Another Boxing Tale

Our second day in Chang Mai, Glyn and I were walking around when a local guy in his early 20s stopped in front of us on his moped. He handed us a boxing event flyer and said he would be fighting tonight and would we come watch him. He had a killer smile full of pride. The next night, we showed up at the boxing ring and sat on a plastic chair with a hundred other spectators; equal number of locals and travelers. It was a special holiday--I can't remember which one now as this was in March, so there was no alcohol being served.

The first fight was between two boys that looked no older than eight. In Thai years that might have placed them at about twelve. The boys kept pounding away at each other with their little boxing gloves. Finally their coaches called the fight.

The next fight was between two fourteen year-olds. Before the fight began, they ceremoniously prayed at each corner of the ring while shrill and whiney prayer music played. Then they bowed their oiled bodies to each other and began boxing and kicking. I was crowd watching because I couldn't stand seeing such young teens punching and kicking each other, although I'll give them credit for their sportsmanship and athleticism. I looked up just in time to see one boy punch the other so hard in the chin that he spun around and dropped like a bag of rice thrown out of the back of a truck. The entire audience gasped and jumped up. The guilty boxer paced, worryingly holding back tears, as the coach soothed back into conciousness. The winner helped the dazed boy out of the ring.

The guy who invited us fought in the last, climactic fight of the night. He won to a guy a foot taller than him and much heavier. But the best part of the night was the show in between the concussion and the last fight: a topless transvestite show. Three beautiful ladie-boys pranced on stage in lingerie-style dress. The diva of the group wore a corset around her stomach with her perfectly round, unbouncy boobs out for everyone to admire. The girls were absolutely gorgeous, and I felt for the first time a bit jealous of a transvestite for having perfected the female form.

Chang Mai gave boxing a whole new picture.

Strength and Honour

My parents, old friend Julia and I saw Strength and Honour last night at Cinema Paradiso in Fort Lauderdale. I love that theater! It's an old church built in an old Spanish style architecture indicative of old Miami. Inside are blue velvet chairs and a giant Oscar award with a penis. I've never noticed if the statues given out at the Academy Awards have schlongs or not.

Strenght and Honour is an Irish boxing movie. Watching me punch each other around, killing each other doesn't usually get me off, but Strength and Honour was enjoyable regardless of the blood hurling and a couple dramatic killings and knock-outs that made Julia and I cringe.

The story is set in an Irish traveller community, which I'll be apart of tomorrow when I move into our family friends' pop-up camper to gain some privacy while still in the comfort of my parents' home. Moving back in with my family with no job after a break-up is the lowest point I would have imagined I'd ever get to. IT's here, however.

On the bright side, I'll save up money to go back to school, make new friends, catch up with family and old friends, and have my own place that I can laugh at in a year or two.

Just keep on punching!

Eternal Love

Last night my grandparents (Papa and Carolyn) and I visited Carolyn's cousins in a suburb of Tel Aviv. Simon, from Poland, was liberated by Allied forces from a concentration camp; I saw the camp tattoo on his forearm. His entire family died under the Nazi Final Solution, so Simon made his journey to Israel to start a new life. On his way, he was stopped and held in Cyprus along with thousands of other Holocaust survivors, where he met Rosa. Rosa was 19 and Simon 22.

Simon, now 84, greeted us at the bus stop with all smiles and energy to match a 60 year old. We sat around the table talking, eating fresh dates from their daughter's farm, roasted cashews, dried figs and croissants. Simon was attentive to Rosa, who has just had surgery, with a diligence of obvious enjoyment. When she talked, he listened, looking straight into her eyes, his face of pure adoration, respect and affection. They have been married for 61 years and have never let their passion die.

Seeing these two people so dedicated to each other put me nearly to tears last night. Every person deserves to be loved unconditionally and passionately by their partner. I hope that I am loved by my future husband until the day I die.

