We got up early once again in order to eat our last big breakfast at the phenomenal hotel buffet. Our plan for the day was simply traveling by air from Cairo to Luxor, and we had plenty of time to make the flight. So we ate the biggest breakfast yet, and then said goodbye to all that great food and went back to our room to pack. Our last hours in the hotel room meant final charging and downloading to our phones, and using the toilet because, well, just in case. It is always good to be near a clean, functioning toilet while traveling.

I found a taxi service on the Internet that would pick us up at our hotel and take us to the airport, and it was a lot cheaper than both the hotel service and the price that yesterday’s taxi driver had quoted. The best part was that there was no negotiation and hassle – I knew the price going in and that is what I would pay. We made a taxi reservation for noon. After checking out we walked outside with our suitcase, and our taxi driver from yesterday came running up to us hoping to drive us to the airport. He must have been waiting there all morning to try to catch us when we left the hotel. I told him we made other arrangements and the sad look he gave us just about broke my heart. The big, bad Internet squashes another small family business. Just about then our ordered taxi pulled up, and to his credit our clearly disappointed ex-taxi driver gave us a warm handshake and said goodbye and to enjoy the rest of our trip.

Our ride to the airport was with a service called London Taxi Cab, and they actually sent a black London-style taxi cab to pick us up. We sat in the back in a huge passenger area, and the driver silently drove us to the airport – no haggling, no discussion, but also no Egyptian hip-hop or hot coffee. The driver was very skilled and the ride to the airport wasn’t that far through the brutal traffic. On the freeway we encountered bumper to bumper traffic, and that slowed us down a bit. We were even rear-ended lightly by a medium sized truck at one point. Our driver sighed, stopped the car, and went out to talk it over with the other driver. Apparently this is no big deal, and after a very calm discussion he got back into our cab and continued driving, without making any comment to us. It was a minor bump, but we tried to recall just how extensive our traveler’s insurance was. Things could easily have been a lot worse.

He dropped us off at the airport, I gave him a little tip that seemed to surprise him (thanks for getting us in a car accident!?), and then we approached the entrance to Cairo Airport. We were using the domestic terminal, and I have never seen a more disorganized and unnecessarily complex security system in my life. I was glad we weren’t in a hurry to get anywhere. What a mess.

It started with the front door. Even before we enter the departure terminal, they are checking to see that each person has a paper ticket. We don’t have paper tickets, we have e-tickets. We need to show the guard our passport along with a screen on my phone that shows the flight number and luckily I have prepared an offline e-ticket and we get past the first hurdle. If I didn’t prepare that, what would have happened?

The next hurdle is a security check. This is before our check-in, which is an extra step of security that we’ve never seen before. Here there is one line for all departures for the entire terminal, but fortunately it is only 10-20 people long. We need to take off our shoes and jacket, and put them on the x-ray conveyor belt with our suitcase, electronics, etc. We line up to do that but there is a lot of discussion between the security workers and the passengers. The shoes, jackets, suitcases, electronics, and pocket change have all been through the x-ray machine long before their owners get to pass.

One cultural point we noticed was that anytime there was a person in charge helping someone, it was perfectly OK in Egypt to walk up while that person was helping someone else and ask them some question or make a request. Rather than refusing the request or pointing to the end of the line, the person would always handle that request, interrupting their previous activity. Then there was a visible point where you could see them trying to remember what they were doing before. This wasn’t just at the airport – it was everywhere. These “side conversations”, as Kuniko called them, caused lots of delays and inefficiencies, and led to a very long wait to get through our current security situation. At the front of our security line there were lots of people walking up and asking questions, and all these questions needed to be resolved before the next person could pass security. It was fascinating to watch.

For added excitement, suddenly a young woman sprinted to the front of the line, and shouted in English to the people waiting that she was about to miss her flight so she needed to get by. Many of the people waiting started to debate with her, and security guards were further confused, and … I think you get the picture.

We finally made it to the front of the line, and the guards were not satisfied with our e-tickets – they wanted paper. He held our passports and demanded paper tickets, and so I showed him the e-ticket, but this time he said it didn’t have both our names on the ticket. More people came to have a side conversation with the guard, and he forgot about us, and when he came back to us he said, go ahead. After we left with our stuff and lined up at the check-in counter we realized that the guard was still holding our passports, so Kuniko ran back and retrieved them. All this before we even check in to our flight.

Luckily, after this we were able to get paper boarding passes for our flight to Luxor. Using those we passed through the next security check, this one a little easier since our luggage was now checked in. We had arrived a little early at the airport to look around and survey the souvenir shopping situation, but things were grim here in the domestic terminal. We couldn’t leave to visit the other terminals, and so we were stuck in a waiting area with only a small shop. The good news was that they sold beer and wine. So we calmed our nerves with a couple of cold ones and relaxed until our flight time. The beers were expensive here – almost eight times the price that we paid in the secret liquor store back in Dokki. I think the only people buying beer here were either rich foreigners or the truly desperate secretly drinking locals – either way, no price was too high.

It was a simple one hour flight to Luxor, and by the time we arrived, night had fallen. It is always a little more scary to arrive at a new city in the nighttime – it has been that way for us since our visit to Florence, Italy for our honeymoon. The darkness makes you a bit nervous, but the next day in the daylight everything seems perfectly normal and safe.

We picked up our suitcase and above the baggage claim carousel was a sign saying the expected taxi prices to the center of town, which I thought was a very nice touch. The price said 60 pounds, so I prepared to pay around that after haggling. We talked to a taxi driver outside who started negotiation at 200 pounds, and I laughed out loud and kept walking. He chased me down and offered 150 pounds, and I said that the best I could do was 100 pounds. He acted like I was kidnapping his children at gunpoint, but he motioned to the car and we were off. Later I heard that the price of gasoline in Egypt had recently shot up 50 percent because of some kind of austerity deal, which meant that the sign that we had seen quoting taxi prices was a little out of date. Our taxi driver told us all about it, but I didn’t believe him until I confirmed it later on the internet.

It was a short drive to the Sofitel hotel, and we looked out the window and saw a much smaller city than Cairo. We went through a little mini security gate, and then checked in to our hotel without any issues. The hotel was a bit past its prime but the price was right and the grounds and location were exceptional. When we arrived there were two pastries waiting on a nice dish for us as a welcome, and we thought it made a good first impression.

The Sofitel was located one or two minutes’ walk from a sightseeing spot that I wanted to see, Luxor Temple. We drove by it on the way in and it was beautifully lit up and looked pretty dramatic. Since it was so close, we left our bags behind in the room and set out.

Outside our hotel there was a big group of touts waiting for us. They were trying to sell rides on horse-drawn carriages, taxi rides, trips to a nearby market, their guide services to local sites, and who knows what else. You could tell there was a big drop in tourism recently because these guys were desperate – more than we had seen anywhere in Cairo. As we walked we were followed by six or seven touts, two horse-drawn carriages, and even a couple of little kids. We were like walking ATMs, and interest was high. The touts spoke really good English, and they told the same jokes over and over to try to get your attention (“Want to ride in my Ferrari? It is one horsepower!”) We tried “No, thanks” repeatedly but after the tenth time it appeared to be ineffective. The touts wouldn’t let up.

Eventually we walked near a police checkpoint and then they ran off. I asked the police which way to the entrance to the temple, and they smiled and gestured off towards the northwest, so we walked along in the direction they indicated. We walked around the area back and forth a few times, and even went into a mosque by accident because we could not find the entrance. Many locals were sitting around the square in front of the temple, and men would constantly come up to us trying to sell their goods or a ride in their carriage. It got to the point where you were almost saying “No, thanks” as people walked up to you, which I think was frustrating for them as well as us – a real-life lose/lose situation. One younger kid eventually told us where to find the entrance, and we were so sure that he would demand money for the information that we almost flinched away from him. He didn’t ask for money though, and continued on his way. It is too bad the touts were so aggressive in Luxor because I’m sure that most people were kind-hearted and just wanted to help.

The Temple of Luxor was illuminated at night, and thanks to the advent of LED lights the structure was beautiful. They could position the tiny lights in various places to produce a highlighting effect on the carvings of the hieroglyphics in stone. You could really see the details and for us it was our first chance to really see and touch actual hieroglyphics. These are messages from people a long time ago, and you are free to run your hands over them. I got a little chill when I did. There are tall pillars throughout the temple, and also big statues of pharaohs standing guard here and there. Running from the temple all the way to the Temple of Karnak (which we visited later) ran the Avenue of the Sphinxes – which was just as it sounds – a wide walkway that had a Sphinxes lining each side. The Sphinxes were quite close together – hundreds of them stretching out of sight to the north – and it was interesting to imagine it in its heyday. It must have been a grand way to arrive at the temple.

Inside the temple were more detailed hieroglyphics, but unfortunately there were also local men standing around ready to point things out. Apparently this is a way to make money – stand there, point out some details to the tourists, and then ask for money. Some “guides” were quite physical and actually tried to hold your arm and pull you towards an engraving they wanted to talk about. When we go to museums and sightseeing spots we like to see it at our own pace, so we pulled away from the grabby hands of the locals and told them no thanks. They saw it as income lost, but we didn’t care so much about giving out the money – it was just that we wanted to control our experience ourselves. We bumped into these “guides” at every tourist spot in Luxor, and it served to remind us just how bad things have been for the tourist industry here. These were desperate men making money the only way they knew how.

After getting our fill of the temple, we left and walked into another part of town to get something to eat. There was a big loudspeaker tower nearby, broadcasting the sharp voice of a man speaking Arabic. Was it the president of the country making a decree? An announcement of military restrictions on travel outside of town? Maybe a bake sale at the local community center? Who knows, but the big booming voice and the military vehicles parked here and there made it feel like a scene from a military dictatorship. Just my imagination running wild, I suppose. I liked the feeling – this was adventuresome travel.

