remember feeling like I had been hit by lightning.

I decided I wanted to become a scientist like David Suzuki. The only problem was I kept failing math and chemistry. So I became a journalist instead. I was good at it but I hated it. I couldn't detach myself emotionally from the stories I was covering. And I was shy. I never got comfortable with approaching random people and asking them for interviews. I lasted three years as a journalist until I left for a place that was a better fit for a thin-skinned introvert.

I don't believe in fate but if I did, I'd say there was something else at work when I landed a job at the David Suzuki Foundation. I spent the next seven years working side-by-side with the man who changed my life when I was a teenager. Call it kismet.

However, it was far from paradise. The work often felt Sisyphean in nature. Just like rolling a boulder up a hill, it seemed like we were constantly offering solutions to environmental problems that fell on deaf ears. The struggle to turn policy into legislation, only to be defeated again and again, was an exercise in frustration. Caught up in daily work and deadlines, it was difficult to know if we were really making a difference. There was little time left over to step back and critically evaluate what we were doing well and what we were failing to do well.

When I applied to do a master's degree at Kyoto University, I wanted to look at how to communicate climate change in a way that motivates people to act. That, in turn, led to an internship with the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) last year. I spent four months at the UNFCCC's office in Germany, where I compiled information for a report on what countries have (but mostly haven't) done to increase public awareness and education on climate change.

It was disappointing to see the low priority given to public awareness and education on climate change in many countries. Public support for measures to fight climate change is critical to their success. Without public pressure for strong action, countries will be able to continue to push for weak targets during international climate negotiations. Ministers will be able to continue to return home from these meetings and ignore the problem until the next summit.

It's easy to blame political leaders for the failure to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. But the problem goes deeper than that -- there is very little being done to address the root cause of climate change. And while it's true that climate change is caused by increased concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, that's only part of the story. The climate crisis is also a crisis of worldview.

We don't live in an infinite world and yet we act as if we do. We act as if the ocean will never run out of fish or as if the ground will never run out of oil. During the past 250 years, human beings have altered the planet more rapidly than any other period in history. We have consumed resources faster than they can regenerate. We have driven thousands of plants and animals to extinction. The science is clear: a major shift in our consumption and production patterns is needed in order to live within the constraints of the natural systems that support us.

We need a way of thinking that reflects the scientific reality of the world we live in. We need to understand the natural systems that make life on earth possible and to live accordingly. We need to become ecoliterate.

But what does becoming ecoliterate mean in practical terms? I spent two weeks at Schumacher College this fall in an attempt to answer that question. Satish Kumar, the director of the college, explained that ecoliteracy is about acquiring basic ecological knowledge, and then putting that knowledge into practice. I asked him how to move people toward a more ecoliterate worldview. How do you start a groundswell? He said most social movements tend to share four things in common:

1. Action. If you want to influence other people, you need to back up your words with action. It's not about being dogmatic or demanding. It's about being the change you want to see in the world.

2. Communication. Share your ideas. If 10 people share their idea with 10 other people, they will reach 100 people. If 100 people share their idea with 10 other people, they will reach 1,000 people. If 1,000 people share their idea with 10 other people, they will reach 10,000 people. Ideas can spread exponentially, so start spreading them.

3. Organization. Slavery in America ended because people organized. The Berlin Wall came down because people organized. The Arab Spring spread across the Middle East because people organized. People need to come together to make their voices heard.

4. Long-term commitment. Urgency does not mean panic. It means continuous, patient action to change the world.

And while I agree with these steps in theory, putting them into practice is much more difficult. Working on environmental issues tends to leave me vacillating between idealism and cynicism. Seeing ecoliteracy in action at Schumacher College inspires me; seeing the lack of political will at international climate negotiations depresses me. But I recognize the importance of staying away from the extreme end of idealism (the naive and infantile kind of thinking that presumes people are inherently good or will choose to do the right thing) and the extreme end of cynicism (the negative and defeatist kind of thinking that constantly says "that's unrealistic").

Hope is the safe middle-ground between the two extremes. History gives me hope because history proves that worldviews can shift and people can change. Science has given us the power to destroy the environment but it has also given us the knowledge to understand the consequences of doing so. We're living at exactly the right moment in time. We are aware of the consequences of our actions. We can turn things around.

The earth is our only home. But more than that, it is the only place in the known universe where life exists, which is an amazing thing when you consider how big the universe really is. Our planet is just one of eight in orbit around our sun, which itself is only one of about 200 billion stars in our galaxy. But even our galaxy is just one of 100 billion galaxies, all joined together in an enormous web stretching out in all directions. It puts our tiny planet into perspective. In the vastness of the universe, life on earth is special and rare and worth protecting.

In the end, that's what this thesis is about. It's about everything that matters deeply to me -- love of nature, love of the universe, love of place, love of community. It's about moving beyond being a passive receiver of environmental knowledge, toward a deeper understanding of ecology and igniting the passion for change.

It is not just a master's thesis; it is a love story.

Note: I wrote this as a foreword to my master's thesis. I thought it was important to explain why I was writing this thesis and what it means to me. But, fundamentally, I wrote it for myself. I wanted to tell the story of how I got to this point. I'm not sure if my supervisor will allow me to include it in the final draft, which is why I decided to post it here.

The Schumacher College experience

2011-11-13T22:52:00.013-08:00

If I had to summarize the two weeks I spent at Schumacher College as simply as possible, I would put it like this: Schumacher College is an amazing place full of amazing people doing amazing things.

I left Schumacher feeling inspired and motivated. Most of all, I left feeling like I'm on the right track with my research, my work, my thesis, my life. Everything is in line with my values. There's harmony in that, and with harmony comes happiness.

The purpose of my trip to Schumacher was twofold: 1) To take a course on ecological literacy; and 2) To use Schumacher as a case study for my master's thesis, which itself is about ecological literacy.

In case you're wondering what ecological literacy is, it's about knowing the story of who we are and where we come from. It's about understanding that we are a part of -- not apart from -- the natural world. That we are a species that is utterly dependent on healthy ecosystems for the food we eat, the air we breathe, and the water we drink.

Thinking that we are somehow superior to, or separate from, nature is the kind of thinking that led us to create an economic system built on a foundation of limitless consumption. So ecoliteracy is about the shift to a way of thinking that reflects the scientific reality of the world we live in. In other words, it's about recognizing that the earth is an intricate system of relationships that we are part of. It's about moving away from an ethos of separateness toward an ethos of relatedness. Of course, ecoliteracy is much more than just the passive acquisition of knowledge; it is the ability to understand the natural systems that make life on earth possible and to live accordingly.

Being at Schumacher was great because it gave me the chance to learn more about ecoliteracy from both a theoretical and practical point of view. We saw all sorts of examples of ecoliteracy in action, from Transition Town Totnes to sustainable farming to ecological design. People are simply rolling up their sleeves and getting to work.

Schumacher also gave me insights into how I want to communicate about the environment. I am not interested in the confrontational "who can shout louder" style of activism. I think it's more productive (and effective) to talk about the issues in a way that is not dogmatic or demanding. No one wants to be preached at. It's better to be soft and permeable, to mould the message to the other person's interests and beliefs. To invite them into the conversation, rather than shut them out. And, above all else, to have a sense of humour when communicating about the environment. Humour is critical. Otherwise we come across as being too earnest and being earnest is annoying. Earnestness is the enemy of environmentalism.

I have a lot more thoughts, but I'm saving those for later. For now, I'll just end with some photos of the English countryside.

London in 24 hours

2011-11-01T10:53:00.008-07:00

I've been in the English countryside for almost two weeks now. I'm taking a course on ecoliteracy at Schumacher College. The experience has been incredible. Partly because of the college and partly because of its pastoral setting. I love the smell of cow poop in the morning. The college grounds are unlike anything I've seen before. All rolling green hills and quiet paths and stone buildings and grazing sheep. But I'll get to that later.

For now, I just want to post some pictures of London, a city in which I spent far too little time. I took the red-eye from Osaka to Dubai and then caught a connecting flight to Heathrow. By the time I arrived in London, I hadn't slept in more than 40 hours. But it's funny how being in a different country makes you feel alive and awake, no matter how tired you are.

I only had 24 hours in London from the moment my plane touched down to the time the train left for Totnes. So I bought a metro pass and hopped on the tube (I now know why they call it the tube. But I think "the cigarette" is a more accurate description. Subway trains don't get rounder or skinnier than the ones in London). I managed to hit all of the major tourist traps: Buckingham Palace, Tower Bridge, London Bridge, London Eye, Big Ben, the Parliament Buildings, Hyde Park, and the dudes with the furry hats. I had dinner at a British pub, rode a double-decker bus, and wandered around the market in the morning.

But my favourite discovery was finding out that British people really do say things like "bollocks" and "blimey" and "bloody hell." It's adorable. Like a Hugh Grant movie come to life.

Haiku #2

2011-10-29T14:11:00.001-07:00

small purple flower
for me and the bumblebee
nature in balance

The beauty of the cosmos

2011-10-19T00:45:00.010-07:00

I was walking with my friend Mai the other day when we passed by a field of cosmos flowers.

"Did you know that you can see stars inside the cosmos?" she asked.

I told her I had no idea what she was talking about.

If you look deep inside a cosmos flower, she explained, you will see lots of little stars. So I pulled a cosmos close to my face and was struck by what I saw: there were stars inside the cosmos! The universe never ceases to amaze me.

Learning how to bow

2011-10-12T21:01:00.011-07:00

A degree from Kyoto University is a golden ticket to a good job in Japan. As a result, the school feels more like an incubator for salarymen than a place for higher learning. Which is why a compulsory class on Japanese business manners is part of the curriculum.

I wasn't too happy about being forced to take a class geared toward future salarymen when I wasn't planning to work in Japan after graduation. Equally annoying was the syllabus, which explained that we would learn "how to make/receive phone calls" and "how to send/receive emails." The implication was that we somehow hadn't acquired these skills before entering grad school. I love Japan but I hate the hierarchical social structure that makes it acceptable to treat grown adults like 12 year olds.

I went into the business manners class thinking it would be a waste of time. But I was wrong: it turned out to be one of the most fascinating classes I've ever taken. It was both absurd and illuminating. Absurd in the sense that we learned looking cute was more important than being competent, and illuminating in the sense that we learned why looking cute is part of Japanese business culture in the first place.

The university had contracted the class out to Smart-i, a company that specializes in teaching new recruits how to fall in line with corporate culture. Our instructor was an impeccably groomed woman by the name of Akiko Sakamoto. It was her job to teach us how to dress, how to hand out business cards, how to bow, how to smile, and how to sit in a car. It was like boot camp for businessmen.

Learning how to dress

We were told to come to class wearing business attire. All of the Japanese students showed up in identical black suits and white shirts. Most of the foreign students showed up in suits as well, but with a dash of style -- a flashy pink tie or a purple blouse. After the introductory remarks, the first lesson was about appearance. Ms. Sakamoto geared her talk toward appropriate interview attire. She told us to stand up while she walked around the room and inspected our outfits.

She praised the Japanese students and scolded the foreign students. The way the Japanese students were dressed showed they valued the group, while the way the foreign students were dressed showed they valued their individuality. Generally speaking, interviewers in Japan are looking to see how well you conform to the group, while interviewers in the west are looking to see what sets you apart from the group.

When it was my turn to be inspected, Ms. Sakamoto was blunt. My blue silk blouse was offensive ("bright colours cause a feeling of strangeness"). My flared black skirt was too showy. My red nailpolish was inappropriate (nails should be clipped short and left unpainted). My earrings had to go (absolutely no accessories). My open-toed heels were wrong (plain, black low-heeled pumps covering the whole foot were best). My bare legs were scandalous (hose is a must). The only compliment she gave me was on my hair, which was pulled back in a bun ("avoid loud-coloured hair, it can make people uncomfortable").

According to Ms. Sakamoto, the most important thing is to look "clean" and wearing white shirt (presumably one without stains) is the best way to do that. A white shirt and a black suit creates a good first impression. Almost every Japanese job seeker will wear the white shirt/black suit uniform to an interview (they call it their "recruit suit"). Wearing something other than the recruit suit implies that you are not a team player. A good employee follows the rules and doesn't make waves. It's better to blend in rather than to stand out (therefore, no earrings, no jewelry, no nailpolish, no hair out of place). Of course, these rules are for the interview process, not the job itself. We were told the rules loosen up after you've been hired.

Learning how to give and receive business cards

Next on the agenda was the art of giving and receiving business cards. In Japan, the business card (or "meishi") is considered an extension of the individual. Exchanging business cards is a formal activity; therefore, the card must be treated with respect.

You give your business card with your right hand and you receive a business card with both hands. It sounds simple in theory but it's more complicated in practice. Technically, you're supposed to put both hands on your business card holder and hold your arms out in front of you when you receive a card, while saying "choudaishimasu" ("I will accept it"). Then you have to read the other person's card out loud, acknowledging their name and title. If you receive the card during a meeting, you put the card on the table in front of you and leave it there throughout the duration of the meeting. If you exchange cards in a place where there aren't any tables, you are supposed to put it in your card holder. Shoving someone's business card in your pocket or your wallet is considered rude. Ms. Sakamoto had us practice in groups of two and four.

The foreign students weren't the only ones fumbling around. The Japanese students were also having trouble remembering all the rules. My friend Abe-chan leaned across the table and said, "Don't worry. It's difficult for us Japanese too."

Learning how to bow

There are three different kinds of bows: eshaku; keirei; and saikeirei. Deciding what bow to use depends on the level of politeness required in a particular situation.

The eshaku bow is reserved for a light greeting, such as when you say hello to someone when you pass them in the office. The keirei bow is used for general greetings, such as when you welcome a customer into a store. The saikeirei bow, a deep bow from the waist, is the most polite bow of the three. It is used when you want to express a feeling of gratitude or apology. A prolonged saikeirei bow -- often lasting longer than 30 seconds -- is reserved for extreme contrition. It's the one you see on TV when a tearful company president takes responsibility for something horrible (a nuclear meltdown, for example) and bows so deeply he almost bends in half.

Ms. Sakamoto then had us stand up and practice the saikeirei bow. First we had to stand with our hands placed in front of us, with the left hand on top of the right hand. The reason for covering the right hand with the left hand is that (in olden days) you would pull out a sword with your right hand so covering up your right hand shows you won't give any harm. Then we learned how to bow down quickly and come up slowly. We were taught to come up slowly to prevent us from coming up earlier than the other person. Coming up more slowly than the other person is a sign of respect. It was highly entertaining watching two people bowing quickly at the waist and then trying to come up more slowly than the other. Competitive bowing. It could be an Olympic sport.

Learning how to behave

Smile, smile, smile. This was Ms. Sakamoto's main message when it came to proper behaviour. Judging by the smile plastered on her face throughout the entire class, it was a lesson she clearly took to heart.

Smiling, she explained, creates an impression of cuteness. Being cute makes you seem friendly and nonthreatening. Direct confrontation is a sign of poor manners so if you are cute, you are showing respect to other people (Ms. Sakamoto's words, not mine).

She also told us that "beautiful posture" would take us far in the business world. She barked out orders like a drill sergeant. Don't sit cross-legged ("it's bad for your back and bad for manners")! Don't cross your arms! Stand up straight with your hands at your side! The line dividing business manners and military training is a thin one in Japan.

Learning how to sit

Learning how to sit falls under the broader umbrella of "order of precedence." In Japan, there is an order of precedence in terms of where you should sit in a business meeting or where you should sit in a car. The order of precedence for seating arrangements follows a set of rules called sekiji. Customers, supervisors, or people older than you should have the best seats. Such seats are called kamiza.

For example, three co-workers sharing a taxi to a meeting downtown have to follow a strict seating arrangement. Where each of these employees sits in the taxi depends on their rank in the company. The most important person sits in the back, directly behind the driver. This is the most honourable seat because it is the safest seat. The next person down the ladder also sits in the back seat. The lowest ranking employee sits up front beside the driver. This is the least honourable seat because it is the least safe seat. So if there's an accident, it's better to sacrifice the 22-year-old intern than the 60-year-old boss.

Of course, there are exceptions to the rules. Consider, for example, the case of four employees taking a taxi. Suppose three of the employees are equally important, with one lower ranking female employee. Technically, the three important employees should sit in the back and the unimportant female employee should sit in the front. But if the three important employees are all large men, then the female employee should offer to take the middle back seat so that the important male employees are more comfortable. The lowest ranking female's comfort and safety are irrelevant (again, Ms. Sakamoto's words, not mine).

All the rules get thrown out the window, however, if the company president is the one driving the car. In that case, the intern gets booted to the back seat and the second-in-command takes the seat beside the driver. The least safe seat mysteriously becomes the best seat. Don't ask me how this works. It defies logic. The whole thing made me feel as if we had been transported back to the 1950s.

Learning how to speak

After being drilled on how to answer the phone and send emails, the last lesson of the day was on how to speak super polite Japanese ("keigo").

Keigo includes teinei-go (polite form), sonkei-go (honorific form) and kenjo-go (humble form). Deciding what form to use depends on the relationship between the two speakers. But it's not just who you're talking to that determines the form, it's also who you're talking about. For example, when talking with the boss in the office, the speaker uses the honorific form. But when taking with a client about the boss, the speaker uses the humble form.

It's confusing. Let's leave it at that.

Overall, it was a fascinating class. I fully endorse the general goal: respect, manners, and politeness are all wonderful things. The western world could use a few lessons from Japan on how to cultivate group harmony.

But I think Japan takes the repression of individuality a bit too far. It can't be healthy to hide your true emotions all of the time. The class reinforced so many of the little things that I'm not entirely comfortable with here. Like making myself small and submissive. Or blindly conforming to the group. Or putting in 12-hour days for the sake of company loyalty. Or putting everyone else's needs ahead of my own. Or simply not being able to call out, "shotgun!" when I'm sharing a ride with my colleagues.

Hot off the press

2011-10-05T18:15:00.004-07:00

One of the things I've been working on at Kyoto University is figuring out how to talk about environmental issues in a way that resonates with the public. After all, what good is scientific research if you can't communicate it?

There's a lot of interesting work going on at Kyoto University's Graduate School of Global Environmental Studies. But no one knows about it because very few of us bring our stories beyond the conference circuit. Professor Tracey Gannon wants to rectify this. So she created a newsletter to highlight some of the work being done by faculty and students in our graduate school. I helped her edit the newsletter and wrote an article on the future of nuclear power in Japan. The inaugural issue is now online.

The first issue focuses on the aftermath of the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami and what faculty and students are doing to help the country rebuild. One article explains how the engineering department created an eco-friendly toilet for evacuees who were staying in shelters where there was often only one toilet for 500 people. Another article looks at the work of the disaster management lab, which is researching the role of social media during the Tohoku disaster. My friend Melina wrote about her experience volunteering in the disaster-affected area. Another student wrote about Kobe's Maiko High School, which is the only school in Japan that teaches a special course on environment and disaster mitigation.

The newsletter is stripped of academic jargon in order to tell our stories in a clear and compelling way. It's not the New Yorker and it won't win any design awards but it's a much-needed bridge between scientists and the public.

The mystery of the exorbitantly expensive grapes

2011-09-28T00:48:00.008-07:00

This is a story about a $98 package of grapes. I found them sitting on a supermarket shelf in downtown Tokyo. They were sandwiched between a $2 bunch of bananas and a $3 pack of pears. It was a low-key place for such a high-end product.

The grapes were sold by the bunch. Each bunch contained about 12 grapes. The price per bunch? A whopping 7,350 yen (about $98 or 70 euros). That's 612.5 yen (or $8.16 or 5.83 euros) per grape.

Clearly, these were no run-of-the-mill grapes. The packaging was as excessive as the price tag. The grapes were lined with paper, wrapped in plastic, cradled in Styrofoam and placed in a box. Four layers of packaging signified that these grapes were something special. But I had no idea why they were so exorbitantly expensive.

So I did what any modern detective would do -- I googled it. It turns out there is a reason why the grapes are so expensive. This is not to say the reason is valid or logical but rather to point out that even the most seemingly bizarre and random things in Japan are almost always that way for a reason. The reason may be as bizarre and random as the thing itself but there is a reason why things are the way they are. Like the way the office expects me to follow their absurd orders without question. Every three months or so, they ask me for a photocopy of my passport and visa. My passport and visa do not change every three months. They must have at least 10 copies of the same two pages by now. But they still ask for a new photocopy every few months. I know there is a reason behind it I just don't know what it is.

As for the mysterious $98 grapes, it turns out there are two types of fruit in Japan: the fruit you eat and the fruit you give as a gift. If you don't know how to distinguish between these two types of fruit, the price tag serves as a guidepost. The fruit you eat is cheap. The fruit you give as a gift is expensive.

According to the New York Times, gift fruit is cultivated in a special way. The high price reflects the "exceptional methods" used in growing the fruit. The grapes I found in Tokyo are a variety known as Ruby Roman. They have been engineered to be extra big and super sweet. They are grown, packaged and marketed solely as gift fruit. In other words, the grapes owe their existence to the high-priced-fruit-as-present industry (an industry I'm pretty sure exists nowhere else on the planet). It's a system that works well in Japan, with its love of luxury brands and its culture of gift giving.

So there you have it. Mystery solved.

Apartment blues (a haiku)

2011-09-21T02:50:00.002-07:00

sleep interrupted
a putrid smell fills the air
my neighbour's cooking

Rethinking nuclear power after the Fukushima disaster

2011-09-13T00:18:00.005-07:00

I wrote a letter to the Prime Minister of Japan about the Fukushima disaster. Much to my surprise, the Japan Times decided to publish it.

The letter appears in today's newspaper. You can read it here. I have also cut and pasted the letter below:

Dear Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda,

The Tohoku earthquake and tsunami that devastated northeastern Japan continues to resonate far beyond its geographical borders for many reasons, but most of all because it exposed a deep fault line that runs through the global nuclear industry.

The twisted, charred reactors that sit on the Fukushima No. 1 site are a powerful symbol of both the literal and metaphorical damage to an industry that has long promoted nuclear power as a safe, reliable and clean source of energy.

The Fukushima disaster -- the worst of its kind since Chernobyl -- has shaken our assumptions about nuclear power, proving it is more unstable and dangerous than we thought. The disaster has also exposed the human arrogance that leads us to think we can somehow "outsmart" nature by building nuclear power plants as if they were unsinkable ships impervious to the rumblings of the earth and the movements of the ocean.

