Category: Uncategorized (page 6 of 6)

The tiredness of the journey begun to sweep over us. As she was asleep, she tended to tilt her head toward me. Each time I thought it could touch my shoulder, suddenly it stood upright as if she felt a sense of danger, disoriented, slowly leaning on the window of the bus―I was thinking about whether her strategy or not, even though the tour conductor spoke eloquently.

On the sunny afternoon, we were walking on pathways through the woods in Jiuzhaigou National Park. She grumbled about something. “There was a Russian man in my dormitory room before. He was too bothering. He asked me out so many times.” There she goes again. I thought. That was the simple way to stimulate jealousy of a man, who might accelerate his approach to her.

“We sat on a riverbank talking about astronomy. So exhausted, physically and mentally. Because I wasn’t interested in it, much less him.” While I supposed that she just wanted a man whoever he was, I made her look good. “You are popular, don’t you? Everyone wants to talk with you.” “Not really,” she smirked and looked a little tired, a long hike, maybe. 

When Vivid color came into view, Five Flower Lake, through gap in ancient trees, she got her second wind. So intense in the center, that it shed an emerald green luster that lost its color outward―the submerged tree trunks complemented its beauty.

The route from the park to Chengdu―the tour bus stoped by the resting area. We were enjoying browsing in the souvenir shop; loitering about then looking for gifts together, maybe drifting apart. When I went out from there, I spotted her talking with a young man of another tour group. They spoke English and exchanged WhatsApp IDs. After that, they started to walk side by side around the exhibit; She had dismissed me from her mind. In some ways I felt inferior to them—I could hardly speak English and was reserved with strangers. 

I got on the bus alone and sat down in my seat. After a while, I noticed that she came back and I did not pay her any mind, but she said, “You know what? He was a Taiwanese. We exchanged contacts. I’m wondering about visiting Taiwan someday.” “That’s good,” I said, not looking at her.

During the bus trip, at times she was glued to WhatsApp, Facebook or LINE(akin to Whats APP) on her smartphone. “Guess what? I’ll show you,” she scrolled through her phone. “This is him, a gross man in Thailand.” she muttered. I took a squint at the photo of a mediocre man, who would play with her feeling. “I wish to see him, I’m thinking over when I could … .” “Tomorrow,” I suggested. “No way … ,” she grinned and I laughed, not wanting to appear annoying. “Tomorrow, I’m going to Hong Kong. I’ll leave Chengdu no later than 9 am.” “Okay, I will see you off, uh … how about the lobby in the hostel?” she said. “I wish I could get up by then … .” “No biggie, take it easy.”

The next morning, I lounged on the sofa in the lobby, but she did not show up at that time. When I got to my feet and put my backpack on, the entrance door opened. “Oh, you were awake?” She stood there without expression on her face; I went out to catch a taxi, followed by her, “Yes, I ate ramen at a stall, five yuan (about $1 in 2016), very cheep but nice.” “You have to save your money, don’t you?” “Yes, After China, I am going up to the north toward Russia, stopping briefly in Xi’an, and in Mongolia where I’m staying at the ger.” “That’s good.” I raised my hand to stop a taxi, turning to her, “I’ll be in touch with you.” “Okay,” she nodded. 

I knew that a kind of woman flitted from one man to another. Nevertheless, I was glad that there were her replies to my mail, photos of pandas in Xi’an and the ger in Mongolia attached, but soon, I lost contact with her.

Three months later I received a mail from her. “How have you been? I was able to get to Larung Gar and Yarchen Gar, a city of East Tibet―I enjoyed the hot springs and the superb view. And then, through the Silk Road, I’ll come back to Kyrgystan, then, Tajikistan … . I sent you their photo. Tajikistan was the most beautiful view ever… .”  

I opened the photo folder―what a tremendous beauty. I pressed the reply mark: “Thank you for your message and photos… .” It occurred to me that, like mediocre men in Thailand, Russia, Taiwan and more, she would be somewhere comfortable. I erased the draft.

