Chapter 13 - Japan

I meet Hiroshi in Sydney just after Mardi Gras early this year. He picked me up StarBucks on Oxford St, of all places. As a result of this meeting I was invited to visit him in Tokyo anytime. So when I was planning my trip I decided to include Japan as the last stop before heading home.

Leaving Amsterdam I had decided to catch the Eurostar to London, where I would spend a couple of nights and then head to Tokyo. Once again I can highly recommend train travel as a great way to see a country and get a feel for the place. The train took me from Amsterdam to Brussels and from there I transferred to the high speed Eurostar. It is also the only form of travel I can afford to travel first class on. The landscape of Holland was lush and green, but I only got to see one Windmill. My next trip to Holland I will definitely spend some time out in the country – it had a simplicity and beauty that you only expect to see in oil renditions of an idealised countryside.

The trip from Brussels to London on the Eurostar was fast…. The country sweeps by at a great rate of knots and for the most part was beautiful – but lacked the lush greenness of the countryside of Holland. The last time I took the Eurostar, with Michael, once you got to the English side of the Tunnel the train slowed down to a snails pace. I was very happy to find out that for the most part they have upgraded the rail lines that the Eurostar runs on and it powers through the English countryside – although not quite as fast as the French countryside.

I arrived in London and had found a cute little home stay Bed and Breakfast in Central London. I got to do a little more sight seeing and tried to sort out some problems with my PowerBook at the Apple store. For some weeks – my Mac had been telling me that my hard drive was failing – fortunately I had my portable hard drive and had been able to back up all of my data. Approximately two and half minutes after uploading my blog entry on Athens and Mykonos and photo’s the hard drive finally failed. I was impressed with how long the drive had continued to operate reasonably well in a such a failed state.

I left London and headed to Heathrow to catch my flight to Tokyo, got the airport, checked in, got seated on the plane. We had been informed that there were some delays due to problems with the Air Traffic Control computers earlier in the day, so we sat on the plane for about and hour. The captain then informed us there they had a fuel venting issue, which was normal when sitting on the ground – but it had reached a threshold where they had to take precautionary measures. We were all asked to leave the plan and wait in the lounge. I have never been so amazed at how disorganised British Airways flight crew and staff were. Surely this sort of thing is an occasional occurrence and they would have procedures to follow – these people where clueless. They tried to keep us corralled – by legal definition we had left the UK and where therefore unable to return. People needed to use toilets and they initially were not allowing us to access facilities. And then it finally got to a point where I think they just gave up trying. After another hour of waiting in the lounge and the captain exited the plane – which is never a good sign. Apparently the fuel problem was very serious indeed and the flight was cancelled.

We were allowed back onto the plane to gather our belongings. And then had to re-enter the UK through the normal security and passport control. When I got to the passport control guy and he asked me how long I was staying – I replied. “Mate I’m trying to leave this place”. As soon as I got my luggage I raced to the premium lounge where we had been directed to sort out flights etc. I knew that they queue was going to be a nightmare. Thankfully I knew where the premium lounge check in was and got there well ahead of the bulk of the plane travels. They were trying to get people onto other flights that night headed for Japan, I just told them I would be happy to travel the following day – which seemed to elicit a great deal of relief from the stressed check-in counter staff.

So I got to spend another night in Sunny London, well a hotel near Heathrow airport. Was not the most exciting night of my life. I was wondering through the hotel lobby some hours later around 10pm and one of the fellow passengers on my flight who I had been chatting with had only just gotten to the hotel after been in the queue at British Airways checkin for several hours – boy was I glad I had been quick on my feet.

The following day I boarded my flight to Tokyo and arrived ten hours later without event or problems.

I arrived in Narita airport – which is about one and half hours by train from Tokyo, I thought Melbourne airport was a long way out.

Tokyo – where do I start… It’s immense, it’s ugly, it’s crowded. There are pockets of beauty – but these are mostly shrines and temples. The rest of Tokyo is dense and not particularly attractive. In fact this description pretty much describes all of the populated areas of Japan that I saw (which I must admit was only Tokyo and coastline between Tokyo and Kyoto and Kyoto itself).

I thought that I had encountered a lot of people in Europe, Japan is jammed packed with human beings. The streets of Tokyo are teeming with life at all hours of the day and night. When you see the apartments that most people live in you can understand why. My friend Hiroshi lives in an apartment, the total size of which is smaller than my bedroom, he had one room which is his bedroom and living space, a miniscule kitchen, and a bathroom. It’s claustrophobic to say the least, so when the shrinking walls have crashed in on you – you want out to wonder the streets along with all the other people who don’t want to be trapped in their tiny little apartments. I don’t know if this is actually the reality for Japanese people – but it certainly was mine while I was there.