We forget that nature can't always be controlled or predicted, and so when a bigger-than-planned-for tsunami slams into a nuclear power plant, we are shocked to see the ugly mess left behind when the water recedes -- in this case, a series of equipment failures, nuclear meltdowns, the release of radioactive materials and the evacuation of tens of thousands of people from their homes. The tragedy is that we did this to ourselves.

If any good is to come of the Fukushima disaster, it is that it has sparked a worldwide debate about the future of nuclear power. Switzerland and Germany took quick, decisive action after the Fukushima crisis and announced their complete withdrawal from nuclear power in the coming decades. I'm pleased to hear that you plan to phase-out nuclear power too.

But what happens next is more complicated. Shutting down nuclear power plants will leave us with an energy supply gap that will have to be made up somehow. Will we invest in renewable energy or rely on increased imports of polluting fossil fuels? Will we attempt to reduce the demand for energy in the first place or continue to act as if the ground will never run out of oil?

Before the March 11 disaster, nuclear energy accounted for about 30 percent of Japan's power supply. Former Prime Minister Naoto Kan hoped to fill the majority of that gap with renewable energy by the early 2020s. You have said that reducing Japan's dependence on nuclear power will be a gradual process and that some reactors will have to be restarted.

In Germany, however, political leaders acted immediately to phase out nuclear power following the Tohoku disaster. The German government reversed its pronuclear stance and decided to abandon nuclear energy within 11 years. Eight of Germany's 17 nuclear reactors were taken off the grid after Fukushima. The German government has set a target to produce 35 percent of its energy from renewable sources by 2020.

But it's not enough to just address the supply of energy; we also need to look at how we can reduce that demand for energy in the first place. This will require a change in the way we think about energy and the way we live our lives.

Here in Japan, for example, there are more than 5.5 million vending machines. They guzzle electricity day and night to keep drinks hot and cool. But do we really need any of those vending machines? Do we really need to have their refrigerators and heaters running 24 hours a day, seven days a week for the sake of convenience?

How we use energy, how we produce energy -- it's all part of the discussion. I hope you will continue to keep Japan on its path of phasing out nuclear power. I also hope you will start thinking about safer, cleaner and more reliable alternatives.

If there is any good to come out of the Fukushima disaster, it is this.

SARAH MARCHILDON
Kyoto

Five days in Tokyo

2011-09-06T00:23:00.001-07:00

Tokyo's manic energy is intoxicating. I don't know if it's the lights or the crowds or the futuristic vibe of the city. Whatever it is, it's impossible not to feel a rush of excitement while walking under a night sky blotted out by neon signs.

The best way to get to Tokyo is by bullet train. Being on a train going more than 300 kilometres an hour sets the tone for the trip. Riding the bullet train is like sitting in an airplane as it roars down the runway just before takeoff. That burst of takeoff speed is the thing I love most about flying. The only problem is that it doesn't last long. On a bullet train, you get the thrill of traveling at takeoff speed for more than two hours. You feel like you're hurtling headlong into the future.

I have a newfound appreciation for Tokyo. Maybe it's because I've been in Kyoto for too long. Living in Kyoto is like being in a small bar with jazz playing softly in the background. It's smooth, easy and comfortable. Going to Tokyo is like entering a huge nightclub with techno thumping from the speakers. It's loud, crowded and frantic. The bass rattles your teeth, the lights sweep over a sea of heads dancing in unison. The energy is contagious. There's nothing to do but look for a space in the crowd, slip in and let go.

The beauty of big cities is their diversity. There's a greater variety of people and lifestyles. In turn, people in big cities tend to be more accepting and tolerant than their small-town counterparts. You won't see gay couples holding hands on the streets of Tokyo but you will see a lot creative and non-conformist people -- stylistically speaking, at least. People in Tokyo are not afraid to dye their hair green, pop the lenses out of their glasses, carry a bag with a huge kitten painted on it, pair chunky purple shoes with red pants, and top it all off with a gold-sequined shirt. And those are just the guys. Harajuku girls elevate cosplay to an art form. Kyoto seems so conservative by comparison.

There is no shortage of things to do in Tokyo. On Saturday alone, there was a jazz festival, a bicycle film festival, an organic farmers' market, a high school cheerleading competition and a march against nuclear power.

It was inspiring to see hundreds of people marching against nuclear power. A lot of Japanese people are angry about the Fukushima disaster. And they are making their voices heard. I only hope the politicians are listening. The times they are a-changin'.

After the protest march, I ate a vegetarian falafel at the organic farmers' market at the United Nations University. It doesn't get much more politically correct than that! I felt like I was back in Vancouver.

Tokyo is a great place to visit but I wouldn't want to live there. Too big. Too many people. There are more people in the Greater Tokyo area (35 million) than in all of Canada (34 million). Five days in Tokyo was fun. But I couldn't imagine a lifetime of crowded trains, cramped living conditions and concrete as far as the eye can see.

Learning how to cook Indian food in Japan

2011-08-30T23:18:00.006-07:00

One of the things I love most about Japan is the food. Sushi, ramen, curry, tofu, tempura, soba, udon, sashimi, onigiri, yuzu, nashi, gobo, edamame and wasabi. I love it all. But man cannot live by white rice and miso soup alone.

Unfortunately, easy access to foreign food is difficult to come by in Kyoto. It's almost impossible to satisfy a craving for Jamaican patties or Russian borscht or Mexican fajitas without spending a lot of time, energy and money traipsing across town to the tiny specialty shops that may or may not have what you're looking for in stock that day.

So it was a treat to be invited over to my friend Sunil's apartment to learn how to cook Indian food using ingredients easily found in Japan. Few Japanese supermarkets carry basmati rice or a large variety of beans or the myriad of spices needed for Indian cooking. But Sunil is able to buy everything he needs online from Ambika Japan.

Sunil, who originally hails from Delhi, said he didn't know what to eat the first few months after he arrived in Japan. Being vegetarian and unable to read Japanese meant he went hungry most of the time. Tired of subsisting on rice, Sunil asked his mom to teach him how to cook via Skype. Friends told him where to buy ingredients online and thus began a year-long foray into Indian cooking. The experience was miserable at first. Sunil overcooked the rice, burned the curry, couldn't figure out the right balance of spices, couldn't prevent the bread from hardening. But he persisted and made small adjustments here and there until the food began to taste good. The more he cooked the better he got. The better he got the more he enjoyed cooking. The more he enjoyed cooking the more he began to invite people over for dinner. And the more he began to invite people over for dinner the more his reputation began to spread.

I told him I had heard about his culinary prowess in the hallways at school. He laughed and said he wasn't sure he deserved any praise but that I'd be welcome to try his cooking for myself. Even better, he said he'd teach me and a couple of friends how to cook Indian food.

We made kidney bean curry with puri. It was easy to make and even easier to eat. The curry had the magical flavour combination of garlic, ginger, onion, tomatoes and chili peppers. The puri was soft and delicious. With Sunil's permission, I have reprinted his recipe below.

Red Kidney Bean Curry With Puri Recipe

INGREDIENTS

One head of garlic
One chunk of ginger
One large tomato
One medium onion
Five green chilies
500 grams of red kidney beans
One tablespoon of whole cumin
Half a tablespoon of turmeric
One tablespoon of coriander powder
Half a teaspoon of tamarind
Half a teaspoon of salt
Half a tablespoon of garam masala
Chili powder to taste
Olive oil
Canola oil
Three cups of atta (whole-wheat flour)

METHOD

1. Either cook the red kidney beans in a pressure cooker yourself or buy them pre-cooked in a can. Be sure to save the water from the pressure cooker or the can.

2. While the beans are cooking, prepare the puri dough. Spread out a bunch of newspapers on a large surface and dump three cups of whole-wheat flour in the centre. Knead small drops of olive oil into the flour then add a few drops of water, little by little, kneading the flour into one big ball that is slightly hard. Set the dough aside and keep it covered until you've finished cooking the curry.

3. Grate the ginger and garlic. Chop the onion, chili peppers and tomato.

4. Set the stove to low heat and add four tablespoons of olive oil to a large pot or frying pan. Add one tablespoon of whole cumin and fry for 30 seconds.

5. Add chopped onions, grated ginger, grated garlic and chopped chili peppers.

6. Stir fry until the onion is golden coloured.

7. Add half a tablespoon of turmeric powder and one tablespoon of coriander powder. Continue stirring and cooking for a few minutes.

8. Add the chopped tomatoes. Stir for about five minutes until everything becomes like a paste. Add half a tablespoon of salt and some chili pepper to suit your taste. Add half a teaspoon of tamarind.

9. Add the cooked beans. Little by little add the water that the beans were cooked in (or the water in the can of beans). Be careful not to add too much. You don't want liquid curry.

10. Add half a tablespoon of garam masala spice blend. The curry is finished. Now it's time to make the puri.

11. Take the puri dough and rip off small chunks and roll it in your hands into small balls. Using a rolling pin, roll each of the small balls into a small circle. Use oil on the pin if the dough starts sticking.

12. Fill a deep frying pan half full with canola oil over a high flame. When the vegetable oil is hot, take a pair of tongs and place (one at a time) a single puri in the oil. Allow it to deep fry for about two seconds before turning it over to do the other side for another two seconds. The puri will puff up immediately. Remove it from the oil quickly and set it aside. Continue one by one until they are all done.

13. Enjoy! Serves five.

Shirahama Beach: Japan's Jersey Shore

2011-08-26T00:22:00.003-07:00

Summer in Kyoto is a little slice of hell. The humidity is oppressive, the heat is sweltering, and the sun is scorching. The temperature hovers around 35 degrees Celsius for weeks on end. The rivulets of sweat drip like a leaky faucet. The cicadas never stop screaming. The mosquitoes are omnipresent; the cockroaches even more so.

Escape, if only for a few days, is essential. Which is why four friends and I decided to leave the city behind last week. We hopped on a bus bound for Shirahama, a resort town on the Pacific Ocean about 150 km south of Kyoto. It seemed as good a destination as any. Shirahama, which means "white beach" in Japanese, is one of the country's most famous attractions ("famous" meaning "crowded"). The tourist propaganda describes it as popular destination but neglects to mention that the beach is more of a Japanese Jersey Shore than a scenic getaway.

Every Japanese beach-goer was armed with two essential accessories -- a beach umbrella and an inflatable life preserver. The umbrellas were used to create a little patch of shade. The life preservers were used by children to stay afloat and by women to keep their heads high enough above water to avoid getting their hair and makeup wet. Each one of these women could have been a Jersey Shore cast member with their teased, sprayed, dyed hair and full-face makeup -- foundation, powder, blush, lipstick, eyeliner, fake eyelashes, eye shadow all the way up to their drawn-on eyebrows, eyelid tape (if they hadn't already had eyelid surgery), and those creepy "big eye" contact lenses that create the appearance of a bigger, wider iris. There's nothing wrong with wearing that much makeup but wouldn't it be more fun to swim in the ocean without worrying about your face sliding off?

Not that there was much room to swim. The water was so crowded it felt like we were fish in a tank. We kept bumping up against other swimmers and when we weren't bumping up against other swimmers our bodies were brushing up against candy wrappers, plastic bags, newspapers, and other assorted bits of garbage. The flotsam and jetsam were a fitting accoutrement to the noise pollution. The entire beach was ringed with loudspeakers spaced a few metres apart. Every five minutes a recorded voice would remind us to be careful, "Attention everyone! Please be careful." That was about as specific as it got. Occasionally there were live announcements, usually concerning nondescript lost children, "Attention everyone! Mrs. Tanaka is looking for her six-year-old son. He is wearing a black shirt and blue shorts." And then, inevitably, the follow-up announcement, "Attention everyone! We have found Mrs. Tanaka's son. He is safe. Please be careful!" Over and over again.

This is one of the things about Japan I don't think I'll ever really understand. It's as if anything that is naturally beautiful or unique (as I imagine Shirahama Beach once was) is exploited by developers who demolish the surrounding area and build ugly hotels and line the streets with shops selling cheap junk and put down parking lots the size of shopping malls so that hundreds of buses can drop off thousands of tourists who mill around taking pictures of whatever it was that once made this place so special before everything around it was razed to the ground and encased in concrete. The worst offenders are the places marketed as the country's top three famous spots (such as the top three famous views, top three famous castles, top three famous beaches, top three famous mountains, etc.). Japanese tourists, with their limited vacation time and limited desire to get off the beaten path, descend on these famous places en masse, take some pictures, buy some souvenirs, eat some food, and then leave before the next busload of tourists arrives to take their place. It's not my idea of fun but people here seem to enjoy it.

Maybe I'm just a spoiled Canadian, unable to appreciate natural beauty if it isn't in full-screen format -- a wide vista of open spaces and wild places. I can't narrow my field of vision the way Japanese people can. They seem to be able to block out the concrete and the neon signs and focus instead only on the small beautiful thing nestled amongst the urban ugliness. I can't focus on the beauty of a cherry tree if it stands on a riverbank strewn with garbage. I will always see the whole picture, not its individual parts. That's not to say my North American way of seeing is better. Just different.

Still, there are beautiful areas to be found away from Shirahama's main tourist strip. We stayed at the Kyoto University research house, which is located in a forest a 20-minute walk away from the main beach. It was a bit out of the way but it's hard to complain when you're only paying $10 a night (being a student has its privileges). The best part is that the research house had its own private beach, which was much nicer and cleaner than the main beach. Because our beach wasn't "famous" it was completely deserted. It was so empty that we were able to go skinny dipping in the middle of the afternoon (much to the delight of the lone male researcher who showed up at the exact moment one of us was letting it all hang out on the beach).

Other highlights included a walk to the Senjojiki rocks and the Sandanbeki cliffs (sadly famous for being one of the top suicide spots in Japan).

Of course, the pictures don't tell the whole story. How do you capture the feeling of skin covered under layers of sweat, saltwater, sunblock, bugspray, mosquito bites, and melted ice cream? How do you capture the warmth between friends and the sensory experience of summer -- the long days and the even longer nights? The noisy cicadas and the burning sun? The rivulets of sweat and the freedom of the open ocean? As crowded and as tacky as Shirahama was, it was a trip that embodied the best of summer.

You will be missed

2011-08-22T19:05:00.004-07:00

It is fitting that at the exact moment I read the news that Jack Layton had died, thunder rumbled overhead and the rain began to pour. It was as if the universe was grieving along with me.

His death came as a shock and I felt as sad as I would have if a friend had died. I never met Jack Layton. I didn't know him personally. But I felt like he knew me. Or he understood what was important to me. He fought for the things I cared about. He was more of an activist than a politician, and he had a strong sense of what was right and wrong, what was fair and unfair. He fought for what was right and he fought for what was fair. He fought for human rights, social justice and the environment. He fought for ordinary people not for powerful corporations. He marched proudly in the Gay Pride Parade every single year. He rode his bicycle to work. He was kind, compassionate, and caring. He spoke plainly and honestly -- always with hope and optimism. He was funny and intelligent. He was a man who devoted his life to the greater good.

It is unfair that his life should be cut short by cancer when he was only 61 and fitter and stronger than many people half his age. But it is especially cruel that his life should be cut short just months after he managed to lead the NDP to official opposition status. The party owes its historic success to Jack's charisma. He deserved to enjoy the results of his tireless hard work for much more than a few months. He would have made an excellent Opposition leader.

What will happen to the NDP now? Who will hold our Prime Minister accountable? Who will speak with a voice as strong and persuasive and reasonable and respected as Jack's when our Prime Minister promotes policies and measures designed to make a country that once stood for peace and human rights and compassion unrecognizable? We lost Jack Layton when Canada needed him most.

Two days before he died, Jack wrote a beautiful letter addressed to all of us. His last words were the most moving:

"My friends, love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear. Optimism is better than despair. So let us be loving, hopeful and optimistic. And we'll change the world."

Farewell, Jack. You will be missed.

Taking the Canon S95 out for a test drive

2011-08-15T18:10:00.013-07:00

I finally bought a new camera to replace the one that died on top of a mountain in the pouring rain many months ago. It took me all of about five minutes to decide on the Canon S95, which had less to do with the camera's features and more to do with wanting to get in and out of the electronics store as quickly as possible.

Japanese electronics stores are like torture chambers. If I was a spy and the enemy was trying to get me to spill some top-secret information, all they'd have to do is take me to a Japanese electronics store and I'd crack in less than 10 minutes. These stores are an all-out assault on the eyes and the ears. The fluorescent lighting is so bright it feels like your head is being squeezed in a vise grip. Your eyes dart wildly all over the place, unsure where to look because every square inch of space is plastered with ads. They hang from the ceiling, they line the walls, they take up more shelf space than the electronics. Too much clutter, too many colours. It makes you dizzy and nauseous. And the noise. The noise! There are more salespeople than customers and some of them are shouting out random greetings, others are using megaphones to advertise special deals, and the rest stalk their prey like commission-hungry carnivores. The overhead speakers blast the store's theme song over and over again (these theme songs usually feature a woman singing in a high-pitched voice over happy-sounding but crazy-making synthesizers). Every television in the store is turned on. Every stereo system is thumping out music. The result is a toxic cloud of noisy gibberish under blinding lights and aggressive advertising selling shiny plastic things in unnatural colours. The whole place is madness.

My tolerance level for these stores is about five minutes. I went in knowing exactly what I wanted -- a small point-and-shoot camera. And it had to be Canon. My old camera was a Canon and it was good. (I have the soul of an 80-year-old: I know what I like and I stick with it.) As much as I would like to upgrade to a digital SLR, I can't imagine lugging the damn thing around all the time. I like the little point-and-shoot cameras. I like their compact size and their light weight. You can take them everywhere. The Canon S95 was on sale and it looked good. So I bought it. And got the hell out of the store.

Two days in and I'm pretty happy with my little camera. I took it for a test drive yesterday. Just taking some pictures of a typical Monday here in Kyoto. I took some pictures at the lab. I took some pictures on my walk home. I took some pictures at the grocery store. And I took some pictures from the roof of my apartment. So far, so good.

I am especially fond of the "miniature" setting, which makes everything look like a little model version of the real thing.

The "macro" setting works nicely as well.

So connected yet so disconnected

2011-07-21T19:15:00.007-07:00

Two very different news stories caught my eye yesterday. The first story was about Candy Spelling's Los Angeles mansion, which sold for a mind-blowing $85 million.

The second story was about the food crisis in Somalia, which is now a full-blown famine.

The two stories seem unrelated. But they're not. They are both fundamentally about greed and stupidity.

A society that not only allows but glorifies the use of 4.7 acres of land to build a 56,500-square-foot house that contains 123 rooms, 27 bathrooms, and five kitchens for one family is a symbol of all that is wrong with the world.

Candy Spelling's mansion is an extreme example of wasteful excess but it drives home the point that our economic system is built on a foundation of limitless consumption.

We've created this myth that growth is progress and that progress is accumulation. So we accumulate obscene amounts of wealth and build obscenely big houses and call it "progress" but what we're really doing is digging our own graves (and taking everyone else with us) by consuming resources faster than they can regenerate and pumping so much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere that the climate is changing.

And this is where Somalia comes in. The famine is being blamed on the combination of a severe drought and the ongoing conflict. A New York Times article reports that many scientists point to climate change as the cause of the current drought. And if we are changing the climate with our growth and our technology and our addiction to cheap oil, then we are partly responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of Somalis.

Of course, there is also the greed and stupidity of the Islamic militants who control the famine zone in Somalia. The militants forced Western aid groups out of Somalia last year when the drought was looming and now they are asking the aid groups to return. But few want to return due to the danger of dealing with the militants. Making the whole emergency relief effort even more complicated is that American government rules prohibit material support to the militants. The scale of the disaster and all of its complexities boggles the mind.

I don't know what's worse: the insanity of America's excess or the insanity of Al Shabab's extremism? An economic system that is directly responsible for climate change or a bunch of militants who chop off hands, stone people to death and ban TV, music and bras in the hope of turning Somalia into a seventh-century-style Islamic state?

Either way, multi-million-dollar mansions in America and Islamic militants in Somalia are connected. It's not difficult to imagine some Somali kid growing up in a poor neighbourhood in Los Angeles seeing these McMansions and the obscene wealth and the big cars and feeling excluded and angry. And it's not hard to imagine some Islamic extremist group exploiting that teenager's frustration by giving him a sense of community and a feeling of brotherhood while radicalizing the young man's anger into something more sinister.

And so when I read those two very different stories yesterday -- the sale of Candy Spelling's mansion and the food crisis in Somalia -- it wasn't their differences that struck me, it was their connections.

Academic writing ain't my thing

2011-07-17T23:06:00.003-07:00

Can someone please explain why so many scholars and scientists feel compelled to obscure, confuse and bore their audiences?

These are brilliant people with brilliant ideas and yet they can't tell a story to save their lives. Just open any academic journal and you'll see what I mean. The language is impenetrable to outsiders. The sentences are clunky, heavy, and awkwardly constructed. Each article contains a wealth of information – some of it interesting and important – but the writing is so bad as to render the whole thing unreadable.

It pisses me off for three reasons: one, because I have to read this shit as part of my master's degree; two, because of the inherent disrespect to the general reader embedded in this kind of writing; and three, because it doesn't have to be this way.

I think part of the reason academics write the way they do is because they write for other academics. They're after the approval of their peers, not the public. As a result, there's a certain snobbery and elitism in academic writing. Academic writing must have weight and gravity, and the easiest way to add weight and gravity is to fill a paper with technical terms and sentences that are so scientifically precise that they obscure, rather than illuminate, what it is the author is trying to say.

Accuracy is the aim but obfuscation is the result.

Let me give you an example from one of my least-enjoyable reading assignments of the past year. The article, published in Functional Ecology in 2005, was titled "Neutral theory in community ecology and the hypothesis of functional equivalence." Here is a brief excerpt:

"The theory for community assembly based on the competitive niche paradigm became highly developed, first with multispecies community matrix theory (Levins, 1968), which was developed on the foundation of the Lotka-Volterra equations, and then with more mechanistic theory, which explicitly incorporated the dynamics of resource supply and consumption along with the dynamics of the resource-dependent consumer species (Tilman 1982, 1987)."

It goes on and on like this for seven pages. I had to read it three times before I started to understand it. And then I had to read it a few more times before I was able to translate the author's abominable sentences into something more digestible. Line by painful line.

You could argue that someone without a background in ecology is not the intended audience for this paper. It was written for specialists in the field who could quickly and easily grasp its context and significance. So there is no need to simplify it for a general audience. It's all well and good to contribute to the general body of knowledge in a particular field. But why are so many scholars and scientists content to just please their small circles of peers?