Diaspora

I'm visiting my grandparents in Haifa, Israel at the moment. They emmigrated here nearly two years ago, the first time they have ever lived abroad and for my grandmother, the first time she had ever traveled abroad with the exception of visiting Israel for two weeks before deciding to move here.

They have the same fascination and dismay that I first experienced when I moved to Japan. Simple things, like the toilets are in a tiny room separate from the shower and sink. The lever to flush the toilet is different (theirs is the same as Italian toilets). I think my germiphobe grandmother would flip if she had a Japanese toilet in which the sink to wash her hands was the same water circulating in the toilet tank to conserve water.

They took me to the Shuk, the local market where they buy their meat and produce. Touring me around the market they pointed out watermelon, oranges, dates, walnuts, cheese and fish as if this were the first time I had ever seen such treasures. Explaining the bus and train system as though I have never used public transport before: On the train, a station employee will come around and check your ticket.

I just smile and nod, act surprised or amazed, and try to suppress my comments of Yes, I know, most of the world outside of America has the same thing, or does the same thing, or operates in the same manner. It's cute, and I'm proud of them for emmigrating.

Goodbye Northern Ireland

I'm leaving from Belfast the day after tomorrow for Israel!

Although I'm obviously excited about seeing some of the oldest sites in the world, I will miss Ireland.

The day before yesterday Glyn and I went on a five hour trek across the Antrim Plateau. On either side of us were heather fields and hundreds of sheep grazing on farm plots. About two kilometers in the distance, the ocean, dark blue indicating its depth and frigidity, spread as if we stood in a landscape painting hanging on a hotel bedroom wall. It was gorgeous! I felt so clean and fresh from the exercise and being in a nonpolluted environment amongst the epitome of peacefulness: lamb and sheep Baaahhhing.

We sat at the edge overlooking the Irish Sea where Scotland spanned beyond that, to eat ham and cheese croissants with tomatoes and lettuce. Walking home, I ate wild blackberries growing on the bushes.

English Breakfast

The first time an English breakfast was laid before me in an Irish Pub in Tokyo, I was terrified. How could I possibly eat so much protein? What will happen to my large intestine after indulging in Heinz baked beans (a commodity in Japan), chips (aka french fries), fried eggs, toast, sausage, bacon and roasted tomatoes (for the prostate)?

It was amazing! Especially after too much beer the night before, it's what the stomach needs to make the devourer feel truly human in every sense of the hethonic word.

This morning I got some really bad news concerning my UK work permit. What did I do? I whipped out the baked beans, toast, bacon, and ran to the store for free-range eggs and cherry tomatoes and cooked an English breakfast in Northern Ireland--my first ever non-cheese comfort food.

Vietnamese Shoes Killed My Feet

A few months ago I visited Hoi An, a city in central Vietnam famous for custom-made clothing and shoes. The city is gorgeous--two to four centuries-old wooden Chinese architecture, paper lanterns lit at night, Chinese temples, art galleries and antique stores; a quaint town straight out of a Pearl S. Buck novel.

I had four pairs of shoes made: a cute silver pair with orange and yellow polk-a-dots (trust me--they were fabulous) to wear with jeans, black and brown pumps for work, and a hot pair of black knee-high boots. The silver dotted shoes I threw away in Italy after the second time wearing them.

Yesterday, I walked downhill to the train station in Larne, NI for fifteen minutes in excruciating pain. Even though these shoes had been measured and designed for my feet, they felt like torture devices from the Inquisition or, dare I say it, devices used on POWs during the Vietnam War. Never mind, that was uncalled for.

When I reached the station, I had missed the train by three minutes since my stride slowed down as I awkwardly walked in the least painful way possible. SInce I had an hour to kill, I went to a cheap clothing store called New Look and bought a pair of flat, black eyelet shoes for only 12 pounds. Although they were much more comfortable, my feet had blisters and bubbles like the time I spilled boiling water on my foot. Today, I have to walk on the sides of my feet around the house, since blisters are covering the entire bottom of my soles and the tops of my toes.

