J-Plus continues with Kobe and Kyoto, but because there’s a story to go with my trip to Kobe, let’s go to Kyoto first.
This isn’t the first time I’ve been to Japan, Osaka, Tokyo or Kyoto – I visited when I was in elementary school on an exchange trip between elderly Americans and Japanese families.
You might wonder how I, not an elderly American, became part of the trip. Well, my grandparents went, and brought me with them to Yamaguchi Prefecture, among other sights. I remember well waking up to a hotel breakfast in Tokyo and seeing the news ticker lined with Kanji, or Chinese characters – easy reading for having grown up learning Mandarin in Taiwan; it felt familiar.
Kyoto was about the same as I remembered it, just with a lot more Chinese tourists this time. I will let the photos do the talking.
At one point I found myself at the foot of a hill, and started walking up through the mosquito-laden area to a view of the city.
Kobe began with style in the harbor, fancy restaurants and bars, scoring a picture of me when I was 25 years old.
Also impressive were the Japanese wrestling posters and other ads. But the return journey featured a highly inebriated man, who almost lost his phone were it not for the timely intervention of a good samaritan – myself.
He writhed and wrangled his way across the train car to the disgust of many, but I knew the feeling.
Next time, the castles, gardens and paths of Kanazawa…And now, your J-Plus tape, which apparently was released along with a magazine covering Japanese music of the same Sounds of Japan name:
May marks the start of holidays for some, so let’s take a break from pure music with a travel log to go with more J-Pop tapes. The travel log is, of course, about Japan, a trip I took there in 2015.
The Phables isn’t a travel blog, but it has seen my fair share of overseas experiences, and continues to show exciting times in pre and post-pandemic China. Has the world changed so much since 2015, when I boarded a flight from Singapore to Osaka? Let’s take a stroll down nostalgia lane and get some ideas for another trip to Japan…
The trip really begins in meandering alleys of Osaka, where yakitori places are located.
This was about the smallest yakitori restaurant I could find, but the meal here set the tone for the rest of the trip – friendly locals, some of whom could speak Chinese or English, others who were just outgoing enough in true Osaka style so we could still communicate in limited fashion. The experience here was so welcoming that I put into my first sci-fi novel, and Osaka served as inspiration for the setting.
For obvious reasons, pictures do not show my trip to a hot springs bathhouse near Tsutenkaku, an austere metallic tower that Osakans like to joke is the Tokyo tower of Osaka. This bathhouse had multiple attractions, with different rooms featuring different types of baths and statues of different Western cultures. The first time I went there was nobody there owing to it being a “Silver Week” and people being out of town, and I enjoyed it so much I went again a few days later. Oops – this time since the holiday was over, it was full of people, and I could barely sit in a communal hot spring without getting a stoic glance from one of the locals.
Next day was Osaka Castle and Dotonburi, which is Osaka’s tourist district. Actually they have quite a few tourist spots, and the castle itself is also quite interesting, along with the Osaka Museum (the above photo is just of the castle wall, not the castle itself, which is below).
The Glico Man at Dotonburi
Tsutenkaku tower and a Biliken in the bottom-right foreground.
Tako Tako King, a famous takoyaki (octopus-filled flour ball) place and a play on the name B.B. King, due to the owner’s love of jazz and blues.
You might be wondering where I stayed during my trip to Japan. It was a combination of youth hostels and the cheapest AirBnbs I could find, not necessarily just because I was trying to save money, but because I went to Osaka right during a “Silver Week”, and both hostels and AirBnb locations were mostly booked out. I ended up in an Osaka apartment that was so small and dingy that some of the would-be tenants left a note for the AirBnb proprietor saying they had to leave because the conditions were so bad. I didn’t mind it that much. The bathtub was tiny, that’s all.
Finally some shots of Tsutenkaku, which you can also take an elevator up into. I have additional photos that show Osaka in its greatness, but this one below probably takes the mantle for my trip.
The next day I visited the famous Osaka aquarium and its whale shark, whose design is meant to represent volcanic activity.
