You may never find yourself anywhere near the city of Takasaki, but it is the capital of Gunma Prefecture, Japan. It is also the terminus of the Japan Railways Takasaki line, so it's fairly easy to reach from most places in the Kanto area. We went there to see a gigantic statue (another story for another day), but ended up liking this little ekiben so much more. It is shaped like the famous Daruma Dolls that are produced in the area. The contents are pretty tasty, albeit room temperature. According to my source, this meal is composed of bamboo shoots, konnyaku, teriyaki chicken and soy sauce-flavored rice. There was definitely an assortment of vegetables tossed in for good measure, but I ate them before they could be properly identified. After you finish your lunch, you can take the plastic container home, wash it out, and use the doll as a piggy bank. Ours is currently a Krazy Kit Kat holder.
I would have difficulty describing our meal at Bao Luo Jiu (Paul's) in Shanghai without resorting to hyperbolic rhetoric. Unfortunately, that would be the only way to do justice to the food. Please, just go there. (pictured from above: sheng jian bao, lotus duck in a bun, lotus duck and sauce)
Beware the Chinese shoe shine sniper. As you stroll around town, politely turning down requests for all manner of random, unnecessary services, keep an eye out for a seemingly harmless old lady in ambush mode. She will squirt this stuff all over your toes before you even realize that she is holding a half empty tube of sneaker cleaner. How else will she convince you to let her clean your shoes?
This one was a lemon in every sense of the word. Despite the pretty packaging and the promise of sweet, citrus flavor, this particular version was woefully uninspired. The taste was reminiscent of bottled lemon juice and lacked balance. Even the white chocolate outside was not enough to cut through the flat, sour sensation.
This was definitely one of the lowlights of our trip to China. To be fair, I also remember certain establishments requesting this behavior when I studied abroad in Sevilla, Spain. China has been taking steps to modernize its plumbing situation for some time, but I have been told this method is a good way to save water. It appears that this viewpoint is up for debate in Taiwan.
As we ventured out from the heat of Southern China, our first stop was the international metropolis of Shanghai. We were so looking forward to seeing its famed futuristic skyline, but had to make do with this smoggy, cloudy sight for the first couple of days. Luckily, our hotel was right across the river from the ultra modern Pudong district, so we eventually had opportunities to enjoy a better view. A word of caution to travelers heading this way in the near future. Leading up to the 2010 World Expo, the city is undertaking so many major construction projects that it might be difficult to enjoy a lot of the places that make Shanghai so charming. The historical Bund district is particularly out of sorts, though that should not stop you from walking inside a few of its illustrious buildings to admire some of the city's most incredible interiors.
Spotted in China this summer: coconut M&Ms. These were tasty and kind of big. I especially liked the color scheme of the candy coating. I know they have these elsewhere. Have you seen them?
Unforeseen delays along our train route forced us to spend the night in Xiamen, a beach town on China's southeastern shore. Given the location, this place is a major destination for Taiwanese tourists. We were disappointed to find out that its main attraction, Gulangyu Island, was no longer something special. In the old days, this was apparently a quaint colonial style islet. Even now, you might enjoy observing the charming architecture on a brilliantly sunny day by the sea. Despite being a pedestrian haven, though, the place gets incredibly crowded. To make matters worse, the appeal of the ocean is greatly diminished by the overwhelming presence of barges and cargo ships clogging the horizon. Major bummers aside, as with most places in China, you can still find really good food here. That should offset at least some of your chagrin. We stopped in at Zehe Huang on Zhongshan Lu for a late night snack of pork buns. I suppose we should have tried their famous peanut soup, but it didn't sound very appealing at the time. The place was easy to find and the staff were super friendly.
I am confidently declaring JAL's in-flight economy meals the best I have ever tasted. Since I am not a food critic, you can take that statement with a grain of salt. You cannot, however, deny a matcha sponge cake, reasonably good chicken teriyaki, seemingly fresh vegetables, sweetened yuzu juice and free white wine. Furthermore, I always consider Japanese potato salad to be a treat due to this country's reliably tangy mayonnaise.
For once, a place where the advertisements live up to the product. The regular cheeseburger (above) and the miso onion burger (below) looked good, tasted delicious, and were very, very fresh. My favorite chain in Japan!