Moral of this complaining: The suits in Hoi An are great. Get some. But skip the custom made shoes.

I'm Back!

No more traveling in remote areas of the world with no internet. Believe it or not, Italy has less internet points than Cambodia and Vietnam.

I'm back in Northern Ireland in a town called Larne thirty minutes outside Belfast hunting desperately for jobs in London. Hopefully knocking down recruiters' doors will help in my quest for employment. I talked to a good friend of mine today in Florida who scared the crap out of me: How an entire neighborhood in Michigan is foreclosed, teachers in Florida have been laid off and her and her new husband are struggling as he can't find a full time job. Guess I shouldn't come back to the States for a while.

On a positive note, Larne is absolutely stunning. I spent two months living and working in Italy and I prefer Northern Ireland's landscape. There really 40 shades of green. I run (almost) every day right on the coast; I'm looking out the office window now at the harbor filled with sailboats and hills beyond that with speckles of sheep. Ireland is gorgeous even when it's raining.

I love the Cyber Cafes in Japan

I'm typing this blog at a computer in a cyber cafe in Toritsudaigaku, the station where I work. After nearly one and a half hours, two cappucinos and a mint tea later I am thoroughly convinced that Japanese cyber cafes are the epitome of brilliance.

They're very different from any I've been in in America or New Zealand. In the aforementioned countries(and I presume most other countries) cyber cafes are merely rows of sterilized computers with students or travellers checking their emails and writing papers. Here, of course there are always students, but also sitting in the same circle (not row) of computers as mine is a grandmother, a man reading a book, and woman the same age as my mother. Here, cyber cafes offer all you can drink tea (with about 15 different leaf combinations to experiment with), fountain drinks and coffee. There are snacks and cheap meals you can buy as well. Two hours here will cost me about 5 dollars.

Tonight, like many nights, I have two hours to kill before my plans in Tokyo. There is no use in me going home. I used to go to Starbucks with a book, but at $4 for a coffee which gets cold after twenty minutes and anxious customers wait for your seat in the perpetual trendiness of the Seattle dry-roasted shockwave, I feel uncomfortable hanging out in Starbucks for too long, especially when I've already finished my coffee an hour before, or it's gone cold from me trying to milk it for all it was worth.

Instead I can go to one of the literally trillions (ok, maybe not literally) of cyber cafes, hang out with a book, check my emails and get all the coffee and tea I want. Brilliant!

I finally got what was coming to me!

I think I told everyone I know, but last October the company I was working for went bankrupt almost overnight. Luckily, I had a little bit of savings since Glyn and I were planning on backpacking. I started working immediately: private lessons, part-time teaching at English schools and cram schools, transcribing, freelance writing...literally any way I could make money.

Today, Glyn called me while I was out to dinner with my Japanese sister Yoko announcing that we got the paperwork required to file for our lost wages! I'm finally get paid for the three months I endured with no steady pay. This changes everything! Instead of having to go to work almost immediately in the fall after I finish the summer camp in Italy. Instead, I can take my time (not too much) finding a job I like in a country/city I like. I can take two or three months longer and travel to Eastern Europe or India. I can take the time to write a novel--which I've been wanting to do but wasn't sure if I would have the time.

This changes everything. Haaaaaa.....A huge sigh of relief!

UnGrumpy Old Men

I took the express train home from Shibuya at about 10pm last night, meaning, it was packed to the hilt with business people coming home from work. I was standing in the aisle in the middle of the three rows of standing people, nealry half were asleep, as we sped by the local train stops. Two men in their seventies stood next to me pushing each other into sleeping businessmen and women, laughing hysterically. When the people turned around to look at them they'd shrug their shoulders and melodically offer "Sorry!" in English and feign holding in a laugh. I couldn't help but to catch their contagious goofy mood. I laughed and laughed at them. A man standing to my left from Nepal began talking to me and we both laughed at them. The old men put on more of a show since they now had two enthusiastic audience members (the only on the train that seemed to be amused).

