photopost - beijing subway

It was rush hour, so we took the subway: 60 min door to door. (cab would have been about 90.) Fare was 2 yuan.


Destination sign, Wangfujing station.


The red (line 1) train is coming!


It's here! It's here!


Like salmon at a ladder, we climb the stairs to transfer to blue line (line 2).

I am pretty sure I could make it to the office in 45 min if I didn't have to struggle through rush hour crowds.... But all in all, the subway is pretty efficient. Beijing has uniformed officials with caps to organize everyone at the station into lines. (I was a little intimidated, so you don't get a photo of the official in his uniform.)

wo qu beijing (finally!)

Well, I am behind in my travelblogging, but I no longer have to wear a mask when I talk to my co-workers -- and not just because I'm in China now, where it takes more than a little sniffle to warrant biohazard protection.

On the flight into China, they give you a form to fill out with checkboxes indicating which of the following potential bird flu symptoms you might have experienced. With trepidation, I checked the box for "cough", since I didn't think the odds were good on my making it through an interview without coughing. I passed on the box for "snivelling". I know, "snivelling" is a real word, but it's kind of humorous to see it on a form.

Anyhow, I decided I was merely coffy, not snivellous. And as it turned out, no one checked the form, just like the Canadian one.

--

At immigration, you (the immigration customer) get a little panel to rate the officer for level of service. You can choose between very happy face, kind of happy face, okay face, unhappy face, and super unhappy face. I pushed the button for very happy face. He was fast.

I really wish USCIS would add buttons like the Chinese service has. For instance, the USCIS official who stamped the boy's passport with a negative date range in 2007? He would SO get the super unhappy face. And the guy who told me to go to Tijuana to get a visa stamp? super unhappy face.

But I liked the Chinese official. He was nice and efficient. Americans: you could learn something here.

--
Our hotel is the Beijing Hotel, on Chang An Jie. It's steps from the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square. This is particularly amusing because Chang An Jie is one of the Canonical Street Names Used In Chinese Lessons, and Beijing Fandian is the Canonical Hotel used in How To Ask Directions examples. I didn't plan it this way, but let me tell you, when getting into a cab, my pronounciation is stellar.

Sadly, Chang An Jie is really really really far from the office. It's 90 min by car in rush hour traffic, and 60 by subway. I should probably move (this is about what my regular commute is at home) but I love being steps from downtown, even if I was too cheap to spring the extra 250 yuan (35 USD) a night for the view.

Beijing Fandian was built around 1900 and feels like an old railway hotel. My room is huge. And we're steps from the subway station.

---

I am really wishing I had studied harder in class. I have the most basic Chinese vocabulary, and everything here works through bargaining. I got my host at the office to negotiate laundry service for me. It's hard to find a laundrette, so you have to pay by the piece.

I have a week's worth of laundry, and the hotel charges San Francisco hotel prices. As in, I could buy a new wardrobe for that. So the negotiation with the girl from the less expensive laundry service who comes to pick up my clothing goes like this:

[laundry girl] ...and six pairs of socks. That will be 155 yuan. (22 USD).
[my host] okay, and remember, I have a coupon.
[laundry girl] huh. all right. so, we'll have this done by friday.
it's tuesday. i only have underwear and socks to wear because i washed them in the sink at the hotel.
[me] what???
[my host] she says friday.
[me] friday? but i don't even need ironing!
[my host] she doesn't need ironing.
[laundry girl] friday.
[my host] rapid-fire Chinese with very concerned face.
[laundry girl] rapid-fire Chinese with very concerned face.
[my host] she says maybe thursday.
[me] this is not good. i have a talk on thursday. i really need clean clothes. i will have to go somewhere else.
[my host] more rapid-fire Chinese.
[laundry girl] <negotiates>
[my host] she says tomorrow afternoon, but it will cost extra.
[me] how much.
[laundry girl] 30 yuan.
[me] okay, 30 yuan extra, but i pay when she brings my laundry back.
[laundry girl] right.

I am waiting now, for my laundry. I really hope it gets here, or I'll be giving that talk in long underwear and a skirt.

more about the mask

The Internets failed me -- apparently no one has seen fit to write up anything in English about mask-wearing etiquette in Japan.

Luckily, I have colleagues who have worked in Japan, so I can tell you (and the Internets, hellooo Internets) that it is acceptable to go out to dinner with your coworkers sans mask, even if you are totally losing your voice. Which is good, because eating with chopsticks is hard enough, never mind cutting a teeny little hole in the mask through which... no I'm joking. No one eats with a mask on, not even lepers.

Anyhow, dinner was nice. I'm testing the theory that enough sake, shoju, and plum wine will cure laryngitis. Chestnut shoju and plum wine? Very tasty. (The sake, we already knew was tasty, but you might have been wondering about the others.)