Okonomiyaki, another famous Osaka dish that is basically a seafood and pork pancake drenched in brown and white sauce.
I also took long walks from my hostel or place of lodging to the Osaka Art Museum and a park outside there, which featured many crows.
Osaka partly kick-started my writing by providing the setting for my novel, Chronicles of the Tidepool. If you read the novel (someday), there will be an account of the golden columns next to a tall tower shining with alchemical fire…
Until next time, when I show my trip in Kobe and Kyoto in Part II.
This is part of the back-to-back posts on China adventures!
The weekend before I represented my company at a forensics conference in Wuhan, China. Wuhan is a huge city about two hours away from Shanghai by plane, so I flew out from the airport closer to the city in Shanghai (Hongqiao).
Air travel in China has gotten a lot better since the days of “rude inflight behavior” that was quickly quashed by the government.
The ride to the hotel from the Wuhan airport was very long, and featured row after row of tall, dark apartment buildings. It felt a little bit dystopian, Ghost in the Shell-like.
The Hetian hotel itself was nice – Hetian means field of lotuses – and the accommodations were pleasant. They did have creepy pandas at the entrance and rip-off Peppa Pig statues though. Why are there always creepy animal statues everywhere in China? Is it just creepy because they are putting cutesy things in non-family spots?
Anyway, allow me to introduce a little about part of what I’m doing in China. Over the course of civil litigation in the United States, there is a Discovery phase where the litigants have to surrender (almost) all of their records related to the case. The scope of discovery is determined by a judge or simply by management if they are doing an internal investigation.
Right?
So our job is to go and collect as instructed by lawyers all the documents and data related to the scope of discovery, including emails, Word, Excel or Powerpoint documents, mobile data like text and instant messages, other specialty data types, sometimes social media, scanned and paper documents, everything. Obviously this can get to be a lot of data.
“Greatly nurture and actualize the core values of socialism”
Then we process and load that data into a database where lawyers and (our) investigators can review the documents in a page-by-page format.
Military Olympics in WuhanWuhan University
In my next post, I’ll go over some details of the conference.
This next post is something of a testament to how difficult it is to get basic services set up as a foreigner in China. First off, I got my health report back with no problems, so now I am eligible for a work permit. This is what the report looks like:
Next, I had to get a bank account and a China mobile phone number. For a bank account I needed my basic identification (passport, visa) and a signed, “chopped” copy of my employment contract with my company. Chopped, meaning it has the official seal of the company plastered in red ink or some such.
This was not too difficult – However, a bank account is only of limited use in China since most payments are conducted using WeChat Pay or Ali Pay. These are third-party payment methods offered by WeChat (China’s largest social messaging and networking app offered by TenCent – more on this later) and Alibaba, respectively. Basically the Chinese do everything through their phones now, even in some instances unlocking and locking doors.
Cash is almost non-existent and credit cards are not prevalent as they are difficult to obtain. I’ve mainly only seen foreigners using cash (myself included). You can transfer money to other people using the app (though again, there are limitations for foreigners) or pay vendors like shops and restaurants.
With Alipay, you scan the vendor or a friend’s QR code and pay or transfer money them through the app. WeChat pay is similar. There is a daily limit for transfers (image from https://www.saporedicina.com/english/alipay-alibaba-payment-platform, a helpful article on Alipay)
But in order to get those services, I needed real-name authentication of a Chinese phone number – I needed to be personally identified with a Chinese cell phone number at the China Mobile office, with my picture taken, along with my passport information, for the real-name authentication to take effect.
I got a real-name-authenticated, local Chinese number, which I was able to link up with the bank (debit) card I received in WeChat and Alipay, so that I could pay directly out of the bank account or transfer money into the two apps and vice versa. With that, here is a brief overview of the main components of China’s app (they call them “A-P-P”’s ecosystem.
