Well Come

As I stumbled, blinking, into the Senegalese night from the cool of the airport, I saw masses of people behind metal fences.  Some waved around signs, none of which had my name on it.  I'd never met the people whom my colleague told me I'd be staying with, but I was told the person who would be picking me up had a picture of me and would be carrying a sign.  I hadn't found a SIM card for my phone, either, so I was flying blind, with only a name and a useless phone number.  I passed through one checkpoint, then another, then another, until a tall man in white called to me from behind a barrier.

"Mister!" he said.  "Mister!  What's your name?"

Unthinking, shifting my backpack, I replied, "Harry."

"Mister Harry, I was sent for you," he smiled.  He gestured for me to follow.  "Come on."

I came a little closer, hesitantly.  "Who sent you?" I asked.  "Amina sent you?"

"Yes, Madame Amina," he confirmed, still smiling.  "Come on, let's take a taxi."

I shuffled behind, hesitant, but somewhat encouraged by his confidence.  As a taxi ran in front of me, I heard "Psst!"  I saw the taxi slow and the driver wag his finger at me.  I glanced at my guide, who was talking to someone else at this point.  The taxi driver shot his eyes toward the man I was following and again wagged his finger.  My stomach started to prickle.  Finally, fucking finally, I chose between rudeness and safety.  I walked back the way I'd came, crossing the barriers into the walkway leaving the airport.

"Hey, Mister Harry!" the man called from behind me.  Without turning, I shouted back something about making a call and booked it back to the entrance to the airport.  All the way up to the rifle-carrying guards, anyway.

I stood there for a long second, not really processing what had just happened.  Unable to think of literally any other option, I tried walking again: past the taxi touts, ignoring anyone calling "Monsieur!" or "Hey, mister!" or "Mon ami!"  This was the Conakry airport in January all over again, with a dozen places labeled "Meeting Point," each presumably the last before dumping travelers onto the mean streets of the capital.  Except this time there seemed to be other risks than just being asked for money.

"Mister Harry!" a muscular young guy in a beard called to me.  I met his eyes, and he pointed to the end of the walkway.  Others called to me, but I walked towards where he'd pointed, though with every step I second-guessed myself: did this guy just hear me talking to the man in white?  Was he my ride, or was this just the start of an exceptionally well-executed con?

"Hi, Mister Harry, my name is Mohamed.  Welcome to Dakar," he said with a smile as he took my hand.  I shook it even more tepidly than usual.

"Did, ah...who sent you?" I asked without a great deal of resolve.

"Excuse me?" he said, blinking.  I repeated myself, using different words, and his eyes turned to comprehension.  "Amina, yes, Mrs. Amina."

I sighed in relief.  "I'm sorry, there was just a guy—"

"Come on, let's get a taxi," Mohamed said, turning.

I walked behind him into the surprisingly well-lit parking lot.  All of Dakar was surprisingly well-lit compared to Conakry, where indeed the students sit outside stadiums and airports to study after dark.  Casually, smoothly (yeah, right), I began to press Mohamed for details.

"So, I know Geneviève is coming on Wednesday," I said coolly, dropping the name of my colleague.

"Yes, yes," he said, seemingly without recognition.

I tried again: "And, uh...how is Mariam?" I asked.  From what I understood, Geneviève's little daughter was staying with Amina.

"Yes, ha ha," he said, still not meeting my eye.

Suddenly chilly, I stopped in my tracks.  As calmly as I could, I asked to see Amina's phone number so I could compare it with what I'd written down.

"Wait, wait," he said as he fiddled with his phone, no longer smiling.  Then he showed me a picture:

(That's me in the back.)

I don't think he bears me any ill will for regarding him with such suspicion—though I wouldn't blame him if he did.  Since that first meeting, though, I've struggled to fill the long, long taxi rides with conversation, and it's obvious that Mohamed has been trying, too.

"What kind of sports do you like?" he asks, or "What kind of car do you like?"  A noble effort, and probably smart questions for most other guys, but sure-fire conversation-enders with this particular knucklehead.  Even "Do you use social media?" is a pretty short talk, perhaps unsurprisingly.  We converse in English, since he said that's what he prefers to use with me, though sometimes it's clear French would be better (if more difficult for me).

