Flags

Bjorn’s Blog

Flags

“You going see many flags.” The hostel manager explained to us over the phone in her broken English. Great, it should be easy to find then right? I quickly became frustrated with the directions, it was my understanding that these flags, which allegedly adorned Tokyo’s JGH hostel, would pop into view and guide our weary souls to the beds and showers we badly wanted. Even after retracing our steps we’d spotted no such flags. When we finally stumbled upon the doorstep I was ready to share a piece of my mind with the manager, but I realized the description of the flags had been correct. She must have meant “mini flags” not “many flags.” Had we been more attentive we easily could have spotted the flags from the road with an average pair of binoculars.

Tokyo, the big city of little flags, is not my favorite place. It’s a massive conurbation of cities (I think it’s the biggest metropolis in the world). Aside from a few parks there’s nothing like countryside for a long way in any direction. We did find hospitality. We were very lucky to be given a tour, and treated splendidly, by one of my dad’s classmates. Certainly Tokyo has a rich history and unique sights, but I’m finding it to be a sad place.

The desire for material wealth and career success seems to have a strong hold on the Japanese psyche. The job market in Tokyo is uber-competitive. Professionals and students struggle under colossal workloads and massive amounts of stress. The speedy Subway trains are frequently delayed by people looking for a way out. Jumping in front of the train is the preferred method of suicide.

As I travel I’m always looking for cultural elements that have value; I like to live eclectically, so I’m always looking for ideas that are worth borrowing. Latin siestas, sauna bathing like the fins, and the bidet method for post-fecal cleansing (our smear method is quite primitive when you think about it) are examples habits I think are worth adopting. Now I’m in Japan, trying to figure out what these folks do right. The public baths and simple floor plans of years gone by seem beautiful to me. But sadly the current state of affairs leaves little room for human interaction. Ear buds and smart phones serve as the only companions for hoards of lonely strangers on commuter trains during short trips home between long work days. Hopefully escaping Tokyo will revitalize my outlook on the country as a whole. We’re taking a bus to Osaka tonight.

Our flight to Japan included a 15 hour layover in Seoul, Korea. Even though we arrived in Seoul in the evening, we had an eventful, if short, Korean foray. You could call us “lucky scuzzes.” (Turner, Jessi)….(MLA way of giving literary credit where it’s due). As it turns out the night of October 9 is Seoul’s annual fireworks festival. The city was charged; millions lined bridges and streets, jostling for a better vantage point from which to see the shimmering display.

After the show we caught the tail end of a bustling evening in Namdaemon market. The market is the place to get right into the think of the culture, and to expose your palate to local flavor. Unfortunately for me, Korean food is my least favorite of the Asian collection; however the friendliness with which it was served makes up for what I think is a major lack of deliciousness. We ate in a tiny restaurant and watched a Korean soap opera with the three other patrons. I’m sure the consternation on my face, as I muscled down pickled vegetables, rivaled that of the unlucky lady on the TV screen who’d been betrayed

A kind, enthusiastic, slightly chubby 19 year old named Kim Taehyung was our volunteer guide on the way back to the airport. We were in trouble, unable to read the transit schedule in Korean and also unable to understand Kim’s well intended advice which came in the form of an epic Korean monologue. Jeremy finally managed to convey our urgency; our plane was leaving first thing in the morning, and the transit system was about to shut down for the night. Kim decided he better just go with us. We didn’t make it all the way to the airport before the transit system closed, but Kim made some phone calls and had us stay at a Jim Jil Bong (Incredible sauna/spa that has a sleeping area and makes a great place to spend the night). Kim insisted on paying for our night at the spa and wrote down our travel needs (in Korean) so that we could hand the instructions to a cab driver in the morning.

Nudity is mandatory at Jim Jil Bongs. There are separate areas for men and women. A troop of boys (8-14) years or so joined us in a steamy tub and gigglingly practiced their English on us. We were having too much fun to sleep. I finally laid down in the sleeping room on a small matt, but when I got up to pee somebody stole my matt. I ended up sleeping for a couple short hours on the wood floor with a stack of books for a pillow; eventually I opted to skip sleeping and headed back into the sauna.

So that’s how it’s been. Three more days in Japan and we’ll be ferrying to mainland Asia. There are ferries from here many Asian ports, including Vladivostok, Russia which is the city through which we originally planned to enter Asia. Since we’ll inevitably visit Russia in two months or so, catching the trans-Siberian railroad, we’re thinking of heading to Shanghai and seeing South East Asia now rather than starting in Russia only to retrace our steps.

Straits: Financial and Bering

For my latest musings click there...right back there to the left...get it?

I’m in Sitka Alaska, the Russian capital of the Americas until the U.S. purchased Alaska (19 cents per acre) in 1867. 150 years ago there was regular ship traffic hauling payloads of otter pelts between here and Russia. At that time it was, of course, impossible to cross the Bering sea by plane, these days it’s quite a trick to cross without a flying.