Not far from the temple we found a large restaurant that looked promising, with a big menu that had an English version. The manager urged us upstairs and we sat at a table in the center of a big room, with a few young couples around us. We chose from the menu, ordering a kofta plate and a small pot of simmered vegetables and garlic. It ended up coming with a soup, salad, hummus, bread, and the main dishes even had a little candle made from colored peppers to set the mood. I like the way the manager snapped his fingers at his staff and put them in position to serve us correctly each time. The manager talked with us a little and he seemed very grateful for the business. The food was quite good – better than we expected – and although we were expecting a padded bill at the end it was priced exactly like the menu said it would be.

We walked back to the hotel which was just a few minutes away. The touts still tried hard to get us to submit to a horse-drawn carriage ride, but we kept up our wall of “La, shukran (No, thanks)” and eventually they lost interest. Just as we arrived at the hotel, a ten or eleven-year old boy walked by pulling an unhappy donkey with a rope. The donkey was reluctant to move on and was digging in with its feet. The boy sighed, lit up a cigarette, and jumped on the poor animal’s back, and they took off. Donkey and rider zig-zagged across the road as honking cars swerved around them, and then they disappeared into the night. It was sort of a surreal end to our day.

We woke up on Christmas Day, looking forward to another day of sightseeing and of course that big breakfast buffet waiting for us on the second floor.

Originally I had penciled in a trip to the Egyptian Museum for today to see the artifacts, mummies and masks collected in Egypt over the years, but Kuniko noticed that our next hotel in Cairo at the end of the trip was located right next door to the museum.  So we postponed the museum for later, and instead decided to go visit some mosques around Cairo.

After a big breakfast of omelets, hibiscus juice, and plenty of fruits, bread and cheese we left the hotel and hired a driver on our own to take us to the Muhammad Ali Mosque in southeastern Cairo. The mosque is part of a fortress on a hillside overlooking the city, and it is pretty dramatic to see from a distance with its two bold minarets sticking up from the building. Since we were visiting several other sights in the area we went ahead and hired the driver to take us around to the next few places too. He was being deliberately vague about the price – “Pay me what you want to pay,” he said. Ugh.

He dropped us off at the base of the fortress complex, and we walked in on our own, past a few police checkpoints and military vehicles. Some soldiers attached to the security detail stood behind an upright bulletproof plate for cover, and a few soldiers wore ski masks to hide their identities from the local people. I felt safe the entire trip but it was a little unusual for me to be around so many soldiers and machine guns in my day to day activities. I guess like anything else, people get used to it.

The Muhammad Ali Mosque was quite impressive. The structure was made from beautiful stone and marble, with tilework and stained glass throughout. Unlike Catholic cathedrals through Europe the use of stained glass was more restrained, but when they used it they used it to great effect. Similar to other mosques there were lights and chandeliers hanging from the tall ceiling on chains, and light streamed in from some open windows on one side. The interior was big enough that one or two birds had taken residence. Outside the mosque we came across a booth with two young men distributing literature on Islamic religion, and they were very polite and friendly to us as we walked by. I imagine they would have a tough job doing that in some Western countries. Across from the mosque was an open area offering a dramatic view of the city of Cairo. We could even see the Pyramids, and even in the distance they gave an exotic look to the city.

We walked back down the hill to meet our taxi driver at the agreed time. Since we had arrived a bit early, we had to wait a few minutes, and other taxi drivers were chomping at the bit to steal away his customers. One guy offered to take us right now, and to charge us less than what we had promised to pay our driver. I told him that we’d stick with our agreement, and he understood, but told us that he’d be hanging around if our driver was late and he’d be happy to take over. I realized what a risk our driver was taking by letting us pay at the end – there was no real guarantee that we’d stick around – but I supposed he could probably find us back at our hotel since that was where we met him originally.

Soon enough our driver returned, and he took us to a few more mosques that were nearby that we wanted to see. At the entrance to the mosques there was a ticket booth – we were apparently the first customers, and when we paid the cashier made a big production about not having any change. She counted out some of our money back and then waited to see if I still wanted the rest. I kept my hand out, and she peeled a couple more bills off the roll she had in her hand, and stopped and said that was all she had. A bit hard to believe, but it was my fault for not breaking up the larger bills that I was carrying. Lesson learned, and she got an extra 30 pounds ($1.50) for her efforts.

The second mosque wasn’t quite as dramatic as the previous one, but next door was a third mosque that was really impressive. It had Skyrim-esque design with dark hallways, vaulted ceilings, and beautiful natural lighting running through some areas. The center of the mosque was open air, and again there were lanterns hanging from long chains attached all the way up on the ceiling way above us. I wondered how much they moved around during windy days. At each mosque there were people waiting to take our shoes so that we could walk in barefoot. Each shoe are “watcher” was also expecting a tip. Unfortunately my large notes were useless here, and I had to resort to giving the only small denominations that I had: 1 pound coins.  The staff were less than thrilled, but there wasn’t a lot I could do except cheerfully thank them.

Our last stop with our taxi driver was a popular “garden” that was recommended online. It was kind of a park, and it was landscaped nicely so that local people could walk around and get a break from the busy city. Mostly it was occupied by young couples, and I’d guess that it is some sort of romantic ritual to walk through this garden with the one you love.  Even in the late morning there were couples walking around in the nice weather. As far as parks go, to be honest, we’ve seen better and the place didn’t hold a lot of attraction for us.  Soon enough we went back out to our taxi driver who was patiently waiting, and he took us back to our hotel where I paid him what I hoped was a fair wage. I’m sure he did all right.

We took a little break at the hotel, making sure to get enough relaxation between meals and sightseeing. A big part of this trip was to decompress and get away from our routines back in Japan, and I think we did a pretty good job of it in Cairo. While we lounged around the hotel we did notice that there seemed to be a lot of power outages. The power would cut off and then on again immediately, two or three times, and then be OK for the rest of the day. Then the next day it would happen again. I don’t know if this was limited to our hotel or if it was happening everywhere, but it was a little odd, especially at night when all the lights blinked out momentarily.

After a little downtime we went back out on the street to do some sightseeing outside of the Dokki area and get some exercise walking around. We headed east out of our neighborhood (we were already thinking of it as “our” neighborhood) and past the tall, striking Islamic Bank with the penis shaped logo, and then we were crossing the bridge over to Nile to see the Zamalek district of Cairo.

Believe it or not, the same guy from yesterday who was supposedly getting married came up to us, asked us where we were from, and started the same spiel as yesterday. Where is your hotel, I know a guy who lives in Toronto, etc. At first I thought it was a different guy because there was no way that the same guy wouldn’t recognize us, right? I thought that he kind of looked like that guy – but Kuniko confirmed it – this was the same dude. We knew what was coming so we said we had to run and we (almost literally) ran off to the east and left him behind. It would have been fun to tease him about missing his wedding today but I just wanted to move on and see more of the city.

The Zamalek district is located on an island in the center of the Nile River, and was recommended online as an area that is a bit unique with more of a European, young, and nightlife-oriented vibe to it. We walked almost the length of the entire island, past upscale hotels, restaurants on big boats permanently moored on the Nile, and a couple of members-only sports clubs. The area was filled with nice places, but the streets were the same as elsewhere – full of cars and in disrepair. It was not easy to walk anywhere in Cairo as the city is really designed for cars not pedestrians, and Zamalek was no different. We eventually made our way to neighborhoods that did feel more European, and the number of restaurants and shops increased dramatically. I got the feeling that lots of foreign tourists stay in the area.

We were looking for a particular restaurant for lunch, called Abou El Sid, and when we found it the big doors were firmly closed and there were no windows to confirm whether it was open or not. We figured that it was closed (later we found out that it wasn’t) and went to our second choice restaurant, called Zooba. We entered the place and instantly liked it. The feel of the place was younger, with the strong smell of cumin and other herbs floating around. We sat at a table and across from me a cook was serving up big spoonfuls of koshary for to-go orders coming in on the phone. We ordered a tray of hummus with harissa, and two Egyptian flatbread (kind of like whole wheat pita bread) sandwiches. One was a taamiya (falafel) sandwich and the other had mainly herbed beef with spicy eggplant and onion. The hummus came with several rounds of flatbread to dip in there, and we drank a bottled juice/tea with everything to balance the flavors. It was a great meal, and once again very affordable.

Filled with food we decided to forgo a taxi and walk all the way back to the hotel, using regular streets and our downloaded street map on my phone. It turned out to be quite an adventure. We’d have to walk in a single file line sometimes to squeeze between cars, other times we’d try to cross fast-moving streets of traffic. I would cross and then realize that I left Kuniko behind (or vice versa). We stepped across broken sidewalks, through construction zones and empty cement buildings, over feral kittens playing on the corner, and around kids who bounced balls to each other and called out “Hello” to us in English.  We spent almost an hour walking, and it felt great. We were really getting accustomed to the flow of the city and the streets, and by the time we made it back to our Dokki neighborhood, we felt like locals.

Cairo was a place that really felt “foreign” to me – the only other time I felt like this was when we traveled in India. We enjoy that foreign feeling – it is one of the reasons that we travel to begin with. Traveling around Europe or through Asia there are a lot of similarities, but Cairo felt like a new category for us. I guess it made sense, since it was our first time in Africa.

Back at the hotel we put up our tired feet, had some hotel coffee and Christmas chocolate, and rested until dinner time. According to the internet there was a nearby branch of the restaurant that we had failed to enter, “Abou El Sid”, so we set off to go try it. Unfortunately when we arrived at the place on our map and searched the street we couldn’t find it. Maybe it was there, maybe it had moved, maybe the internet had bad information. We just rolled with it and search around the neighborhood until we found a sit-down restaurant that offered stuffed pigeon on their menu. The place was called the Saber Grill, and as we walked up the stairs to our dinner table we had to pass the cooks and a big cooking area with their dishes on display. Everything looked delicious. All that walking had built up our appetite.