On Tuesday he took me to a roadside tea cart, one of hundreds in downtown Dakar.  I bought us tiny plastic cups of very powerful, very minty, very sweet tea, and he introduced me to some of the regulars at this particular establishment (which was only just a couple of thermoses and a wooden bench on the sidewalk).  With one of them, a youngish Fulani man whose name I don't catch, I hit it off immediately: he and I discussed linguistics and geopolitics, mostly in French, while Mohamed sat next to me, smoking quietly.

Taking Jenn's advice, I've been trying to deal with the awkwardness by pretending that it doesn't exist, pretending that our long silences are companionable and mutually agreeable.  It works, some of the time at least.

I've realized over the last several days that I put a lot of pressure on myself to be charming and polite, meaning I haven't really liked myself very much here in Dakar; we don't really share enough interests or enough of a language for me to be very funny, and the pressure I put on myself to entertain makes for some severely unentertaining banter, plus the fact that I have no idea what's expected in this culture means I might be acting like a total jerk much of the time.

I didn't ask for a guide—though a day walking around town quickly shows me how much easier and safer things are with one—and I often get caught up in myself.  I'm frustrated that I'm not getting to vacation the way I'd imagined I would, frustrated that I'm not able to be pleasant and charming and funny, frustrated that I care, and frustrated that I don't care enough, as though Mohamed is unworthy of my trying to put forward my best self.

The food, meanwhile, is excellent, as is the weather and the freaky North Korean-built monuments (see above).

Chinese Whispers

I never really cared about going to China.  For the last half-decade or so that we've been planning this trip, my head has always been filled with images of sweltering jungles and banana pancakes.  Lao, Thailand, Cambodia, those are the places that stir the imagination.  China, on the other hand, brings darker things to mind: open sewers, dirty streets, contaminated food, crushing mobs of strangers who spat and smoked and shouted, toxic clouds of pollution, an oppressive government spying on its citizens or disappearing them in unmarked vans.  These ideas come from the American media, from friends who've spent time in China, or from my own frantic imagination, and even though I knew they were probably of limited veracity, they hung over my head as our ferry pulled into Qingdao port.  Years in Japan had intensified my already timid nature; I feel like crying when someone cuts in line in front of me, how the heck was I going to cope in China?

Over the next four weeks, though, I found myself proven wrong in the best possible way.  The people we met were friendly, welcoming, and chatty (even when we didn't understand a word that was being said).

The food was abundant, easy to order, cheap, safe to eat, and damn delicious.

Except for the scorpions, of course.

The scenery was absolutely breathtaking.  Especially where we did all of our cycling, Yunnan province, which means "South of the clouds."

And the cycling, most importantly, was top-notch.  Mountainous, sure, and therefore exceedingly difficult.  We were unable to keep up our usual molasses-on-a-cold-day pace what with all the 20-kilometer climbs, and so we had to cut our visit short to get out of the country before our visas expired.  But if we had had another 30 days, we would have spent every one happily pushing up those mountains and taking photos of clouds.

The road leaving Kunming is lined with these solar- and wind-powered streetlights.  On a windy day like this, the turbines hum like cicadas. 

Unfortunately, China's nice modern roads are the product of constant construction, which leaves day-long patches of road that are nonstop mud puddles or dusty pothole fields.

 

Of course, not everything about China is perfect.  Beijing was a good city to be a tourist -- easily navigable by bike or foot, plenty of English, lots to see and do -- but the pollution was so unbelievably thick every day we were there.  It was so bad that skyscrapers a block away were all but invisible and the sun looked like it was coming through smoked glass.  In a way, Beijing felt like being in the future.  The dystopian future, y'know, where the earth is too far gone to save and all we can do is cough and squint and hope that it doesn't go completely kaput until we're already dead.  Leaving the city for the countryside was a relief, but we haven't forgotten how awful it felt to be somewhere so polluted, and I hope we never do.

And we did find the pushing, rude, anarchic China that we'd head so many horror stories about.  In fact, we lived it for one brief afternoon.  On our trip to visit the Great Wall, which is only a short train ride away from Beijing, we made it to the train station an hour early for our return to the city to find the station completely mobbed.  We took our place in line and scoffed at the bent-backed grandmothers and young spiky-haired dudes trying to muscle past us.  "Where do they think they're going?" we asked each other quietly, unable to believe that someone would be so rude in order to get on the train 5 seconds faster.