Hiroshi lives in an area of Tokyo called Shinjuku. This is usually the area of Tokyo you get to see on news broadcast etc – the massive amount of flashing lights, neon etc. The rest of Tokyo did not seem so gaudy, but still dense and ugly. We did take the monorail/tram down around the harbour and I did see some amazingly futuristic architecture. Tokyo is certainly a city that needs to be experienced at least once in your life.

I was a little overwhelmed by it all and it’s hard to describe everything I saw. There was the street parade, which was just a huge advertisement for travelling to the Islands of Southern Japan, there were the naughty girls, there was one naughty girl who I saw and I thought she had stripes of makeup on her arm, but on closer inspection discovered that these appeared to be numerous razor cuts in various states of healing. There are the Barbie girls who have mostly gone out of fashion, although we did spot a few, there is the busiest intersection in the world – which is mind blowing to watch from above in the busiest Starbucks, and even more amazing to be crossing the intersection with the thousands of other people crossing at the same time. The Japanese people, particularly the younger generations are OBSESSED with name brands, Prada, Gucci, you name it and they are buying it.

Hiroshi took me to the gay district of Shinjuku, which was quite near his home. There are 200 hundred gay bars in Shinjuku. I was stunned at that number. 200 hundred gay bars. But then you find out that each of them is about the size of a large closet. At most they can hold 15 people, at worst 5. They are stacked on top of one another in an area no bigger than an average Sydney city block. Of those 200 hundred bars, only 4, repeat 4 of them welcome westerners. The other 196 will either not let you in, or actively discourage you from staying. It is a very strange place indeed.

I was very glad to get on the Bullet train (XXXX) and head to Kyoto. I had heard beautiful things about Kyoto. The train follows the coast for most of the way to Kyoto, then heads inland a little. The coast of Japan appears to be as densely populated as Tokyo and just as ugly. What amazes me is that a culture that was capable of building such amazing temples and shines – can now only build very ugly and grey monstrosities. I did see a couple of rice paddy fields. The mountains ranges march close to the waters edge, squeezing the population into even smaller spaces.

Initially my reaction to Kyoto was OMG. Its like the rest of modern Japan, U G L Y. I found my hotel and bunkered down for the evening. I had gotten some maps etc and plotted out sight seeing for the following day.

If you can ignore the ugliness of modern Japan, which I think I was able to do, then beauty of old Japan is simply mind-blowing. The Shoguns palaces, with their moats, gardens, carvings, paintings and nightingale floors. A nightingale floor is a floor that was designed to whistle as you walk across it. It has special clamps that secure the floorboards to the support beams underneath. The purpose of the whistling floors was so that the Shogun could hear his enemies approaching in the night. A very effective tool, and a design marvel.

The tranquillity of the Buddhist temples was sublime. Stepping through the gates of the temples is like stepping through a portal in time and space. The world of modern Japan ceases to exist and you are immersed in beauty and peace.

I only had two days in Kyoto and it was not nearly enough to see the numerous temples, palaces and shrines that exist there. I will certainly be returning there one day.

My advice on Japan – bypass Tokyo – head straight to Kyoto and then head to the mountains to see some of the natural beauty that I know exists there but did not get to see on this trip – this is what I will be doing the next time I visit.

Chapter 12 - Amsterdam

For years a good friend of mine had been telling me, you HAVE to do to Amsterdam. So finally I arrived in Amsterdam after an overnight stay in Athens. In my last couple of days on Mykonos I had meet a Greek Cruise ship captain, and had an invitation to stay at his house, which I gladly accepted.

Arriving in Amsterdam was much the same as most other airports with one curious exception. After we had disembarked the aircraft, there was quite a hold up in the gangway leading from the plane to the terminal. I soon discovered that the reason for the hold up was Holland’s answer to immigration queues. They put two immigration officers at the exit of the gangway and checked passports as you entered the terminal. No stamps, no questions, just a cursory glance at your passport and then you were on your way. Although they did pull one foreign national aside and request that he wait. I did not stick around to find out why.

Like most of the major cities I have visited in Europe there is an efficient train system from the airport into central Amsterdam. The train ride was uneventful if not a little crowded. There was a horde of English lads on a bachelor party weekend on the train and headed in the same direction. In addition to this I had arrived in Amsterdam on the weekend of SAIL 2005, an event that happens once every five years, more about that later. I suspect that Amsterdam is a popular destination for groups of British Lads.

I departed the train and navigated my way out of Centraal Train station, picking up a map of Amsterdam on the way, well old Amsterdam at least. Within fifty meters of the train station I was in love with this city. The city was clean, there was a tram system on the door of the train station, there were Canals… Canals and Canals. My hotel was very close to the train station, so I only had a short distance to haul my luggage. As soon as I had checked in I headed out onto the streets of Amsterdam to explore.

Amsterdam is a beautiful city, the building are quaint, cute and often a little left of centre. The ground on which the city of Amsterdam is built is not particularly stable, and the buildings seem to be in a constant state of movement – often sideways. More than once I came across a building that was being supported by huge pieces of wood acting as braces between the street surface and the front of the building.