10 Habits of Thin Beautiful Japanese Women

Japanese women are by far the most beautiful I have seen in my travels through Asia. Of course there are millions of gorgeous American women and at least 1 billion beautiful women in the world, but the percentage of gorgeous thin women in Japan is near to 100. Japanese women look twenty years younger than their actual age: they have virtually no lines or wrinkles until in their 60s, they have thick shiny black hair, smooth olive skin and are thin even after having two or three children. Below are the reasons Japan's women are so beautiful, most of which is common sense:

1. Japanese women eat a huge, filling breakfast consisting of a bowl of rice (100-150g) topped with nato, fermented soybeans, or topped with salmon. On the side they normally eat a small bowl of miso soup with tofu and seaweed. The rice and protein from their breakfast is filled with complex carbs so it takes hours to digest their breakfast. Thus, Japanese women are not famished at 10 am at work like I usually am.
Also, miso, tofu and nato are all soybean products which are ideal for women's bodies.

2. They don't snack. Snacking is not ingrained into their culture the way it is in America. One reason is because they eat mroe high-fiber, complex carbohydrate meals, so they don't need to snack as much. This also means that their aren't whole sections of thegrocery store devoted to chocolate trail mix and granola bars that claim to be all-natural but contain your daily sugar allowance.

When snacks are necessary, such as when visiting someone's home, they normally place on the table sembe (rice crackers), dried fish with almonds, or pickled plums. Much healthier than potato chips or honey roasted peanuts and not as tempting to eat an entire canister full.

3. Their diet does not consist of sugary, over-processed food. They eat rice, fish and soybean products everyday. Most women drink their coffee black. However, Japanese women do like desserts, but they usually eat small portions of high-quality of chocolate and custards from Godiva, Leonidas and pastry shops. The smaller portion of rich chocolate satisfies their craving so that they do not ravish an entire candy bar. This is the same principle at play to explain why when I worked next door to Godiva, I lost my insatiable craving for chocolate. And why TIME magazine just published research showing that eating sugar substitutes causes more sugar cravings and people tend to gain more weight.

4. They drink gallons of green tea fresh from the moutains of Japan. Green tea has shown to contain an abundance of antioxidants that prevent cancer and prevent signs of aging.

5. They eat many small portions of healthy food. A typical Japanese meal is a bowl of rice (100-200g), a bowl of miso soup with tofu and seaweed, a main protein (usually grilled fish or pork), pickled cabbage and daikon(giant raddish) and a small portion of seaweed and edamame(soy beans). Presented on a table, it appears to be an enourmous amount of food, but is a normal portion and healthy.

6. Japanese women eat slowly. Femininity and formal courtesy is thriving in modern Japan. Women take small bites, often covering their mouths daintily while they chew slowly. They never rush meals, at least not while other people are watching. Also, chopsticks naturally force diners to eat more slowly and to take smaller bites.

7. Food in Japan is all-around lower in calories than in America. It contains less preservatives and less ingredients (especially sugar). I noticed immediately when I first moved to Japan the difference even in frozen pizza, as if I had been eating MSG and lard my entire life and had suddenly ceased to ingest it. Food in Japan spoils faster and the fruits and vegetables are not waxed.

8. Japan has cheap, healthy fast food. McDonalds and the like are much more expensive than grabbing sushi and miso soup. In a rush, people go to 7-11 and grab unigiri (rice ball) filled with salmon, tuna, chicken or seaweed. Each unigiri (in various styles) are usually 180 calories and keep you full for a few hours. They only cost $1. Also at convenience stores: sushi, seaweed salad, fruit cups and a varitey of other low-fat, healhty meals.

9. Most women walk or ride their bicycles everyday. Although several million women own cars, the price of parking, gas and the headache of driving in Tokyo and other cities means that women usually walk ad take the train and leave their car in the overnight parking lot until weekend excursions. They walk or ride their bikes (often with one or two children sitting in bicycle seats) to the grocery store, their friends' house, work, everywhere that is considered everyday transport and places. Most areas in the city are hilly so women who walk even half an hour a day (almost impossible not to achieve) get enough cardio without going to the gym.