We had the pigeon stuffed with herbed rice, and a chicken and rice roll that looked a little better than it tasted. The chicken roll was good but not revolutionary. The pigeon was good though – pretty bony as you might expect, but the skin was nicely browned from the rotisserie and it went well with the vegetables that came with it. As we ate our dinner one of the waiters laid out a prayer mat and started praying nearby. Staff at the restaurant were very friendly to us – they had a good sense of humor and they were nice enough to chat with us in English while we ate. It was a fun time considering we chose the place almost at random.

As we walked back to our hotel after dinner I would stop occasionally to take a photo of something interesting. At one point I stopped to take a picture and a young woman walking by was so distracted by watching me take the photo that she stumbled off the curb unexpectedly and Kuniko had to help her recover her footing. There were not a lot of tourists in Dokki and everywhere we made a big impression.

We headed to bed after another busy day – 24,000 steps according to our pedometer.

We woke up early on Christmas Eve, eager to go out and do some sightseeing. The first step was to go downstairs and get breakfast, as it was included in the hotel reservation anyway. I’m usually not a big fan of breakfast, but during the vacation it can be a nice way to start the day.  We showed up right at 5:30 a.m., and we walked into the restaurant to a huge spread of breakfast items. The room was filled with a huge buffet – rows and rows of cheeses, fruits, cereals, breads, sweets, yogurts, and even lots of hummus and Egyptian spreads full of tomato, garlic, herbs and nuts. Our favorites were the big bowl of dates, and the guava juice was really delicious – sort of a tropical banana taste that really hit the spot. We were really impressed, and then we found out there was an entire other room next door that had all the hot foods, including a lonely chef waiting to cook omelets for the guests. We ordered some coffee and tucked in – what a meal! The good news was that this elaborate breakfast would be waiting for us the next two mornings as well.

In preparing for our trip we had read a lot about the scams, tricks and aggressiveness of touts in Egypt, and it was written that the ones around the Pyramids were the worst. We started mentally preparing for the trip out, and strengthened our fortitude and ability to say no. As it turns out it wasn’t as bad as I was led to believe, but it was no picnic, either.

We went down to the lobby to catch our taxi to the Pyramids at 6:30 am. The previous day I had arranged with the hotel concierge for a one-way taxi ride to the Pyramids. The concierge tried to sell us on a half day excursion, a Nile cruise, and various other activities but I just wanted a taxi – and paid for it through the hotel so there would be less hassle. Later I figured out that I didn’t really need to make appointments for taxis because the economy is so bad here that the taxis line up outside the hotels 24/7 hoping for foreigners like us to leave. But the front desk said that the taxi that we had paid for was just outside, motioning to the curb, and sure enough there was a taxi idling there. Kuniko and I walked outside to the taxi and asked about going to the Pyramids. The driver looked a little surprised but said he could do that and motioned to another guy walking up who was ready to drive. “Pyramids, no problem” said the newly arrived driver, and something felt off. I turned back to the hotel just as the doorman came out and pointed me down the street, where another taxi was pulling out of a parking spot. Oh, so that’s our taxi – got it. I said sorry to the guys who had been eager to get a job, and got into the taxi. Not a smooth system at the hotel for catching their cab.

Finally, with the correct driver, I instructed him on which entrance in Giza we’d like to use, and then we settled back to enjoy another frantic ride through Cairo traffic. The horns honked, the driver politely offered us some hot coffee that we politely declined (he held a glass filled to the brim with hot coffee, which looked like it was burning his fingers), and then he turned up the volume of some Egyptian hip-hop and we tore through the streets. Unfortunately our seatbelts weren’t working so we just kind of slid from side to side as we made our way across town.

We really liked the driver – he was much friendlier than the previous guy, and we also liked his taste in music. As we got closer to the Pyramids he pointed them out, and they looked strange looming over the local buildings. We got close to the gate, but the driver made an odd turn, took us down a narrow street that felt weird, and dropped us off in front of a shop.  Oh, I see – the old “kickback for bringing tourists” system. I was a little disappointed but I had heard that in Egypt this kind of thing happens a lot and you just have to push through. I tipped the driver a little money, and the driver thoughtfully pointed us towards the entrance a few minutes’ walk away.  We got out of the car, and I stepped around the shopkeeper who was trying to welcome me with his hand extended. I said, “La, shukran” which means “No, thank you” in Arabic, and walked around the car to get Kuniko and try to find the gate. Our sales clerk wasn’t giving up so easily though, and he followed behind us saying, “In Egypt when a man offers his hand for a handshake it is very bad to not shake his hand!” and more comments in an effort to try to get me to at least engage in his services. We just kept walking until we found the entrance.

If you try to make a mental picture of the entrance to the Pyramids, you might imagine a ticket office with a price board, a reception hallway filled with displays explaining the history of the area and outlining what you are about to see. You might even imagine some multimedia programs going on with interactive stuff for kids to play with while you waited in a long line to enter. And it was nothing like that.

The ticket office was just a small old building with three little windows that were boarded up when we arrived. The only reason we knew it was a ticket office was that there was a crowd of Egyptian men who pointed it out to us in the hope that we would give them some money as a gratuity. As we waited for clerks to appear at the windows, our sales guy, who had followed us all the way over from his shop, tried to sell us on a camel ride to the southern ridge, which apparently had a spectacular view of all the Pyramids together. Since we had no other place to escape to, we had to listen patiently to his pitch and then said no thanks. Not camels? How about horses? Eventually he sensed that we were not about to give in, so he suddenly put on a very human face, and explained that because tourism had dropped so significantly in Egypt he and his fellow shopkeepers were really hurting. He apologized for giving us the hard sell, and said that he hoped we enjoyed the sightseeing. I relaxed a bit when I finally saw a glimpse of the real person behind the sales pitch, but he couldn’t resist telling us that he’d be at his shop later if we changed our mind.

After a few minutes some young women wearing colorful headscarves walked through the crowd, opened a door to the small house and started selling tickets. There was no price list anywhere to be seen but inside a small chart showed the price for foreigners (120 pounds) and Egyptians (20 pounds).  We bought our tickets and then walked through a small security checkpoint. Then we went on in to see the Pyramids. We were the first people to enter, and there were only three or four people behind us in line. I guess it pays to get there early!

We walked up the mild embankment and were greeted with an expansive view of the Giza Plateau. Right in front of us was the Sphinx, and then behind it arrayed in a line were the three Great Pyramids. What I didn’t expect was quite a few smaller pyramids as well – varying in condition from good to falling apart. We had made it! It felt good to finally be here, and to be here pretty much alone was even better. We walked up the hillside to see the Pyramids up close. We spent time at all three of the biggest Pyramids, and they were even more impressive than I had imagined. They are huge, and it is hard to believe that tourists used to climb to the top of them – it certainly looked dangerous to me.

We spent a long time walking around the area and taking photos – it is quite large – and tried to burn off all the calories from our big breakfast. There was the option to go into the Pyramids themselves, but we had decided beforehand that it wasn’t something we wanted to do – I had read that it was a tight space, empty and not very interesting inside them. Later in the trip we would have a chance to enter the tombs of the Pharaohs in the Valley of the Kings, so we’d hold off on Pyramid spelunking. Just standing at the base of the giant structures and looking up at something that had lasted so long was humbling. The lack of other tourists made it feel even more special. To be alone with structures having 5,000 years of history – it made a big impact on me.

But we weren’t totally alone. Some touts had paid the admission fee to enter and brought a few camels with them. We were approached by camel riders offering a ride over and over again during our visit. Usually there are a lot more tourists, so all the touts had no choice but to concentrate on us. Thankfully we were in the desert so we could see them coming from a long way off. They couldn’t understand why anyone would want to walk when you could ride a camel. I had heard all kinds of horror stories about the tricks that they use to extract more money from their “guests” – paying a price to get on the camel and paying a much higher price to get down, to give one example. We weren’t interested and let everyone know that… “La, shukran.” There was even an old Egyptian lady with two little kids who saw us coming and then suddenly began struggling with a big bag, looking pleadingly at us for help. Why would an old lady be here in the middle of the Pyramid complex with a big package that she had apparently been able to manage until we arrived? These are the questions that you had to ask yourself before stepping unwittingly into an uncomfortable situation. Years of travel to other countries had really prepared us well for this trip.

Thoroughly invigorated from our walk among the Pyramids, we left the plateau after a couple hours, and found a taxi driver to take us back to the hotel. We negotiated a good price before getting in the cab, and he drove us back through heavy traffic. There was a pretty big car accident on the freeway blocking everything – a car had run right off the elevated expressway and they were trying to rebuild the guard rails while cars crawled by. The driver didn’t try to sell us anything or take us anyplace weird – just straight to our hotel so I gave him a big tip. I wanted to reward simple, professional service.  Back in our hotel we shook the desert sand out of our shoes, and spent some time resting up before setting off again.

Believe it or not we were hungry, and so Kuniko and I walked to a nearby kebab stand that had caught our eye the previous day and ordered some chicken kebab sandwiches. The shop was very casual and very cheap, and we sat in the back of the shop at a Formica table, eating off paper plates. Delicious! Our strategy when we are eating in a new country is to order lots of small things instead of one big meal, and so we left the shop in search of something else to eat.

For fun we walked east of the Dokki neighborhood to the banks of the Nile River. In this area the Nile split to surround an island, and so the river didn’t look quite as wide as you’d expect because you are seeing just half of it. We crossed big streets with fast moving cars – most intersections didn’t have pedestrian crosswalks or signals, and the streets that did have pedestrian signals simply never changed from “Stop”. You had to be brave and walk through the cars, trying to make eye contact with the drivers and judge whether they know you are there or not. It was very hard at first to cross the streets – but by the end of the trip we got better at it. It was kind of like crossing the street in Vietnam, but there it was only scooters you had to watch out for. In Egypt you had to watch for full size cars and trucks, which are a lot less forgiving.