* Larung Gar and Yarchen Gar are most likely to be closed for foreigners.

I was at a hostel in Chengdu, an inland city of China, following the procedure for the tour. I felt someone stood by me. “Could I ask where you are going?” A voice was in Japanese. Turning, I saw a young woman in black dress, carrying a huge backpack on her back. The look of her―glossy black hair, her slender figure, and strength and grace.

“Not at all,” I went on. “Tomorrow, I’m going to Jiuzhaigou. I’ve heard of the lakes, crystal blue, very beautiful.” “Oh, let me see … ,” she took her wallet and zipped. “Oh, what should I do?” she juggled her traveling expenses. “I’ll just be a second.” After some consideration, she said, “Would you mind if I joined the tour, too?” I thought to myself: “ Of course”; I disguised my feeling and said, “If you are okay with me … .” 

In the afternoon, we headed for Jinli Street, Qing Dynasty style: temple, buildings, stores and shops. “I’m K, and you are?” I said. “My name is Miki(anonymous).” She was in her mid-twenties. A fine drizzle had started to fall. We were strolling about the streets, telling each other what we had been up to. She was eager to reach Larung Gar, the community of mostly Tibetan, and had gleaned its information. 

We had coffee together at a cafe. “Do you mind if I smoke?”she asked. “Go ahead,” I said and saw her light a cigarette, needing to reevaluate the woman. “What do you think of women who smoke?” I felt that she sounded me out, as many women do. She knew I did not smoke and that I could not say I really don’t like that. Naturally, I was considerate toward her. “I don’t mind.”

The night before the tour, we sat on the stools outside the hostel, conversing and waiting for a Japanese staff who has extensive knowledge of Larung Gar. When he showed up and begun to talk about it, she was engrossed in his story―so long a talking was boring, I just pretended to catch up with them, for I did not want to leave them alone.

Huanglong, “Yellow Dragon” in Chinese mythology, was inundated by tourists, almost Chinese. To get to the main scenic spot, we took the cable car up to the top. From there we started a very long walk. As we savored the ambience of the forest, she talked about her family, her work―free-spoken―and her experience in love.

“I’ve so far had more than ten boyfriends. I was now chasing a man, since the first time I met in Thailand. He is Japanese. He and I have similar values. Music, book, food and so on, in addition, ways of thinking. One evening, we drank until morning and made love … I thought he was now waiting for me. He said, ‘Let’s be together, just the two of us.’ Though, he divorced once and had a child.”

There was something flirtatious. Why did she get involved in me, despite her having been into him? It was also typical of a shallow woman who implied how popular she was in the way she showed off a large number of guys she had been with. She would never articulate my thought quality counts, not quantity, and that she only debases herself by saying that; somehow I missed my old girlfriend—a decent woman.

I could not stop thinking of the good old days. She was not such a foolish woman. She was beautiful and had inner strength. Whenever guys would have come up to her, she would have snubbed to them. I thought if she saw me with this fast woman, she would despise me―I felt like I had fallen low. Miki kept on talking about something, but I could not hear to what it was.

Meanwhile, we were approaching the main spot. The valley―like terraced paddy fields―housed plenty of turquoise pools, so crystal clear, that I could imagine a celestial dragon waded through underwater. We started to take photos of the scenery. I took photos of her and vice versa, however, and none of us said “Let’s take a picture together.”

In the late evening, we arrived at the hotel and sat down on the chairs in the lobby. The female tour staff called my name, holding out one key to us. “No, separately,” Miki said flatly. It was natural that the staff thought we were a couple. Then the staff asked, “Why? What make you inconvenient?” “We are ‘friends’,” she stressed the word with a serious look, as if she was a decent woman. “Exactly,” I said, without looking in her direction. The staff looked curiously at us and cocked her head.

It was drizzling as I walked along Hollywood Blvd.. “Hey dude.” A man’s voice said behind me. I saw the speaker with a skateboard under his arm. So sick. The man in street fashion with long, curly, black hair jogged toward me and said, “I saw you coming out of the hostel, where I stayed, too. I arrived in Los Angeles this morning. I’m new. Would you mind if I walked around together?” It was my first fresh encounter since I arrived in America and his English easy to hear. “Not at all. Let’s go,”I said.