Despite an initial sense of disappointment upon our arrival in Guangzhou, we ended up seeing some very cool things there while meandering around its hot and steamy streets. We decided to see Liu Rong Si, the Six Banyan Temple, and climb its nine story octagonal pagoda. Much to our chagrin, climbing to the top was prohibited on that day. It was rebuilt in the 1097, so maybe it's for the best that we didn't brave its ancient staircase. The presence of three big, shiny Buddha's in the back more than made up for the wrench in our plans. We have seen quite a few of these guys in our day, but the artistic quality of this trio made them stand out long after our tour de Chine ended. We had seen offerings to the Buddhas and kami-sama in Japan before, but for some reason, Jake was really amused by the muffin that somebody had left here..
China may have invested a lot of money in its public transportation systems, but there is still some ground to cover in the area of ticket sales. Unless you go to the right travel agency, it is virtually impossible for you to buy your way onto a train without standing in a long line. Forever. No, there are not any automated machines in the stations, but there are harried, overworked human beings who sit in front of obscenely overcrowded windows, trying to communicate with frustrated customers above the din. As if this weren't enough, waiting one's turn is not exactly a time-honored Chinese tradition, so if you are too meek, people will appear out of nowhere and jump right in front of you. This is an especially magical experience for foreigners who are used to computerized transactions and have no clue how to speak Chinese (I think the "We speak English!" signs we saw in Shanghai were part of some kind of experiment on positive thinking). If the tickets you want are sold out by the time you make it to the station agent, you need to have the information necessary to put Plan B into action, or risk waiting again while you figure out your woeful situation. As if all of this were not enough, it is currently impossible to buy tickets for trains departing from places other than the city in which you are currently standing! So, booking in advance is not an option. Due to this extremely unfortunate circumstance, we usually found ourselves getting off of one train and immediately running to buy tickets for the next. Competition in China is fierce, so we were sometimes too late to get on trains that were not leaving for another three or four days! Apart from avoiding a systemic overload of airborne toxins, I think that securing train seats was the most difficult challenge we faced. What made it worse was the fact that we came from Japan, the land where almost everything is spotless, efficient and user friendly (even for us). Jake made everything much better by having flashcards ready at all times. In addition to our seating requests, Jake always had the destinations written down as well. Amazingly, he often finished his business faster than the Chinese people around him. If you are headed to China at some point, do yourself a big favor and prepare your ticket window cue cards on the flight over.
September 9, 2009 (09/09/09) might just seem like a neat coincidence to you, but according to Japanese superstition, it is probably not the best date to schedule any important events. To be honest, I had no idea that the number nine was so unlucky until a lovely reader named Shelby alerted me to the story behind the scare. I am taking her excellent advice to spread the spooky word right here. The Japanese word for nine is "ku" (九), which sounds just like another word that denotes pain and suffering. As a result, it can be a hard number to find in places like hospitals, hotels, elevators. Even if you do not traditionally subscribe to this idea, consider that the world was in a similar situation a decade ago. You could definitely make the case that the past ten years have not been especially lucky ones. Might that have something to do with the fact that they were book-ended by two very bad days?
How does China suggest you avoid swine flu? The government has managed to embed an important public safety message in an animated kiddie rap, starring the masked pig you see above. I was only able to snap this photo, but am relieved that the actual video is also available on line. We first glimpsed the upbeat tune on our way from Xiamen to Shanghai, but encountered it again on subsequent trips across the country's considerable skies. It plays on a loop at all the Chinese airports and was also screened on every flight we took. It's basically your standard flu season advice, a sensible approach to potential pandemic paranoia. Stay home if you feel unwell. Avoid crowds of grinning rabbits. If you are able to find the humor in it because nobody you know is actually sick with this stuff, please enjoy.
Shopping in foreign grocery stores inspires you to cook dishes that might have seemed crazy in the past. Although you could have easily found the ingredients for such meals back home, given your habits and culinary influences, certain pairings might have never crossed your mind. Every day around dinner time, the workers at our favorite local supermarket put on a cooking demonstration at the intersection of the seafood and tofu aisles. The liberal use of tofu in Japan, coupled with a general fondness for pasta with fish, has been seeping into our brains for some time. Thus, it was only natural that Jake whip up this tofu and shrimp spaghetti with peanut sauce. It was sweet, salty, nutty, shrimpy and satisfying. The tofu added some interesting texture to the mix and the substantial spice he added gave it enough heat to make things interesting. It felt like eating Asian fusion comfort food.
When you move somewhere new, it might be impossible to gauge how long it will be before your next move. When people come to teach English in Asia, it is especially tricky to estimate the duration of their stay. Contracts vary in length, and even if they decide to stay in the new country for a while, that does not mean that they will remain in the same apartment, town or prefecture. Moving is usually a hassle, and the easiest way to ensure a smooth relocation is to accumulate as few possessions as possible. Upon our arrival in Japan, we were only committed to a six month stint in the local public school system. Half a year is not enough time to justify the full on furnishing of a spacious (for Japanese standards) apartment. So, we bought a low table and some traditional cushions instead of a normal, Western-style dining set. Here we are, a year later, still sitting on floor!