As we were waiting to cross at one intersection a guy casually started a conversation with us. He asked where we were from and when I said Canada he said that he had a friend in Toronto (red flag #1). When we crossed the intersection he kind of tagged along making conversation. He asked which hotel we were staying at, and we told him our hotel name and he said that it was a coincidence because he works there as a painter (red flag #2). As we walked along he explained that tomorrow he is going to get married (red flag #3), and so he is running errands today before the big event. He was planning on driving to a village south of Cairo the next day for the ceremony. He asked us what we were doing at the moment, and since we weren’t really doing anything but walking around taking in the sights, we said as much. He recommended a market nearby (red flag #4), and when he said market I mentally envisioned a big open-air market with lots of food stalls where we could eat. He offered to show us the location and I said, “Sure, why not?” and we were off.  He led us down a few streets, still chatting the whole time and finally brought us to the doorstep of a painting shop where he said we could see his original artwork if we would just come inside and look (red flag #5).

It was at this point that I finally registered all those little red flags that individually didn’t bother me the first time. It is easy to look back at the situation now and see it all clearly, but this guy was clearly a professional at this and he did a great job luring me in like a plump fish. Fortunately we knew enough not to go into the shop to see “his” paintings and he subsequently tried to get us into another “antique” shop nearby, but we weren’t having it. He was visibly frustrated by our unwillingness to enter these shops (the shop owners pay him a “finder’s fee” for each potential customer he brings in) and asked us what we were looking for. We told him the truth – we were looking for food. I told him what we wanted to eat, and he looked defeated. He recommended walking in a particular direction for about ten minutes and there we would find a restaurant that he said was good. He told us that he needed to get going and take care of his “wedding preparations”, and then asked us if we’d like to donate something to commemorate the big event and thank him for all his help that he gave us.  I offered him 10 pounds (50 cents), which I felt was about how much I valued his “services”, but he actually asked me for 200 pounds.  I laughed and gave him 20 pounds (about a dollar) and wished him good luck with his wedding.

Throughout our trip we met people who would start a nice conversation, and sooner or later mention a store or a shop that they would like to introduce you to. It became kind of a running joke between me and Kuniko – we’d start to see people coming and know they had a shop to recommend. Soon we figured out ways to break off the interaction quickly and not waste their time or ours.  But it just goes to show how tough things are there for the local people and how gullible some tourists must be. It is easy to make fun of the approach now, but it worked on me to the tune of 20 pounds.

While walking around with our “guide” Kuniko had spotted a supermarket that looked promising, so now on our own we could go check it out. The Alpha supermarket wasn’t quite as nice as the Metro supermarket that we had visited earlier, but it had more Egyptian products (and fewer imported items). Just down the street from the supermarket was a tree-lined avenue with carts selling fresh fruits and vegetables. The quality of the produce varied, and cars weaved around pedestrians honking their horns to create more chaos, but we like those kinds of environments. There was even an old lady sitting on a box cutting up fish (without refrigeration), surrounded by five or six cats patiently waiting for scraps.

Along the street we found a restaurant with an outdoor kebab stand selling shawarma wraps. We lined up at the register to pay. An old lady behind us in line asked the cashier to translate into English that I was a “beautiful boy”. Thanks, lady! We ordered two wraps and watched the process of making them. The wrapping material was thinner and wider than a tortilla, with a squared-off notch in the bottom The cook put in some sauce and then lined the wrap with meat from the kebabs and vegetables and spices. Then he dipped one edge of the wrapped meat in the puddle of meat juice and oil standing at the bottom of the kebab pan, and fried them on a hot plate until the outside browned like a panini sandwich. He handed over a bag containing one chicken and one beef shawarma, and we headed back to the hotel to enjoy the bounty of good food. This takeaway style was pretty common in Cairo, and so we often got food to go and brought it back to our place to eat it. When we got back to the hotel we had received a small Christmas present from the hotel staff – little stockings full of Egyptian chocolates. That was kind of them. The chocolates were pretty good, too.

For dinner we went to a takeout place that looked good online, called Semsema. It was traditional Egyptian food served fast food style. The place was swamped with takeout orders, and we waited in a big group for our food to be completed. The staff noticed that we were waiting a longer time than most and started shouting at the cooks, and before we knew it the food was in our hands ready to go. We had ordered an assortment of different dishes – hawawashi (a sort of fried lamb sandwich), grilled chicken on cinnamon infused rice, croquettes filled with ground lamb called kobeba shami, and salted vegetable pickles as a palate cleanser. As we walked back to the hotel with the food we stopped at a liquor store to buy a couple of Stella beers, too. One lady watched us walking by and begged for money or food, and when I shrugged and kept walking she had a few choice words shouted at our back in Arabic. Thanks to all of the shenanigans that we put up with today we really started to get comfortable with how things go on the streets of Cairo. Each time we came back to the hotel we felt like it was the end of a little adventure, and it was very satisfying to walk the streets easily by the end of the trip.

So we enjoyed our feast in our hotel room, and everything was great. I was surprised how tasty the food was in Egypt, maybe because our expectations were so low. It was heavier food than we are used to eating, but we are on vacation after all.

For a long time, Kuniko and I have been considering a trip to Egypt. To see one of the ancient wonders of the world, to visit Africa for the first time in our lives, and to taste a food culture that we knew almost nothing about – it sounded like the perfect combination. Unfortunately, politics and safety played a large part in keeping us away for a long time. Just when we thought it was safe, Arab Spring rose up and put a big question mark on the future of Egypt.  We waited things out, and finally decided that this winter was the time to go.

My holiday began on Friday, but Kuniko had to go in to work and wrap things up with her students. That gave me a chance to leisurely clean up the house, prepare it for a couple of weeks without us, and then I went into Sannomiya to meet Kuniko at the bus stop. I bought a couple of cans of beer and some Jagarico – a potato snack that we’re addicted to – and then we hopped on the bus to Kansai airport. Surprisingly the bus wasn’t that full, and the traffic was light enough that we arrived on time.  We had dinner at a Chinese restaurant – dim sum and spicy chicken – and then a celebration cocktail at the airport café before heading to the gate. We flew on Emirates airlines, and they have a convenient flight every Friday night around midnight, which is perfect for our schedule and allows us to start the vacation right away on Saturday.  While we waited for our flight at the gate, we noticed a large group of students being led by a guide wearing a nametag that said “Megumi”. She looked a little stressed, and I wondered what she’ll look like after the trip – she was just getting started.

It was an easy overnight flight to Dubai, and surprisingly I got a lot of sleep. In the Dubai airport we killed time at a café drinking coffee and eating a shawarma wrap. We had one of these wraps the last time we were in Dubai on our way to Georgia, and they really got our attention. A warm wrap filled with spicy chicken, vegetables and yoghurt – yum.  It was a short layover in Dubai, so by the time we walked over to the gate they were already getting people on buses and taking them out to the airplane. We joined the crowd and got our seats onboard. The flight to Cairo was short, only three and a half hours, but there was a bit of drama on board. Around us were a lot of Chinese tourists, and they appeared to be rookie fliers. They switched seats with each other five or six times, they reached behind their seat and used our power outlet because they didn’t have one, they suddenly reclined several times causing the person next to us to get a lap full of coffee, and they fired up their own tablet computers and watched them with the volume on high so most of the front of the plane had to listen as well. I guess everyone is a rookie at some point, but it was still a little surprising to see the lack of awareness of the people around you. Maybe that’s just because I live in Japan where they suffer from maybe a little too much awareness of the people around them.

We flew into Cairo around noon local time on Saturday, but couldn’t really see anything interesting from the window as we landed. Immigration and customs were a snap and we could buy a visa-on-arrival for US dollars at a small bank window just before entering the country. There was no application to fill out, which was a little odd compared to other visa-on-arrival countries we have visited like Laos and Turkey. Once we got our suitcase, I changed about 50,000 yen into Egyptian pounds, and we got quite a lot of cash to carry out of there. The exchange rate was definitely in our favor here in Egypt.

During our research for the trip I heard that the taxi situation in Cairo (and Egypt in general) is particularly troublesome. Most taxis have no meter, and so you have to haggle over prices every time you ride. In order to avoid a potentially stressful start to our trip I had arranged a ride through the internet and paid in advance, and so we exited the arrivals gate looking for someone holding a sign with my name on it.  Unfortunately, no such person was there.

Of course there were plenty of other people standing around looking to make money. But I had already paid for my ride – I just had to find it. There were some desks for taxi services inside the building, but the company that I had reserved didn’t have a signboard there. When we stepped outside to see if the taxi driver was waiting at the curb we could see hundreds of guys standing around, but nobody with a sign for us. Plenty of guys came up to us and said, “Need a taxi?” but each time we had to say no thank you. Back inside we decided to approach the taxi service desk, and they were absolutely ready to arrange a taxi for us. I explained that I had reserved one already, and since I am kind of naturally suspicious in these situations I was really surprised when I gave him my name and he pointed to a list with Arabic writing on it and said, “Ah, here it is right here.”

He guided us out of the building and to a car that was waiting, and then talked a little to the driver who was sitting in the car looking bored. The clerk said that this was our driver and he would take it from there.  At this point I still wasn’t entirely sure I was in the taxi that I had reserved – I didn’t want to get to our destination and have to pay again. So I asked the clerk to confirm our hotel name – since I hadn’t told any of these guys our destination yet I figured it was a good test, and luckily the clerk knew our hotel and passed the test. Before closing the door he smiled and said, “If you like sir, you could give me something now for helping you with this situation.” So I passed him a ten pound note (about fifty cents) and he seemed satisfied and waved goodbye as we drove off.

So this was a good example of doing things to try to make your life easier and ending up with the stressful situation anyway.  Oh well, it turned out to be good practice for future taxi rides in Egypt.

Our driver got on the road and headed towards western Cairo. Driving in Egypt is a strange experience because people tend to ignore the lanes and drive wherever they feel is best at any given time. There are lines separating each street into distinct lanes of course, but everyone collectively just chooses to ignore them.  So on a “three lane road” at any given time you usually have five cars across, which physically is possible because the extra two cars take up all that safety buffer space that is normally a part of the driving experience in other countries. Cars dart in and out and honk and honk and honk, and by the end of our trip we had figured out the code for the honks for the most part. We saw quite a few accidents on the road, and we were even involved in one minor accident ourselves towards the end of our trip.  Driving in Egypt is not for wimps.