If you as an environmental scientist have no desire to communicate your findings to the public or to policy makers then what the hell is the point? Why spend years of your life on research that ends up collecting dust in an obscure journal in a remote part of some distant library?

It goes back to the snobbery and elitism unnecessarily embedded in academic writing. The problem is that plain English and simple storytelling is disparaged as not scientific. I have one professor who constantly dismisses non-academic writing as mere journalism.

And while I agree that journalistic research doesn't carry the same weight and rigor as academic research, I disagree that a more journalistic style of writing is somehow less serious than an academic style of writing. If academics want their research to resonate with the public or policy makers, they could benefit from a more narrative style of writing.

I'm not saying you have to spoon-feed the reader but at least open it up a bit. Tell us why your research is important. Put some effort into making the significance of your research clear and compelling. Strip down the sentences a bit. Why use five words when one will suffice? Push the academic journals to change their stuffy conventions.

There are many scientists who are excellent communicators. People like E.O. Wilson, David Suzuki, Jane Goodall, Richard Dawkins and Carl Sagan come to mind. They understand the importance of explaining their work to the public and they do it well.

Scientific research is important but it is meaningless if there is no attempt to communicate that knowledge in a way the public and the people in power can understand. Information locked away inside impenetrable jargon and technical terms is not helping anyone.

Weekend wildlife sighting

2011-06-27T18:42:00.003-07:00

A snake munching on some tadpoles in a rice field. Kyoto, Japan.

Welcome to the jungle and my secular spiritual awakening

2011-06-22T01:07:00.007-07:00

This is a tally of all the wild creatures I have run into during the past three weeks. One poisonous centipede. Two dozen monkeys. A handful of mosquitoes. Several hundred frogs. A dozen fireflies. One slug. Two hawks. Half a dozen spiders. A whole bunch of salamanders. Countless butterflies. Two lizards. Three snakes. Four deer. And one leech. (Being attacked by a leech was actually kind of exciting.)

The amazing thing is that I spotted all of these creatures within the Kyoto city limits, either in the mountain behind my apartment or by the river across the street or in the rice fields down the road.

That there can be so much wildlife in such an urban area is a juxtaposition that makes me happy. I mean, happy in the sense that so much wildlife exists outside my door. I'd be much less happy if the centipedes and snakes decided to move into my apartment.

Sometimes Kyoto feels more like a jungle than a city.

Let me give you an example. Two weeks ago, I hiked up the mountain behind my apartment. I was alone on a quiet trail when a stampede of more than 30 monkeys came running through the forest, crossing the path in front of me. Some of the adult monkeys were carrying baby monkeys on their backs and they stopped and looked right at me. It was just me and a bunch of wild monkeys. No fence. No barrier. Just me and my distant relatives hanging out in the forest. The monkeys didn't seem threatened by my presence. Instead, they seemed indifferent to it. They just sat down in front of me and starting picking the bugs off each other's backs. It was an incredibly moving experience. And I don't even like monkeys.

Watching the monkeys watching me, I couldn't help but feel that we were equals. Both of us nothing more than primates living on the land. I felt no greater or less than the monkeys in front of me. I felt no better than the ants underfoot or the leaves overhead. Rather, I just felt that we were equal and connected -- all of us small parts of a greater whole. All of us nothing more than species among other species, the product of billions of years of evolution. I couldn't help but feel a sense of awe and wonder about the beauty of nature and the magnitude of the universe.

I love the way the main character in White Noise describes the way he feels when he watches children sleep ("Watching children sleep makes me feel devout, part of a spiritual system. It is the closest I can come to God. If there is a secular equivalent of standing in a great spired cathedral with marble pillars and streams of mystical light slanting through two-tier Gothic windows, it would be children in their little bedrooms fast asleep"). It's the same way I feel when I spend time in nature. It makes me feel connected to something bigger than myself.

And, dammit, the more time I spend in nature, the more I can feel myself turning into a hardcore tree-hugging hippie. Well, maybe not that hardcore. I still like having stylish clothes, shiny hair and a sense of humor. I'm a hippie on the inside only.

I feel like I'm having some sort of spiritual awakening and I hate that I'm having some sort of spiritual awakening because I hate the word "spiritual" and all of the flaky, new-age shit (crystals and space music and astrology) that goes along with it because that's not what spirituality is for me. It's a word that has no religious meaning. It's simply about feeling a deep connection with nature. It's about feeling a sense of awe and wonder at knowing we live on a tiny planet, in the middle of the Milky Way, surrounded by billions of stars and billions of planets and billions of galaxies in a vast, yawning universe.

Never have I felt this more profoundly than in Kyoto. In the mountains, by the river and in the forest. I am constantly reminded about how small and insignificant we really are. And how, at the same time, we are connected to everything and everyone. It all makes sense in the mountains.

Note: I broke my camera at the end of April (it turns out taking pictures on top of a mountain in typhoon-strength rain wasn't such a good idea) so I've missed out on capturing most of the aforementioned wildlife encounters. My cellphone camera takes crappy pictures. That's a leech on my leg in the last photo. I let it eat until it was full. And then it eventually dropped off on its own. It was kind of exciting to walk around with a leech on my leg. And I kind of missed him when he was gone. (See what I mean? I'm totally turning into some sort of nature freak.)

The cute, the not-so-cute and the ugly

2011-06-12T00:01:00.005-07:00

It all began when a cat named Tama was appointed stationmaster of a railway station in rural Japan. And then the wheels came off the cute wagon.

Eager to cash in on what turned out to be a money-making bonanza, other railway stations jumped on the animal-as-stationmaster bandwagon. They appointed cats, dogs, goats and rabbits as honorary employees at railway stations across the country.

But what started out as a cute copycat move has corkscrewed down into a lazy and unimaginative gimmick now that railway officials are appointing lobsters as stationmasters. Seriously. Lobsters. The animal-as-stationmaster craze has officially jumped the shark.

Who knew that such a heart-warming tale would end on such a dark note?

It all began innocently enough. Five years ago, several Japanese railway lines went from being manned to unmanned in an effort to cut costs. Railway officials selected local businesspeople to serve as honorary stationmasters.

At Kishi station in the Japanese town of Kinokawa, a local grocer was appointed stationmaster. A stray cat took up residence outside the empty ticket booth and the grocer would feed her while going about his stationmaster duties. Tama the cat became a regular fixture at the station. Her friendly personality made her a hit with the locals, who would stop and pet her on their way to work.

The cat's popularity caught the eye of the railway officials. For fun, they decided to name her honorary stationmaster in 2007. The cat was given an office (a ticket booth containing a litter box), a uniform (a cute little hat and collar), a salary (free cat food), and a job (greet passengers as they come in and out of the station). The story made headlines across the country and Tama the cat became an overnight celebrity in cute-crazed Japan.

Japanese tourists flocked to the tiny train station to pose for photos with Tama. The cat became so famous that the railway had to hire a human employee to assist her. A shop at the station started to sell a variety of Tama-branded souvenir goods, including buttons, snacks, and a special photo book. According to the Japan Times, the cat has attracted tourists from across the country and boosted the local economy by 1.1 billion yen.

Last year, Tama was promoted to corporate executive of the Wakayama Electric Railway Co. (making her the company's highest-ranking female executive).

It's the stuff American dreams are made of: one day you're nobody, the next day you're somebody. Or, in this case, one day you're a stray cat, the next day you're at the top of the transportation industry.

In an attempt to cash in on the success of Tama, other unmanned railway stations in Japan jumped on the animal-as-stationmaster bandwagon. There are now several cat stationmasters and at least two dog stationmasters, with the latest being a fluffy Akita named Wasao.

Wasao reports for duty at Ajigasawa station in Aomori Prefecture. His job is to help boost the local tourism industry, which has been suffering since the March 11 earthquake and tsunami.

The other dog stationmaster was a Yorkshire terrier named Maron, who worked at a small railway station in northern Japan. Unfortunately, Maron passed away from bronchitis in 2009 -- you can view pictures of his funeral here.

This is where the story starts to get weird. Because it was no longer novel to appoint a cat or a dog as stationmaster, other stations had to get creative in order to generate both headlines and revenues of their own. So in an attempt to one-up the kitties, the next animal to be appointed to the role of stationmaster was a goat called Koma.

Koma reports for duty at Uzen-Komatsu station in Yamagata Prefecture. The goat stationmaster worked out so well that a station thousands of kilometres to the south stole the idea and appointed a goat named Taro to greet passengers in Fukuoka.

But the novelty of goat stationmasters was starting to wear off so the next animal to work the railroad was a rabbit. At Unomachi station in Ehime prefecture, railway officials chose a rabbit named Tsubasa to fill the position of honorary stationmaster. According to a news report, the railway station is the only one in Japan that contains the Chinese character for "rabbit" in its name. So a rabbit was the obvious choice.

It didn't take long for another Shikoku railway to rip off the rabbit idea. Yamagata Railway also named a rabbit as stationmaster and lined its gift-shop shelves with a stuffed bunny so cute your brain will melt just looking at it.

This is when things started to go horribly wrong. With all of the cute, domesticated animals spoken for, other railways took the animal-stationmaster trend one step too far. It stopped being cute with the appointment of two baby monkeys.

Nehime and Rakan were named stationmasters at Hojo-cho station in Hyoto prefecture. The monkeys were donated by a local resident, who was concerned about the railway's decreasing ridership and poor finances. The railway hoped the monkey stationmasters would help attract publicity and riders to the line's first biodiesel-fueled train.

It gets worse. Officials at JR Ibusuki Station in Kagoshima prefecture appointed a tortoise as stationmaster. Kotaro is a 25-year-old African Spurred tortoise who weighs 41kg. He has a custom-made stationmaster hat and it wears it on the job.

The prize for the least-cute stationmaster goes to a pair of lobsters at Shishikui station in Tokushima Prefecture. Yes, stationmaster lobsters. The local railway set up an aquarium in the station's foyer and placed a stationmaster's hat above the tank, after attaching little hats to the lobsters' heads proved to be too difficult.

Let's throw a lobster in a tank and call it a stationmaster. How uninspired can you get? What's next? A cockroach stationmaster? This is a trend that has gone one step too far. Monkeys are not cute. Tortoises belong in the wild. And lobsters are just plain ugly. The animal-as-stationmaster craze has officially jumped the shark.

Poisonous centipedes + flying cockroaches = summer in Japan

2011-06-08T18:31:00.004-07:00

I found this monster terrorizing the neighbourhood yesterday. I told him in no uncertain terms is he to enter my apartment this summer.

I am still slightly traumatized from the time one of these guys crawled into bed with me while I was sleeping, and then bit me on the arm when I rolled on top of him. My arm swelled up like a football and the bite was painful and itchy for a good two weeks. The wound healed but the terror of waking up in bed with one of these things will never go away.

Welcome to summer in Japan.

The call of the mountain

2011-05-28T22:21:00.006-07:00

There's a mountain behind my home. It's not particularly big or beautiful, as far as mountains go. But it forms a pretty backdrop against the crowded tangle of apartment buildings, utility poles and power lines in my north-eastern Kyoto neighbourhood.

From a distance, the mountain's cedar-covered flanks appear smooth and symmetrical, rising up to meet each other in the shape of a slightly lopsided volcano. At almost 900 metres tall, the mountain stands high above the rolling hills that form a coiled border around the ancient capital's edges.

I am magnetically drawn to the mountain, my eyes pulled toward it by some uncontrollable force. Maybe it's because the mountain is a paradox: always the same and constantly changing. It is electric green and sharp in the morning. It is purplish and soft in the evening. It hides under layers of fog in the rain. It hibernates in the winter and bursts with life in the summer.

But it's not enough to just look at a mountain. You need to climb it. To breathe its forest-filtered air. To hear its birds sing overhead. To sink into its mud underfoot. To reach its summit and to see nothing but mountains beyond mountains all the way to the horizon.

The reward for all that effort is not to feel as though you have conquered the thing but to feel humbled by it -- to surrender yourself to the realization that you are nothing more than an insignificant speck on a tiny planet in a vast universe whose mysteries we know very little about. But to also feel, with unwavering certainty, that we are connected to everything and everyone. This is the gift the mountain gives us.

Mountaineer and philosopher Arne Naess calls the view from the top of a mountain "philosophically important." He says the smaller you are in relation to the mountain, the more intensely you feel that you are part of it. "You get greater. You get on par with it. You get to feel good with it. So, the tinier you are, the more in some sense you are together with something great and, therefore, get something of this greatness" (from The Call of the Mountain).

This feeling of greatness, of feeling an intense oneness with nature, is what drives me to climb the mountain behind my home. I suppose it's the same feeling that has been driving people into mountains for centuries. My mountain, Mount Hiei, has long been considered the home of demons and gods. It has been the subject of poems and books. It has sheltered warrior monks and inspired marathon monks -- monks who run the steep mountain trails for seven years straight in search of spiritual enlightenment.

Many scientists have studied this human connection to nature but few have explained its importance as eloquently as biologist E.O. Wilson: "Wilderness settles peace on the soul because it needs no help; it is beyond human contrivance" (from The Diversity of Life). He argues there is a human need to have a deep connection with the natural world. It's a hypothesis that feels intuitively true. It also feels increasingly important as our urbanized, globalized and industrialized world continues to view nature as something to tame, conquer and exploit in the name of unlimited economic growth.

Somewhere along the way we deluded ourselves into thinking of nature as something disconnected from us. But nothing could be further from the truth. We are nature. We are the air we breathe, the food we eat, the water we drink.

"We did not arrive on this planet as aliens," writes Wilson. "Humanity is a part of nature, a species that evolved among other species."

Being in the mountains reminds us of that irrefutable truth.

The less we identify with nature, the more quickly we will allow the crowded tangle of apartment buildings, utility poles and power lines to creep up and swallow the mountain whole.

Early Spring in Rural Ontario

2011-05-18T05:06:00.003-07:00

I stand amid a cluster of trees on my grandparents’ farm,
a 10-year-old girl pretending not to hear
the voice of my mother as she calls to me
about dishes in the sink that need to be washed.

I hide in the trees that border the garden,
desperate to stay outside a little longer.
The ground is wet and I’m drowning
in a pair of black rubber boots that belong to my grandfather.

The trees stand in uneven rows,
their veins dripping sap into aluminum buckets
that hang on metal taps bored into their trunks.
(A few days from now my grandmother will boil the sap on the stove,
and I will sit transfixed at the kitchen table,
watching maple syrup being made.)

I stick my tongue in the spout
and am surprised to discover
the sap tastes slightly sweet.
I unhook the bucket from the tree, wrap my lips around the rim,
tilt my head back and drink the whole thing,
a 10-year-old girl pretending not to hear
the voice of my mother as she calls to me
about dishes in the sink that need to be washed.

-- Sarah Marchildon

In defense of Jersey Shore

2011-05-06T02:57:00.005-07:00

I watched George Stroumboulopoulos interview Rex Murphy the other night. At the end of the interview, George asked Rex what his guilty TV pleasure was. To my surprise, Rex said he wholeheartedly and unabashedly loved Jersey Shore.

I was floored. Here was one of Canada's sharpest and most accomplished political commentators coming out of the closest to confess his fond feelings for the debauchery of the Shore. A man known for his love of literature was publicly admitting that he also enjoys watching a bunch of gorilla juiceheads getting jacked, dodging grenades and creeping in the club.

All I could think was: I'm not alone!

Embracing high art does not mean you have to snub low art. I love books and I love Jersey Shore. Rex Murphy proves it is possible to appreciate both Shakespeare and Snooki. So why is this such a difficult concept for some people to wrap their heads around?

I once told a friend I was a fan of the Shore and she acted as if I had slapped her in the face.

"But, but, but," she stammered. "Your lifestyle is the complete opposite of their lifestyle! They're so stupid. How can you watch that garbage?"

Because it's funny. Because it's fascinating. Because it's dark. Because you don't have to be stupid to enjoy the stupidity of it all.

We all know a triple-fudge brownie is bad for us but that doesn't make it taste any less sweet. It's the same with Jersey Shore. It's junk but it's delicious junk.

To be fair to my friend, my lifestyle really is the complete opposite of the one enjoyed by the Shore cast mates. I don't tan. I don't club. I don't creep. I don't drink to the point of inebriation every night of the week. I don't have fake hair, fake boobs, fake nails and fake eyelashes. I am not attracted to guys with big muscles and small brains. And I most definitely would not be DTF with Vinny, Mike or Pauly D (and even if I was DTF, they'd probably think I was a grenade so it's out of the question on all counts).

Rex Murphy defends the Shore much better than I ever could. He explains that the environment of our common consciousness is television and the Internet. And, like it or loathe it, Jersey Shore is part of our collective consciousness.

"I mean, you don't have to want to marry Snooki to watch it," he said. "But as long as you're aware of it, at least you know the world you're in. But this idea that you seal yourself off in some purist castle and read Descartes and Kant and snub the world, it's idiocy! And as I often say in this kind of context, Moby Dick really is a great book and you really should read it more than once but you shouldn't read it every day. It's a bad habit." (Source: George Stroumboulopoulos Tonight, interview with Rex Murphy, May 3, 2011)

In other words, it's all about balance. A little bit of Shakespeare, a little bit of Snooki. It doesn't have to be one or the other.

Thoughts on a bittersweet election

2011-05-03T01:20:00.005-07:00

Let's get one thing straight: Stephen Harper may have won a majority government but the majority of Canadians did not vote for Stephen Harper.

The majority of Canadians (more than 60 percent of us) voted against Stephen Harper. The Conservative Party did not win a majority government because the majority of Canadians support the Conservative Party. The Conservative Party won a majority government because the majority of Canadians split their vote on the left.

The numbers in this election tell a very important story: 39.7 percent of Canadians voted Conservative; 30.9 percent voted NDP; 18.8 percent voted Liberal; 6.1 percent voted Bloc Quebecois; and 4.5 percent voted for something else. That means more than 60 percent of us voted against Stephen Harper. The majority of us voted for change.

But we shot ourselves in the foot. We split our votes between the NDP and the Liberals. And, in turn, the NDP and Liberals canceled each other out and sent votes to the Conservatives. In the riding of Scarborough Centre, for example, the Conservative candidate won with about 13,400 votes. But if you combined the votes that were evenly split between the Liberal and NDP candidates in that same riding you'd end up with more than 23,000 votes against the Conservative Party. In the end, this vote splitting is how the Conservatives built their majority.

Still, it was a momentous night for both the NDP and the Green Party. The NDP made a huge leap to second place, winning more than 100 seats and forming the Official Opposition. The Green Party now has a seat in the House of Commons for the first time in Canadian history. This is huge. And it is very exciting. I'm elated to know the NDP will hold Harper accountable on social justice issues. I'm overjoyed to know the Green Party will be in the House of Commons to speak up on environmental issues. I feel like shaking a bottle of champagne and spraying it all over the room.

Watching the election results come in was quite the wild ride. I was shocked to see Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff lose his seat to the Conservatives (I was sure he'd win by a comfortable margin). I was also shocked to see the destruction of the Liberal Party and the collapse of the Bloc Quebecois. Of course, you can't write either party off entirely. Parties crash and burn and rise again. In the 1993 election, the Conservative Party dropped from a 154-seat majority to just two seats. But they managed to claw their way back into power. There's no reason the Liberals can't do the same thing.

So where do we go from here? I think the main challenge is for Jack Layton to be an effective Opposition leader. He has to make sure the "orange wave" keeps surging forward, especially in Quebec. He has to make sure the party's popularity stays high.

Because we now have a majority government, we won't have another election until 2015 (election law dictates that a majority government has a four-year mandate to govern). So we're stuck with a Conservative majority for the next four years.

In the meantime, I think we need to talk seriously about merging the left. A recast NDP that includes Liberals is probably the surest way to defeat Stephen Harper in the next election. I don't want to head toward a polarized two-party system like they have in America but we have to do something about all of this vote splitting.

The next four years will be a critical test for the NDP. If the NDP and the Liberals decide not to merge, then Jack Layton is going to have to do a bang-up job as Opposition leader. He is going to have to convince Canadians that he'd be a better prime minister than Stephen Harper.

Stephen Harper just has to continue governing the same way he's been governing all along -- disrespecting the democratic process, tightly controlling the message, restricting journalists' access to information, ignoring the environment, trashing our international reputation, freezing foreign aid to Africa, cutting corporate taxes, buying fighter jets, beefing up prisons, loosening environmental regulations, and generally just putting competition ahead of compassion.

The deeper Stephen Harper corkscrews us down into this cesspool, the better Jack Layton is going to look. Maybe we'll be ready to elect an NDP prime minister four years from now.

The election may have ended tonight but the real work begins tomorrow.

Not voting is not an option

2011-04-30T03:16:00.007-07:00

My special ballot finally arrived in the mail this week. Never before has voting felt so unsatisfying. Never before have I had to choose from a more lackluster list of candidates.

I voted in the riding of Etobicoke-Lakeshore, in the middle-class Toronto neighbourhood where I grew up and where my parents still live. The strange thing about voting from abroad is that you get to choose the riding you want to vote in. You can either vote in the riding where you last lived or where a spouse or family member currently lives.

You can even choose the dubious option of registering an address of "a person with whom you would live if you were not residing outside of Canada." This seems highly subjective. I mean, I would totally live with my friend Annelle in Vancouver. She has a nice house and a cute cat. The fact that she probably wouldn't want me to move in with her is irrelevant. I could register her address anyway. Which means that those of us living overseas can pretty much vote in any riding we want.

But I decided to keep it simple and cast my ballot in the place where my emotional roots run deepest. I may have lived in Vancouver for seven years but Toronto is home.

Like any good civically minded citizen, I did a little bit of research before I voted. This is what I found out about the five candidates running in Etobicoke-Lakeshore:

Bernard Trottier, Conservative: His key issues are (surprise, surprise) lower taxes and continued economic growth. If he had a slogan, it would be Business as Usual. The environment and social justice are nowhere to be found on his website. He's a senior consulting manager, "working with Canadian and international companies to improve their competitiveness and profitability" (words that deaden the soul). He claims to regularly mix with the immigrant community by attending religious celebrations at Polish and Ukrainian churches. The guy is a shortsighted, out-of-touch relic from the last century. Next!