When there is no time (or motivation) to cook, we can always count on a Japanese grocery store to pull us through our time of need. There are prepared food sections in America, too, of course, but the ones here are different. Neither of us ever purchased ready-to-go meals at Whole Foods in New York, but we find ourselves doing just the opposite now. I suppose the difference can be attributed to what's on offer. Instead of displaying trays of room temperature chicken parm and soggy vegetables, the markets here usually have lots of fresh sushi on hand. There are more Western style options as well, such as potato and pasta salad, but they comprise only a small section. Again, you can also get sushi in American supermarkets. It's just unlikely to be this fresh and well made. There probably won't be as many interesting varieties either. One day a week, there is a whole sushi buffet (biking) set up where you can purchase any kind of roll for a flat rate. People just load up, especially the old ladies. Everybody goes for the sake/maguro combo, and things can get a little hairy.P.S. I lied. We actually bought the Whole Foods mac n' cheese all the time and just added salt and pepper to make it taste better. Ditto their mashed potatoes.
The whole roasted goose. At Tao Tao Ju. It's apparently considered somewhat pricey, (relative to Chinese restaurants perhaps) but you will have no trouble filling your belly for very little money. Despite expensive renovations, it's still kind of stuck in a turn of the century time warp. I wasn't sure whether the look they were going for was "Russian ballroom" or "dinner on the Titanic". I actually loved the antique wooden Chinese pieces of furniture for all of their intricate carvings and inlaid marble. The ostentatious chandelier that towers over the entrance was so awesomely gaudy that I became sort of mesmerized. Unabashed attempts at opulence are hard to come by these days!
If you are approaching China from Hong Kong, then you might be considering a stop in Guangzhou. I had read that the place was becoming an increasingly developed, international metropolis, but to be honest, what I saw did not deserve the hype. To be fair, the city does have a convenient and modern subway system. This is one of its best features, especially if you are arriving here via the train station. As soon as we surfaced at our stop, however, we were greeted by a vast expanse of rubble with no discernible project in sight. This might not have been so surprising had we not been staying in the most popular area for foreigner-oriented accommodations, Shamian Island. Directly across the canal from this French colonial style neighborhood, it looked as though a huge shopping mall had just been detonated the week before! The air was thick with pollution. Smog seems like a euphemism for the toxic cloud that choked the sky. This was also our first encounter with the staggeringly insufficient Chinese drainage system. It had rained the night before, and crossing the street to the island bridge reminded me of fording the river on the Oregon Trail. Now, we had prepared ourselves for anything and knew that China would be a world unto itself, so it wasn't necessarily the mess that gave us pause. The proximity to our hotel was just kind of surprising.
When we did see signs of modernity, however, we were aghast at the heavy-handedness of it all. I have never seen neon utilized to the extent that it is in China, and that's saying a lot for somebody who lives about an hour from downtown Tokyo. The proliferation of flashing, chasing rainbow lights in even the most unlikely of towns was astonishing. Of course, Guangzhou is a big city, so the circus made sense to some degree. Sadly, though, the garish lights served mostly to illuminate the squalor in which many of the residents seemed to be living.
Don't just travel for work, work so you can travel!
Teaching English abroad is a great opportunity to finance your wanderlust. Asia is a huge market for native English speakers, but there are opportunities for adventure all over the world. If you are still in school, do everything you can to study in another country or take some time off before you commit to a job. Then, find a job that lets you travel. Get out there and have some fun!
You may never find yourself anywhere near the city of Takasaki, but it is the capital of Gunma Prefecture, Japan. It is also the terminus of the Japan Railways Takasaki line, so it's fairly easy to reach from most places in the Kanto area. We went there to see a gigantic statue (another story for another day), but ended up liking this little ekiben so much more. It is shaped like the famous Daruma Dolls that are produced in the area. The contents are pretty tasty, albeit room temperature. According to my source, this meal is composed of bamboo shoots, konnyaku, teriyaki chicken and soy sauce-flavored rice. There was definitely an assortment of vegetables tossed in for good measure, but I ate them before they could be properly identified. After you finish your lunch, you can take the plastic container home, wash it out, and use the doll as a piggy bank. Ours is currently a Krazy Kit Kat holder.
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