Our driver was surprisingly zen about the whole thing. One of his hands he kept almost exclusively in his mouth, as he chewed on his nails like some kind of cannibal. He didn’t stop eating his own nails the whole 30 minute drive, while listening to Egyptian pop music and he even managed to take a few phone calls. We kept one eye on the nail-consuming driver and the other eye on the fascinating landscape. Some areas of Cairo we saw looked like strip malls, others like war zones. Huge neighborhoods were made up of broken old red cement buildings, dusted with sand. From our position on the elevated expressway we couldn’t see the lower levels of the buildings but they must have been occupied because each building was decorated with hundreds of dirty satellite dishes arranged haphazardly on top. Some areas of Cairo are probably upscale, but on this particular journey we didn’t have a chance to see them.

We arrived at our hotel, the Safir Hotel, and the driver accepted a small tip and drove off, happy to get back to gnawing on his poor fingernails. We went inside the hotel and had to walk through a security gate and put our bags through an X-ray machine. This turned out to be standard operating procedure for most buildings in Egypt, and a sign that they are taking security quite seriously these days.

We hit a bit of a bump during check-in, when they had us reserved for two nights but we had reserved online for three nights. The clerk asked us to sit down while she made some calls and sorted things out, so we walked around the lobby to kill time. There were some decorations up for Christmas, which caught me a little by surprise because I had heard that Egypt is a primarily Islamic country. There were some events happening in the hotel ballrooms, and most of the people in the lobby seemed to be Egyptian rather than tourists like us. The hotel had an old feel to it, not rundown, but more of a classic feel. I walked by the concierge desk and took a casual look at the price list for taxi rides: $65 USD for a ride to the airport (I had just paid $10 USD), so I was a little suspicious of the other prices for tours of the Pyramids and such. My casual look was apparently not casual enough because soon the concierge came over and tried to sell us on a few package tours.

After a surprisingly long wait we lost patience and went back to the clerk, who said everything was sorted out and we were OK for the three nights. We checked in and the room looked just fine. After a brief freshening up we went back outside to do some exploring.

Our hotel was located in the Dokki area of Cairo. It is just west of the Nile River, and is a bit old and not at all touristy. In fact, we didn’t see many tourists at all, even around our hotel. The neighborhood was pretty run down, with broken streets, dirty parked cars jamming the avenues making it an adventure to cross the streets, lots of shops with mysterious goods lining the shelves, and even some street food down the sidestreets. We loved it. This kind of neighborhood is exactly what we usually look out for when traveling – it feels like the real deal and often you can find the most authentic experiences and delicious food in places like this.

We started our food experience by hitting a koshary restaurant that was recommended on the internet. Koshary is apparently the working man’s meal in Egypt – chickpeas, pasta, rice, spicy vegetables, and topped with garlic oil and tangy vinegar. We entered the place and the cashier pointed us upstairs, and as we sat down we noticed that we were the only foreigners here. The menu was written only in Arabic, but we were saved by the waiter who spoke English to us fluently and recommended their signature dish. We ordered two small plates, and then sat back to wait. I noticed that lots of people were watching us covertly, and the place was filled with younger people, especially couples. When the koshary came we added what we hoped was the right ratio of oil and vinegar and went to town. Very delicious – and very filling. It was a lot more carbohydrates than we normally eat, but what the hell – we’re on vacation!

We paid the bill (about $2 USD) and then went back out on the street to look around some more. We found a few upscale supermarkets that were almost deserted – apparently the prices were too high for the local people but they were quite affordable for tourists. The people everywhere were so nice to us – they called out, “Hello!” (and “Nihao!” to Kuniko – evidently they are more used to Chinese people than Japanese people). Mostly you could tell who was friendly to be friendly and who was friendly to try to sell you something. The longer we stayed in Egypt the better we were at making that distinction quickly, with one notable exception that I’ll talk about later.

In the evening we went back out on the street for dinner, and ended up going to a take-out restaurant that had some delicious looking foods on their menu. The place mainly served kebab and kofta – grilled meats – and the staff were very friendly. They asked about us and where we are from (I always said Canada, just in case). They took a liking to us so they put a bunch of free salads and side dishes into our bag. We found a place to buy alcohol (which is not easy to do in Egypt), and so we brought back the food and two tall cans of cold beer to the hotel for our first dinner in Cairo. As we brought the food and beer through the security check, the staff noticed the alcohol and had me sign a paper saying that I was fully responsible for any bad behavior that happened because I consumed alcohol on their premises. Religious reasons? It was very unusual and a nice snapshot of the social situation there.

The dinner turned out great – the meats were laid out on a bed of fragrant yellow rice and we enjoyed trying all the salads, soups and sauces that they included. We drank two Egyptian beers, Sakkara and Stella. Later Stella turned out to be a frequent companion for our stay in Egypt.

We were pretty tired from all the travel and walking around, so we ended up falling asleep at 8 pm, much earlier than usual. I forgot to hang out the do not disturb sign on our door, so I was startled out of bed when someone started knocking at our door urgently. I groggily answered the door in my pajamas, and a housekeeper handed me a plate with a couple of oranges on it and said “goodnight!” It was an unexpected event to wrap up a busy day.  From tomorrow we’ll hit the Pyramids and start the sightseeing.

This morning I looked at the previous post for the blog and realized it has been nearly a month.  I have been seriously neglecting my blog writing lately.

I do have a good excuse, however, since the end of the year is always full of events that seem to eat up our time, money, and energy.  No complaints here – we always enjoy our busy holidays. Usually about this time I am feeling stress about my contract and whether I’ll have a job in the upcoming year.  At the end of the year we are throwing together packages of presents for our family overseas, we’re finalizing plans for our winter trip, and we’re hosting holiday parties for friends and neighbors.  There is always a lot going on, culminating in a rush to the airport and quick zip down the runway to whatever destination we have chosen.

This year is pretty much the same, but it seems like the job situation is clarifying a bit and I’ll have some good news to announce soon.  As of last Sunday our packages were sent out, and tomorrow we’ll host our last holiday party of the year with the neighbors.  Kuniko spent the evening last night making a rich red sauce to smother lasagna noodles rolled around ricotta cheese.  Tomorrow will be a red wine night for sure.

Next week is an abbreviated week for me – I have shorter class schedules, some open time to plan for next year’s lessons, and a company holiday party on Thursday that hopefully won’t leave me with a hangover for our departure the next day to Egypt.

We’re excited about the trip to Egypt, seeing Cairo, Luxor and Abu Simbel.  I think that more than previous trips this one will be a challenge for us, but the challenging trips are the ones that leave you with the best memories.

We’ll be in Cairo from December 23-26, Luxor, Aswan and Abu Simbel from December 26-30, and then back in Cairo from December 30-January 2nd.  We should be landing back in Japan on Wednesday, January 3rd.  It looks to be a busy itinerary but we can’t wait to see what’s out there!

An hour into the wedding party we attended on Sunday my wife tells me she still believes that our own wedding party was the best that she has ever attended.  She says this often, especially when we are attending someone else’s party, and I always feel a strange sense of pride even though I’m not really responsible for it.

Today we are attending a wedding party for one of my wife’s ex-students.  I don’t know the bride (the aforementioned ex-student, Miho) or the groom (a healthy looking chap named John).  Some of my wife’s ex-coworkers are in attendance, and they ask about her job with barely concealed looks of envy.  Some of them had to work on the Sunday morning before this party.

A large assembly of friends and family has been squeezed into a cement room too small for the occasion.  We all sit on folding wood and leather chairs that threaten to snap shut upon entry or exit. Guests need to get up and sit down and get up again to eat or drink because all the action is at the other end of the room. The difficulty level of this operation increases exponentially with the amount of alcohol consumed. The grey cement color of the room is offset by brightly colored overhead lights, and above the bar the Ramones are quoted in giant yellow letters: Hey / Ho / Let’s / Go!

In the Japanese way people are assigned seats at tables, and there is little opportunity to speak to anyone at another table without awkwardly breaking into their table’s conversation.  With little room to stand or mingle you get up only to reload your plate with onion rings or pizza or to refill the beer pitcher. You sit and talk with the people seated in your group – usually people you already know. Owl City and AKB48 play from the speakers as multi-cultural background music.

I like the atmosphere of the party.  It isn’t the flowery, glitzy style with Japanized French/Italian/Spanish food. This is a more unpretentious way to celebrate a marriage. The crowd is mixed with a liberal helping of foreigners like me who break enough of the traditional customs of a Japanese wedding party to make it interesting and unpredictable.

Upon entering we each were photographed with a polaroid camera and we wrote our name and wedding message at the bottom of the resulting mugshot.  These photos end up in a box and Miho and John pull them out at random to award a prize and extract a short speech from the winners.  Several people who don’t know the bride or groom win, including myself, and it makes for an awkward but oddly personal moment that wouldn’t have happened otherwise.

The groom’s father makes a speech, and like all the speeches of the day it is translated into the other language of this bilingual event.  The father is dressed like a gangster but is soft-spoken and friendly and looks like the kind of person you’d want on your side in a bar fight. His theme of two families joining together combined with the black silk suit can’t help but bring forth images the Godfather.

We listen to live musical performances by friends of the couple who all seem to be very gifted and happy to be the center of attention.  The bride and groom look equally happy to relinquish the limelight for a while so it appears to be a win-win situation.

Three hours pass, and we get up with the rest of the group to leave.  Our gracious hosts are waiting at the door to give us a small souvenir from the event and a personal thanks and goodbye.  It is a nice touch and they both look spectacularly happy.  And I’m sure that this wedding party will be the best one that John and Miho will ever attend.

A while back Kuniko asked me about my work schedule – she had found a concert that she’d love to see with quite a few K-Pop artists. The tricky part was that the concert was in Korea, and it was on a Sunday.

The timing was not perfect but thanks to a slightly flexible schedule at my company I was able to take Monday off, making it easier to return to Japan in time for work on Tuesday. Kuniko bought the tickets and booked a hotel, and we were set!