Amsterdam has a number of museums which I ventured into, the Van Gough museum probably been one of the most notable. An artistic genius who not only mutilated himself but committed suicide at a very early age due to depression. I also visited the Rembrandt house, which was the residence of Rembrandt in Amsterdam and where he painted as well as collected artefacts from foreign cultures. Rembrandt was also an art dealer, selling the works of other local artists as well as his own. There was a large collection of Rembrandts etchings on display, but not a lot of his artwork, but worth the visit nonetheless. I don’t normally buy mementoes of places I go, but I did purchase a small Rembrandt etching – a unique piece as Rembrandt only every etched one, count again one still life, of the hundreds possibly thousands etchings he only did one still life. That fact alone was enough to make me buy the reproduced etching, a conch shell.

The Anne Frank has was also on my list of places to visit. It’s a very moving experience and one that at times bought me to tears. It was the second holocaust museum that I visited on my travels – the first been in downtown Alberqueque, which I found to be a emotionally intense experience as well as a very strange place to have a museum of this sort. The Attic where Anne and her family hid from the Germans was much larger than I was expecting or had been lead to believe. But it is also devoid of furniture – which gives a sense of more space than there might otherwise have been. Within the Anne Frank museum they have a very interesting experiment running. They put a scenario to the audience which is often the choice between freedom of one thing and freedom of another, for example freedom of speech vs basic human rights and you get to vote on which you would rather have. I was amazed at the number outcomes, that when taken to there logical conclusions would lead back to a state of dictatorship and oppression such as experienced in Nazi Germany – the world has not changed very much and we seem to be walking a very thin line ….

Amsterdam also has the Homomonument. Three pink triangles one raised, one on tiled into the ground and one is designed as a set of steps leading down into one of Amsterdam’s canals. A monument to thousands of gay men and women who were persecuted and sent to camps and their deaths, during world war two. It was a very sobering experience seeing this and the Anne Frank house. I had to sit for a while and gather my emotional wellbeing and be grateful for a world that for the most part is growing more tolerant – yet it constantly in danger of slipping back into the dark ages of thought and reason. Sadly there are still places on our small planet that execute and persecute people for expressing themselves freely.

Amsterdam is also a city of fun … and everything you have every heard about Amsterdam and its reputation as a city of sin is entirely true, although it really depends on your definition of sin ;-). Within the red light district almost anything goes, although it does seem to be contained to this area – my hotel was just on the edge of this district. In Amsterdam a coffee house means something entirely different, coffee houses are establishments where you can acquire all variations of marijuana you can imagine. In Holland it is legal to smoke and possess the weed. Although not kosher to walk the streets smoking, it is acceptable to consume in the privacy of your home or coffee houses. Other harder drugs I understand are illegal, but there are many hawkers on the streets offering you the sale of just about anything you could desire. Prostitution is legal and there are many young ladies and some not so young of all colours and nationalities enticing you from behind their glass doors. The hookers of Amsterdam sit, stand, gyrate, and entice you from their little booths with glass doors. Once they have snared a potential customer there are small rooms behind their window shop fronts (so I have been told). I had read somewhere that taking photo’s of these professional women is likely to end you up in a heap of trouble with their minders – so sadly there are no photo’s. I must say that the first few times I saw this it was startling, but you get used to it so quickly – it’s the norm in Amsterdam and no one blinks an eye.

The weekend I stayed in Amsterdam there was an event called SAIL, which I alluded to earlier. SAIL happens once every five years and is an event entirely devoted to sailing vessels and their ilk. The harbour of Amsterdam was jammed with every conceivable sailing ship you can imagine, from tall ships to short ships, with a few warships thrown in for good measure. Amsterdam was buzzing, the canals I suspect where more packed than usual and it was amazing to see so many boats of every size, shape and variety in one place.

I took one of the many tourist boats that wind their way around the canals of Amsterdam and more than once I thought we were going to be involved in a major pileup of boats and people. But amazingly we survived unscathed, there would appear to be some sort of gentle persons code for navigating the high seas or canals, ship captains gave way, boats skirted around one another, even a rowing team was given room to make its way through the throng of vessels.

While I was staying in Amsterdam the managers of the hotel asked if I would participate in a survey been conducted by the University of Amsterdam. It seems that Amsterdam is very concerned about losing its title as Gay Capital of Europe. As a result of other countries legalising gay marriage and becoming open and inclusive societies, gay travellers are choosing other destinations such as Madrid and Barcelona, Berlin etc etc. Amsterdam has recognised the economic impact that this is going to have and are trying to understand how they can stem the tide and lure back the gay and lesbian traveller to it shores. I am not sure the city of sydney is NOT undertaking any studies to understand the impact of Mardi Gras not been held in 2006

There was a lot to do and see in Amsterdam and i my stay of three nights was way too short, Amsterdam in short was a lot of fun and i cant wait to get back there.