This non-exhaustive list of essential apps in China includes WeChat （微信）, DiDi （滴滴）, Baidu Maps and Baidu （百度）, Alipay （支付宝）, TaoBao （淘宝）, JingDong (JD.com)（京东）, ELeMe（饿了吗），Meituan （美团），Dazhongdianping （大众点评），CTRIP， Tielu 12306 （铁路12306）and DingDong Maicai （叮咚买菜). They are displayed in order below:
WeChat: It would take an entire blog post or more to describe the centrality and functionality of WeChat to Chinese life, but besides being the most popular social messaging app in China (1 billion users worldwide as of early 2019), its payment feature allows you to pay vendors (restaurants, stores, even fruit sellers and locksmiths) and receive money yourself from friends and others.
There’s a lot of features in WeChat, but once you add money to your WeChat balance with a Chinese bank account (and Chinese cell phone number,) you can transfer money by scanning people’s QR codes and adding them as friends, or pay others using the Money button, where the vendor scans your QC code that pops up (picture from helpful https://lerner.co.il/2018/12/28/the-foreigners-guide-to-wechat-payments-in-china/)
DiDi Chuxing: China’s highly dominant ride-sharing service, equivalent to Uber or Lyft. You can order more than one type of car (nicer vehicles, or regular taxis) at a time when queue times are long, which happens a lot in a busy city (there isn’t so much of a surge charge as there is in the US). Of course, you pay with WeChat or Alipay. Lots of safety tips and driver rating systems.
Baidu Maps and Baidu: Very similar to Google Maps and Google, but in China
Alipay : There are a ton of features and products on this app too, but it’s mainly used to pay with – Dominant in Hangzhou, where Alibaba hails from
TaoBao, JingDong (JD.com): Similar to Amazon in China, you can buy pretty much anything on these sites, although the stuff on TaoBao tends to be cheaper in quality and price. I’ve ordered 24-packs of Perrier, silverware, and clotheshangers so far.
As you can see, lots of food can be ordered in bulk
ELeMe（饿了吗）[Blue theme]，Meituan （美团）[Yellow theme]: Food delivery apps, think GrubHub or DoorDash but not as expensive – it’s only slightly more expensive than dining in a restaurant. Super popular.
Dazhongdianping （大众点评）: This is like the Yelp of China, lots of ratings of restaurants, shops, stores, bars, everything.
Stores in the hot pot category, you can filter by distance, rating etc.
CTRIP : Dominant Chinese version of Orbitz, Kayak, etc., you can book tickets for plane, rail, tour packages, hotel and hostel trips, and so on.
Tielu 12306 （铁路12306） : One of the main apps for rail ticket booking in China
DingDong Maicai （叮咚买菜) : They will purchase groceries for you and deliver them to your door.
To show some of the complexity around these apps, many of these apps link to one another within the app itself. For example, WeChat connects to Didi, Jingdong (JD), Meituan and Dazhongdianping, as shown below:
I could keep going with these apps – and probably will – but this is just a start. Remember, basically all of these apps require a smartphone to operate.
I flew to Shanghai on September 1, 2019 as part of my relocation to my company’s China office for at least two years. It’s only been about five days since I arrived, but of course there are already Phables to be told. It’s China!
Actually, this entire process to transfer to China took five months, and it’s still ongoing. Two months for corporate and leadership to approve the transfer, two months to gather and prepare the necessary documents, and about one month of just waiting around. Here are my bags packed and ready to go after the apartment got cleared out.
There were more bags than this
To be honest not many Americans understand or know much about China. But I believed that this was the right decision for my career and my future.
The flight itself went well. I didn’t sleep much but watched a lot of movies, some of questionable quality. American Airlines claims not to edit their movies for “objectionable” content, but they did for the latest Hellboy movie, which is obscenely violent. Aquaman needed no editing, being one of those mass market PG-13 comic book romps, but what struck me about both movies is this idea of a hero of mixed “breed” trying to unite both worlds – Demon and Human in Hellboy’s case and the undersea people and surface people in Aquaman’s case. Both characters were born as hybrids of humans and whatever other species. I kind of took to this idea since I’m mixed with both Chinese/Taiwanese and American heritage, and sometimes see my purpose as bringing the two (well, three) worlds together, all the more important during these times of difficult relations for all sides.