So Sunday morning we got up early, caught a train to Sannomiya, and then the airport bus from there. It was a very rainy day, and there were reports of a typhoon approaching. It seemed like we’d be able to fly out before the typhoon hit, but whether we’d be able to make the return flight was still quite unclear. Exciting!

This time we flew on a new airline for us, a Korean LCC called Jeju Air. It was a bit of a bumpy flight but since we were only airborne for an hour or so, no big deal. The lady sitting on my right slept through the whole flight, while Kuniko on my left held my hand tight during the turbulence.

Back in Busan, we had no trouble getting around, since we had visited here just last spring. This was a big advantage, and we moved pretty smoothly through the transportation system, with only a few wrong turns.

Since we arrived in Busan in the late morning we had plenty of time to eat and explore before the evening concert. We started with a place serving mandu (Korean gyoza) and noodles. The restaurant was decorated (and felt like) someone’s home. We loved the mandu, and we had two kinds of noodles – one with soup and one without, both cold. Since the weather in Busan was clear and sunny the cold noodles were great.

After filling our stomachs we decided to go find our hotel. Called the Angel Hotel, it was not where our maps said it was, and we were ready to give up and call them before we finally found it a block away from where the address said it was. Maybe they had moved? The neighborhood around the hotel (in Seomyeon) was really lively, full of young people and eating places, and later we found the nightlife was going long after things shut down in our neighborhood back in Japan.

We checked in, and the clerk preferred using Japanese to English which was a little unusual but we were happy that we didn’t have to try to get through things in Korean. The hotel room itself was small with an interesting bathroom – the shower drained across the room, so you had to accept a river of water when you used the toilet. This was apparently by design, but it seemed a little strange.

I realized that I was starting to develop a small headache. Since we’d be rocking all night I figured I should nip it in the bud and went across the street to a convenience store to get some painkillers. Unfortunately I didn’t find any, so I asked the hotel clerk on the way back. She said that since it was Sunday most drugstores would be closed, but she offered me three Advil from her personal stash – that was very nice of her.

We dropped off our stuff and then headed to the concert. I wasn’t sure about taking the camera, and since we couldn’t read the tickets to see the ground rules, I left it behind. We still had our phones to take pictures. The concert was held at the Busan Sports Complex, in an interesting partially covered stadium. As we arrived we noticed how windy it was, probably due to the typhoon hitting Japan at about that time, and we started to realize we had no idea about where to go to enter. There were lots of different entrances, and you chose the entrance based on your ticket. The lines outside the venue were huge, with pretty much everyone having a big linguistic advantage over us.

We had some fried fish cake on a stick as a snack (a bit greasy but it did the trick), and then Kuniko navigated us to the correct entrance by asking staff while I held our place in various lines.

Despite paying a pretty reasonable price for our tickets, our seats were near the field level of the stadium. The stage was positioned in the center of the field, with long walkways in various directions so the artists could get closer to the fans. Still, we were pretty far from the action. But I learned later that the distance from the artists hardly mattered.

As usual I was a minority at the event, in two ways. First I was western, which I am pretty much used to living in Japan surrounded by Japanese people. But second, I was one of the few men at the concert. 95% of the fans were young women ready to scream at the sight of their K-Pop idols. But honestly once you get used to being the first kind of minority it usually isn’t that different being one of the second kind.

We walked around the stadium to kill some time (and stay warm) and we spotted some K-Pop stars doing an interview which made lots of people happy. We couldn’t find any open food stands inside the stadium so we would just have to wait until after the show to have dinner.

Our tickets had some things we could read and understand, and one of them was the time of 6:00 written in simple numerals. So we sat down in our seats to wait. At about 5:30 a band played one song, and then they were joined by a singer, and then they wrapped it up. At 6:00 they did the exact same thing – the same band came up and played the same song, and then the same singer joined them again. From 6:00 to 6:30 they showed a K-Pop awards show interview program on the big screen, and every time a familiar face showed up the crowd of 15,000+ would scream. We sat and shivered in the cold wind and waited patiently. At 6:30 again the band came up and played the same song and was joined by the same singer. I was starting to think that I could sing the song myself I had heard it so many times.

At about 6:45 something interesting happened. There was a mass of security staff in yellow jackets, and they swarmed one area of the stage. They turned on some field lights and there were some announcements (that of course we couldn’t understand). There was some chaos and confusion, and then the show started promptly at 7:00 pm.

Later Kuniko read online that there was a bomb threat called in and apparently that was why the security showed up. We sat up in the stands completely oblivious to the possibility of a bomb going off. Oh, well – sometimes ignorance is bliss.

The concert was really enjoyable. They used two giant circular screens in the center of the stage that served as both curtains and also video screens to highlight the performances. Since we were in a huge stadium they also used the stadium lights, flames and fireworks to dramatic effect. Near the beginning of the show they fired off some big fireworks that stayed within the stadium without burning our cold little faces and Kuniko cheered so hard that I thought that if the concert stopped right then she would still be completely satisfied.

People around us occasionally screamed frantically and scanned the staging area between screaming fits. Some famous boy idol would walk by 100 yards away and fans around us would jump from their seats with binoculars screaming lustily. Some fans had bought mini-posters of their favorite idols and they would wave them frantically and perhaps hope that the idol would look up and see their sign and their face amongst the thousands of other fans doing the same thing and there would be some kind of connection and who knows what could happen?

I certainly had a good time.

With new groups rotating in every few songs we could experience a wide spectrum of K-Pop acts. Kuniko knew most of them, I knew several of them, and the fans knew all of them. We saw Wanna One, Blackpink, Ikon, and some others, and after a while Kuniko had her fill. We were cold out there and the winds blowing around the stadium made us even colder. We left before any of the superfans around us, and headed back to the neighborhood around our hotel.

Back in Seomyeon, we easily found a place to eat. First we hit a grilled pork place, and sat down to a nice warm dinner. We ordered lots of beer, and a combo dinner with three different cuts of pork and lots of side dishes. There was spicy greens, kimchi, cheese, garlic frying in oil, macaroni salad(?), steamed egg, and spicy miso paste to mix into anything that wasn’t spicy enough for your personal taste. The waitress cooked for us, and it was a bit odd to share a nice dinner with my wife and a total stranger who we couldn’t communicate with. The meat was quite good, and cooked to perfection by a professional while we watched, and we were just getting started.

Next we left the restaurant and headed out in search of two things: makkori and chijimi. We found both at a large restaurant tucked in behind a garden on the street. The sign outside clearly showed several kinds of chijimi (Korean savory pancakes) together with makkori (milky rice wine) and so we knew they’d be serving it inside. We got a table in a nicely decorated traditional atmosphere. Our waitress spoke English and answered our questions, and soon we had a big bucket of makkori (with ladle) to serve ourselves. The drink is not so strong but it goes really well with spicy food and we were pretty tipsy by the time we hit the bottom of the bucket. The chijimi we ordered was a half and half of kimchi flavor and traditional onion, but both sides were good. We’ve had so many different kinds of chijimi over the years that it is hard for me to figure out what is the traditional style. We were tempted to go for another bucket of makkori but made the smart move and left. Kuniko tried to pay the bill while thinking about the total in yen instead of won. Some confusion occurred but luckily we figured things out and hit the road.

Our last stop for the night was a convenience store for some drunken shopping, and we brought back more makkori (banana flavor) and Korean snacks to munch on in our room and wrap up our day.

Since we had almost the whole next day to ourselves with no solid plans, we once again focused on food. It started with a subway ride to a neighborhood that had a mandu place that opened at 9 am for service. Korean dumplings for breakfast, oh yeah!

First, we couldn’t find the place using our maps, and we almost gave up to go back into town. Every sign was in Hangul so it took a long time to scan each board to find the place. We asked an old fisherman guy who gestured in the distant direction but I read from his body language that it wasn’t a “The restaurant is over there” but instead “Go that way for all I care”.

Luckily, as we walked around we passed a delivery driver making rounds, and he was right next to me so I showed him the Korean name of the restaurant on my phone. He thought a bit and then pointed us in the correct directions using gestures. We were close by, and after a right and a left we found the place. It was a restaurant with a stand out front, and it was selling mandu to go, but they also had two tables inside. Run by an older husband and wife, they had printouts of a TV show that had featured the shop sometime in the past, and we sat down under the proudly displayed printouts and checked the menu. Kuniko had already translated the menu for us so we knew what to order.

We had 12 grilled mandu, 10 steamed mandu, and 10 steamed kimchi mandu. The lady seemed a little unsure whether we could eat it all but we were up to the task. Good dumplings, and plenty of them! It was a great start to our day.

The meal was all the better because of the hidden away atmosphere, no English in sight, and the odd time in the morning. We were really satisfied to seek out and find this place without using GPS or English.

The rest of the day we walked around the areas of Busan that had the best foods, covering some of the same territory that we did on our previous visit. We went up into the huge Lotte Department Store to track down some character goods shop that Kuniko wanted to visit, bought souvenirs at a convenience store and witnessed two Americans going through an ugly fight (and possible divorce?) loudly in English among the startled Korean customers.

We ate on the street – oden served on sticks in a chili pepper broth (we didn’t eat the insects on sale there, however), tempura fried kimpa (Korean nori roll), and dokku, a fried sweet pancake/donut sprinkled liberally with nuts and honey.

There was a stop for coffee and contemplation, at the oddly named Angel-in-us Cafe.

From there it was back to the airport to kill a little time there and relax. We checked in, and then had a mango shaved ice with salted cream cheese and ice cream (something we really liked from last trip) and then after security we drank beers from the convenience store and snacked on fried nori bites, and waited for our slightly delayed return flight. It turns out we completely avoided the typhoon.

The return flight was smooth, and we even sat next to the same woman we sat with on the way to Korea. She said she was visiting friends, and I thought it was an interesting coincidence.

The airport was busy when we got back to Kansai, with long bus lines going back into town. I guess tourism is really increasing in our area these days. Later we found the typhoon was quite strong and made a direct hit – there were damaged trees and buildings around my workplace the next day. Glad we missed it!