Ten days of “shaking the bushes” up and down the Alaskan coastline, and we are well oriented with the challenges of floating to the Orient. It’s like this: After 9/11 cargo ships have very stringent security mandates and only a handful of freighters in the world are licensed to carry passengers, exactly zero of these visit Alaskan ports. Occasionally cruise companies run trips from Alaska to Japan, but these are prohibitively costly, and long gone by late September.

I made my best effort to leave no stone unturned (no number uncalled), but every time the search would slam to a stop against someone’s utterance of the word “impossible.” Nearly at my wit’s end I finally caught word of a fishing company out of Dutch Harbor (the port from the show “Deadliest Catch”) that dry docks a couple of boats in Yokohama, Japan after the Aleutian Cod season. I managed to reach them by phone and was elated when the crew manager enthusiastically suggested we hire on for the trip across Pacific.

The Cod season lasts through October, so those boats will cross in early November. The thought of waiting for more than a month is a bleak one, especially as the first snows are falling. The year’s last ferry to Dutch Harbor from mainland Alaska (a four day chug) leaves right away, so waiting in Anchorage (land of friends and warm coffee shops with internet) is not a possibility.

I was busy getting my courage up for a bone-chilling, lonely, expensive month in Dutch Harbor (wondering if we’d be able to find work on a fishing boat in the mean time) when the crew manager emailed me. They were already overstaffed so the owner regretfully said he wouldn’t be able to hire us. They, like freighters, are not insured to take passengers, so our invitation was withdrawn. This was our last good lead. Upon receiving the news we surrendered and decided to fly. The relief to not be spending a grim October in Dutch Harbor took the edge off of the disappointment of having to fly.

I reckon what we wanted to do could be done. But especially this late in the year it’s no longer worth the time or money to us. However, we were close, both figuratively and geographically: We visited Sarah Palin’s home in Wasilla and were able to catch a glimpse of the Kremlin from the veranda. Haha, I mean that kindly though. If anyone is sympathetic with her for that statement it’s me. Alaska and Russia are dang close. We drove the Sunbeam to Denali Park’s Wonder Lake, where we were only about 600 miles from Russia. Private vehicles aren’t allowed in Denali; that’s another good story.

Visitors to Denali are prohibited to drive their own cars into the park, they must climb aboard clamoring Park Service buses and take in the sights through little glass rectangles. We unwittingly arrived at Denali’s gate too late in the season for tourist buses. The tourist season had already ended. They told us we were out of luck, but they also told us about the Denali CarPass Raffle. For a few short days the whole park was open to winners of that raffle. All we needed was to win a raffle that had taken place months earlier.

Evie (the dreaded girl from the last blog ) was still with us in Denali. Back in Seattle, when she had joined us, I remember wondering if her arts and craft kit (markers, giant drawing pad, and even ceramics for us to paint) was really a necessary item considering there were three of us (two of us quite tall) traveling in one compact car in which we planned to sleep. I remember expressing my concern as I was wedging myself into the driver’s seat while simultaneously performing a churning act with my legs in an attempt to unearth the accelerator so we could go. Evie is too sweet to discriminate against any of her belongings, so she brought all of them, but this time it payed off. The craft kit included everything we needed to get our raffle pass. We began sign production.

The signs were to ask for people’s raffle passes as they were exiting the park. “What rhymes with “pass?” we asked ourselves, trying to come up with clever lines for our ad. We tried hard to think of how donkeys were relevant to Denali park, but in the end we went with a great line Jeremy thought of. “We’re low class, give us your pass!” And it worked. We gained full access to the park and had a great day among the moose and grizzles in the shadow of North America’s grandest peak, Denali (20,320 ft).

From Denali we headed to Anchorage, the last leg of the trip for both Evie and the Sunbeam. We pulled into Anchorage thanking God that our little $800 car had been such warrior. Jeremy listed the car for sale on Craiglist.

Jeremy, a horse trader at heart, had seen online (back in California) that cars sell for a lot more in Alaska than they do in California. This was part of our reasoning for buying the car, we hoped to offset some of our costs by profiting on its sale. We sold the car (on the way to church, incidentally….our ass was in a ditch) for twice what we payed for it. The profit from the car covered, nearly exactly, the cost of the gas we burned between Los Angeles and Anchorage. We actually underestimated what the car would be worth up here. Jeremy hasn’t had time to remove the Craiglist ad so he’s still getting calls everyday. The girl we sold it to offered us more than we were asking and flipped out with glee when we finally made the exchange.

We are over budget for the trip, but between Jeremy’s horsetrading skills, the generosity of friends, family, and our “store” visitors, we’re still crossing our financial straits (all but the Bering). Church members have been forthcoming with meals, beds, and cheerful smiles. Two Alaskan brothers, who we met on the way through Columbia, gave us a free ride from Anchorage to Haines (where I, of course, changed my underwear). Some kind folks payed for our auto insurance, and more recently a very gracious couple bought us ferry tickets all the way from Alaska to Washington (all the flights to Asia go through Seattle anyway, so flying from Seattle is cheaper and means we’ll only fly once).

We’re sitting on the ferry now, a few hours south of Juneau. We just saw a pod of humpbacks, one narrowly escaped being struck by the ferry. Some Dall porpoises are chasing us. I love it!