In the afternoon we took the tour organized by the hostel. The sun was braking through the clouds. Hid name was Ivan (anonymous). The chemistry―he was warm and outgoing, and I was collected yet introverted―was somewhat good. Unlike his appearance, actually he taught English to elementary school students in Colombia, and so he often translated what I didn’t understand into what I could understand.

“K, watch me,” he put his skateboard on the edge of the water plaza against the background of the letters: BEVERLY HILLS. It was showtime―he wore his cap backward, stood on it, and begun to ease ahead balancing his body carefully. But I felt something was wrong. His board wobbled and tilted, and in no time he stepped to the water side; the water splashed and his pants wet. What is this all about? He cocked his head pulling up his pants.

We walked on for a while past the gorgeous houses. He begun to do that on the sidewalk again. It had not been for three seconds when he fell out from his board―five seconds at most. He overturned it countless time through trial and error as a beginner did, however, and the look of him―holding a well-used skateboard, dressing well in street style and his long hair blowing in the wind―was sophisticated. I tried to clear up what a conundrum.

Ivan said, “K, let’s go eat something before climbing the hill.” And then he started to talk to a Brazilian guy in Spanish with a laugh and bright; I was not a character to jump in by goofing around. At the same time I thought he must have pushed himself somewhat to speak to me―he had to use easy English in the way he did to a child. Following behind them, I felt as if I had been invited to make up the numbers.

At Hollywood/Highland station, the tour host taught us how to use the TAP(Transit Access Pass) Card. I struggled to reload my card alone, and while the others had gone through the ticket gate. “K, what’s up?” I heard the voice of Ivan from the other side and almost immediately he came back to me―that was a relief.

The path to Griffith Observatory climbed steeply. We hiked in the group: three men from Mexico or Brazil, except for Ivan, were quiet and a woman from Australia was always full of energy and dancing. Ivan was quite the social butterfly and got along well with her, however, and once he begun to hang out with the other groups, there was an awkward tension in my group.

I acted on my own in the observatory, for it was a little hard for me to fit in the others. “K,” Ivan came out of the blue with the energetic woman. “You ‘disappeared’ on the way, l’d been looking for you,” he said. “Oh, I’ll take photos for you.” I thanked him, had photos taken and walked with them. Seeing him and her joking around and playing together, I become a little distance in order not to get in the way of them―time with me would be fun for him? I wondered.

When I was refreshed after the shower that night, I saw the tattoo on his arm and said, “Cool tattoo.” I did not know if I really thought so. Since I watched him skateboarding, he had looked dodgy. “Thanks. Do you like tattoo?” he said. “Yes, that’s art, but I can’t put it on my skin,” I went on. “In Japan, there are a lot of people who linked the images, in a word, outrage. It would also affect your career, even if it was invisible. There will come a time I’ll make money outside, then get tattooed.” I laughed at a little, but he looked puzzled and said, “I have never been to Japan, but interested in. I will come to see you someday.”―I thought he said that to just flatter me.

The next night, I played billiards with Ivan, who asked me, “Want to go for a drink?” “I would, but tomorrow, I was to leave here early in the morning,” I said. “All right, I will see you off,” he said and then I saw him leave the hostel with the Brazilian guy―my instinct told me that he would not do that: after the drink he may well sleep late.

I strolled around the glittering hotels in Las Vegas when I got email from him: “Hi, K! … I wanted to goodbay to you. But I didn’t know what time you leave. It was really great meeting you … .” That sounded like a clumsy excuse.

Over the next two months, we exchanged a few email. His email: “I hope to see you again.” “I miss the good days we shared in LA.” “I hope you are doing good!”―I sensed that I was just one of his many friend and, sure enough, I did not hear from him since I sent the photos in my trip to Vietnam.

In the winter of that year, there was an email from him … I replied to him less and less, until I no longer used that email account. 