Michael Erickson, New Democrat: His two big issues are increased funding for public transit and the environment. He has solid community-activist credentials (works as a high school teacher, takes teens on social justice trips to Ghana, served on the LGBT Youth Line Board of Directors, worked with the Metro Network for Social Justice, and volunteered as a poverty and disability activist). Of all the candidates, he is the kind of politician I'd most like to clone. Ottawa needs more compassionate and socially progressive people in power. But he's running in the wrong riding. He doesn't have a hope in hell in Etobicoke-Lakeshore. No one here votes NDP. The first and last time Etobicoke-Lakeshore elected an NDP Member of Parliament was in 1972.

David Corail, Green: He wants increased federal funding for public transit. He wants to build a community centre for young people. But he's too inexperienced. According to his website, he's lived in the area for almost 20 years and is raising his family there. And that seems to be all he has done. Also, his website contains horribly worded and utterly meaningless phrases like, "We must also invest in peace. And we must shockproof our society against unforeseeable events by building in resilience." Huh? He's probably a nice guy but he's not a serious contender.

Janice Murray, Marxist-Leninist: She is "calling on the women, workers and youth in the riding to join her in organizing to empower themselves and elect an anti-war government." Workers of Etobicoke-Lakeshore unite! The only problem is that the Marxist-Leninist Party of Canada is supportive of North Korea and batshit crazy Kim Jong-il. Next!

Michael Ignatieff, Liberal: The incumbent. The leader of the Liberal Party. The potential prime minister. Ignatieff is the heavyweight in this riding and he casts a long shadow over all of the other candidates. His intelligence borders on brilliance (he's an award-winning writer and deep thinker who has held senior academic posts at Cambridge, Oxford and Harvard). His background is extraordinarily, intimidatingly impressive (check out his wiki page for all of the eye-popping details). But his campaign has been safe, inoffensive and banal. He talks about the importance of families, jobs, health care and seniors. But there's no substance behind the spin. No fresh ideas. The Liberal Party is just so middle-of-the-road. Not quite left wing. Not quite right wing. I'm sure Ignatieff would be a competent and strong prime minister, just not an inspiring one.

So there you have it. The lackluster list of candidates I had to choose from. Not that my vote is going to make much of a difference. The Liberals consistently win this riding and they win it by a large margin. According to unscientific research conducted by my mom, Ignatieff's lawn signs currently outnumber all others by about 99 to one.

I voted with a sense of resignation, not feeling particularly inspired by any of the Parties. The Liberals are too dated, the Conservatives too out-of-touch, the Greens too amateurish, the NDP too idealistic. I say this in the most non-partisan way possible. I always vote based on the merit of the individual candidates, not based on an allegiance to a particular Party. And that's why I decided to vote for Michael Ignatieff this time around. I don't particularly like the Liberal Party. I do, however, like Michael Ignatieff. Or, rather, I like the gravitas of his experience. He is ready to govern.

Having said that, I think Jack Layton would make the best prime minister of the bunch. Of all the leaders, he is the most appealing. I like his focus on social justice and the environment. I like his sincerity. I like his emphasis on hope. I think he would be the one to best steer Canada back to its compassionate roots, both at home and abroad. Stephen Harper has steered us so far in the opposite direction that we need to take a hard left to bring us back on track.

But I'm not telling you who to vote for. The most important thing is to vote. Just vote! If every single one of us voted, then we'd have a truly democratic government -- one that actually represents the majority of Canadians. Not voting is not an option.

A post in which I compare the Canadian federal election to high-school calculus (or, two things that make me cringe and want to vomit)

2011-04-27T01:01:00.001-07:00

The Canadian federal election is about as painful, as uninspired, and as humourless (unless you count the unintentional hilarity of watching wooden politicians try to deliver barn-burner speeches as if said speeches were on par with Martin Luther King-inspired greatness when they're nothing more than pandering, partisan gibberish devoid of any real meaning or substance) as high-school calculus.

It occurred to me to make the connection between the campaign and calculus a couple of weeks ago. It was the first day of the spring semester at Kyoto University and I decided to take a graduate-level class on economics. The class started with a pop quiz. We were asked to answer a bunch of questions. Stuff like "calculate dy/dx where y = f[x, z(x)]" and "solve the following optimization problem where max z = -x squared + 2x."

Two full pages of math problems. I left the whole thing blank. Those of us who failed the quiz were advised to brush up on high-school calculus. But how do you "brush up" on calculus when you never learned it in the first place? I dropped the class immediately.

I'm just not wired for math. I love words. I hate numbers. I love stories. I hate formulas. I love ideas. I hate details. I love improvisation. I hate memorization.

I was thinking about all of this as I made my way out of the classroom when it hit me. I suddenly understood why I was so turned off by the Canadian election and by each of the federal leaders. This campaign is too much like calculus.

A formula calculated to win votes

Just like numbers on a page, the federal leaders' words are cold and calculated. Their messages don't come from the heart. They come from the head. Each message is carefully crafted and controlled. Each message is brought to life not by inspiration but by polls and focus groups. Each message is shaped and massaged by campaign strategists and communications experts. It's a formula calculated to win votes.

The end result is messages devoid of meaning but full of partisanship and pandering. All spin, no substance. Do they think we're idiots? To speak of "family values" is to insult our collective intelligence. What does "family values" mean anyway? I'm pretty sure that Stephen Harper, who voted against gay marriage, has a very different concept of "family values" than Jack Layton, who makes a point of marching in Toronto's Gay Pride Parade every summer.

But it's too easy to just pick on Stephen Harper. All of the leaders are aiming low. They're all trying to woo us with talk of families and health care and jobs and money for seniors. I mean, how can anyone be opposed to any of that? I suppose that's the point. It's banal and safe and inoffensive. It's how you win votes in Canada.

Ordinary Canadians

I can't stand the way they call us "ordinary Canadians" as if we are some sort of homogeneous blob that thinks and acts the same way. When the leaders want to get in touch with us ordinary Canadians, they go to Tim Hortons and hockey rinks and churches and mosques and synagogues. They loosen their ties, undo a button or two, roll up their sleeves, maybe even wear a baseball cap.

It's an image contrived to make us think, "They're just like us!" Except it's an "us" I don't identify with. I'm not religious, I don't watch hockey, and I don't think anyone over the age of 10 should wear a baseball cap unless they are actually playing baseball. You can't generalize about the tastes and habits and hobbies of average Canadians. We're all different. (Although, I will admit to a fondness for the occasional double-double and chocolate dip donut from Tim Hortons).

I'm starting to think our political leaders have a low opinion of us "ordinary Canadians." It seems they think the only thing we care about is protecting our jobs, our high standard of living and our families. Could they be any more insulting? Oh, yes, they could. They bombard us with attack ads that are so amateurish and silly that it feels less like an attack on the other parties and more like an attack on our intelligence. I don't care about how much of a loser you think your opponent is. Drop the ads and spend the time and money on something else, like a well-designed website with detailed information on your policies and your long-term vision for Canada.

This what I would tell the leaders

Be bold. Be brave. Say something you really mean. Say something off-message and unscripted. Say something controversial and original. Say something that touches our hearts. And say it in plain English. Answer journalists' questions honestly and directly. Tell us about your policies. Tell us about your dreams. Stop pandering. We're not stupid.

I'm tired of only hearing about the safe stuff. Let's talk about corporate tax hikes. Let's talk about ending government subsidies to the Alberta oil sands. Let's talk about public transit. Let's talk about bullet trains. Let's talk about a carbon tax. Let's talk about the shameful living conditions on First Nations reserves. Let's talk about compulsory voting legislation. Let's talk about universal daycare. Let's talk about poverty. Let's talk about secularism. Let's talk about art and books and poetry.

I'm not naive. I know that if the federal leaders talk about this stuff their opponents would tear them to pieces. And they would lose credibility and votes. I think this is why they play it so safe during the election campaign. Better to offend as few people as possible in order to get as many seats as possible. Then, once you're in Parliament, you'll have real power to push your real agenda forward.

I just wish it didn't have to be this way. I wish we could elect sincere, honest politicians who don't stick to a script when they talk. Campaigning needs to be less like math and more like life. Stop calculating every move, every word. Make your speeches messy, emotional, moving. Touch our hearts and stir our emotions. Inspire us to follow you. Create a vision for Canada that leaves no one behind and makes our hearts soar with hope and possibility.

But what do I know? I'm just an ordinary Canadian.

Stories for Japan

2011-04-24T20:32:00.003-07:00

Write for Tohoku is a collection of stories about Japan, with 100% of the proceeds going directly to the Red Cross to help the earthquake and tsunami survivors rebuild their lives.

The project's website describes the book's content and goals in a concise and lovely way.

"The ebook contains stories of Japan from over sixty writers, both Japanese and foreign. We share our memories of adjusting to Japanese culture, experiencing the kindness of strangers, forming close friendships, discovering the country’s natural beauty, challenging ourselves through new experiences, and coming to feel at home in whatever corner of Japan we find ourselves.

We have two goals for this project: to raise funds for disaster relief, and to share with overseas readers the beauty and warmth of Japan."

The book costs $9.99. You can buy it here.

Global anxiety and the disaster in Japan

2011-03-20T20:21:00.004-07:00

This morning, for the first time in more than a week, my in-box was eerily devoid of panicky messages urging me to get out of Japan. The melodramatic media coverage of the Fukushima nuclear crisis seems to have cooled. In turn, my parents are no longer pressuring me to come home. I feel like I can breathe again.

There's a discrepancy between the way people inside Japan are reacting to the disaster and the way people from outside Japan are reacting to the disaster. Most of the panic is being generated by people from other countries. My Canadian friends are more freaked out about the possibility of a nuclear meltdown than I am. People in Vancouver are stocking up on potassium iodide tablets, afraid of a toxic cloud of radiation blowing west across the Pacific Ocean.

I can't blame the rest of the world for thinking the apocalypse is upon us. A nuclear crisis on top of a tsunami on top of an earthquake -- just one of these things would have been horrible enough. But to deal with all three at the same time? The aftermath has been overwhelming (8,100 people dead, 12,000 people missing, half a million people homeless, entire towns wiped off the map, nuclear reactors exploding, radiation escaping, electricity failing, shortages of food, water, fuel and medicine, aftershock after aftershock).

But through it all, life went on elsewhere in Japan. People went to work. Kids went to school. The trains ran on time. The buildings remained standing. This ordinariness was nowhere to be seen in the media coverage coming out of Japan. And why would it be? It's not news. Journalists rightly focused all of their attention on the unfolding tragedy. There wasn't room for subtlety and nuance, which maybe partly explains why the foreign reaction seemed to verge on panic while the Japanese reaction was comparatively calm. Maybe it's because people from outside the country were looking at Japan through a very narrow lens. And what they saw looked terrifying.

Even though I am in Kyoto, hundreds of kilometres away from the Fukushima nuclear power plant, people back home worried about my safety. I've spent a good part of the past week trying to convince family and friends that I'm okay. Not that I'm complaining. I'm extremely touched by all of the concern. I received emails from friends I haven't heard from or seen in years. It's nice to know that so many people are thinking of me. It has been the best part of a very long week.

Other people are frustrated with all of the fear-mongering from the foreign media. There's a sense that the media focus on the nuclear crisis is overshadowing the devastation of the earthquake and tsunami. They complain that it's taking attention and aid away from the earthquake survivors up north. It's also causing people outside the country to panic needlessly. Their panic feeds our panic.

I don't think it's fair to blame the foreign media. Yes, there has been some sensationalism but I can live with a bit of sensationalism if it helps draw attention to the disaster. I'm far more comfortable with a few inaccuracies than I am with media outlets that serve as propaganda tools for the government. Most people in Japan don't trust the Japanese media to look for government cover-ups and half-truths when it comes to nuclear safety. The Japanese media simply reprints what the Japanese government and the Tokyo Electric Power Company are saying verbatim. The foreign media is working much harder to find out what's really going on.

I'm no longer worried but I'm still not taking what the Japanese government and the Tokyo Electric Power Company are saying at face value. There has been too much confusing and contradictory information. At first, the Japanese government said people living outside a 20-kilometre radius of the power plant were safe. Then they changed that to 30 kilometres. And then the Americans stepped in and said that the evacuation zone should actually be more like 80 kilometres. (I don't know what distance is truly safe. Personally, I'd take their best-case scenario and double it. Just to be sure.)

The Japanese government is desperate to avoid mass panic and they've done a good job of keeping people relatively calm so far. In a country of 127 million people, mass panic would only lead to mass chaos.

We've already seen small pockets of panic, as some people in the Tokyo area started hoarding supplies -- buying rice, noodles, bottled water and toilet paper in bulk. Imagine if everyone tried to flee the country at the same time or ran to the supermarket and stripped all the shelves of food. It would make things much, much worse, especially for the hundreds of thousands of people in the evacuation centres who are already running short of food, water, fuel and medicine.

A handful of friends have flown home. The rest of us are staying put. The nuclear situation seems to be somewhat under control -- for now, at least. The media is starting to shift its attention away from Japan and toward Libya and Syria. For the first time in a week, Japan is no longer the top story. By this time next week, most of the foreign journalists will have left Japan. The country will start to recover and rebuild, without much attention or fanfare.

How you can help:

Japanese Red Cross

Canadian Red Cross

Doctors Without Borders

SEEDS Asia

Second Harvest Japan

Nuclear meltdown: To panic or not to panic?

2011-03-17T00:29:00.006-07:00

I am still in Japan and I am still safe. But the very real possibility of a nuclear meltdown is making me increasingly nervous. I'm not panicking but maybe I should be.

I don't know what to do. The news changes hourly and it's often full of contradictory and confusing information. There was an explosion. There wasn't an explosion. Radiation is leaking. Radiation isn't leaking. Radiation levels have risen. Radiation levels have fallen. There's a risk to human health. There's no risk to human health. I don't know what to believe.

My Japanese isn't good enough to follow local media reports so I'm relying on western media outlets to keep me informed. It's an incredibly strange feeling to be sitting inside my Kyoto apartment watching Canadian, American and British journalists report on the disaster in Japan. I'm counting on people from outside the country to tell me what's happening inside the country. Life is still so unremarkably normal in Kyoto that it feels like I'm watching the disaster unfold half a world away.

The disconnect -- between the unfathomable devastation in the northern half of Japan and the absolute normality in the southern half of Japan -- is huge.

But I'm starting to wonder if this disconnect, and its accompanying feeling of safety, is just an illusion. The mask of calmness across Japan is starting to crack. For the first time since the earthquake and tsunami hit, Japanese people are starting to get angry. A lot of people don't trust what the government is saying and have chosen to get as far away from the nuclear power plant as possible. It's difficult to gauge the real level of panic because people communicate in an indirect way here. What is unsaid is often more important than what is said. You never take a sentence at face value. You have to read the subtext and decipher its unspoken meanings. So when a government minister appears on TV to tell people the risk of a nuclear meltdown is low, it's difficult for people to accept that as the whole truth.

Not only am I getting nervous but I'm also getting frustrated. There is no information about what a nuclear meltdown would mean for those of us in other parts of the country. Kyoto University has not contacted its students. City Hall is not publishing any information in English. The Canadian Embassy is telling us to stay away from the disaster zone but offers no advice to anyone anywhere else. No one is telling us whether or not we need to take potassium iodide tablets. If you were to trust what the Japanese government is saying, then only people living within a 30-kilometre radius of the Fukushima nuclear plant need to be concerned. Everyone else can remain calm.

But some people aren't buying it. A friend of mine left Tokyo and came to Kyoto a few days ago because she was worried the city would become chaotic if things got worse. She decided it was better to leave while there was an easy way out before becoming stuck if millions of people decided to flee at the same time. Another friend and his wife decided the radiation risk just wasn't worth it (they have a baby) and they're flying out of Japan tonight. My mom, who booked a flight to Japan several months ago, is debating whether or not to cancel the trip. She was supposed to fly into Tokyo two weeks from today. But that's looking more and more unlikely.

My friends and family back in Canada are becoming increasingly worried and it's starting to make me anxious. I'm getting emails on a daily basis urging me to leave the country. I don't blame them. Life north of here is a nightmare. The earthquake and tsunami have killed more than 10,000 people. Hundreds of thousands of people are now homeless. Food, water, fuel, medicine and electricity are in short supply. And as if all that wasn't bad enough, we're dealing with a nuclear crisis at the same time.

But I'm not panicking yet. No one has given me any reason to believe Kyoto is not safe. People here are still going about their daily lives. Everything is so remakably ordinary you wouldn't know there was a disaster to the north of us.

Any suggestions?

After the earthquake

2011-03-14T03:57:00.003-07:00

I was sitting in my apartment, organizing files on my computer, when the earthquake hit. I didn't feel a thing. Not even a tremor.

Kyoto is far away from the earthquake's epicenter so we were oblivious to the violent shaking and the speeding wall of water that would devastate northern Japan within a matter of minutes.

The earthquake and tsunami came and went unnoticed in Kyoto. It wasn't until friends from Canada starting posting on my Facebook wall, asking if I was still alive, that I knew something horrible had happened.

I turned on the TV for the first time in a week. Every channel was showing the same thing -- wall-to-wall coverage of the earthquake and the tsunami. Someone in a helicopter had managed to shoot footage of the tsunami as it roared inland. Ten metres high and moving at the speed of an airplane, the tsunami devoured everything in its path. We saw houses ripped from their foundations, cars bobbing along like toys, utility poles snapping like sticks. We saw people in offices ducking for cover as the shaking shelves toppled and crashed to the floor. The same videos played on a loop throughout the day. At that point, there wasn't much information. The full extent of the damage was unknown. But it was obvious the earthquake was bad.

During the next few days, the news got more and more grim. Hearing the frequently updated death toll is the worst part. The numbers just keep getting higher. The official death toll now stands at nearly 2,000. But the last report I read said at least 10,000 people are missing from a town that was virtually wiped off the map by the tsunami.

Life was so normal and so ordinary and then one tectonic plate moves under another and everything is suddenly turned upside down.

I can't imagine how terrifying it must have been.

Stories from the survivors are now starting to trickle in. A reporter interviewed a young Japanese woman who survived the tsunami. She had been holding her daughter's hand but lost her grip when the water rushed in. She hasn't seen her daughter since. The woman told the reporter that she saved herself but couldn't save her daughter. It's horrible and heartbreaking.

But here in Kyoto, life goes on. You wouldn't even know anything had happened. People are working, shopping and just generally going about their daily lives. I feel so far removed from the tragedy and yet so deeply affected by it. Japan is my second home and it hurts to know that so many people here are suffering.

I want to do something to help but I feel useless and powerless. I donated money but it doesn't feel like enough. I want to go up there and help dig through the rubble. But I know I can't do that. I'd just be in the way. If everyone headed up north, it would be a logistical nightmare. We need to make room for the professionals -- the doctors, the nurses, the soldiers, the search and rescue teams, the journalists, the people actually trained in disaster response. The last thing these places need right now is an influx of people with good intentions and no skills.

And yet, in the midst of all of this horror, Japanese people remain polite and civil. There is no looting. There is no shouting or pushing in the long line-ups for food, water and gas. Two nuclear power plants are on the brink of blowing up but no one is panicking. Everyone appears calm and orderly, pulling together for the common good. It's an inspiring thing to see and my friend Mark MacKinnon, a journalist with the Globe and Mail, captures the stoicism well.

For now, the best thing the rest of us can do is donate money.

The Japanese Red Cross, the Canadian Red Cross and the American Red Cross are all accepting donations.

Google has set up an excellent 2011 Japanese Earthquake and Tsunami crisis response site.

I don't know what else to say or do. Even though I didn't suffer through the earthquake, I still feel shaken up by it. It's just such a blunt reminder that life is unfair and death is around every corner. Things can go from good to bad at any moment. You can be holding your daughter's hand one minute and have it ripped away by a tsunami the next minute. It's just so fast, so uncontrollable and so unpredictable. It could happen to any of us at any time.

My heart goes out to all of the victims and all of their families.

The Tokyo Marathon (from a hedonist's point of view)

2011-03-09T20:46:00.008-08:00

I am not one of those people who think the marathon is some sort of mythical challenge reserved for all but the fittest and strongest among us. Nope. I'm one of those people who think pretty much anyone can complete a marathon. All it takes is a commitment to a training plan that slowly and steadily builds up the mileage.

Finishing a marathon is an admirable accomplishment, to be sure. But let's not pretend it's something bigger than it is. If someone held a gun to your head and said, "Run 42 kilometers or I will blow your brains out!" you would do it, even if you had never run more than a mile in your life. You would somehow force your body across that distance -- run, walk or crawl. It would be painful but not impossible.

So why is the marathon held up as example of something that pushes the limits of human endurance? (I'm not talking about the elite runners here. They actually are pushing the limits of human endurance. They run the marathon at a pace that is so blisteringly fast they practically sprint the entire 42 kilometres.) But for the vast majority of us plodding along behind the front runners the marathon isn't all that difficult (assuming we've trained properly).

I'm not disparaging the marathon. Forty-two kilometres is a long way to run and it's a distance that demands respect. I just don't buy into the whole "massive challenge" mystique that the race wraps itself in. It's a bit of a smokescreen. In reality, the marathon is accessible to almost anyone. If you want to run 42 km, you can. People in wheelchairs do it. Blind people do it. Intellectually impaired people do it. Overweight people do it. People in their 80s do it. And, now, I do it too.

Sergey and I ran the Tokyo Marathon last weekend. And while it was tough, it wasn't nearly as difficult as I thought it would be. I didn't hit the wall. I didn't cramp up. I didn't even break a sweat. This is probably because I was on cruise control the whole way through. My only goal was to cross the finish line feeling good. And while I wouldn't exactly describe the way I felt when I crossed the finish line as "good," I certainly wasn't destroyed.

I took my time getting to the finish line -- a whopping five hours, 40 minutes and 57 seconds. A time so slow it pretty much puts me at the back of the pack. A time so slow it prompted a flurry of emails from friends and family who assumed something had gone horribly wrong. My dad asked if I'd walked most of the marathon. A friend asked if I had injured myself. Another friend wrote, "You have some explaining to do!"

The simple truth is I plodded through with minimal effort on purpose and I'm okay with that. I know what it feels like to push yourself to the limit and it's not a fun feeling. I used to be able to be comfortable with being uncomfortable. But the pain barrier is now something I shrink away from rather than push towards. I wanted to make the Tokyo Marathon as pleasurable an experience as possible. Hedonism is the new masochism.

The only other marathon I've ever run was at the back-end of an Ironman triathlon. And I think the reason why the Tokyo Marathon felt relatively easy was because I didn't have to swim four kilometres and then cycle 180 kilometres beforehand. (Although, amazingly, my Tokyo Marathon time was half an hour slower than my Ironman marathon time.)