We'll talk about my voice later.
---
Okay, I did find one site, but mostly it asked the question "am I a dork if I wear a hygenic mask and I am a big white gaijin?". I think, if you are asking this question on an Internet newsgroup, the answer is probably yes regardless of the attitude of the Japanese towards foreigners who adopt their germ self-containment practices.

i has cold in japan

not the worst cold ever, but i am trying to be polite...

photopost - seijin no hi

Meanwhile, back in Shibuya, Monday was seijin no hi, a national holiday celebrating young people coming of age (20). At 20, you can smoke, drink, and vote. It's a huge event, with street fairs, people visiting shrines, and young girls decked out in fancy kimonos all over the place.


Girls drumming at the street fair.

Shibuya residential street.

Train crossing, Shibuya.

Walking to the Meiji shrine

Throwing coins for good fortune and prayer

Girl in kimono. Everyone takes pictures and the girls in kimonos pose.


Looking at prayers at the shrine.

You can shake a box of sticks and get a number, which gets you a poem that tells your fortune. They're reading their fortunes.

Festival snacks outside the shrine. That's fish roasting over coals. Too bad i can't eat them! They looked tasty.

Crossing the street at Harajuku Stn.

the sound of flushing

So, the super high tech Toto toilets are sneaky... it's not always clear how to activate the flush. The ones at the Ghibli museum and our office are particularly mysterious. Not only is the flush activation mechanism physically separated from the toilet, but they've helpfully provided a nice red herring: a button conveniently located next to the other controls (which wash front, wash back, and fluff, style and air-dry your private regions) helpfully labeled "Flushing Sound". There's a little music note symbol on the button itself.

If you press it, desperate as you may be to avoid having to mime a request for help flushing a toilet because you don't speak enough Japanese to cover this kind of emergency, you are rewarded with.... the Sound of Flushing.

It's not even a particularly good sound of flushing. It sounds like what robots might imagine the sound of flushing would be, recorded, and then played back through a tinny speaker somewhere beneath your nethers. It goes on for awhile, and it does not stop when you press the button helpfully labeled "Stop". Although this button does stop the other washlet functions, it does nothing to the Sound of Flushing, which continues wilful and unabated until it reaches the end of the recording with a pseudo-realistic gurgly finish. Unless, of course, in your mortification at having activated it, you pressed the button again, in which case the Sound of Flushing starts over again.

But the Sound of Flushing is merely sound and (a little) fury, signifying nothing. So you may be congratulating yourself at having stopped the noise, but you are still facing an unflushed toilet.

At this point, I'll explain that the actual flush mechanism is an unobtrusive round button on the cubicle wall, with Japanese characters on it and no other indication as to its purpose. Even noticing it is tricky, because it blends in so well with the surroundings. And, also, let's not forget the large helpful button at the Narita airport toilet, labeled "A GUARD RUSHES". Perilous!

But anyhow, let's assume that you figure all this out. You're still wondering, well... why?

I asked Tohru, who is my expert. He gave me a look, like, I can't believe you're asking this totally ridiculous and obvious question. "No, really," I said, "why would you need the Sound of Flushing?"

The purpose of the Sound of Flushing? It masks any indelicate noises you might be subjected to in the washroom, thus preserving both your dignity and the dignity of those around you.

I thought this was totally ridiculous, but actually, five days later, I'm seeing the usefulness. Sometimes you just want a little mystery about your actions.

---
I was joking about the washlet fluffing and styling your nethers. Some things, you still have to do for yourself...

rotenburo! onsen!

The bathing gets its own entry, of course.

I woke up at 5:28 am, I was that excited about seeing the sun rise from the rooftop rotenburo (hot tub, outdoor type). Also, 5:28 is an excellent time to take pictures that don't have other naked people in them. I leave it to your imagination whether I was wearing clothes or not when I took these.


Here is the changing room where you prepare for bathing.

These little wicker baskets hold your things while you are relaxing in hot water. That's my yellow towel.

Japanese-style showers. You sit on the stool and wash before entering the hot pool.

Hot pool! That thing on the right is a sort of underwater couch made of tile for sitting on. Comfort while bathing is essential. The box on the left is where the hot water comes from. You can sit under the waterfall if you like, and the water is hottest there. This is an onsen, so we're bathing in mineral spring water and there's no chlorine smell. Bliss.

This is how you get into the onsen. Those things with the rails are slanted underwater tile beds so you can lie back at an angle underwater. They have, in fact, thought of everything.

To the right of this picture, there's a dry sauna. The rotenburo is through the glass windows, and beyond them, if it were day, you could see the mountains. It is not day, and it was dark outside, so I didn't take a picture, but I watched the stars from the rotenburo on the roof until the sun came up. The funny thing about sunrise is that you think "ah! now! it is so bright, the sun must surely be about to come up!" and then that goes on for an hour as details slowly come out of the world around you and suddenly the sun is actually rising and there is contrast and light. And your fingers are more wrinkled than you remembered was possible.

Train official. They have great uniforms with hats.

The train home. Goodbye Yabuzuka!