Archive | January, 2007

Hong Kong 香港

24 Jan causewaybay.JPG

The canopy of Causeway Bay.Bird's nests for sale.Mahjong tiles.

All fixed set patterns are incapable of adaptability or pliability. The truth is outside of all fixed patterns.

Bruce Lee

 

In almost every way I can think of, my all-too-brief Hong Kong holiday was a break from routine. A much-needed and much-appreciated one, I might add. Now don’t get me wrong, I love Japan. But life here can get monotonous, just like it can anywhere else in the world – except, maybe, for Hong Kong.

Nonsense, you say. Hong Kong is just like any other big city. What makes Hong Kong so special, so exciting, so worthy of such unabashed exoticism?

Don’t get me started. The bustling markets! The hilly terrain! The lush foliage! The ultra-modern architecture! The neon! The affordable taxis! The comforts of a cosmopolitan capitalist society! The idiosyncracies of a thriving local culture! The exuberant sound of salsa music in an African bar, the distracting sight of radiant pink dragonfruit in the windows of corner stores, the tantalizing scent of five spice and ginger wafting out of noodle shops!

What makes Hong Kong so great? Well, everything. But if you need a few specifics…

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The Hopleaf ザ･ホップリーフ

11 Jan

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Chicago’s Hopleaf Bar and I share a common kodawari.

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Racine, Wisconsin ウィスコンシン州のラシーン

10 Jan kringle.jpg

Ah, Racine. The viking motherland.

If memory serves me correctly, Racine is a boring place to live. I spent most of my weekends in high school playing Super Smash Bros. at a friends house, or otherwise driving around aimlessly, singing along to Less Than Jake and making occasional pit stops to suck down Slurpees and gas station hot dogs. I can’t say it’s a bad place to live, really, but for a teenager who doesn’t drink or do drugs, it isn’t much fun.

Now that I’m older, with four and a half years between me and my departure from Racine, I have a much more favorable opinion of my furusato 故郷, my old hometown. Maybe that’s because I now only take small doses of Racine at a time, but it might also be because it has come to represent simplicity, safety, and ease. It’s true that not much changes in Racine and there still isn’t much to do there, but this has transformed from a source of angst into a source of relaxation.

Also, I miss the food. It could be that this is just due to nostalgic associations, but everytime I go back, the food tastes just as good as I remembered it, or better. A few things I already miss after leaving just two weeks ago:

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Layover in Nagoya 名古屋で途中降機

9 Jan

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In general, I like airports. After I stand in line, abandon my luggage, stand in line again, take off my shoes, get probed, forfeit irreplaceable souvenirs to the TSA, put my shoes back on, and finally escape, gasping for air, into the white light of the terminal… I like airports. And I especially like international airports, with their abundance of duty-free Scotches (which I have actually never found to be a very good deal) and shops hawking local souvenirs. These shops, while often tacky and overpriced, can be an excellent way to glimpse a city or region’s meibutsu – and this goes for America and other countries in addition to Japan. Think of all the cheese-, football-, and beer-related products you can find in any given store in MKE.

I had no prior knowledge of Nagoya’s meibutsu, but thanks to Chubu Airport’s mezzanine-level arcades, I learned quite a bit in my two short layovers there on the way to and from America. Miso products were ubiquitous. So were instant versions of local noodle specialties, including beef ramen, Taiwan-style ramen, and kishimen きし麺 (flat noodles). And somewhere between the store devoted entirely to shrimp chips and the cuddly shrimp tempura plush toys, I gleaned that the Nagoya area must be famous for shrimp (but that’s just a guess).

But the Nagoya meibutsu that enthralled this viking most was the unagi 鰻, the freshwater eel, mostly thanks to the efforts of a restaurant called Unasyo うな匠 (their Romanization, not mine). (more…)

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