Admittedly, I did the bare-minimum amount of training needed to cross the Tokyo Marathon finish line. And Sergey, hobbled by knee pain for the past month, did even less. We signed up for the marathon last summer but our names weren't drawn in the initial lottery (the race is limited to 36,000 participants but because more than 360,000 people sign up each year, runners are chosen randomly. It's more of a challenge to actually get picked to do the marathon than it is to run the race itself). After we lost the lottery we also lost our motivation to train. And then, out of the blue, we got an email in November saying there had been a second lottery and our names had been drawn. So we signed up, with only three months to prepare.

Because of our bare-minimum training, I figured it was better to play it safe and run a conservative race. I planned to be out on the course for a long time so I decided to run with a backpack and fill it with all of the things I needed to keep propelling my body forward for 42 kilometres. What I lacked in terms of raw physical ability I would offset by a constant intake of sugar, caffeine and ibuprofen.

My backpack contained the following items. Six energy gels (taste like crap but they work), some money (in case I decided to stop at a convenience store for a more filling snack), a tube of chapstick, lots of painkillers, sun block, a bottle of coke, a coffee, a bottle of water (not pictured), and my camera (also not pictured, obviously).

Sergey wanted to run unencumbered by extra weight and figured he'd just pick up food and drinks along the course. We started the race together but agreed to run separately. He ended up finishing 20 minutes faster than me. Not bad for a guy who quit smoking six months ago, took up running in the summer, and suffered shin and knee pain throughout the entire race.

Unlike Sergey, I didn't have to deal with too much pain during the race but I did have to deal with a brain reluctant to push my body the entire distance. To keep my mind occupied, I divided the time up into regimented little chunks. Every 10 minutes, I walked for one minute and drank two gulps of water. Every 60 minutes, I walked for two minutes and popped one gel and took two ibuprofen. Every aid station, I drank a cup of gatorade. Every food station, I ate one banana. I was so busy focusing on these little tasks it took my mind off how tired I was feeling.

Things became mentally tough at kilometre 28. I was ready for the race to be over. I needed to find a way to keep myself going so I invented a hackneyed Hollywood plot and put the marathon at the centre of it. I imagined we were running through the streets of Tokyo 100 years in the future. But it was a bleak future. The world's population had grown so large it had strained the earth beyond its breaking point. Life was a post-apocalyptic nightmare. There was not enough food to eat or water to drink. The air was dirty and gray. Famine, disease, and death were widespread. Totalitarian governments were in power the world over. They wanted to cull the population and create a superior race of human beings. Their solution was to force people in the biggest cities to run marathons. Anyone who dropped out of the marathon before reaching the finish line would be shot and killed. Imagining there was a sniper by my side ready to shoot me in the head if I stopped running helped keep me going. (Zero points for originality but whatever works.)

Things became physically tough at kilometre 37. I felt a sharp pain in one of my toes that was so intense it almost brought me to a dead stop. I assumed one of my toenails had ripped right out of its bed and my shoe was filling up with blood. I could feel the detached nail shifting around inside my sock and the blood squishing between my toes. I didn't want to stop and assess the damage because I was pretty sure I would faint if I came face-to-face with the mess inside my shoe (turns out it was only a blister that had popped).

By kilometre 38, the pain had dulled and I hobbled through the last four kilometres. My legs were so leaden it felt as if someone had joined them together with elastic bands at the ankles. I wanted to lift my legs but I couldn't. I crossed the finish line feeling okay. Not great but not destroyed.

Still, it was an overwhelmingly positive experience. The weather couldn't have been better. Blue skies, 15 degrees and only a hint of a breeze. From start to finish, the organization was top-notch. Everything went so smoothly it was like floating from one cloud to another. From registration to the bag drop to the start line to the finish line there was not one wrinkle, not one kink. All 36,000 of us got the Japanese white-glove treatment from the organizers, volunteers and supporters. It was, hands down, the best-organized event I've ever seen. Every little detail was handled with meticulous care, right down to the bananas handed out to runners on the course.

(Side note: The bananas are actually kind of a funny story. Dole developed a banana specifically for the Tokyo Marathon. According to the company, the banana was created in the Philippines where growers played "runners' favourite songs to help in cultivation and make it even tastier." The songs played included the theme to Rocky and Queen's "We are the Champions.")

If I had one complaint, it would have to be the toilets. There's just no way to set up enough porta-potties along the course to satisfy 36,000 runners. There were several porta-potty stations but the line-ups were at least 15 minutes long. But there were plenty of convenience stores along the way and a few enterprising runners (myself included) decided to get off the road, push our way through the crowds, run down the sidewalk and jump into the nearest 7-Eleven toilet.

Also interesting to note was the large contingent of runners dressed in costume. I counted at least three salarymen running in full business suits. There were a few men dressed up in schoolgirl uniforms and wigs. Another runner went as Michel Jackson (black shoes, white socks, black pants, white t-shirt, single glove, fedora) and moonwalked most of the marathon. Dozens of runners dressed up as Japanese anime characters. Darth Vader, Spiderman and Captain America also made an appearance. It was somewhat demoralizing to be passed by a man in a Pikachu costume but my spirits picked up when I kicked Jesus' ass.

Would I do another marathon? I don't know. I think, like the Ironman, it's something I only want to do once. To cross it off my bucket list. I don't like the way the regimented training puts a stranglehold on spontaneity. The reward isn't big enough to make the sacrifice -- the huge investment of time and energy -- seem worth it.

I like running. I like the purity and simplicity of it. I like the solitude of it. I like the low-cost, low-tech, low-skill freedom of it. And the marathon is kind of the opposite of all of that. That's not a bad thing. I'm just not really sure it's my thing.

I'm happy I ran the Tokyo Marathon. It's something I've wanted to do for a long time. I set a goal and I accomplished it. It wasn't a mythical challenge but it was good.

Why I refuse to work in Japan

2011-02-23T01:42:00.006-08:00

Kyoto University is a cross between a ghost town and a funeral parlor these days. There are very few students on campus and the ones that actually do show up are usually wearing black suits.

There are two reasons for the empty hallways and somber attire. First, winter classes have ended and spring break has begun. Second, it is now job-hunting season for the class of 2012.

Spring break is a misnomer in Japan. Spring break is not a vacation. It is a hellishly competitive and brutally stressful period of job applications and interviews. But it is not job-hunting season for students that will be graduating next month. It is job-hunting season for students that will be graduating next year.

They will go to dozens of interviews during the next couple of months in the hopes of signing a contract with a company one full year before they graduate. Students who haven't secured a job by the time the recruiting process ends in May will be out of luck by the time graduation rolls around 12 months from now.

Japanese companies like to hire far in advance and openly discriminate against students who are not new graduates. Students who missed out on this year's round of hiring will have almost no chance of getting a job next year because they will be trumped by fresh graduates. Their only option is to stay in school an extra year, take a part-time job or go on welfare. No freedom. No flexibility. No choice.

Japanese employers do not look kindly on Japanese students that take time off to travel or do odd jobs while "finding themselves" after graduation. This kind of behaviour, which can be framed as adventurous, independent-minded and well-rounded in the western world, is seen as immature, selfish and irresponsible in Japan.

Taking a year or two off to build up a resume overseas isn't going to put a Japanese student any further ahead in the job market back home. Most companies prefer to hire new recruits with zero work experience. Students straight out of school are seen as blank slates that can be easily trained (or, as a Japanese friend bluntly put it, "brainwashed") by the company.

For example, one of the guys in my graduate school got a job offer at a major investment company with a starting salary of $80,000 per year. He has no work experience but will be hired as an investment banker straight out of school. The company will send him to Hong Kong for six months of training. In return, he is expected to be a very loyal employee for a very long time. I swear he aged 20 years right in front of my eyes while he was telling me this story.

No one is forcing the Japanese students to hunt for jobs a year before they graduate. But they have very little choice in the matter. This is the way things are done. To not do it would be unnatural.

A portrait of the job hunt

The job hunting process in Japan is officially known as shushoku katsudo or shukatsu for short. It is a world unto itself, with a set of rules unto itself.

It is a grueling process that starts with attending job fairs, picking a company and submitting a resume. If your resume passes the initial screening, you will have a preliminary interview. If you pass the preliminary interview, you will take a written exam. If you pass the written exam, you will be called in for a group discussion with several other candidates. If you pass the group discussion, you will have an interview with HR. If you pass the interview with HR, you will get a second interview with middle management. If you pass the interview with middle management, you will get a third interview with upper management. If you pass the interview with upper management, you will get a final interview with the head honchos. If you pass the final interview with the head honchos, you may (or may not) be offered a job.

It's a long, slow process. The written exam to the final interview can take months. But most students don't just apply to one company. They apply to dozens of companies, which means they are constantly traveling to big cities, taking one exam after another, running from one interview to another.

The job hunters are easy to spot because they all wear the same "recruit suit." Although, technically, it's more of a uniform than a suit. White shirt, dark suit, and plain black shoes. No earrings. Minimal makeup. Black hair. Everyone dresses the same in order to suppress their individuality and show they can conform to the group -- a highly valued trait in Japan.

The pressure is suffocating. Job hunting in Japan feels less like cubicle shopping and more like coffin shopping. Of course, not everyone feels this way. One friend swears the process is fun -- she's having a blast wooing and being wooed by several different companies. I believe her. I was also eager to get out into the working world after my undergraduate degree. But after years of slaving away in front of computer, I've come to the obvious conclusion that there are few things in life more valuable than time. We have so little of it and I don't want to waste one second of it.

That's mostly why I have decided to opt out of the Japanese job-hunting process. Not that I had much of a choice in the matter. My age, my work experience, and my embarrassingly bad Japanese pretty much disqualified me from applying in the first place.

I could apply as a "mid-career professional" but I don't want to work in Japan. I don't want to live in a shoebox apartment over some neon-lit noodle shop in the middle of Tokyo's never-ending concrete jungle. I don't want to wake up at 5 a.m. to join the dead-eyed masses that limply allow themselves to be pushed into packed subway cars by men wearing white gloves. I don't want to spend 12 hours a day toiling at some company that does little more than help the capitalist world go round. I don't want to endure enforced drinking parties with male colleagues who turn into lecherous gorillas after two drinks. I don't want five days of vacation a year. This is not how I want to live.

I want an intellectually stimulating career that is in line with my values. A career that allows me to do some good in the world. I want to be an active member of the community. I want to get off work early enough to enjoy the sunset from my balcony. I want time to connect with friends and family. I want to live somewhere with easy access to real wilderness. I want to live in a place where the skyline is dominated by mountains, not skyscrapers. I want a job with a modest salary and lots of vacation time. I want a balanced life filled with meaningful work, healthy relationships, community involvement and lots of time to indulge in passions, adventures and hobbies. This is what I want.

And I don't think I can find it in Japan. It's a difficult thing to come to terms with because there are so many things I love about living in this country. But living in Japan as a master's student is a much different thing than living in Japan as a salaryman.

So I will watch my friends run from interview to interview. I will watch them go down one path while I head down a different one. They are getting ready to become full-fledged members of Japanese society while I am getting ready to leave it behind.

Liquid pancakes

2011-02-21T22:36:00.003-08:00

I found a vending machine in Kyoto that sells some sort of pancake-flavoured beverage. I didn't try it. Just looking at it made me want to vomit. I wonder if it tastes as bad as it looks.

Cigarettes and unexpected poetry

2011-02-07T03:01:00.017-08:00

Japan is a smoker's paradise. The kind of place where you can light up in bars, restaurants and coffee shops. The kind of place where -- paradoxically -- it's against the law to smoke on the street but perfectly acceptable to puff away inside a McDonald's.

And should you doubt how pervasive smoking really is, let me quote from the 2011 Tokyo Marathon race guide, which asks participants to "refrain from smoking while running." Because, apparently, even marathon runners are chain smokers in Japan.

Everyone talks about how Japan's lax smoking laws are changing but I don't see it. It may be true that you can no longer smoke on most trains but some long-distance trains still have smoking cars. Last year, a new guideline (not a law, just a guideline) was put in place that "strongly recommends" employers to prohibit smoking in the workplace. But, as far as I know, the teachers at the junior high school where I used to work are still smoking in the staff kitchen. And while many restaurants have smoking and non-smoking sections, the dividing line between the two is usually invisible. It makes no sense. (But, then again, neither does Hello Kitty-branded booze. So I guess it's all relative.)

It's rare to see anti-smoking messages in Japan. Instead, anti-bad-smoking-manners messages are much more common. The biggest promoter of good smoking manners is Japan Tobacco, which created a series of ads to improve the image of smoking without (not surprisingly) actually discouraging smoking itself. You can find the ads in public smoking areas all over the country. They are plastered on ashtrays in train stations and outside convenience stores. There are more than 70 different ads in total.

The ads are interesting because they are so much more than just a plea for good manners -- they are a reflection of the Japanese psyche. In Japan, one must always behave honourably, even when smoking. To be rude or selfish is to commit social suicide. The ads hit where it hurts. But they do so in a way that is clever and unintentionally poetic.

I'm kind of obsessed with these ads. Each one contains an element of surprise and delivers an emotional punch. And they manage to do so with only a few well-chosen words and simple illustrations. It's not advertising. It's art.

I started taking pictures of the ads almost two years ago. Whenever I stumble across a new one, I take a picture of it. These are a few of my favourites.

Dude, where's my bike?

2011-02-01T01:19:00.007-08:00

If there is one lesson I have learned during my time in Japan it's that a stress-free existence here requires a blind adherence to the rules and that you should always budget at least an hour for all matters bureaucratic. Okay, technically, that's two lessons. But rules and bureaucracy go hand-in-hand here. Japan isn't the Land of the Rising Sun so much as it is the Land of the Red Tape.

Take bicycles, for example. Bicycles are treated no differently than any other vehicle in Japan. The upside is that cycling is a very mainstream form of transportation. The downside is that there are just as many laws for cyclists as there are for drivers. A partial list of things that are illegal to do while riding a bike include holding an umbrella, ringing your bell repeatedly, listening to music, talking on a cell phone, being drunk, riding through a red light, riding without a light at night, riding on the sidewalk, and parking in a no-parking zone.

Yes, you read that last one right. It's illegal to park a bicycle in a no-parking zone. Break this law and your bike will be towed to the pound. It seems kind of funny and absurd (there are no-parking zones for bikes? They actually tow bikes? There is a bike pound?) until it happens to you.

I will come clean and admit that I knew I was parking illegally. Mea culpa. There were signs explicitly stating it was a no-parking zone. But I had no other option. There is almost nowhere to park in downtown Kyoto. Of course, you can pay to park at one of those fancy bicycle garages but, to me, paid parking goes against the spirit of cycling. The beauty of riding a bike is that you never have to pay for gas or parking.

I wasn't the only one parked illegally. There were about two dozen other bikes in the same (very wide and very open) spot. It was a quadruple-wide sidewalk, with more than enough room for wheelchairs and baby strollers. I figured it was a safe enough spot to park. Besides, I was only going to be gone for 10 minutes. I just had to run into the bank and I'd be right back.

This was my tragic mistake. I should have known there is no such thing as "just running into the bank" in Japan. This country has an uncanny ability to turn even the most mundane errand into a bureaucratic nightmare. Forty-five minutes after I entered the bank, I was still sitting with a teller going over a pile of paperwork. She wanted me to sign a piece of paper that, despite her patient explanation, I simply didn't understand.

She tried switching to English but the only word I understood was "mafia." I was pretty sure her English was mixed up so I asked her to explain in Japanese. This time the only word I understood was "yakuza." A light went on above my head. She wanted me to sign a form declaring that I wasn't a member of the yakuza (because, apparently, the fact that I have two pinkies and zero tattoos isn't evidence enough). She nodded enthusiastically while apologizing that she clearly knew I wasn't a member of the yakuza but she needed me to put it in writing anyway.

With the question about my ties to organized crime finally answered, I was free to leave the bank. And so I half-jogged, half-walked back to where I parked my bike because I was late for a meeting with the Japanese Mark Zuckerberg (a shy undergrad rumoured to be a computer genius, complete with standard-issue hoodie and baggy jeans) who was making a special trip to my lab to fix my computer.

But my bike was gone. All of the bikes were gone. It was as if someone had taken a giant broom and simply swept them off the face of the earth. There was nothing but a big empty space where the bikes had been. I cursed and swore. I cursed the stupidity of no-parking zones. I cursed myself for parking in a no-parking zone. I cursed the stupidity of the bank for making me spend an hour testifying that I was not a member of the yakuza. I cursed the fact that I was now going to be late for my meeting with the Japanese Mark Zuckerberg. I cursed having to waste half a day getting my bike back from the pound.

But I didn't have time to deal with any of that now. I took the train back to school and spent the next few days bike-free. It's funny how much of an effort walking becomes when you get used to cycling everywhere. Wheels are so much faster than feet. The other day, I walked to Mister Donut (which is the closest thing to Tim Hortons in Japan) and all I could think was, "Oh my god! This is taking forever!" Everyone always talks up the benefits of cycling -- it's good for the environment! It's good for your health! But no one ever mentions the sinister side of cycling -- it makes you lazy and impatient.

It was good to take a break from the bike but by yesterday, I'd had enough of walking. It was time to go to the pound. I was kind of excited about going to the pound. I have never been to a real pound before, especially not a bicycle pound. But first, I had to return to the scene of the crime to figure out where the pound was exactly. Luckily, the no-parking sign contained a helpful map of where the bikes had been towed to.

I should probably explain that a bicycle isn't towed the same way a car is. There's no tow truck with a steel cable hooked up to the bike's front wheel, dragging it through the streets. What happens is a pick-up truck with an extra-long, extra-wide bed comes to a stop in front of a bunch of illegally parked bikes. A group of guys jumps out and hauls the bikes, one by one, over to the truck before lifting them up to another group of guys standing on the truck bed, whose job it is to pull the bikes up and arrange them in neat lines. They do this very quickly and very efficiently. It's like watching a well-oiled assembly line.

Getting my bike back required two train trips. One trip to where I had parked the bike (to take a look at the map) and another trip to the pound (or, as it turns out, the middle of nowhere).

The train took me south of the city. To the part of Kyoto you won't find in any guidebook. Unless it's to warn you to avoid going there. If Kyoto has a "bad" neighbourhood, then this is probably it. It was industrial, ugly and bleak. Nothing but empty lots, run-down houses, and tall fences. Exactly the kind of place where you would imagine a pound would be located.

I spotted the pound right away. It was cordoned off from the street with metal sheeting and barbed wire. But this is where the similarities between the cinematic pound and the real pound ended. Instead of being lunged at by snarling rottweilers, I was greeted by a group of friendly old guys. They directed me to a shed near the entrance-way where another friendly old guy asked me to fill out a form. I had to write down my name, my address, a description of my bike (I wrote down "black"), where I had parked it, and when it was towed. After I forked over 2,300 yen (about $20) and showed some ID, another friendly old guy escorted me to a long line of bikes that had been towed on January 28 (they were all neatly arranged by date. After four weeks in the pound, all of the unclaimed bikes are hauled out and crushed).

My bike was in the middle of the pack. The guy waited for me to unlock it and then I was free to go. Lesson learned. From now on, I will blindly follow the rules and always budget at least an hour for all matters bureaucratic.

A very Japanese New Year

2011-01-05T21:01:00.008-08:00

Because this was the first -- and probably the last -- time I would spend New Year's Eve in Japan, I wanted to ring it in right.

To me, ringing it in right meant celebrating the same way Japanese people do. The only problem was I didn't know what Japanese people do on New Year's Eve exactly. A quick Google search turned up a few answers. I learned that New Year's is one of the most important holidays on the Japanese calendar but that it is typically spent at home with family. It's more about quiet, quality time than it is about consuming copious amounts of alcohol and kissing a random pair of lips at the stroke of midnight.

I also learned that Japanese people clean their homes from top to bottom to start the New Year off on a clean slate. They spend New Year's preparing and eating traditional food, including rice cakes or "mochi." But because mochi is extremely sticky and chewy (the texture is best described as a thick ball of glue) a few elderly people suffocate and die every year while trying to eat it. The annual mochi death toll makes headlines every January.

Scrubbing the floors, slaving over a hot stove and choking to death are not my idea of a good time so I decided to westernize my Japanese New Year's Eve and look for a ball drop.

It turns out the closest thing to a public countdown and exploding fireworks is the traditional ringing of the temple bells. Before midnight on New Year's Eve, temple bells across Japan begin to ring 108 times. Apparently, the tolling of the bells purifies us of our 108 worldly desires (nothing like starting off the new year with a little self-loathing and flagellation).

In case you're wondering what all of these 108 sins are, many of them are your garden-variety sins. Greed, lust, envy, gluttony, gambling. That sort of thing. But the Buddhists aren't content to just cover the basics. They've included all kinds of bad behaviour in their long list of sins, including inattentiveness, stubbornness, stinginess, voluptuousness, capriciousness, a desire for fame, indifference, dissatisfaction, lack of comprehension (what does that mean?), and sarcasm (no, I'm not being sarcastic).

I managed to find a temple in Osaka that had both the traditional ringing of the bells and a public countdown. It seemed to be the Japanese equivalent of watching the ball drop in Times Square. So I had pinpointed where I wanted to be when the clock struck twelve. Now I just needed to figure out what to do in the last hours of 2010 and the first hours of 2011.

A little bit more digging -- clicking deep into the third and fourth pages of the search results -- revealed another Japanese tradition I could get behind. Part of celebrating the new year in Japan includes paying special attention to the first time something is done in the new year. For example, hatsuhinode is the first sunrise of the year and many people will often climb a mountain or drive to the coast to see it. Going to a temple to ring the bells and then heading somewhere to watch the sun rise seemed liked a good way to ring in the new year to me.

Sergey gave me free reign to plan the entire night. He claims this is because I am such an excellent planner. And while this is indisputably true, I suspect laziness may have had a small role to play in his willingness to let me be in the driver's seat. Although to be fair, he came up with the idea of going out to eat and he introduced me to the concept of coffee-shop loitering.

The New Year's plan in a nutshell was to head to Osaka for dinner, loiter in a coffee shop for a couple of hours, head to a temple for the countdown, stay up all night (more coffee-shop loitering) and then watch the first sunrise of the year from the top of a skyscraper.

The first part of our very long night in Osaka was spent inside an arcade trying to get our picture taken in one of those little photo booths where you can digitally customize the photos with a mind-numbing array of cute things like stars and sparkles and hearts. But we simply couldn't fight our way through the hordes of teenage girls who were monopolizing the machines.