10. Japanese women eat only when they are hungry and finish when they are not hungry. Children in Japan are taught this in elementary school. They are given small portions of lunch and are allowed to have seconds after they finished everything on their tray. Restaurants ask how much rice a customer wants to be served. Typically a large portion of rice is the same as a small portion or about 30 cents more. But, people are expected to take only what they can comfortably fit in their belly. This is an attribute of Japanese eating I struggle with occasionally when the food is particularly excellent and I want to continue eating even after my buttons have shot off across the room.

Hitotoki

Lauren, the leader of my writer's group just turned me on to this amazing website featuring short anecdotes from a specific area of Tokyo, New York or London. The maximum for each story is 500 words, so you can read them in a few minutes. The criteria is that the story must relate to a specific area in the writer's city. A graphic provided by the author or from participating illustrators accompanies each story and the exact location is added to their city map. Readers can click on a specific marker on the map and stories pertaining to that area come up.

The writing is top quality and features an array of writing styles and story subjects.

So far they only have sites for Tokyo, NYC and London, but responsible editors that are willing to advertise and find writers and illustrators can start websites in their own cities with the help of the web designers that started the original site.

Support art by visiting the site, contributing a story or starting the site in a different city.

Check it out: www.hitotaki.org (Tokyo); www.hitotaki.org/london; www.hitotaki.org/newyork

Old Mixed With the New

Thousand year-old shrines and temples mixed with cyber cafes and high-speed trains is one of my favorite aspects of Japan (and many other countries). In my fairly modern neighborhood their are tiny makeshift shinto shrines on street corners and urban coves next to 7-11s and ATM machines.

Japanese people fit in perfectly by grasping firmly to their traditional culture: Shuji (Japanese calligraphy)is compulsory in school, most women study at least one traditional art form from tea ceremony, flower arranging to kimono dressing and traditional dance. Most families still go to a shrine or temple at midnight of January first together, and a stream of other traditions that will surely never die because they have been carefully preserved for hundreds or even some for thousands of years.

On the other hand, Japan is a first world country. Six year-olds have cell phones, grandmothers text message people on the train, mothers drive their kids around in luxury cars and teenagers hang out in cyber cafes, watch movies and TV on the train and streets via PSP and other portable devices; Sixty year-old business execs walk the streets listening to their iPods. But then, they all go home, serve rice and sake to their ancestral shrine, burn incense, teach piano in their homes and drink green tea often on the floor.

Last night I ate dinner at my Japanese grandparents' house like I do every Monday night. They are the manifestation of the ambiguous modern traditionalists. Junko teaches piano in her home, wears only pink and blushes if you mention snoring (that's so personal, she says). Ken (retired stock broker) teaches shuji, paints beautiful architectural pieces that have been featured in major galleries in Japan, and studies obscure Japanese kanji no longer in use.

My Japanese grandmother hates cooking, but her traditional side is forced to hide this fact. She always buys prepared food and serves it on beautiful plates and tells people that she cooked it. Last night my grandfather made an amazing stew. Then my grandmother put frozen pizzas in the oven. I came in to help her as she was cutting pizza slices with scissors--scissors! I laughed and brought the pizzas out. When I came back in to carry more, she had a bowl of macaroni salad that she had obviously dumped into the serving bowl from a plastic store container. She insisted that she had made it in even as I pointed to the mayonnaise-lined container on the top of the garbage can. She shrugged and laughed.

In any culture, old traditions are usually hard to bury. But in Japan, the stark contrast between long-standing customs and modern lifestyles and technology is unique.

American English

Not until I moved to Japan did I realize that non-American English speakers use different language. I do not mean accents, but the vocabulary of especially British English can be much different. Thankfully, because of American movies and TV, most Britons and Australians will translate their words into American for me--not usually necessary anymore I am proud to say. Since I have no close American friends in Japan, I have had to conform to non-American English.