As time ticked closer to departure, though, the station swelled with more and more passengers desperate to get a spot on the next train, which was also the final train of the day.  Miles from the city, none of us could afford to be stranded out here overnight.  Hundreds packed into the hallway, and it grew more doubtful that there would be room on the train for all of us, much less room to sit down.  After an hour of waiting, all thousand of our knees began to ache and we all knew that we needed to get on that train.  Uniformed officials shuffled around uselessly, occasionally making announcements far too quiet to be heeded (also they were in Chinese).

When the gate to the platform opened at last, civilization collapsed.  We all broke into a run.  Elbows out, backpack clutched to my chest, I sprang between mothers and their children, headbutted my way past old men with canes and young women in high heels.  A hand grabbed my shoulder, pulling me back, but I shook it off and sprinted to the end of the platform were there were already a dozen people waiting.  The train pulled up and hundreds of eyes stared at that door hungrily, all breathing that we would kick our own mother in the shin to get a spot on that train (sorry, Mom), so tired were we of waiting and so desperate to get away from this awful place.

In the end, we did make it on the train.  As far as I know, no passenger was left in a bloody heap at the station.  Somehow, Jenn and I even got seats.  We stared out the window into the smog, breathless and dry-mouthed, and we wondered if the price of getting our seats was worth the spiritual toll we paid.  All it took was a little bit of discomfort and a little bit of fear to turn two friendly, sensitive hippies into crazed animals who were perfectly ready to murder the crap out of Piggy if that's what it took.  If this is what train travel in China was like, if this sort of unmediated competition for limited resources was a regular situation to be in, then that must really make it hard for the people who live here to be nice people.

As bad as we felt, we still kept our seats.  I don't know how many orphans or limbless veterans had to stand up for another two hours, and I didn't want to know.

I don't know why China has such a terrible reputation in the West.  I think a fair amount of it stems from good old-fashioned racism; hell, Chinese people have been distrusted or outright reviled in the US for a couple hundred years.  There's also a healthy dose of distrusting the other major world superpower.  I mean, there are more Mandarin speakers than English speakers in the world, and that's scary as hell to a place where few dare utter that USA does not equal #1.  I guess the biggest reason there's such a negative image of China, though, is just basic media scare-mongering: people will watch a news program about a big bad empire of not-white people who oppress their citizens and hate our capitalist freedoms.  Programs about diverse, complicated places don't really make it to air.  And I don't mean to say that China's without problems (because that would be a dumb doo-doo-headed thing to say), just that it's really easy to assume from watching the news that America is nothing but school shootings, state-sponsored executions, and McDonalds, and that's just as ignorant a caricature as thinking that China is nothing but jack-booted authoritarianism and poison toothpaste (and pandas).

So I guess the lesson here is: don't trust the media (sorry again, Mom).

The other, probably more relevant lesson?  China's an awesome place to tour, and we're sure as hell coming back someday.

Cramping

By now, I've become something of an expert at free/wild camping, at least in Korea.  The bike path is dotted with parks and rest areas every dozen kilometers or more, and it's usually not a problem to find a relatively flat patch of land where we can set up our tent unobtrusively.  In recent weeks, we've really gotten cocky about it, too: whereas in the past we'd always try to have the tent down before anyone might wander by, now we've moved on to the "meh" method.  After months of free camping in Korea and Japan, we've been spotted dozens of times by joggers, dog walkers and cyclists, and never once have we had anyone hassle us or tell us to move on.  As long as we try to keep mostly out of the way, we get some curious looks and the rare greeting or question, but never anything more.

After 200 kilometers of (mostly) beautiful bike path, we were once again approaching Daegu.  Last time coming through Daegu, we found a free public campsite right under a highway overpass in the city.  It wasn't the best night's sleep, but it beat the alternatives, which at that point were setting up in a baseball diamond or dying on our feet from lack of sleep.  It was a relatively comfortable site, if only because I sleep better when I don't think that every rustle in the night is the Man coming to throw me in the vagrants' jail (which I assume is a thing).  Our enjoyment of the site was slightly diminished in the morning when an old lady suffering from extreme crankypantsedness confronted us, accused of littering, and told us that we had to move along and that the campsite was only open on weekends.  Then she stole the tie to our rainfly, apparently her hunger for cleaning up trash being so insatiable.

Still, since we'd be coming into Daegu on a Friday, we figured this campsite would be a good place to take a rest day for free.  Sure, we'd much rather stay in a motel, especially since our body odor had progressed from "P.U." to "biohazard," but we decided it would be best to save the money and enjoy the free campsite.  Besides, since it was mid-September by this point and the summer holiday was over, surely we'd have the place to ourselves.