So we gave up and headed to the first decent restaurant we could find, which turned out to be a Korean-style BBQ place where you pay to cook your own food. It was loud and the air inside was a fragrant mixture of two kinds of smoke -- one part cigarette smoke and two parts tabletop-grill smoke. But it was delicious and warm and we ate until we couldn't eat anymore.

After dinner, we enjoyed an hour of coffee-shop loitering before heading to the temple for our first traditional Japanese New Year's Eve countdown. At the temple we were given a numbered ticket and a sheet of paper with a detailed explanation about how the night would go down. We were ushered into a huge room with a few hundred other people and told to wait for further instructions. There was no room for spontaneity. Everything was highly organized, with lots of rules and procedures. It was fun because it was the opposite of fun.

Eventually, a guy with a bullhorn came into the room and told us to write a New Year's message on the little piece of paper we had been provided with at the door. My message was vague and general, something about wishing good health and happiness upon pretty much every person on the planet (like that's ever going to happen). Sergey's message was indecipherable (because it was written in Cyrillic).

The bullhorn guy then shouted at us to form a single line out the door in order to receive a balloon. We were told to tie our handwritten message to the balloon. The balloons and their accompanying messages were not to be released until midnight. Although some slippery-fingered folks let their balloons go early. We were then marched outside and up the temple steps where we waited for the clock to strike twelve. We joined the crowd in counting down from 10 to one (in Japanese, of course) and threw our balloons up into the air at midnight. Happy New Year, indeed!

And then the real fun began. Everyone who wanted to was allowed to ring the temple bell once. The only problem was that everyone wanted to ring the bell. Because there were so many of us, we were divided into groups based on the letters of the alphabet. There were about 100 people per letter, starting with A and ending with Z. We were grouped under letter M. By this point we had been outside so long that we were cold. Really cold. But we kept ourselves warm with the thought of the free soup after ringing the bell.

Next on the agenda was some more coffee-shop loitering until the first sunrise of 2011. The ability to spend hours in a coffee shop without buying a refill is one of my favourite things about Japan. I've said it before but it's worth repeating. When you buy a cup of coffee in Japan, you are not just buying a cup of coffee; you are buying a piece of real estate. That one coffee gives you the right to monopolize a table for as long as you like. One hour, two hours, eight hours. You can stay as long as the place is open. You don't have to buy anything else and no one will ask you to leave.

It seemed like everyone else in the coffee shop that night was also using it as free accommodation. Two Japanese girls sitting beside us were hunched over the table fast asleep with their heads cradled in their arms. One of the employees kept waking them up and telling them they weren't allowed to sleep. Eventually, the poor guy had to give up since practically everyone in the place was asleep at their tables.

The sun was scheduled to rise at 7:05 a.m., which meant we still had four and a half hours to kill when I took this picture. So we enjoyed some valuable times with our beverages.

By 4:30 a.m. we were tired of sitting in the coffee shop so we decided to make our way to the sunrise party -- a short 10-minute walk away. The elevator took us up to the 40th floor of the Umeda Sky Building, where we had a panoramic view to watch the sun come up. Except it was still dark at 5 a.m. and very, very, very cold. So we waited inside until the sky started to lighten. At the first hint of daylight, we joined the crowds of people on the outdoor observatory waiting for the sun to rise.

I can only remember a handful of times when I have experienced this kind of cold. Standing on top of the Osaka skyscraper waiting for the sun to rise ranks right up there with standing on an Ottawa street waiting for the bus to come in minus 30 degree weather. It was the kind of cold that seeps under your skin and into your bones, making you shiver uncontrollably while stamping feet you can barely feel.

It was also the kind of cold that makes you realize that life on earth owes its random existence to its random distance from the sun. If the earth was any further away from the sun, we would freeze. The universe kind of blows my mind sometimes.

All of this made the sunrise so much more awe-inspiring when it finally did arrive. To see the sky go from pitch black to navy blue to purpley pink to light blue as the earth rotated on its axis was an amazing thing.

When the sun finally broke above the clouds, everyone started cheering. I couldn't tell if they were happy because of the sunrise or because they could now get out of the cold.

It was a great way to mark the end of one decade and the start of another. We managed to combine a couple of Japanese traditions and create a few of our own. I think we rang in 2011 right. Happy New Year, everyone!

Unintentionally in Istanbul

2010-12-20T10:17:00.008-08:00

I am in Istanbul. I am not here on vacation. I am here by accident. I was supposed to be back in Japan three days ago. But, as lousy luck would have it, I was stranded by snow in Germany for more than 50 hours.

My original flight from Cologne to Amsterdam (and then onward to Osaka) was cancelled Saturday because of "snow chaos" that has made travelling in Europe a nightmare since Friday. I was rebooked on a flight to Istanbul the following day but that too was cancelled because of a snowstorm that pretty much crippled every airport in Germany. Although, let's be honest -- a Canadian snowstorm and a German snowstorm are two very different things. I doubt there was more than 10 cm of snow in Bonn. The mercury had barely dipped below zero. Wind speed was about 5 km an hour. But, unlike Canada, I guess they're not used to these kinds of conditions. Pretty much every major airport in Europe has been closed since Friday. Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Paris, London, you name it, they are all closed. No one is flying in and no one is flying out. Not fun!

After my flight was cancelled on Saturday, I lined up for four hours to be told by KLM that I was on my own. No hotel. No food. Weather is not our responsibility, they said. They rebooked me on a flight the next day to Istanbul and then washed their hands of me. It's a good thing my insurance covers this sort of thing (or at least I hope my insurance covers this sort of thing) so I treated myself to a night in a nice hotel in Bonn.

I returned to the airport on Sunday to attempt to fly to Turkey but an hour before takeoff, the snow started coming down. Harder and faster until you could see nothing but a wall of white outside the window. We sat on the tarmac for three hours, going nowhere fast. It wasn't a surprise to anyone when the pilot announced the flight had been cancelled and we'd have to try again tomorrow.

After cancelling our flight, Turkish Airlines agreed to put us up in a hotel for the night. However, this only came about after much complaining and yelling by my fellow Turkish passengers. They were great! I made a Turkish friend and she told me that Turkish people love to complain about everything. Complaining is their national sport and they are very good at it, she said. So even though the cancellation was an "act of God" and the airline had no legal responsibility to do anything for us, the Turkish passengers were not having it.

They yelled and complained and yelled some more, until police with machine guns strapped around their chests were called in to diffuse the situation. The sight of the machine guns seemed to have a calming effect on the mob. But they still swarmed around the ticket counter and continued to complain. The poor airline worker finally gave in and rented us all rooms in a nice hotel in downtown Cologne despite the fact that all of the other stranded passengers on all of the other flights were forced to sleep on the airport floor. They even chartered a fancy bus to take us to and from the hotel.

Of course, once we got to the hotel, the complaining didn't stop! Nope. Now the Turks were upset that there was no free food. My new Turkish friend said that even if they had provided us with free food, they would have still found something to complain about. I said maybe they'll get angry that there's no pool. No, she said, even if there was a pool, they would complain that the airline didn't provide us with free swimsuits. It was quite entertaining!

After arriving at the hotel at about 9:30 p.m., we were basically on standby until there was a break in the weather. Fortunately, it stopped snowing. Unfortunately, it stopped snowing at four in the morning. So we all got a wake-up call at 4:15 a.m. and were told to be in the lobby and on the bus no later than 5 a.m. We were driven back to the airport and checked back in and boarded the plane -- the very same plane we had been sitting on for three hours yesterday before they decided to cancel it. By 8 a.m. we were in the air and flying far away from the disaster that is Europe.

We arrived in Istanbul at about 1 p.m. with not a snowflake in sight. I was so happy I almost kissed the bare ground. Of course, there is chaos here too but only because of the people who are trying to get to London or Paris or Berlin for Christmas. Sorry folks, ain't going to happen. So glad I'm now far away from that mess.

I have about 12 hours to kill until my connecting flight to Osaka, so I decided to do some errands. First on my list was to see if I could sweet-talk my way on to a free upgrade to business class. It was a classic Pierre Marchildon situation and I think I performed well. Maybe not as good as my Dad but he has a lot more experience making friends with everyone he meets than I do. However, having watched the master at work my entire life, I think it's fair to say I am an apt and able charmer.

I sidled up to the ticket counter, smiled and make some Dad jokes and small talk about the weather. Asked if I could be upgraded to business class for the flight back to Osaka. The ticket agent made a phone call and then quietly and discretely printed off a new boarding pass -- in business class! For free! (Dad, how proud of me are you right now?!)

However, before I could enjoy the comforts of the Turkish Airline executive lounge, I had to replace the contents of my makeup bag. I lost it in Germany somewhere. I don't know if I left it at the hotel or at the airport or what had happened. But it was gone. I had stocked up on cosmetics in Germany because I can't find my beloved brands in Kyoto. I was pretty bummed because we're talking about losing about one hundred dollars worth of stuff. My mascara, eyeshadow, lipstick, eyelash curler, tweezers, MAC face powder, "virgin oil" lip-gloss (yes, that's really what it's called. I think they forgot the word "olive" in between "virgin" and "oil") and on and on. All gone. So I made a stop at duty free and bought the cheapest stuff I could find, which is not easy to do when the aisles are filled with the likes of Chanel and Givenchy. So I settled for Clinique. Also, I talked the saleslady into throwing in one of those free bags with all kinds of products that you're only supposed to get when you buy skin creams. Clinique Bonus indeed!

And that brings me to the present moment. I am typing this in the comfort of the Turkish Airways executive lounge. I am in a room with wood panelling and gold accents. There are crystal chandeliers hanging from the ceiling. There are European-style paintings on the wall (I suspect the theme the decorator was going for was "money"). The lounge is the size of about five departure gates put together. There are showers (so going to take advantage of that!) and free food (already took advantage of that!) and free drinks (going to hold off on that. I want to actually make it on the plane). I swear, I don't think I can ever fly economy again...and I haven't even set foot on the plane.

I am scheduled to depart at midnight and arrive in Osaka around 6 p.m. on Tuesday evening. Fingers crossed.

In the meantime, I went for a long walk around the terminal and bumped into another new friend of mine from the Bonn to Istanbul fiasco. He's an Iraqi journalist who writes about the benefits of Christianity. He's not too fond of Muslims and he decided to give me a long and loud lecture about the downsides of the Arab world in the middle of the terminal. In a Muslim country, mind you. Interesting? Yes. Smart? No.

He also told me he went to Japan in 1987, adding "but you probably weren't even born back then." (This is why I love chatting up senior citizens. In their eyes, I look young!) Then he gave me his business card and told me to keep in touch.

I got tired of walking around so now I'm back in the womb-like comfort of the executive lounge. Going to have Dinner Part III and then a long, hot shower. That should take up a good half hour leaving me with another large chunk of time to kill, which I will spend luxuriating in the classy atmosphere of the executive lounge. I wonder what my fellow elites would think if they knew I lived in a one-room apartment in Kyoto with a squat toilet and a coin-operated shower?

Art for voyeurs

2010-11-21T07:39:00.025-08:00

One of my favourite hobbies is spying on people. Not in a creepy restraining-order kind of way but in a harmless curious-about-how-other-people-live kind of way.

I like to walk along residential streets at night and look into people's windows. I don't jump the fence and press my face up against the glass (the last time I tried that I tripped and fell into a bed of stinging nettles). I just see what I can see from the street as I walk past. If the lights are on and the curtains are open, well, that's pretty much an invitation to peek inside.

I'm not looking to catch anyone in a compromising position. I'm more interested in the mundane details. The colour of the walls, the way the furniture is arranged, what's on TV, what's on the walls, the harshness or the softness of the lighting. This is the stuff that fascinates me. A room is a living canvas that we fill with things that reflect our personalities and preferences. We create nests that are pleasing to us because they are an extension of us.

My strong attachment to my own home probably explains why I'm so obsessed with seeing how other people live. I look inside their windows and ask myself a million little questions. Who are they? What do they do for a living? Are they happy? And what kind of person would hang a German flag on the wall and put a collection of empty whiskey bottles on top of a bookshelf and call it decorating?

When I see a really beautiful apartment -- one with high ceilings, big windows, and minimal, but tasteful, furniture -- I fantasize about what it would be like to live there. I imagine myself walking up the steps, pushing open the door, stepping into the living room and sinking into the down-filled couch. It's not late-night lurking. It's window shopping for an alternate reality.

Bonn is a voyeur's paradise. The houses butt right up against the sidewalk and the curtains on the floor-to-ceiling windows are rarely closed. My neighbourhood is full of elegant old houses and as much as I enjoy the occasional peek into the front room through parted curtains, it always leaves me wanting more.

So when my landlady Christine told me some local artists were opening up their homes to the public on the weekend, I was more excited about seeing the inside of their apartments than I was about seeing their art. Christine (pictured below) was the only participating artist whose work captured my full attention since I see the inside of her house on a daily basis.

The Offfene Ateliers in der Sudstadt has become something of a Bonn tradition. Once a year, a group of artists open their studios (which are usually located inside their apartments) to the public. The only way to find their homes is to follow a specially made map pinpointing their location. You walk up to the artist's apartment, ring the buzzer and are quietly let in. The event is open to the public but it feels secretive. Without the map, you wouldn't know where to go.

My friend Emily was my date for the afternoon. Together, we walked along the wealthy residential streets of Sudstadt, going from one apartment to the next. It felt a little bit like trick-or-treating but without the costumes or the candy (although I did notice a bowl filled with mini Snickers at one of the apartments we visited).

There were 18 participating artists and in a five-hour period we only managed to visit eight of them. The artists walked around their homes answering questions or chatting up potential buyers. I walked around the rooms drinking in the mundane details.

I checked out the colour of the walls (I was especially fond of the kitchen painted pink and the living room painted orange), I looked at the furniture (most of it was well-made, sturdy and practical), I glanced at the books on bookshelves (the titles were almost always in German), and paid attention to what was hanging on the walls (lots and lots of art).

I liked the event, I liked the art and I liked poking around people's homes. Especially because these were the very same homes I had walked past dozens of times before. These were the same windows I had peeked in and the same occupants I had wondered about.

I now know that inside one of these houses lives a guy who has never been to Canada and inside another lives a handsome architect with ashtrays in every room and a cat sleeping upstairs. I still walk past these houses at night but now I see a little bit more.

Roman holiday

2010-11-14T11:04:00.015-08:00

I live in Bonn. Elena lives in Bucharest. For the first time in more than six months, we were both on the same continent. A reunion was in order. We decided to meet each other halfway between Bonn and Bucharest. A map of Europe and some unscientific head tilting, eye squinting and finger measuring determined our destination. It turns out all roads really do lead to Rome.

The last time I saw Elena was in March. She had finished her research program in Japan and was heading home to Romania. I first met Elena a year earlier at Kyoto University, where we found ourselves in the same five-day-a-week Japanese class. There were only nine of us in the class and we quickly became a tight-knit group both inside and outside of the classroom.

We were a veritable United Nations. Seema from India, Oneika from Jamaica, Nadia from Bosnia, Lani from the Philippines, Ricardo from Mexico, Fay from China, Luciana from Argentina, me from Canada. And, of course, Elena from Romania.

Elena was my constant traveling companion. We went to Hong Kong for spring break, rang in the New Year in the Philippines, and somehow managed to hike to the top of Mt. Fuji in freezing rain and driving wind.

When it comes to traveling, Elena and I are so similar you'd think we were separated at birth. We both agree the best way to see a new place is to walk 12 hours a day, several days in a row. We like to walk fast, weaving around the slow walkers clogging up the sidewalk. It's not that we're impatient or in a rush. We just like to walk fast. We also like to wake up early. We can be showered, dressed and ready to go in five minutes flat. We both hate shopping and refuse to spend time and money buying anything other than food and drinks while on vacation.

We are efficient and careful users of time, knowing we only have a limited amount of it. But we also like to stop for frequent snack breaks (okay, maybe that last one is just me).

Traveling on a tight budget is the biggest downside to being a student. Staying at a place with four stars, fluffy towels and free bathrobes was not an option. So we booked two beds in a hostel near the train station. My expectations were not high. When I think of hostels I think of a high school field trip gone haywire.

In my mind, hostels cater to the kind of clientele that likes to storm in and out of the room at all hours of the night, throw back vodka shots, chug beer through funnels, yell in the hallway, pee in the shower, vomit waterfalls from the top bunk, steal anything not nailed down, smoke in bed, throw garbage out the window, unleash bed bugs from dirty backpacks, and start violent fights that end with broken glass and smashed teeth.

This is what I steeled myself for en route to the hostel. Upon arrival, I took a deep breath, got ready to face my worst fears and pushed open the door to our shared room. But instead of being greeted by mayhem, I was greeted by silence. Elena, who arrived long before I did, was reading quietly on one of the beds. Two of our roommates were already fast asleep (it was just after 10 p.m. on Friday night). The third was wearing a long flannel nightgown buttoned up to her neck. She was sprawled out on one of the bottom bunks, scribbling furiously in her diary.

It was a pattern that would repeat itself every day for the next three days. Elena and I would leave the hostel before any of our roommates woke up and they were always asleep by the time we returned. Except for the woman in the flannel nightgown. All she did was write in her diary. Ironically, it turned out the person most likely to vomit waterfalls from the top bunk was me.

Elena was not only my travel companion but she was also my tour guide. Everywhere we went, she would read from a travel book on Rome written in Romanian. The book's accuracy was somewhat questionable. The book informed us that the Coliseum was built in the 1700s and it contained elevators that brought animals and gladiators up to the main stage. The book was also fond of stating the obvious. For example, there are a lot of Italian restaurants in Rome. Who knew?

We also learned that the locals don't drink cappuccinos after 10 a.m. If we tried to order one after lunch or dinner, we would expose ourselves as tourists. According to the Italians, a cappuccino is a morning drink and an espresso is an afternoon drink. According to me, a cappuccino is an any-time-of-day drink. The Italians and I will have to agree to disagree on this one.

We stood in line a lot. We lined up for three hours in the rain just to get inside the Vatican Museum. This was after spending one hour in the lineup we thought was for the museum but turned out to be for St. Peter's Basilica. It wasn't until we made it all the way to the front of the line that we realized our mistake.

We took a quick peek inside the basilica (if you've seen one Catholic church, you've seen them all. Although, admittedly, this one was a lot glitzier than the rest) and then headed back to the back of the line we should have been in in the first place. But by this time, the lineup for the Vatican Museum was two kilometers long. It stretched down the street, around the corner, down another street, around another corner, down yet another street and around yet another corner.

We also lined up for an hour to get inside the Coliseum. It was shorter than the Vatican lineup but it was much more annoying. Just as we were about to reach the ticket window, an older American couple appeared out of nowhere and cut in line ahead of us. A group of loud, obnoxious Spaniards started hurling insults and obscenities at the Americans trying to cut in line. I thought it was hypocritical of the Spaniards to harangue the Americans when they had spent the past hour chain smoking in line without giving a second thought to the people around them.

Elena and I decided let the Americans in line ahead of us. Partly because they were in their seventies. But mostly because letting the Americans jump the cue was a sneaky way to annoy the Spaniards who had been annoying us with their loud voices and cigarette smoke for the past hour.

Besides, I was happy enough to go along with the cultural stereotypes. If they were content to play the role of the arrogant Americans cheating their way to the front of the line then I was content to play the role of the passive Canadian letting them cut in line. Anything to avoid confrontation. Don't want to get into a fight, don't want to cause a scene, don't want to hurt anyone's feelings, don't want to take sides. You can take the girl out of Canada but you can't take the Canadian out of the girl.

Elena and I met a lot of Americans in Rome. Aside from the couple who cut in line, they were a very likable bunch. They were friendly, talkative and open. On the train back to the airport, I sat with three Americans from Kentucky -- a middle-aged mother, her teenage son and his 40-year-old uncle, Steve. Steve sat directly in from of me and introduced himself with a firm handshake and a hearty, "How ya doin'. Name's Steve. Where y'all from?"

I learned that they were a military family. Steve served in Desert Storm and his 19-year-old nephew -- a baby-faced boy with a buzz cut and a fuzzy blond mustache -- was shipping out to Afghanistan next week. A family trip across Europe was the boy's mom's idea. Their happiness made me sad. I couldn't stop thinking that this very alive, very young boy sitting right in front of me could be coming home in a coffin. For what?

It was the only sad note on a trip filled with so much laughter and fun. But this is the way it goes. People come and go. Friends move halfway around the world. Only the lucky ones get to see each other again.

So many beautiful things (excluding public toilets)

2010-10-17T00:33:00.012-07:00

Every weekend, I make a point of taking in at least one tourist attraction. So far, I've spent an afternoon in Cologne, visited Bonn's botanical garden, hiked to a hilltop castle, seen a modern dance performance, spent a day in Dusseldorf, strolled along the Rhine River, checked out the Beethoven Museum, and walked through Konigswinter's wine region.

It's good to do these things in small doses. Setting aside a few hours on a Saturday to see the sights is better than spending the entire weekend rushing from museum to castle. But this has nothing to do with a preference for quality over quantity. This is all about a lack of public toilets in Germany.

I would love to spend more than three hours wandering around Bonn on a Saturday afternoon but my bladder won't let me. There are no free public toilets anywhere.

There are public washrooms in the train stations but these usually come with a one-Euro cover charge. Unless you limit your sightseeing to a one-kilometre radius around the train station, you'll be nowhere near a public toilet when the urge strikes. And don't make the mistake of thinking McDonald's is a toilet safe haven -- the one place where you don't have to buy anything to use the bathroom.

I made that rookie mistake in Dusseldorf. I had been walking up and down the same street five times desperately looking for the "WC" marked on the map (this was before I realized the "WC" symbol dotted all over the map didn't refer to the location of a "water closet" but to "wheelchair" access).

So I ducked into a McDonald's, where I was surprised to see a toilet attendant stationed outside the stalls. She sat on a chair beside a table with a small pile of coins on it. There were no signs but the message was clear -- pay up if you want to use the toilet.

I mean, I probably didn't have to pay but this woman was a professional and she knew how to play the guilt card. I was washing my hands in the sink when she jumped up and handed me a paper towel. It was a strategic move. I couldn't get a paper towel with my hands still occupied under the running faucet. She had anticipated my needs and provided a service (albeit a service I didn't want or need). My conscience wouldn't let me walk out of there without adding a couple of coins to the pile.