It was a busy couple of days but we really enjoyed the trip. Once in a while it is good to do something out of the ordinary and spontaneous.

Every day on the way to work I pass under a long line of trees over the sidewalk. The trees stretch from one end of the road to the other, so I can walk under trees for almost five minutes before turning and heading to my building.

Trees are a little rare in urban Japan. I’m told that the falling leaves create too much work and hassle for city residents, so it is rare to find trees as part of the urban landscape here in Kobe.

Every year in summer the city comes through and workers chop the top off the trees on my commute. They trim off all the green growing branches and leave only the twisted naked main branches. This solves the leaf problem, but leaves a long line of weird empty tree-like structures behind. Like a modern art interpretation of Joshua Tree.

Something changed this year, though. For some reason, the city decided not to give the trees their annual buzz cut and the trees have grown out and they look beautiful. This summer I enjoyed walking under the shade of the trees and the street looked almost European. It was a nice change and really improved my mood going to work.

However the change was not good for the apartment building security guard I pass every morning. He walks the long block in front of a huge apartment complex with a tiny handheld vacuum cleaner – the kind you’d use to clean the floor of your car now and then – and he sucks up little gum wrappers, cigarette butts, and stray leaves.

So now that autumn has arrived the leaves are falling in a big way. There are leaves everywhere. This is my first time to see the leaves all over the place, and although it looks quite natural to me it is playing hell with this security guard’s job. Luckily he doesn’t just have the handivac – he has added a little dustpan and broom to his arsenal.

Remember the labors of Hercules? Piece of cake next to what this guy is trying to accomplish. A sea of leaves out there blowing around, and he is filling his little vacuum cleaner over and over. I estimate he’ll be able to finish his cleanup just in time for autumn next year.

So I walk by this guy with this impossible task and I wonder if he even knows that he is overmatched. Does he know that this will never be done? Maybe he doesn’t really care and he just needs to fill the time before going home. Maybe he told his boss about the sharp increase in leaves this year and they just said “we’ve got no budget for leaf blowers so deal with it”. Or more likely, his job is to pick up debris and so he does it without complaint using the tools that he has.

I have to admire his diligence – it is something that Japanese people have in spades – but at some point maybe you have to step back and look at the bigger picture. Because this particular picture is full of leaves, as far as the eye can see.

A long time ago getting older used to be fun. I’d get some nice presents, eat some cake, and take another step closer to being an adult. But, as most kids discover later, being an adult is not quite what they had expected.

Birthdays these days are a different affair. Although I’ve long since stepped into adulthood (and middle age, for that matter) I still manage to enjoy the presents and cake.

This year I got a beautiful new necktie from my wife, and a box of American goodies from my parents. So the presents were covered and I was very thankful to receive such nice gifts.

Since I’m not much of a cake fan anymore, we instead decided to head into Osaka and have the next best thing: all-you-can-eat dim sum. The Swisshotel in the Namba area has a remarkably large menu of dim sum (around 80 different kinds) and you can order as many as you can possibly eat within 90 minutes for a surprisingly reasonable price (for Japan). It was the perfect gift for the dim sum lover that I am, and Kuniko and I ate our fill despite a gyoza marathon the night before. We even walked afterwards to Korea Town in Tsuruhashi to pick up three varieties of freshly made kimchi (nappa cabbage, lotus root, and celery), and some chapche and kinpa. Good eating!

We were also able to spend some time with friends. On Sunday we met Yoshi and Mamiko near Osaka Castle to enjoy another craft beer event. We set up shop under a pedestrian overpass to avoid the summer-like weather, and proceeded to drink lots of different beers over the next few hours. We caught up on our summer trips, exchanged souvenirs, and talked about food and booze, which seem to be our go-to topics.

After the craft beer festival we proceeded to Nishinomiya, and the Nishinomiya Ebisu shrine new sake ceremony. This was a big event held mainly for locals. Although Mamiko had attended several times before, it was our first time, and we settled right in drinking sake and more beer on top of all that we had imbibed before.

I really enjoyed the event even though I usually try to avoid heavy sake drinking. It seems like beer and wine have a very small effect on me but sake goes down way too quickly. The food was quite good – very local Japanese foods like oden, edamame (three big bags full), tamagoyaki, and fried chicken.

With all that eating and drinking it was nice to rest up on Monday and enjoy the public holiday recovering in our living room. We watched movies, played our new favorite relaxation game (Stardew Valley) and got ready to depart this gastronomic dreamland and go back to work the next day.

So as birthday weekends go it couldn’t be beat, and it sort of softened the blow of turning 46 years old. There’s a lot of delicious food and drink out there, and this past weekend I think we put a respectable dent in it.

There are mysterious events in my town Thursdays at 5:00 am.

I walk to the train station every morning, and usually it is a pretty quiet affair.  I see only two or three cars during the whole trip, and then I take the very first train of the day to head to work.  Maybe I’ll spot a jogger, or maybe an old lady walking her dog. However, precisely because there is nothing going on makes Thursday morning events stand out.

As I get close to the station, I always walk past the big JA building on my right.  The JA stands for “Japan Agriculture” which is a surprisingly large association that supports and profits from all the otherwise independent Japanese farmers. In addition, JA sells insurance, runs a credit union, and charges membership dues to the farmers that are part of the association. As an organization they have a lot of political clout and power in Japan, maybe too much considering the shrinking agriculture industry here.

The size of the JA building is impressive, especially for my small little town, with what looks like five floors and even a small credit union building next to it filled with ATMs.  Despite having walked by at least twice a day for the past ten years, I have just once seen the top floor of the building lit up at night, the curtains left open to reveal opulent chandeliers illuminating an upscale banquet room. There is big money here.

But every Thursday in front of the JA building, rain or shine, cold or hot, light or dark, there is a group of ten to fifteen very sleepy people walking around picking up garbage.  It is usually about a 60/40 ratio of women to men, of all ages.  They carry small trash bags and long steel tongs to pick up paper and other trash lying about on the ground.  There usually isn’t that much litter around my town (or any Japanese small town to be honest), but they are out there anyway, shambling around in lazy circles searching for stuff to pick up.

This kind of sleepy stumble has led me to dub them the “Thursday zombies” as they wander the otherwise desolate streets looking for litter instead of brains.  Sometimes they notice me walking by and acknowledge me with a nod of the head, but we haven’t reached the level of making conversation because there are different people almost every week.

The real mystery is why they are doing it.  It seems to me that employees of JA would do it during their work hours, or at least closer to their work starting time.  They could be local citizen volunteers but it seems odd to do the job so early.  My own theory is that the “zombies” are regular Joes who have taken loans from JA and do this as some kind of service to get a discount or something.  But really, there is no way to know unless I ask them, and I don’t want to disturb their slumber at that hour.  Besides, having the mystery is more fun.

This morning while walking by I noticed that most of the “zombies” had finished up cleaning and they had all assembled at the entrance to the JA building, just waiting for the last stragglers to show up.  As is usual in Japanese social culture, everyone will wait until the entire group is ready to go on to the next step, which causes a certain amount of inefficiency, which in turn kind of stands out to me as someone from outside the culture.

In this morning’s case I had passed two stragglers still cleaning up trash about a hundred yards earlier, and they had appeared oblivious to any sort of deadline or wrap up signal.  Their eyes were stuck to the ground searching for elusive cigarette butts.  So I knew that it would be quite a while before they went over to join their compatriots, and that the others would have to wait for quite a bit more time.  But none of them will complain, and none of them will leave for their nice warm homes, because the entire group must gather before they can finish.

I’ve experienced this a lot since I moved to Japan.  The party can’t start until everyone sits down, the drinks cannot be drunk until everyone has one in their hand and the speech has been made. The trip isn’t over until everyone has gathered and a closing speech has been heard, and so on. From one perspective it is strongly emphasizing the cohesiveness of the group, but on the other hand it shows that your own personal time is less valuable than the value of the group itself.

But today most of the “zombies” will wait in the cold patiently for the closing ceremony before they return to their homes, and again next Thursday another group will be out there again.  The end result is nice – relatively clean streets near the train station – but I’m not sure about the method of the whole thing.

As for me I know I would change a few things based on my own culture and perspective.  But I’m living in somebody else’s culture, so I continue to play by their rules, and simply note the more interesting contrasts here.

Over the past few years I have tried to do something a little out of the ordinary at the end of each six month teaching term. Each term consists of working with the same group of students, covering the same (or similar) material in class, and is punctuated with the same sorts of evaluations and tests. I talk mainly with the same twelve to twenty people twice a week for the entire six months.

As the term ends and I get ready to start another, it seems like a good time to completely break the routine. Otherwise, it is hard to know when one term ends and another begins. By doing something a little different it creates a mental border for me, and it helps to turn the page to the next term.

Yesterday I took a day off and went hiking. I got up with Kuniko (which means almost two hours of extra sleep for me) and then I took the train with her, getting off at Sannomiya while she continued on to work in Osaka. It was interesting to walk to our train station in the daylight, and to see all the activity that I normally miss during my early morning commute.

From Sannomiya I walked up to Shin-Kobe station. It is the station for the bullet train, built into the side of a green mountain with part of the station extending into a tunnel. I walked under the station and up the mountain behind it, until I reached Nunobiki waterfall.

It has been years since I had been up here. This waterfall was one of the first hikes I ever did in Japan and it still packs a lot of bang for the buck. Just a few minutes past the train station and you are in nature enjoying a pretty dramatic waterfall with almost nobody around. I have a lot of good memories here.

From there I walked alone at a deliberate pace through the hills of Mt. Rokko, taking turns at random without using the maps or GPS. After a few hours I ended up deep in the woods, and then I started taking a look at the maps to figure out how to get back.