Hahahaha no.  Please note our tent being ganged up on by a pack of larger tents.

Every inch of dirt in this campsite -- this cramped, smoggy, noisy campsite located right under a highway overpass -- was occupied by a tent.  But really, "tent" doesn't do it justice:

"Juggernaut," maybe, or "Colossus."  Or some other X-Man.

Our trusty tent has everything that a couple of campers could need: a place to lie down, flaps to keep out animals, a space to put our stuff to keep it dry, and vents to let out farts and such.  These monstrosities not only had the room to sleep a dozen people, but for those dozen people to dance to "Y.M.C.A."  Our fellow campers brought quite a load of stuff, too: coffee tables, bookshelves, chairs, tarps, stoves, actual literal kitchen sinks.  Many of them were engaged in what I'm told is called "day camping," meaning they packed their chandeliers etc. into their cars, drove to the campsite, set up all of their stuff, hung around awhile, then packed up again and left.  I guess I find nature hard to enjoy without my grand piano, too.

And what's camping without a complete lack of mosquitoes?

It took me several minutes to figure out what this man in the official-looking vest was doing.  He drove his motorcycle, which was rigged with some kind of pollution-spewing device, in circles along the pedestrian paths of the campsite and park.  Clouds of gray-blue smoke drifted across the trees and swallowed up children in the playground.  If he wasn't killing mosquitoes, then the only other thing I can think of is that he's a supervillain and that the secret to successful nefarious schemes is just to look like you're authorized.

I really can't stress this enough: this man was driving around a campsite full of children, spewing clouds of pure DEET everywhere he went.  It got in our tents, it got in our eyes and our lungs.  He was apparently supposed to do this.  Oh, and there were still mosquitoes.

We found a spare plot somehow, put up our tent, and tossed and turned through a night of streetlights, truck horns, and bedtimeless children holding some kind of screaming competition.  In the morning, we resolved to try to stick it out for another day, although the idea that we'd get any rest was becoming more ridiculous with each additional tent that sprouted up and surrounded us.  Any of the things that we might like to do to relax (play music, draw pictures, cook) we'd have to do under a microscope, on display for dozens of families and their pets and furniture.  When the cranky old lady from last month reappeared and started nosing around our tent, we decided to move on to a motel afterwards.  Another family claimed our spot before our tent was half down.  We left them to enjoy the mosquitoless, cramped, heavily-trafficked great outdoors.

The only bright spot is that we got to see an artist paint these murals on the overpass columns.  Though I guess he could ahve just been the world's most brazen graffiti artist.

As we continued down the bike path for the next few weeks, we found another increasingly popular twist on camping known as "glamping."  We spotted multiple signs for "Glamping Korea," more than we saw even two months before, and eventually we sighted a few...glampsites?

All the beauty of a cult compound in the great outdoors!

Essentially, glamping (which apparently does exist outside of Buzzfeed, and also is not a real word) seems to consist of renting cabins for the night.  Except these cabins are made of fabric.  Shiny new fabric, sure, with pretty new electric light fixtures, but fabric that will start to show its age considerably faster than more old-fashioned cabin construction materials (like, say, wood).  Presumably inside of these tents there's some sort of glamorous setup, like...a disco ball?  Bearskin rug?  Man, I have no idea.  And neither, presumably, does anyone else in Korea: every glampsite we saw was utterly vacant.  No glampers looking for a glamp-out at the moment (ugh).

We decided that we pitied the poor souls who so thoroughly populated that awful campsite.  Why would anyone choose to camp in conditions that so little resemble actual camping?  If they're going to bring their air conditioners and beds, why not just stay home, where all those things already exist?  And why would someone drive all the way to somewhere outside just to spend the day sitting in a tent and then go home before dark?  Jenn eventually hit on a more compassionate explanation than I could muster: they most likely came from elsewhere in the city of Daegu, and this must be the closest any of them can get to having a backyard.  Apartment life doesn't lend itself to neighborhood barbecues or kids running around freely.  Even if this campsite has none of the benefits of camping that we enjoy every night, it's not a solitary encounter with nature that these people are looking for, but just a little bit of sunshine, even if it's filtered through smog and thousand-dollar tents.