This wasn't a five-star hotel. This was a McDonald's. A place where homeless people and non-paying customers should be able to use the bathroom for free. I'm not opposed to paying to using the bathroom in general. Just not at McDonald's. Multi-billion dollar corporations should give something back to the community. Free public toilets is the least they can do.

So I limit my sightseeing to a few hours on the weekend. But no matter where I go or what I do, there is always one common theme -- a desperate need to use a bathroom and an inability to find one.

Toilet troubles aside, I have seen so many beautiful things on these little sightseeing trips. Trees wrapped in misty morning fog along the Rhine River. Frank Gehry buildings sparkling and shining in the afternoon sun in Dusseldorf. Trees blazing in the throes of autumn beauty in Bonn's botanical garden. Grapes growing under rocky mountains in Konigswinter.

I only stayed a few hours in each of these places. I would have stayed longer but I had to use the bathroom and there were no toilets in sight. This is the story the photos don't tell.

Ausfahrts and dinkelpops

2010-10-10T10:50:00.005-07:00

I am ashamed to admit that after more than one month in Germany, I still can't speak a single word of German. Unless you count the words that are already embedded in the English language. Kindergarten, hamburger, doppelganger, lederhosen, schadenfreude, sauerkraut and strudel. That's about the extent of my not-so-wunderbar vocabulary.

It's not something I'm proud of. I feel anxious and exposed when someone tries to strike up a conversation with me. I feel like I'm being rude if I reply to them in English when they ask me a question in German. I get self-conscious if I place an order at a restaurant without attempting to do it in German. It's like I'm saying, "Yeah. I'm living in your country but I can't be bothered to learn your language. So I'm going to force you to speak my language."

It's not that I don't want to learn German. It's just easy to survive without it. Pretty much everyone here can speak English. And no one seems to mind making the switch when they realize I have no clue what they're saying. There's not a lot of motivation to break out of the English-speaking bubble.

Except every time I leave my apartment, I get all stressed out when someone tries to talk to me in German. So I figured it was time to master a few uber-essential phrases to ease my angst. I came up with a list of expressions I wanted to learn:

1. "Sorry" (because I always seem to be bumping into people);

2. "Excuse me" (because I always seem to be trying to squeeze past people);

3. "I can't speak German" (because there's no excuse to keep saying it in English);

4. "Three buns, please" (because I'm tired of the mime routine. I always order three buns at the bakery and I feel like an idiot when the woman behind the counter asks what I want and I silently hold up three fingers and point at the buns instead of just asking for them like a normal person).

Learning how to say "sorry" was easy enough. It turns out the German word for "sorry" is "sorry." Learning how to say "excuse me" involved too many tongue-tripping consonants. So I decided to use "sorry" for "excuse me" like the way we do in Canada. Two birds, one stone.

As for the more meaty phrases, Google Translate taught me how to say, "Ich kann nicht Deutsch sprechen" (I can't speak German). But no matter how many times I nail it in practice, I can never remember how to say it in real life.

Like when I was in line at the grocery store and the guy ahead of me turned around and blurted out a few sentences in German. I smiled, thinking maybe he was just making a comment about how long it was taking to reach the cash register. But he repeated it again. And again. I stood there desperately trying to pull out the German words from the deepest recesses of my brain. But my neurons were taking a nap. I wasn't going to be able to fake my way through this one by smiling and nodding. He tried one more time before I broke down and told him I couldn't speak German (in English, of course).

And, so, in perfect English he told me he was waiting for a friend to add a few more things to his cart and I was free to jump ahead of him. I thanked him in German because, well, I've got to start somewhere.

My first real victory was learning how order three rolls at the bakery ("Drei spitz Brotchen bitte"). This was easy because it was strictly mechanical. I just had to memorize the phrase, repeat it in my head 100 times on the way to the bakery, stand in front of the counter and spit it out like a robot. It worked perfectly.

Although the second time I tried this, I asked for three buns and only got two. I felt defeated. Until I returned home and found out the numbers two (zwei) and three (drei) sound very similar, especially if your pronunciation is as embarrassingly bad as mine is. (I'm too self-conscious to attempt the back-of-the-throat gargling sounds.)

I'm slowly picking up other words here and there. Every time I see an interesting word, I make a note of it and look it up later. Like this one.

There are ausfahrt signs everywhere. And, yes, it's pronounced exactly the way you think it's pronounced. But it doesn't mean what you think it does (it means "exit"). I'm sure Germans are tired of their ausfahrts being the butt of juvenile jokes so I'm going to leave it at that.

Another one of my new favourite words is "dinkelpops."

How adorable is that? Puffed wheat is such an uninspired description of the world's most delicious cereal (after Grape-Nuts, that is). Dinkelpops is exactly what they are. Cute with a little touch of naughtiness.

Ausfahrts and dinkelpops. I'm making progress one word at a time. At this rate, I'll probably be able to string an entire sentence together before I leave Germany.

My German may be terrible but bad German is a whole lot better than no German.

Big cucumbers, small carrots

2010-09-23T13:37:00.006-07:00

I feel like I'm looking at Germany through Japanese eyes. All the things that strike me as odd or awesome about Bonn are simply a collection of the things that clash with Kyoto.

Japan, not Canada, is the measuring stick against which I judge Germany.

When I moved to Japan, I remember being shocked by the size of the vegetables. The cucumbers were tiny and the carrots were huge. But I got used to it eventually. Tiny cucumbers and huge carrots became the new normal.

Two years later, I moved to Germany and found myself dealing with vegetable shock all over again. Only this time the cucumbers were huge and the carrots were tiny. Walking into a grocery store in Bonn was like walking into an alternate universe. The cucumbers weren't just big, they were obscenely big. Each one was longer than my forearm and thicker than a baguette.

I felt dizzy, as though the ground had suddenly shifted beneath my feet. Were cucumbers always this big? Had I become so accustomed to living in Japan that I had forgotten what cucumbers in the rest of the world were like? What was really real? And why do my existential crises always take place in grocery stores?

I've had a few other mildly discombobulating moments in Bonn. Like when my landlady Christine invited me into her apartment and insisted I keep my shoes on. Keep my shoes on? Inside the apartment? It felt wrong and dirty. Taking my shoes off in Japan is no longer just a custom I follow to be polite; it has become an ingrained habit. I actually flinch when I watch movies and see characters walking around indoors with their shoes on.

There are other things about Germany that I probably wouldn't have noticed if I hadn't come here directly from Japan. Like the bread, for example. I always thought the bread in Japan was terrible, I just didn't realize how awful it was until I arrived in Bonn. Japanese bread tastes like ground chicken feathers sealed in waxed paper compared to German bread.

The bread here is melt-in-your mouth good. It is crusty on the outside and fluffy on the inside. The butter tastes the way butter is supposed to taste -- rich, creamy, and smooth. And when you spread that butter on a freshly baked bun, the deliciousness of it all is enough to make your head explode.

Don't even get me started on the cheese. Cheese is non-existent in Japan and omnipresent in Germany. It's not all good, though. I bought some firm, yellowish cheese that looked tasty until I got home and opened it up. Its vile stench (a fragrant bouquet of hot vomit mixed with dirty socks and dead rats) made it impossible to eat without gagging.

And while we're on the topic of food, I might as well bring up one of the biggest cultural differences of all -- cafeteria food. The Kyoto University cafeteria and the UN cafeteria are like night and day. As far as I can tell, I am one of the only people who actually like the UN cafeteria. Most people prefer to either pack a lunch and eat at their desks or leave the compound in search of more palatable options. The general consensus is that the cafeteria food is too spicy, too heavy, and has too much sauce.

Which is exactly what I like about it. I've been eating lunch at the Kyoto University cafeteria for the past two years, and the food is never spicy, saucy, or heavy. Japanese food is great but a girl can only take so much cold fish, white rice, and miso soup.

My enthusiasm for the spicy, saucy cafeteria food is causing a few raised eyebrows. I ran into one coworker on my way back from the cafeteria the other day and she asked me how my lunch was.

"Delicious!" I told her.

She eyed me suspiciously.

"How long have you been here?" she asked.

"Two weeks," I said.

"Just wait," she laughed. "Your opinion will change."

I hope she's right. All of this gorging on heavy food is making it tough to fit into my jeans. But I don't feel bad about gaining a few pounds in a place where the vast majority of the population is tall and strapping. I could gain 10 pounds here and still be small by comparison. It's a nice change from Japan, where so many women are slaves to an unhealthy standard of skinniness. I feel like a sasquatch in Japan. Especially when shopping for clothes. Shoes stop at size 8 and pants stop at your ankles -- if you're lucky enough to get them up past your butt and hips in the first place. One of the first things I did in Bonn was buy a pair of pants. Hooray for Western sizes!

Of course, not all of the differences are positive. Public transit is so good in Japan that public transit anywhere else is insufferably bad by comparison. No one does public transit like Japan. It's fast, efficient, convenient, and reliable. There isn't a single corner of the country you can't get to by public transit, and you can guarantee the white-gloved driver will get you there on time. If a train is scheduled to arrive at 12:32 p.m. it will arrive at exactly 12:32 p.m. Bus drivers treat you with respect and courtesy. They'll go out of their way to help you and throw in a bow or two (or 10) while doing it. After all, you are the customer and the customer is king in Japan.

Not so much in Germany. I have taken the bus three times in Bonn. The first time the bus driver screamed at me after I didn't pay my fare properly. The second time the bus was 15 minutes late. The third time the bus was one hour late. There has not, and never will be, a fourth time. Walking is faster and less stressful.

Besides, walking gives me time to reflect on all the things that are odd or awesome about Bonn, and how incredibly lucky I am to be here.

Home sweet temporary home

2010-09-12T04:59:00.011-07:00

It's hard to believe I've only been in Bonn for one week. It feels like I've been here for a year. I guess that's what happens when you step off the plane and into a whirling vortex of activity.

I arrived Thursday night and started working at the UN the next morning. The day after that, I looked for a place to live, found a place to live, and went to a dinner party. On Monday, I moved out of the hotel and into an apartment. Along the way, I got yelled at (in German) by a bus driver after attempting to put coins in the fare slot instead of placing them on the little tray (how was I supposed to know?). I guess I jammed up the machine pretty badly because the driver kept swearing and pounding on it with his fist every time someone needed change. He also made a point of turning around and throwing a few hostile stares in my direction during these frequent temper tantrums. I haven't taken the bus since.

On Tuesday, I got lost on my way to my landlady's art opening, missed the show, and discovered that my bankcard wasn't working. On Wednesday, the bank unblocked my card and I finally topped up my dwindling supply of cash. On Thursday, I went to my landlady's apartment to pay the rent and ended up staying for dinner.

I feel like I won the apartment lottery. I'm living in the basement of a beautiful old house built in 1886. The apartment is fully furnished and has free internet and its own private garden (all for 505 Euro a month, including heat, hot water, and electricity). It's quiet, clean, and cozy. The two other tenants -- a young Italian woman and an older Spanish man -- also work at the UN. The location is about as good as it gets. It's a 10-minute walk to the centre of town, a two-minute walk to the Rhine River, and a five-minute walk to pretty much everything else.

But what makes me happiest about the apartment is the people who rented it to me. I was just one person in a long line of people who were viewing the apartment on the weekend. But I had one advantage -- my Canadian passport. It turns out that Christine, the owner of the house, is also Canadian. Originally from Switzerland, she moved to Montreal at the age of 20 and loved it so much she stuck around for 10 years and became a citizen. She instantly warmed to me and I instantly warmed to her. She later confessed that my being Canadian was what made her decide to rent the apartment to me.

She and her German husband Eduard live in an airy, rambling apartment two floors above mine. Christine is an artist and Eduard is a music producer. They are fun and friendly and love cats just as much as I do. I went to their apartment to pay the rent on Thursday night and Christine invited me in and we ended up talking in her kitchen the whole night. Christine and Eduard insisted I stay for dinner and we feasted on tomatoes, bread, cheese, salad and red wine by candlelight. The three of us talked about everything -- music, marriage, cats, children, grandchildren, Eduard's adventures in Los Angeles, and Christine's adventures in Canada's wild spaces and beautiful places.

It has been no different at work. I have been warmly welcomed and made to feel like a part of the team. The work is challenging, interesting, and meaningful. The cafeteria food is delicious. I am exactly where I want to be, doing exactly what I want to do. Sometimes I just want to pinch myself. How did I get so lucky?

I don't think I will ever tire of walking around Bonn. I love the way the rows of old houses are seamlessly stitched together and stand right up against the sidewalk. I love their richly decorated facades, arched windows, heavy doors, and high ceilings. The houses remind me of towering wedding cakes -- all sugary swirls, etched edges, and gilded pillars. To me, these elaborate flourishes epitomize the romantic, idealized image of Europe -- a place with magnificent architecture and cobblestone streets.

It's strange, this adjusting to life in a new city. I thought I would feel lost or disoriented. But I don't. I haven't experienced any culture shock, other than getting yelled at by the bus driver and being blown away by the size of the cheese section at the grocery store.

Sharing a train with hundreds of drunken, rowdy football fans was also pretty shocking (and by "football" I really mean "soccer"). They were yelling, drinking, and smoking. Most of them were so muscular their necks were non-existent. Some of them were missing teeth. All of them seemed to be a hair-trigger away from throwing punches at each other, which probably explains why there were an equal number of police officers riding the train.

It's hard to believe I've only been in Bonn for one week.

Sayonara, Japan! Guten Tag, Germany!

2010-09-01T01:46:00.004-07:00

My fans have been begging me to post an update for a while now (and by "fans" I really mean "two friends, plus my mom") so here goes. During the last few months, I:

1. Hiked and camped my way across southern Japan for three weeks during March break. It was so cold that the rain pelting the tent turned into ice overnight, and my water bottle froze solid.

2. Started a master's degree in environmental management at Kyoto University's Graduate School of Global Environmental Studies.

3. Wrote seven essays.

4. Made six presentations.

5. Started drinking coffee on a regular basis.

6. Went camping with three Slavic men. We hiked for four days on a trail that no longer existed. I don't know what was worse: dealing with the terrible trail conditions or the Eastern European egos. At least they argued in Russian, which made tuning them out easy.

7. Developed a crush on Paul the Octopus while following the FIFA World Cup.

8. Turned a good friend into a boyfriend.

9. Signed up for the Tokyo Marathon.

10. Went on a week-long field trip in the forest to cut down trees and dig holes.

11. Got 5 million mosquito bites.

12. Stepped on a snake. Didn't get bitten.

13. Was approached by Sofia Coppola to star in Lost in Translation II but had to turn it down due to a scheduling conflict (just kidding).

14. Camped on top of a mountain with three friends in a tent made for two. Watched from inside the tent as the food we had left outside was devoured by wild monkeys.

15. Developed an addiction to Futurama (10 years late).

16. Ate half my weight in ramen.

17. Was awarded a three-month internship with the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Bonn, Germany. I fly out tomorrow and start working on Friday!

Sayonara, Japan! Guten Tag Germany!

A love letter to Canada

2010-06-30T23:18:00.008-07:00

Dear Canada,

Happy 143rd birthday! Although, let's be honest, we both know you're much older than the 143 years the European settlers pretend you are. You may not have been a country in the legal sense of the word but people have called your land home for more than 20,000 years. Dinosaurs roamed across your plains long before we ever did.

The 143-year-old ruse reminds me of the way my mom continues to celebrate her 29th birthday 30 years running. But whatever. Today is not a day to point out your flaws. Today is a day to celebrate all of the wonderful and wacky things that make you so special.

You are so much more than maple syrup, hockey and poutine. You are not just snowshoes, canoes and barbeques. You are the rock beneath our feet. O Canada, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways . . .

1. Freedom: We are free to be whoever we want to be, say whatever we want to say, and wear whatever we want to wear. Other countries have burqas, bombs, and bullets. We have gay marriage, universal health care, and beer.

2. Diversity: We are a country of immigrants. We have different cultures, different religions, and different ideas but we all somehow manage to get along. We don't throw rocks at each other. We don't plant bombs outside busy markets. We don't believe in blowing each other up. We believe in human rights. We believe in tolerance. We believe a new citizen is every bit as Canadian as someone whose family has been here for five generations. Jamaican, Chinese, African, Indian, Australian . . . we are all Canadian.

3. Tim Hortons: A double-double and a chocolate dip to go, please.

4. Food: We can eat a burrito for breakfast, sushi for lunch, and souvlaki for dinner. A walk around the block is like a gastronomic trip around the world. But food from our own backyard is the best food of all. Blueberries, apples, pears, blackberries, corn, rhubarb, strawberries, potatoes, carrots, cherries, fiddleheads, and tomatoes. Just to name a few.

5. Wilderness: We have real wilderness in Canada. These vast, uninhabited areas are among the last remaining tracts of wilderness in the world. This is our national treasure and we should guard it with our lives. Canada does not just belong to us. It belongs to bears, moose, and caribou too.

6. The CBC: George Stroumboulopoulos, Claire Marin, Rick Mercer, Peter Mansbridge, Jian Ghomeshi, Anna Maria Tremonti, and good old Stuart McLean. The Hour, As it Happens, Definitely not the Opera, Vinyl Tap, A Propos, and The Current. The CBC is intelligent, funny, thoughtful, provincial, original, folksy, and fun. Sophisticated but not sleek. Polished but still a little amateurish. Just like us.

7. Manners: We are polite. We are friendly. We are humble. We are modest. We are unobtrusive. We say "sorry" a lot. We say sorry when you tell us to stop saying sorry all the time. (Sorry! We can’t help it.)

8. The four seasons: Lake swimming in summer, cross-country skiing in winter, walking under a canopy of red maple leaves in fall, and watching cherry trees bloom in spring.

9. Film and TV: FUBAR and Exotica. Degrassi and the Trailer Park Boys. We turn low budgets into brilliant art. Just giv'r!

10. Space: We are a big country with a small population. We can drive for days and still be in the same province. We can walk into the woods and not see another person for months. We live in towns so remote you can only get there by boat or plane. Our biggest cities aren't big at all. Thirty-four million people live in Canada. Thirty-four million people live in the Greater Tokyo Area.

Happy Birthday, Canada! You ancient, rocky, sexy hunk of land you!

Homeless in Hokkaido: Part V

2010-04-15T05:43:00.007-07:00

Part I | Part II | Part III | Part IV

Our last day in Hokkaido was a lot less interesting to us than it was to the people around us. Everywhere we went, Sergey and I were the main topic of conversation. I say this not out of paranoia or megalomania, but out of an ability to understand Japanese.

For example, our decision to eat a low-budget breakfast at the train station was a gossip-filled affair. We bought two bowls of instant ramen and sat on a bench in the waiting room. Three older Japanese women sitting on the bench directly behind us gave a running commentary on our every move.

"Look! Gaijin!"

"What are they doing?"

"They're eating ramen."

"It looks like they're enjoying it."

"It sure does."

"They're using chopsticks."

"They sure are."

Sergey and I pretended we couldn't understand them, bending our heads over our cups of ramen so they couldn't see us smiling. It was fun eavesdropping on the locals. They talked about us like we were monkeys in a zoo.

This was about as exciting as our last day in Hokkaido got. Not that I'm complaining. An uneventful day was exactly what we needed after the misadventure-plagued portion of the trip. We were determined not to repeat the same stupid mistakes that got us into trouble in the first place -- like not checking the ferry schedule and getting stuck in Hokkaido an extra day. We couldn't afford to miss the ferry again so instead of simply checking the schedule online, we walked three kilometres to the ferry terminal first thing in the morning to book our tickets for the sailing later that night.

It was our second trip to the ferry terminal but this time the lights were on and the doors were open. We had 12 hours to kill before the ferry left so we decided to head out for another hike in the hills. But we stopped so many times along the way that we didn't even make it to the base of the mountain.

Our first stop was to see if the snowman we built the day before was still standing. It wasn't. Someone had cruelly kicked the snowman in the stomach and its body laid in pieces on the ground. The one-yen coins that served as the snowman's eyes had been plucked out of his head and, presumably, tucked into the perpetrator's pocket. We were sad for a moment but realized there was no point mourning the loss of a few clumps of snow -- our cute little Mible was no more.

We continued on toward the mountain, and accidentally stumbled onto Otaru's main tourist strip. Despite covering most of the town on foot the day before, we had somehow missed Otaru's biggest attraction -- an intersection decorated with three different clock towers.

I don't know for a fact whether this is Otaru's biggest attraction or not, but there were at least 60 tourists taking pictures of the clock towers and we hadn't seen any tourists taking pictures of anything up until now so the odds were pretty good that this intersection was a big deal.

We joined the crowd and took our own pointless photos. We browsed through a massive store selling thousands of miniature clock towers and a few stuffed octopuses (whose relationship to the clock towers is still unclear).

We eventually left the clock towers behind and continued hiking toward the mountain but it wasn't long before we were sidetracked again. The glow of McDonald's golden arches caught Sergey's eye. But, sadly for Sergey, his beloved McPork wasn't on the menu.

It was starting to get dark and we were still nowhere near the mountain. We decided to give up on the hike and take the bus back into town. But we were too tired to figure out which bus to take or which bus stop to stand at so we simply walked back. Walking back required no brainpower. We didn't even need to look at the map. By this point, we had visited every tourist attraction and walked every square inch of every street -- twice. We could have written the Lonely Planet guide to Otaru.

Back in town, we had time for dinner and coffee before making our way to the ferry terminal for the long trip home. The ferry heading back to Honshu was much busier than the one that took us to Hokkaido. There were about 50 people on board. Although, technically speaking, 50 people on board a boat built for 1,000 doesn't make it "busy." It just felt busy compared to the grand total of eight passengers on the ferry on the way over.

Luckily, the ferry plowed through nothing but calm seas during the 20-hour sailing. I didn't have to deal with the roiling waves and low-grade seasickness that kept me flat on my back on the way to Hokkaido. This time around, I only felt like throwing up after eating "kimichi and cheese" instant ramen.

Aside from a poor choice in soup, the ferry ride was thoroughly enjoyable. The on-board entertainment was top notch. We were treated to a live concert by two restaurant workers who play in a jazz band in their spare time. They played such hits as "Sometimes When we Touch."

They chatted up the audience in between songs. They told us they perform on the ferry every day but they were especially happy today because normally only three people turn up to hear them play. Today they were playing for a record-breaking crowd of 16 (almost half of all the passengers on board).

The rest of the ferry ride was uneventful. The trip was ending on a calm note -- completely opposite to its chaotic start. We went to Hokkaido for the majestic mountains, the outdoor onsens, and the fabulous food. Except we took a wrong turn somewhere along the way and ended up on a tour of northern Japan that was more farce than fantasy.