Off the top of my head: they say trousers instead of pants; Pants means underwear; Capsicum means green pepper; Aubergine means eggplant; Prawns are shrimp.

Indeed, I have learned more English in Japan than I have Japanese. Since words and language have always been my pique, I am reading Bill Bryson's Made in America. He has heavily researched why Americans speak such a different language to that of the British. There are several reasons, but it is not my intention to summarize the book in this blog. He also includes interesting tidbits about American history often starkly contrary to what we are taught in school. Much of what we have learned: Paul Revere riding on his horse announcing "The British are coming!" "Taxation Without Representation is Tyranny" and more never actually existed at the time they are said to have occurred, but instead were written by over-zealous historians one hundred years after the American Revolution.

I do want to share some funny names and sayings that existed in America:

Some Puritans in the seventeeth century gave their children atrocious names such as Flie-Fornication, Adulterina, Job-Raked-Out-Of-The-Ashes, Praise-God and Fear-Not.

Among Pilgrims (who arrived in America before the Puritans and are not part of the same religious sect) eccentric names included Fight-The-Good-Fight-of-Faith Wilson, Be-Courteous Cole, Kill-Sin Premble among others.

Some cities in California were once named Murderer's Gulch, Chicken Thief Flat, Git-Up-And-Git, Hell-Out-For-Noon and my favorite.....Puke and Shitbritches Creek.

Boogie woogie was a slang term for syphilis!

And, in the mid-19th century when Irish immigrants were prevalent espeically in New York and the MidWest, their rough bar behaviour rendered slang terms like "Irish Clubhouse" for a police station, "Irish confetti" for a brick and "Irish beauty" for a woman that had two black eyes.

Read Made in America by Bill Bryson if you like obscure history that enriches conversation at a cocktail party or dinner table.

Whale!!

I just finished my school lunch: A delicious array of rice balls, one filled with minute white fish with the eyes still intact and flecks of spinach. The other rice ball had pink pickeled radish and sweet beans called anko (the only food in Japan I can't stand). The rice balls (called unegiri) are eaten inside seaweed paper--literally--the texture is like eating paper. The rice was so dry that soup was served on the side with tofu and loads of veggies so that diners don't get rice lodged in their throats.

On the side was...Dah, dah, dah, dummm.......WHALE!!!

And it was really good! It must have been smoked leftover bits since they were tiny brown balls with a smokey flavor. Ironically, the teachers were talking about Green Peace as they were chomping down their delectable whale balls. I couldn't understand what they were saying, but they were laughing. I'll leave the interpretation up to you.

Now I can add whale to my gastric repetoire along with jellyfish, raw squid and octopus, raw horse, blowfish, pig blood (black pudding), chicken brain and loads of other nameless, extremely chewy things I've tried in Asia having not been able to read the menu.

I'm Back!

So much for diligently writing a daily blog! I was on holiday from work for nearly a month in which I did almost nothing except cook, eat of course, and watch movies with Glyn and Trev.

Glyn made the best meal that I want to tell everyone in the cyber world about. Fireworks went off in my mouth!

He lightly fried the outside of two chicken breasts. Then made a sauce out of ume-shu (Japanese plum sake), cream, garlic and mushrooms and cooked the chicken in the sauce. The sugar in the ume-shu carmalized making the cream sauce thick and flavorful, coating the chicken in sweet delectable ecstasy. He accompanied the chicken with roasted potatoes and carrots with garlic and pepper. You have to try this dish!

And then this morning I made an axcellent, healthy breakfast with left-overs in the fridge: Potato, basil, tomato, garlic pancakes. It was easy: Flour, water, one egg, chooped garlic, chopped tomatoes, chopped potatoes that had already been cooked, and fresh basil. I made them like pancakes in a frying pan. Then poached an egg and placed it on top of each pancake. Ta-da!

Enjoy!