Setsukeian 3: 行って来ます！

Our last day at Setsukeian was a tearful one.  Kei-san burst into the computer room while we were still clicking away, hoping to make a job appear, only to scowl, then admonish us in English, "Hey!  Good WWOOFers."  He laughed, then closed the door, leaving us severely confused.  It turned out that he had wanted us to sign the Setsukeian guest book.  We had learned to read his moods well in the previous weeks: when he frowned, which was often, he is an imposing figure indeed, full of skepticism and irritation.  When he smiles, though, it's a thing of beauty...

Oh, no wait, that's me I'm thinking of.

On our final evening, Kei-san taught us a couple of traditional Japanese New Year's games, which can best be described as "like pin the tail on the donkey, but with faces" and "exactly Parcheesi."  I won.

It was hard to say goodbye to Kei-san and Setsu-san.  Setsu-san, despite having to do all of the farm's domestic chores on her own, with neither help nor appreciation from Kei-san, is a fantastic individual.  She can juggle, she keeps a loom in the closet (for emergency weaving), she makes her own clothes, she keeps the farm running with a smile, and she kept singing some AKB48 song and doing the official AKB dance, which may have tied that teacup bunny for Cutest Thing Evar.  When one of us (and then the other) fell ill, it was farm policy for Setsu-san to give us a full-body massage.  I laid on the floor cushions hesitantly, then gasped as fingers rapidly popped and stretched spots that I didn't know my body had.  Setsu-san has the strongest hands of anyone I've ever met, and I would put money on her in a Thumb War any day.

It was hard reconciling just how relentlessly kind and cheerful Setsu-san is with the somewhat crummy deal she seems to get.  One night over dinner, she explained to us that she really didn't like cooking until they started to get WWOOFers at the house.  Kei-san interrupted at this point, explaining between mouthfuls of miso soup that Setsu-san likes cooking for appreciative eaters; at their home in Tokyo, she would cook every meal for the family, and never would she get so much as a word of compliment.  Jenn and I wondered at Kei-san's simultaneous awareness of his wife's underappreciation and decision not to do anything to fix that.

When it came time for us to leave, Kei-san took us down to the bus stop in the truck first thing in the morning.  Setsu-san first shook our hands, then, incredibly she hugged us goodbye.  We hugged her back, trying to summon the words in Japanese for a situation we had never encountered before; hugs are rare enough in Japan that many of Jenn's students wrote identical essays describing how moved they were by getting hugs from their host families during exchange programs when their own parents had never hugged them before.  Now Setsu-san was shouting "Come back soon!" and waving goodbye to us as the house slowly disappeared in the rear-view mirrors.  Jenn held her own hand to keep herself from crying.  Kei-san explained to us on the drive that he would also be shouting farewells to us until we could no longer see him from the bus, but that we should wave back anyway.  When the bus pulled away, we heard his voice shouting farewells to us until we could no longer see him down the mountain road.

What did we learn at Setsukeian?  Among other things, we learned that hard work (contrary to popular assumptions) won't kill us, though it will make us kinda irritable.  We also reaffirmed what we'd already known: that Japanese people are some of the nicest, most welcoming folks in the world.  Sure, we had some moments of culture shock, moments where if we had to listen to Kei-san complain about how kids today are so for shit, they don't even known how to use chopsticks (I mean, really?), we might've lost it.  We continue to thank our lucky stars every day that we weren't born female in Japan.  But for all of that, we still feel lucky to be a part of this family.  This crazy, strict, conservative, 500-member family.  And we will be back someday.

Shimanami Kaido: Road to Somewhere

After a leisurely (slow) six days of riding and resting our way across the northern coast of Shikoku, we abruptly realized that our plans might have to undergo yet another change.  Having given ourselves only three weeks to tour the entire coast of the island before getting back to Kansai for birthday parties and WWOOFing, we had a choice to make: either we could attempt to increase our pace, covering at least 80 kilometers a day for the next two weeks with precious few rest days, or we could alter our plans to include taking a bus from Matsuyama to the southern coast of blah blah blah anyway we decided not to do that either.

Just before speeding off in a cloud of dust and cigarette smoke, Jake recommended that we check out the Shimanami Kaido while on Shikoku; the Shimanami Kaido is a series of bridges that connects Shikoku to mainland Honshu via a handful of islands in Japan’s Seto Inland Sea.  Jake told us that the Kaido was the main reason he wanted to revisit this part of the country by bike, and that we really shouldn’t miss it.  We decided to spend a day taking in some of the 76-kilometer route, maybe camp on one of the islands, then return to Shikoku for more stalling a decision about our route.