Two years after I met him, I opened email inbox for the first time in a year: “Hello K! What’s up with you? You ‘disappeared’ again.” 

The second email: “Next June, I am going to travel to Tokyo. I am so excited about this trip, but at the same time a little sad, since you are not in Japan.”

Of my foreign friends he was the only one who has got in constant touch with me.

* I couldn’t speak English at that time, All conversations was not what I really said, but what I wanted to say.

I buy a cream puff at the cake shop every Sundays. A young patissier, who looks honest and obedient and would gave her fidelity to her boss, says, “How long dose it take to get home?” I say, “Five minutes, I’ll eat right away.” Next Sunday I buy a cream puff. She says, “How long does it take to get home?” I say, “Five minutes, I’ll eat right away.” Next Sunday I buy a cream puff. She says, “How long does it take to get home?” I say, “Not far, a few minutes,” next time, “I live near by,” then, “I eat immediately.”

I buy Alcoholic beverages at the supermarket. A middle-aded woman produced the laminated sheet: left, “I am over 20 years,” right, “I am underage.” “Please point with your finger,” she said in a lively voice. I deliberately made me languid, putting my right index finger on left side. “Thank you very much,”she smiled. By behaving cheerfully, she seemed to think the customers would be comfortable. She has a serious misunderstanding and would be too old to understand it. She was an epitome of devoting her task “with no thinking.”

The patissier’s same question seemed to go on endlessly and every time I buy alcohol, I was told to point with my finger(in one country, I presented my ID when buying alcohol, but next time no showing simply because they remembered me). They irked me to reply―why can not they remember my face? Of corse, she knew, but had a reason she must ask me, because her boss said to do that. She just does exactly what her boss tells her to do.

One Sunday, as usual, the young patissier said, “How long does it take to get home?” I was about to blurt out: “You can tell by looking at me.” or “You don’t need to ask me.” or “Are you stupid?” But, I could have been too kind to say anything, for she was likely to adhere to what I said altogether―she would try to keep silence, even if I showed up looking different as usual.

In any case, if I had said that, I would might had sunk this lady’s heart to the bottom of an abyssal sea―the customers is always right in Japan, and while she can not defy her superior, so docile to authority, that her brain “stopped thinking”―changing her words, “You live just around corner, don’t you?” or “You need an ice pack?” or else no asking. Too easy.

Most of the clerks at the supermarket, except for that cheerful middle-aged woman who can not read customer’s feeling, seemed to be fed up the store’s rules. In a common room, they would say: “Why must we ask that every time?” “Can’t we just do this once?” “I’m sure you will be sick of being asked.” ―it is only natural that they think so.

Eventually their boss would say, “If you inadvertently sold alcohol to a minor, how will you take responsibility for it?” Now that he said that, no one said anything more. Zero risk or minimizing it is a top priority for Japanese who be afraid of being held accountable. Therefore, they have no choice to obey him and demanding zero risk make them blind to other important things.

One evening, as I stood by the register to pay, I overheard the small talk of the family in front of me. “That young man never show us the sheet,” an elderly woman went on. “From now on, I will stand in the line where he is.”

He did not present it to me, and so next time I saw him, I was going to casually observe him. He was attentive to customers. Once he knew I had my own bag, he never asked if I needed plastics bags; naturally the others always did that, because their boss told to. 

When there were no customers lined up at his register, light on his feet, he led me in the other line to him—I wanted to say this was not where he was.

“Sawatdii, kha.” The beauty jumped into my eyes―no artificial, genuine. It was shining through―how she grew up, how she was polite to others, what kind of education she got. Two female flight attendants bowed to me with their fingertips brought together, before I got on the plane. There were male ones who looked handsome with great figures. They looked totally different from the Thai I had imaged.

Suvarnabhumi Airport―the youth, the energy, the animation―was such a contrast to Fukuoka Airport where it was quiet and calm that I wandered around to enjoy the atmosphere. It was just five days after I left the company―a cliché, “take action,” inspired me―and the first time to go abroad alone.