Everything that could go wrong did go wrong. But that was part of the trip's charm. It may have gone sideways but it was never boring. Especially when we got kicked out of McDonald's at 4 a.m. with no other accommodation lined up for the night. To steal a line from Hunter S. Thompson, it never got weird enough for us.

Homeless in Hokkaido: Part IV

2010-04-08T06:22:00.006-07:00

Part I | Part II | Part III

After a solid sleep in a proper bed in Sapporo, I thought the misadventure-plagued portion of the trip was finally behind us. I thought wrong.

It turned out the ferry we were planning to catch wasn't running on the day we were planning to catch it, leaving us stranded in northern Japan an extra day. Once again, Sergey and I would find ourselves wandering the streets of Hokkaido in the middle of the night with nowhere to go and nowhere to stay.

Life lesson #476: Things don't always go the way you plan them to go. Life lesson #477: Things definitely won't go the way you plan them to go if your plans are based on idiotic assumptions. For example, you can "plan" to catch the ferry to Kyoto from Hokkaido but if you neglect to check that there is in fact a ferry heading to Kyoto on the day you are "planning" to leave, then things definitely won't go the way you plan them to go.

Oh, sure. Calling the ferry terminal a day or two in advance could have saved us a lot of time and money. But we wanted to be spontaneous. (Life lesson #478: There's a difference between spontaneity and stupidity.) But I'll get to all of that later. Because, for the most part, the day went exactly as planned.

We caught the train from Sapporo to Otaru early in the morning. We figured we'd spend the day sightseeing in Otaru before taking the ferry home later that night. There are only two places to catch a ferry back to Kyoto in Hokkaido and Otaru happens to be one of them.

Getting to Otaru from Sapporo was easy. It was just a short train ride along the Sea of Japan. I spent the trip staring out the window, enjoying the view of the cold, grey sea crashing into the snow-covered shore while Sergey buried his nose in a book. (He was reading Into Thin Air -- Jon Krakauer's account of the 1996 Mt. Everest tragedy. This may seem like an extraneous detail but it's not. Later that day, we'd find ourselves up on top of a mountain in sub-zero temperatures, with dwindling daylight, arguing about the safest and fastest way down. We threw examples from the Mt. Everest book at each other to bolster our arguments. It seemed we had two very different interpretations of the book's main message. For Sergey, it was about adventure. For me, it was about minimizing risk. Although, technically, we weren't 30,000 feet above sea level and we weren't running out of oxygen and our lives weren't in any imminent danger so maybe the book's lessons weren't exactly relevant here. But I digress.)

After arriving in Otaru, we threw our bags in a locker at the train station and set out to explore the surprisingly picturesque town. We had finally found the winter wonderland we were looking for. We walked along a canal adorned with Victorian-style streetlamps. We headed to the port and built a mini-snowman -- we named him Mible. And then we set out to hike the steep slopes of Mt. Tengu.

The snow was deep. The air was crisp and clean. There wasn't a single person in sight. A walk in the woods on a winter day is a magical experience. It's even more magical when someone pees your name in the snow.

I had been hiking ahead of Sergey when he called me back to admire his shaky masterpiece.

"I'll bet that's the most romantic thing anyone has ever done for you," he said.

I don't know what's worse: the fact that he peed my name in the snow, or the fact that I was touched by it. I mean it's not every day a guys pees your name in the snow. I think I was in elementary school the last time it happened. Unfortunately, Sergey ran out of urine before he could add the "h" to the end of my name. I told him to drink more water next time.

Two hours later, we finally reached the top. We stood on the summit and admired the view. We were about to turn around and head down the same way we came up when Sergey noticed a single set of footprints heading steeply down the mountain's north face. Let's go back that way instead, he said. I wasn't sure it was a good idea. It was getting late and it would be dark soon. It was cold and starting to snow. We had run out of water and eaten all of our snacks.

Heading down a steep, unmarked trail that may or may not take us into town before it got dark didn't seem like the smartest option. Sergey disagreed. He said heading straight down the mountain would save time and, as long as we kept going north, we'd end up right in the middle of town.

I wanted to head back the same way we came. It might take longer but at least we wouldn't get lost.

"Where's your sense of adventure?" Sergey asked.

"There's a difference between adventure and stupidity," I said. "And to me, this is stupidity."

It wasn't exactly a fight but it was tense. The thing is, Sergey and I are very similar. And while this means we get along like gangbusters most of the time, being alike is also a double-edged sword -- especially when you are both stubborn, headstrong and set in your ways. We could have dug in our heels and refused to budge. But I figured it was better to relent. It wasn't like we were in any real danger. This wasn't some remote wilderness area. We were just a few kilometers outside of town. The city was clearly visible from where we were standing. If we headed directly down the north face and found ourselves stuck or off course, we could easily retrace our footprints to the summit and backtrack to the original trail. The risk of getting lost seemed ridiculously small. So I backed down. And, just as Sergey predicted, we shaved an hour off the hike and ended up exiting the trail almost directly behind the train station. He was right (although, being right doesn't make him a hero. It just makes him lucky).

After lingering over a hot curry dinner and loitering in a coffee shop for a few hours, it was time to head to the ferry terminal to catch the 11:30 p.m. sailing back to Kyoto. We had toyed with the idea of making a reservation earlier in the day but decided against it because there had only been eight people on the ferry to Hokkaido. We thought making a reservation would be a waste of time. We thought wrong.

We headed to the train station and hopped on the last bus to the ferry terminal. It was late at night and most of the streets were quiet, dark and empty. But the ferry terminal was even quieter, darker and emptier than the streets. There wasn't a single car in the parking lot and all of the lights were turned off. Something wasn't right.

The bus came to a stop in front of the main entrance. Before getting off the bus, I asked the driver if he thought the ferry terminal was open. He jumped out of his seat, ran to the terminal and pulled on each of the doors. They were all locked.

The driver returned to the bus, told us the terminal was closed and asked us what we wanted to do. We didn't know what to do. The confused expression on Sergey's face mirrored my own. The handful of passengers on the bus stayed silent and simply waited to see what we would do next. The driver needed an answer so I told him we would just stay on the bus and go back to the station. We were the last people to get off the bus and the driver stopped us on our way out the door. He took off his hat and his microphone, and looked at us with genuine concern.

"What will you do?" he asked.

We told him we weren't sure. He told us where we could find a cheap hotel and offered to drive us there. We told him not to go out of his way. But he kept insisting. He had finished his shift and had time to drive us over. We kept refusing. We wanted to find out what was going on and figure out what our options were before checking into a hotel.

The bus driver was looking at us the same way you might look at a lost child in a supermarket. His forehead was creased with worry and he wouldn't let us get off the bus until we had convinced him that we would be all right. I don't know if his concern was born of genuine kindness or extreme customer service. I suppose it doesn't matter. Whether he was simply being kind or whether he felt like taking care of two clueless foreigners was part of his job, his excessive helpfulness didn't come as a surprise. This behaviour is the norm, not the exception, in Japan. If a bus driver went out of his way to help me back home, I wouldn't be surprised but I certainly wouldn't expect it. In Japan, I expect to be helped. And I expect to be helped with a smile and a deep bow. I've become so used to being coddled and doted on that even the slightest display of rudeness comes as a shock.

The extreme customer service continued at the train station when we asked the guy behind the ticket window for help. He told us the ferry was running and we could catch it tonight at 11:30, no problem. We told him we already went to the ferry terminal but the lights were off and the doors were locked. We asked if he would mind phoning the terminal just to double check.

Despite contradicting everything he had just told us, he picked up the phone and called the terminal without argument or complaint. After he hung up the phone, he said there was a recorded message explaining that the ferry wasn't running because of scheduled maintenance. There was no choice but to wait 24 hours for the next sailing.

We were spending the night in Otaru whether we wanted to or not. The town was too small to have a 24-hour McDonald's where we could sleep for free so we took the bus driver's recommendation and checked into a cheap hotel for the night. There was nothing to do but buy some booze and some snacks and turn it into a party.

This time, the misadventure-plagued portion of the trip was truly and finally behind us. There was nothing left to go wrong that hadn't already gone wrong.

Continue reading: Part V

Homeless in Hokkaido: Part III

2010-03-13T00:30:00.012-08:00

Part I | Part II

So there we were, stranded on the snowy, sub-zero streets of Sapporo at four in the morning with nowhere to go and nowhere to stay. Sergey and I had just gotten kicked out of our accommodation for the night -- a "24-hour" McDonald's that turned out to be open a few less hours than advertised.

Checking into a love hotel was tempting, but too expensive. Bunking down on a park bench was out of the question. Sitting in hard seats at another all-night restaurant was unappealing. There was only one place where we could catch a few hours sleep without blowing our budget or freezing our asses. So we checked into the first internet cafe we found.

Sleeping in an internet cafe was, surprisingly, a lot more comfortable than it sounds. For $10, we each got a private cubicle with four walls and a door that closed. The cubicles came complete with a desk, a computer, and a soft, padded floor with lots of room to stretch out on. (Although, Sergey claims the floor in his cubicle was neither soft nor padded.)

The price, which was cheaper than the cheapest hostel in Japan, also included unlimited coffee, clean showers, and all of the comic books you could read. It was private, quiet and comfortable. I had a complimentary cup of tea and a hot shower before changing into my pajamas and falling asleep on the padded floor that served as my bed for the night. I didn't turn on the computer the whole time I was there. Sergey, on the other hand, spent the night fooling around on Facebook and feeding his internet addiction.

Internet cafes are just one more reason to love the internet. I mean, the internet basically saved us from freezing on the streets of Sapporo. Without the internet, there would be no internet cafes. Without internet cafes, there would be no cheap places to sleep. So, thank you, internet. Thank you for giving us Wikipedia to find facts, Facebook to connect with friends, Google to research our essays, blogs to tell our stories, YouTube to waste time, and cafes to sleep in.

After a three-hour nap at the internet cafe, we woke up at 7:00 a.m. and headed out to see the sights. The night before, we had made a list of all the things we wanted to see in Sapporo. We settled on three "must-see" attractions -- the fish market, the TV tower, and the clock tower -- all clustered within a few hundred metres of each other. By 8:00 a.m. we had crossed everything off the list. Sapporo may be a great place to live, but a tourist draw it's not.

There's not much to distinguish Sapporo from any other Japanese city its size. It has the same buildings, the same subway system, the same identically named streets, the same shopping arcades, the same hidden alleys, and the same neon signs. It did, however, have a series of unique subway ads featuring a misbehaving cat. (The tag line? "Cats don't understand public manners, but people do.")

There was nothing left to do but eat a long, leisurely breakfast and figure out how to kill the seven remaining hours before we could check into the Sapporo youth hostel. (We may have been cheap but we weren't stupid. We knew we wouldn't be able to function much longer without a proper sleep in a proper bed. We called the hostel early in the morning and made a reservation for that night.)

We decided to spend the rest of the morning (and a good part of the afternoon) at the Sapporo Beer Museum. Although, technically, we spent most of that time trying to find the museum. The Lonely Planet guidebook told us to look for a large brick chimney with the Sapporo trademark star painted on it. We were in the right area but we couldn't see the chimney anywhere. So we backtracked and went west instead of east. We asked two different people for directions and they both pointed us back to where we came from, but we still couldn't find it. We wandered aimlessly for at least an hour. It wasn't until we spotted a group of Korean tourists with expensive cameras slung around their necks that we knew we were heading in the right direction. They led us straight to the museum's front door.

Interesting fact: Sapporo's famous gold star logo was originally a red star. The red star represented the North Star, which was the symbol of the early pioneers of the 19th century. The red star logo was later changed to a gold star, to avoid any confusion that Sapporo beer might be a communist beer.

Twenty years after the fall of communism, seeing the familiar red star brought a tear to Sergey's eye. Born in Russia and raised in Bulgaria, the red star brought back a flood of memories from Sergey's childhood -- like wearing a blue kerchief around his neck, calling his teachers "comrade," and marching through the streets in pro-communist demonstrations. ("Everyone seemed really cheerful during those parades," he said. "I don't know what everyone was so happy about but I was just happy to miss a day of school.")

We dragged ourselves around the museum. I was crashing hard and constantly checking my watch to see how much time we had left before check-in. I was too tired to even sample the beer. But the Japanese people featured in the museum's collection of old-timey posters were radiating happiness and joy while drinking Sapporo beer so I'm sure it was good.

The hostel's check-in time was 3 p.m. and we arrived at exactly 2:58 p.m. We didn't shower. We didn't change our clothes. We didn't unpack. We just collapsed into bed and immediately fell asleep. Three hours later, we woke up and headed out for dinner and a taste of Sapporo's nightlife.

On our way out of the hostel, we passed a small display of flags at the check-in desk. Sergey asked me if I knew what the flag was beside the Canadian flag.

"Italy?" I said.

Sergey rolled his eyes.

"Bulgaria!" he said.

He paused and then furrowed his brows in confusion, "Why do they have a Bulgarian flag here?"

I rolled my eyes.

"Read the sign!"

Our night on the town consisted of a delicious ramen dinner, a ride on a Ferris wheel, and coffee in a maid cafe. The ramen and the Ferris wheel were planned in advance (the two teenage boys we met on the train highly recommended the Ferris wheel -- it did not disappoint) but the trip to the maid cafe was spontaneous. We were on our way back to the hostel when we passed a sandwich board advertising a maid cafe. It was one of those "only in Japan" experiences we just couldn't pass up. The price of admission was only 300 yen so we decided to give it a try.

The cafe was on the third floor of a non-descript office building. We opened the door and were welcomed by four 20-something girls wearing black and white French maid uniforms. Although, it wasn't exactly a warm welcome. Our entrance was greeted with shock and dread ("Oh no! Gaijin!"). It wasn't until they realized we could speak Japanese that their frozen faces thawed into smiles.

With one rectangular table that wrapped around the room, the cafe looked more like a small bar than a coffee shop. The girls stood behind the table, taking orders and making small talk with the customers as we drank over-priced coffee. (Sergey would later complain that the girls weren't very good at conversation. They mostly laughed and giggled and talked to us about snow and ice. I don't know why Sergey was expecting stimulating conversation. It was a maid cafe, not a philosophy cafe.)

Unfortunately, we had to cut the night short. The hostel had a strict 12 a.m. curfew, and if we weren't back before midnight, we would be locked out until 6 a.m. The thought of spending another night suffering on the streets of Sapporo made both of us shudder. We were out of there faster than a greased seal on a waterslide.

Back at the hostel, I fell asleep right away. But I was woken up by a loud crinkling sound a few hours later. I opened my eyes to see Sergey squatting on the floor, scavenging through my snack bag like a wild animal.

“What are you doing?” I asked him.

He mumbled something and several chocolate mushrooms fell out of his mouth. Busted! The mystery of the disappearing snacks was finally solved. I had been wondering why my snack bag had been getting so light so quickly. It turned out Sergey would wait for me to fall asleep and then he would devour the snacks. The night I caught him in the act, he had eaten the last of the snacks -- snacks that were supposed to last the entire trip.

The next morning, we left Sapporo and took a snack-free and guilt-ridden (for Sergey anyway) train ride to Otaru. The plan was to spend the day in Otaru and then catch the ferry back to Kyoto later that night. We decided against making a ferry reservation -- a decision that would come back to haunt us. Once again we'd find ourselves wandering the streets of Hokkaido in the middle of the night with nowhere to go and nowhere to stay.

Continue reading: Part IV

Homeless in Hokkaido: Part II

2010-03-09T00:06:00.006-08:00

Part I

It was Saturday night, and we were sitting on an almost empty train, killing the two hours between when we left the ferry that brought us to Hokkaido and when the train would arrive in Sapporo.

Sergey and I were both deep into our books and didn't notice the two teenage boys sitting across from us. It wasn't until they got up out of their seats, stood in front of us and said "America?" that we looked up.

"America?" they repeated.

I told them I was from Canada.

"Oooh! Canada! Vancouver! Olympics!" they cried, clapping their hands.

Sergey told them he was from Bulgaria. This was met with silence and blank stares. (Poor Sergey. Every time a Japanese person asks him where he's from, his answer gets one of two reactions. They either give him a look that says, "Bulgaria? Where the fuck is Bulgaria?" or they cry out "Yogurt!" Which might seem strange but actually isn't when you consider that one of Japan's most popular brands of yogurt is, bizarrely, named Bulgaria.)

We asked them where they were from and learned they were 17-year-old high school students from just outside Sapporo. With the introductions out of the way, the boys started firing all kinds of personal questions at us.

"Are you a couple?"

"How old are you?"

"Are you getting married?"

We didn't know how to answer these questions. Mostly because we had never really defined the answers ourselves. So we just looked at each other and laughed. Their brazen questions were both awkward and adorable. Teenagers in Kyoto would never ask us questions like that. In fact, teenagers in Kyoto would never talk to us at all. Foreigners are a dime a dozen in Kyoto and our presence on a train there wouldn't be all that surprising or unusual. In Hokkaido, we felt more conspicuous. Every time we entered a restaurant or cafe, we would be greeted with panic-stricken stares by the non-English speaking staff. Of course, the panic would turn to relief as soon as they found out we could speak Japanese. But it was like that everywhere we went.

The train pulled into Sapporo around 11 p.m. After 25 long hours of traveling we had finally reached our destination for the night. But that didn't mean we could relax. In less than an hour it would be midnight. And at midnight, February 27 would become February 28. And February 28 was our birthday -- the reason we had come to Hokkaido in the first place. There were two things we had to take care of before the clock struck 12:

1. Find a birthday cake and candles.

2. Find a 24-hour McDonald's to sleep in for the night.

We left the train station and walked south on the main street. It wasn't long before we found a convenience store where we bought some booze and a small cake. Sergey asked the guy working behind the counter if they sold candles. In response, the employee's face contorted into one big question mark.

Sergey tried to explain in Japanese. "The thing you put on the cake when you have a birthday," he said.

The employee still couldn't figure it out and called over a co-worker, who was equally confused. They discussed what it was they thought Sergey was looking for before giving up and asking him again.

"It's the thing you put on a birthday cake," Sergey said. "You put a light on it and you blow it."

"A lighter?" the employee asked.

"No."

The employees consulted each other again. After about five minutes of this, a light suddenly went on above their heads.

"Candles!" they said.

"Yes!"

"Sorry. We don't sell candles."

We didn't have time to go hunting for candles in a city neither of us had been to before so we decided to just find a McDonald's to sleep in for the night. We asked the guys at the convenience store if they knew of one nearby. They said there was one down the street but they wouldn't reveal its exact location. They just kept saying it was "far, far, away." We must have asked at least seven times and the only answer we got was "far."

We left the store determined to find it ourselves. "Far" is a relative term in Japan. I live about four kilometres north of Kyoto University and everyone I meet tells me how "far" my commute is. To me, it's a short walk. To them, it's a marathon. So neither of us was surprised when we stumbled across the "far, far away" McDonald's 10 minutes later.

We had arrived in the heart of downtown Sapporo. The sidewalks were crowded. The bars were noisy. The buildings were fortified with neon. It was like Tokyo, but with snow. And there was a 24-hour McDonald's right on the corner.

But this McDonald's was nothing like the on we stayed at on Christmas Eve. This one was packed with trendy 20-somethings slinking out of the nightclubs for a late-night snack. It was noisy, busy and crowded. There were no soft booths; only hard seats with no room to stretch out and sleep. Even worse, the smoking section threatened to overtake the entire restaurant. Both of us nearly fainted when we saw it -- Sergey out of happiness and me out of horror. It must have been at least three times the size of the non-smoking section. And there were no doors to block the smoke. So the whole place was pretty much one big smoking section.

We realized we were in for a long, sleepless night. But we were determined to make the best of it. We broke out the cake at midnight, and took turns blowing out the "candle." We shared my headphones and listened to music while playing cards. We poured our contraband booze into McDonald's cups and made a birthday toast. (Sneaking alcohol into dry establishments has become something of a tradition between the two of us. It's pure economics. Why spend $30 at a bar when you can buy the equivalent amount of alcohol at one-third the price from a convenience store, pour it into plastic bottles, and sit and drink at McDonald's or Mr. Donut for hours on end? A flip of the coin determines who ends up trudging back to the convenience store to fill the empty bottles for the next round.)

We knew we weren't going to be able to sleep but at least we were having fun. At one point, I left the table to go to the bathroom. I was standing in line when I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned around to see a guy holding his finger up to his lips and his cell phone up to my face. The only thing on the screen was his email address. I had no idea what this was supposed to mean. Was he asking for my phone number? And why wasn't he saying anything?

I asked him if that was his email address. He said it was. And what did he want me to do with this information? He asked me what I was doing later tonight. I told him I was just hanging out with my friend.

"What are you doing now?" he asked.

"I'm waiting to go to the bathroom," I said.

He held his cell phone up to my face again. I suddenly got it. He wanted me to memorize his address and then text him if I wanted to hook up. I laughed and said no.

"No?" he asked.

"Yes," I said.

He shook my hand and then closed his eyes, pursed his lips, and went in for a kiss. I leaned backwards, extracted my hand from his, and said "no" more firmly this time. I didn't feel threatened -- he was at least 10 years younger and two inches shorter than me. I was actually kind of flattered. I may be another year older but I've still got it!

After I came out of the bathroom, he was no longer in line. I wasn't sure if he disappeared out of embarrassment or because he found another girl he wanted to take home for the night. Sergey took it as proof that I have more secret admirers than he does -- the debate over which one of us has more secret admirers is our longest running, and stupidest, argument.

At 3:45 a.m., McDonald's started pumping Auld Lang Syne through its speaker system. In Japan, most stores and restaurants play this song at the end of the business day to let customers know the place is closing. We were confused. The sign clearly said this McDonald's was open 24 hours. So why were they playing the song that meant they were closing down? We decided that maybe they were just trying to annoy people into leaving. Maybe it was a way to deter cheapskates like us from camping out for the night. So we sat there and watched as everyone dutifully filed out of the restaurant. We were the only people -- along with two other freeloading foreigners -- still sitting there at 4 a.m. when an employee came over, told us the store was closing and asked us to leave.

"What do you mean you're closing?" Sergey asked her. "The sign says 24 hours."

She mumbled something about how they still keep serving food but the seating area closes down for "cleaning" for a few hours. And that's how we found ourselves out on the cold, snowy streets of Sapporo at four in the morning with nowhere to go and nowhere to stay.

We turned to each other at the same time with a look that said, "Now what do we do?"

Continue reading: Part III