The ride, as promised, was gorgeous.  By now the sakura were in full bloom, and Shikoku being so rural a place, gorgeous copses of white-pink sakura were surrounded by natural beauty and mountains rather than by passed-out salarymen vomiting in the bushes (to which we had been accustomed after three hanami seasons in Osaka).

After a good day and a half of riding, we found ourselves going up the ramp to the first bridge of the Kaido.  It really is a miracle of engineering, this system of bridges, as well as a miracle of foresight that it’s all extremely bike-friendly.  Physics, unfortunately, remains less bike-friendly, requiring that we pedal up a slight incline for several kilometers before actually finding ourselves atop each bridge.

The superlative of the day is "First Three Consecutive Suspension Bridges in the World."

Having taken a little more time and energy climbing the first bridge than we had hoped, we found ourselves on the first major island, Oshima (literally, “Big Island”) just as the sun was going down.  This chain of volcanic islands tends to be a bit hilly, so we had reached a state of being extremely tuckered out by 5:00.  We could either venture still further into the island, which for all we knew would require climbing spikes and, hopefully, an elevator, or we could look for somewhere to free camp again.  As previously mentioned, we’re slightly less afraid to free camp in Japan due to the culture of hospitality and also not having any guns, but on a mountain road on a rural island, vacant lots and parks are a little hard to come by.

At last we stumbled across a building marked as a “cycle oasis.”  Among its promised amenities were “water,” “air pumps,” and “goats.”  I assumed I must have been hallucinating by this point, but decided it couldn’t hurt to ask the proprietor if there was a nearby park in which we could squat for the night.

Jenn hung back to watch the bikes while I knocked on the door of the bizarrely unfinished-looking wooden building.  I slid open the front door and, as though I had entered a saloon in the Old West, all conversation stopped, and there were twenty pairs of eyes on me.

“Um...are you open?” I asked hesitantly.

“Eh?” asked one of the old guys standing around the table.  It seemed there was some manner of party going on -- children, obachans, and old guys were seated around a grill that was covered with fish and stock pots.  The man approached, and I attempted to explain our situation, finally getting out that we were looking for a nearby park or campground.  The man frowned, shook his head, and explained that there weren’t any campgrounds on the island as far as he knew, but that we could stay right there on his property.

Stunned at this show of generosity (and pretty certain we were misunderstanding something), Jenn and I followed our host around the house, bowing all the while, where we were told we could set up right next to the goats.

Eh.  I've had worse roommates.

Two boys who were hanging around enthusiastically helped us set up our tent, and through them we got some kind of intelligence about where we were, exactly.  It seemed that this old wooden house, covered with barbed-wire spiderwebs and rusted bicycles, was a cram school, of all things.  Also, they reassured us that the goats probably wouldn’t eat our tent, though Daddy Goat seemed pretty determined to try.

On our host’s urging, we came in to join the party for a drink.  We met a whole slew of interesting characters, including a gaggle of middle schoolers, a standard Old Drunk Guy who spent a great deal of time talking about “Tom & Jerry,” and a man who had spent ten years traveling the world with his wife on a tandem bike.  The food was plentiful and delicious: grilled mackerel, pickles, garlic toast, and an immense pot of wild boar stew.  When we asked what the occasion was, someone explained, "We were hungry."  Between bouts of explaining our travel experiences and discussing the foibles of English teaching in Japan, we patted ourselves on the back for how our day had gone, thrilled that once again we had discovered some of the best of Japan off the beaten path.

Things took a bit of a darker turn once Old Drunk Guy started talking about international affairs, however.  I’m still not too clear on all that he said, but I’m sure that he said that he hates North and South Korea equally, that he thinks Japan should go to war with them again, that Latin America is full of disgusting mixed-blood people, and “Tora, tora, tora.”  The room grew quiet.  We’d always heard of this side of Japan, that nationalism lurks in many of this peaceful country’s social corners, though this was the first time we’d encountered it firsthand.  Voice shaking, I managed to get ODG back onto the topic of cartoons, and the room relaxed somewhat.

We retired to our tent long before the party had ended.  This day we had, without a doubt, seen some of the best of Japan and the Japanese, and just a glimpse of the worst as well.