I had hit a snag with the ATM because I could not read English. I failed to withdraw cash so many times, that I asked a bank teller to show me how to use it. When she tried to instead of me, the card was already locked. I became bewildered; she connected me to a man who could speak Japanese. “Go to the Japanese Embassy,” he said in broken Japanese. She was back at the reception counter, no longer dealing with me, but I made an asking motion to her. “Embassy,” she said in a terse manner.

Bangkok was flourishing not far behind from Tokyo. I strolled about the town, touted by bike taxi drivers, looking at the map attached to the tour guide book, not MAPS.ME. (Online maps that I didn’t know was popular among backpackers in 2016.) A luxury car passing by me, I entered a shopping center, where many young people in stylish clothes enjoyed the moment.

When I got to the bank floor, one teller at window of a bank caught my eye―she crossed her legs, with her hands fiddling with her smartphone and her elbows on the desk. I asked her to change yen into baht. For five seconds, she didn’t look away from her phone, and there was an awkward silence. After that she put it on desk reluctantly as if to be prevented from watching Youtube, and got down to work; I was completely astounded. Simultaneously, I was jealous of the society that tolerated this. In Japan I had to carry tasks consistently, lest I was thought to be lazy, even if I had free time at work.

Wat Phra Kaew was packed with Chinese who took photos with their smartphone: Huawei, Samsung, Apple. It never occurred to me these were ubiquitous, regardless of generation. I had never used smartphone because in Japan (2016), flip phones, as faxes, was not obsolete. I recalled the small talk: “They lag behind Japan, doesn’t they?” “Dose they know smartphone?” He said with contempt, even though he had never been abroad. It dawned on me that I needed to get with the times.

I saw a woman with a stick taking a selfie by adopting an ostentatious pose like an actress. That looked like a great time for her. As for Japanese, she could care how she looked to others―to the extent that not asserting was her virtue: modest and graceful as what a woman should be like.

Bangkok was so hot and humid, that I decided to take the tour to Koh Larn, a little island. In the van, I encountered two Japanese young women. During the tour, they were always near the Thai tour guide, who spoke Japanese well. I heard her say in an authoritative tone: “Carry my bag instead of me,” “Go get juice for me,” “What a sick fashion!” They seemed to look down on him. I thought to myself: what do you think you are? If he were a Westerner, could they have had such a demeanor? 

In contrast, they were polite to me: ’Excuse me,’’ before they spoked to me, “You’re really good at jet ski,”as flattery. I had a complex feeling that I didn’t get along with them―changing their attitude depending on the person―and while I was never treated me unpleasantly. Sense of recognition that I cared only about myself, or I didn’t care for others. Basically, Japanese could be unwilling to help a person who was picked on at school or workplace because doing that meant that you were the next victim.

Early this evening, to go watch Calypso Cabaret Show, whose performers were the ladyboys, I got on the BTS (sky train), overwhelmed by glittering ads playing on big screen with blasted sound. I saw most of passengers were young, a student group talking, a man having a chat on his smartphone, a woman putting on makeup carefully―carefreeness in chaos. I pictured that Japanese train was dominated by middle-aged persons who was exhausted from work. If he took such behavior, they could felt unpleasant or tell him off for it―what they call manners in public order.

On the boat from Sathorn Pier to Asiatique the Riverfront, city lights at night that were extravagant attracted me. I was strolling through the night market that was full of life. There were a lot of the small shops selling creative goods. Some people neglected her work, chatting and laughing and others sat behind a shop counter, eating or sleeping. I felt sorry for the technical intern trainees from southeast Asia working in Japan; they were obliged to do with a sense of tension. 

At night, I heard EBM playing from a distance, it was obvious that the excitement around Silom station, and there were a lot of stalls crowded a mixture of young tourists and local people. In a smell of burning in the air, we sat around eating Hainanese chicken rice, drinking and talking. And then I walked toward the stall that sold Banana Roti I was really into. As I watched him making it, there was a beautiful woman stood beside me.