I also identified a lot with the Bradley Cooper/Lady Gaga movie A Star is Born, but mainly the song “Shallow.” I knew I really wanted to watch the movie since I’m a fan of both of them but I never got around to doing it until this flight – and I only watched the first parts where people were still enjoying themselves. The timing kind of worked out well – here are the lyrics to Shallow that really resonated with me on where I was in life, going to a new city in a foreign land (well, not that foreign, as I’ve lived here before):
I’m off the deep end, watch as I dive in
I’ll never meet the ground
Crash through the surface, where they can’t hurt us
We’re far from the shallow now
I’m not exactly escaping my problems in the US, but things weren’t going that well for me, either. I went straight to the deep end on this one in a sort of career Hail Mary. Over the past five days I still find it kind of crazy that I’m actually here. More work remains. Just listen to the story of how I had to get a state-sponsored health checkup in a neighboring city.
My office building in downtown Shanghai
In order to apply for a work permit in China, I had to get a health checkup at a government-sponsored hospital. Since there is apparently only one such hospital per county, city region, or whatever, and the one in Shanghai was booked out for “group” checkups until some undetermined date, Suzhou was the only option within reach. Suzhou is about 30 minutes from Shanghai by high-speed rail, which is pretty reasonable. So I went.
It was pretty easy to buy a train ticket at Shanghai station and get through security (I had to show my passport and train ticket a bunch of places) and it was easy getting to the Suzhou official hospital as well. I got a pass in my application as I didn’t have one of the required documents but they were able to use an alternative method of authentication, and I also later got a pass in one of my medical exams (I wasn’t supposed to drink water but did in the morning since I was too thirsty, but they let it slide “this time”). Someone on the staff there also re-sized my application photos for me.
A note on photos and picture-taking, there are definitely sensitive parts of China I would be uncomfortable taking pictures of, for law enforcement reasons or just out of courtesy, so you’ll have to imagine those parts from my descriptions.
There were seven examinations in a number of different rooms or stations, each staffed by Chinese nurses, technicians, or maybe doctors. I had to get an ultrasound of some of my internal organs, a chest x-ray, blood drawn, a urine test, an eyesight and color blindness test, an EKG test and my height, weight and blood pressure measured. Everyone was very nice about it but it did feel like going through the official motions. There were specific diseases they were screening for (like venereal diseases and diseases of the liver), but I’m not sure what the big picture on this is, and the rules have definitely gotten a lot more stringent in recent years.
A number of other applicants were there as well, we all passed through the stations together. While standing in line I met Austin, an American linguistics student from Syracuse University studying in Suzhou. He said his dad would probably tell him not to talk to me owing to the rivalry with Georgetown. Other students and entrepreneurs from other countries were there too.
I didn’t see much of Suzhou, I wanted to go visit 寒山寺, Hanshan (Cold Mountain) Temple, as it is featured in a poem by Tang dynasty poet Zhang Ji which is (or was) one of the lessons in Taiwan’s middle school textbooks that I remember. According to Wikipedia the poem is taught in Chinese and Japanese (?) curricula too. The poem goes like this (slightly altered English translation from https://eastasiastudent.net/china/classical/zhang-ji-maple-bridge/):
The moon descends, crows caw, frost fills the sky;
riverside maples and fishermen’s lights face me in my worried sleep.
Outside Gusu city lies Cold Mountain Temple;
at midnight, the sound of bells reaches the ferries.
But I picked a random place in the city to eat noodles (I love noodles) and it was pretty far from the temple. Next time – At least I got a cappuccino in Gusu city. Zhang Ji would be proud.
Suzhou
One other note is how helpful the younger people have been on my trip. I got help from a man on the high speed rail about finding out which was my ticket and which was the receipt, and while at a CoCo beverage stand in Suzhou the young woman working there helped me with directions and even offered to have someone drive me to the nearest metro station on an electric scooter, which would have been a Phable all by itself. I walked.
So it’s been a somewhat exciting five days. Can’t wait to see what the coming days bring.