I was surprised to discover that I happened to be close to the hillside that plays host to the giant Kobe city logo that lights up every night above Sannomiya. I figured it would be fun to go check it out, and I was able to get there and enjoy a great view of the city from the hilltop. The logo was formed by a big green topiary, fenced off to keep the hooligans away. Again, nobody was around, the road was quiet with an unnatural lack of cars, and I had the place to myself. I took off my sweaty shirt and laid on a stone bench at the top of the hill, to dry off the sweat and provide a chubby counterpoint to the otherwise beautiful scenery.

After hiking most of the morning I descended the mountain (with my shirt on) and decided to find a good bowl of udon. I ended up at a place called “Marugame” (though significantly, it was not “Marugame Seimen” – a popular udon chain). I enjoyed some cold “tanuki” udon noodles, and then stopped at a local Chinese restaurant to buy some nikuman buns.

Finally, I walked back to Hyogo station and then took a train ride home. After a long, cool shower I relaxed and played some video games, prepped some veggies for grilling and made a cilantro and tomato salad. I hadn’t grilled in a while, so it was nice to stand outside and barbecue in the perfect weather.

Kuniko and I enjoyed the vegetarian dinner when she got home, and had a quiet evening afterwards sipping cognac and thinking about upcoming travel plans.

So, it was a great day that I could spend at my own pace. I’ve got a few more easy days at work before things get intense – the next six months will be as busy as I have ever been at my company. I have a feeling it’ll be nice to look back and remember this particular stress free day.

It was very nearly a typical ride on the morning train to work.  It was a little more crowded than usual, and lots of people were standing because the seats had long since filled up.  I stood in my usual place near the door that I would use later to get off the train at my stop.

After a few stations I noticed a tall woman get on.  I’m not sure what attracted my attention – that she was unusually tall, or that she was pushing along a shiny black spinner suitcase on four wheels.  Whenever I see people bringing suitcases on the train I like to imagine where they might be going.  To Kobe to take the bullet train off to Tokyo?  To Kansai Internationl and a flight to an exotic location?  It is enjoyable to let the mind wander on slow morning trains.  The tall woman stood leaning up against a seat on the aisle across from me, and rolled the suitcase into place next to her.

The train left the station, and as the woman put on some headphones to listen to music, the acceleration of the train caused the suitcase to roll towards the back.  I’ve never had a spinner suitcase but I had assumed that there is some kind of brake.  Apparently it wasn’t engaged this time.  The woman didn’t notice the suitcase leaving on its own accord – she was busy with her headphones.

Passengers on the train at this hour are pretty sleepy, and I think I was the only one to notice the little suitcase departing.  It was placed perfectly in the center of the aisle, and thanks to some very quiet and well-lubricated casters it moved silently and steadily between the seats as if a passing ghost was stealing it. Some people seated on the aisle looked up with surprise as the suitcase glided by.  Nobody made any move to stop it, and the suitcase traveled nearly the length of half the traincar until finally stopping gently against a seat, in which an older man awoke and blinked in surprise, no doubt wondering who delivered this gift of a shiny new suitcase.

The train continued moving, the passengers continued sleeping, and the previous owner of the suitcase looked off in the distance, unaware of the current status of her luggage.

Realizing that perhaps I was the best person to lend assistance in this situation, I leaned a bit to my left to try to get into the tall woman’s peripheral vision and get her attention. She seemed to sense the movement and look away.  The woman was quite attractive and may have had some bad experiences with weirdos on the train in the past.  Unconcerned with being classified as a weirdo, I waved my hand a bit more vigorously and finally she looked over.  I pointed at the place where her suitcase should have been but her reaction was quite odd, she just nodded and kind of moved her hand to acknowledge that yes, this is my suitcase.  I pointed again in a slightly more dramatic fashion, and she moved her hand down and as it passed through the air she at last realized that the luggage was not in fact present.

She looked down, and then back at me, her gaze then following my pointed finger towards the back of the train.  Luckily the old guy was still holding the suitcase, blinking furiously now and looking around, no doubt wondering what steps he needed to take to find the owner of the wayward bag.  The woman turned and walked briskly down the aisle to chase it down.

She negotiated the release of the suitcase from the old man, taking care not to look back and catch my eye; finally electing to stay there instead of coming back where she would have to face me again.

Then it was my stop, so I got off the train and went to work.

In my last post I talked about the incoming TV delivery, and luckily it arrived safely and the set up was pretty smooth.

It was my first time to get a delivery from Costco, and I wasn’t sure exactly what the delivery guys would do and not do to help out with the TV. As it turned out, they did as little as they legally could.

At Costco they warned me that I would have to take care of the TV settings and that was fine with me – I have the technical chops to handle it. When the delivery guys showed up they moved the box just inside our front door, and then promptly turned around ready to hit the road. I convinced them to move the box two more meters into our living room, and after that they were out the door and driving off. These guys were paid to move heavy thing “A” to point “B” and were not concerned about anything else. I understand that – shipping was free so who am I to complain?

I managed to wrestle the TV out of the box and then to move it up onto our TV stand without too much trouble. Setting up the TV was a breeze, and I can’t believe that some people pay a technician to do it. Kuniko and I agree that the size is just about perfect for our room and we’re happy with how it looks. We’ve been watching movies and videos more often lately to take advantage of the “Wow!” factor while it lasts.

Last weekend we decided to take a day-long road trip and enjoy the cooler weather and sunny skies. A while back we had driven to Okayama to see Kuniko’s sister, and along the way we were impressed with some of the scenery along the Seto Inland Sea. It is not far from us, but we hadn’t really explored it much, so this past weekend we did a more thorough expedition to learn more about it.

The trip was great. We started early in the morning and drove all the way to Hiroshima, sipping coffee in the car as the sun rose and taking country roads to avoid the high costs of the expressway. Once we got near Hiroshima, we turned south and took the Shimanamikaido – the expressway built to span many small islands on the way to the bigger island of Shikoku. We crossed bridge after bridge as we moved through the islands, and we stopped at almost every island to do some sightseeing. The views of the ocean and islands were great, especially from atop 360 degree viewpoints like the Kirosantenbo Observation Park.

Kuniko did all the driving on the trip. She loves to drive, and I was happy to let her do it. It was nice to roll down the windows and let the cool air in, and just take it easy and enjoy the scenery. We didn’t really have a time schedule for the journey and that made all the difference. Kuniko had done a lot of research beforehand and between that and the GPS it was a well-organized trip.

You probably would not be surprised to hear that we ate a lot, too. There was salted vanilla soft cream, lemon gelato, frozen oranges wrapped in mochi, a buffet-style seafood barbecue, a monster ham and egg donburi (with a side of gyoza) and two bowls of udon noodles from a roadside udon restaurant in Kagawa. We feasted and then we had plenty of time in the car between meals to digest and get ready for the next one.

Our final stop was at a couple of temples in Shikoku that are part of the 88 temple pilgrimage that has taken by Japanese for the past 1100 years. Our stop was just to get a taste of what it was like to visit these temples. From my limited experience visiting temples in Japan these ones seemed unremarkable, the only difference that I could see was that they were selling “pilgrimage goods”. The goods were walking sticks, clothing and books for people to collect inscriptions from the monks at each of the 88 temples of their journey.

As we were leaving we passed an older man wearing the white robes and hat of the pilgrimage, and he looked like he was in good shape. I wonder if he was traveling the pilgrimage on foot or by car.

From there we drove on home, with Kuniko hitting the expressway in order to trade our money for time and we arrived at home around 7 pm. We were a little tired out, but it was a great Saturday for us. I think we’ll continue to explore a little more around our area in the future, especially with autumn coming.

The weekend is almost here! This week has gone by pretty slowly, mainly because we’re expecting a delivery of a new TV on Saturday.

Our old TV has some good memories behind it. You can go back in time and read more about it in this old blog post about getting our previous TV. If I could I’d keep it – I’m pretty satisfied with the size and screen, even these days. Unfortunately several months ago a black vertical band started to appear now and then, blocking off part of the screen and making it a little hard to see what it going on. The black bar hides at first, and then as the TV continues to operate it starts to appear more often. After an hour or so of watching the TV it is pretty much permanently blocking the screen.

So I started to look for a new one. To make a long story shorter I found what I was looking for at Costco, at about a 30% cheaper price than any other place (including websites) in Japan. Last weekend I drove to Costco and laid down the cash, and we arranged a free delivery for tomorrow.

I’m a little sad to say goodbye to our old Panasonic Viera TV. Panasonic has hit some hard times in the TV department lately, and other Japanese manufacturers are struggling to balance quality with price. I ended up buying an LG TV, and I hope that it will last longer than the 11 years that we got out of the Panasonic plasma TV. The new TV has some new technology, and it should be ready for 4K broadcasts whenever they start doing that regularly in Japan. We don’t really watch much broadcast TV anyway, instead focusing on DVDs, YouTube, video games and streaming internet movies.

We are both eager to see what the new TV looks like in our living room. There is often a difference between what you feel when you see the TV in a showroom (or warehouse, in Costco’s case) and when you set up the TV in your own space. I hope it works out for us.

Kuniko is working this Saturday, but it looks like we’ll both have Sunday off. In addition the weather has slightly cooled down offering a tantalizing glimpse of autumn. I know we’re not there yet, but I can’t wait to sleep without an air conditioner and retire my sweat towels for another year.

Yesterday I taught a class for the new production workers at our company. It is a monthly class that I do all year round, but this time was a little different – I taught it alone.

Our production workers join our company right out of high school. We usually hire 30-40 promising young people and they spend almost a year training them in various skills including welding, steel work, electrical wiring, and more. They also receive training in English, because we have plenty of overseas projects and occasionally our workers are sent to a customer’s railway to do maintenance, repairs or retrofits.

The job of teaching English to the workers falls to the youngest Human Resources staff at the time, and Mr. Yamada (a second year employee and currently the “new guy” in HR) teaches these classes three or four times a month. One of those classes he asks me to help with, so we do sort of a team teaching approach once a month.

However, yesterday Mr. Yamada wasn’t available to teach the class with me, and apparently the other HR workers were too busy to take his place, so my boss asked me if it was possible to teach the class on my own. I was fine with it, and I put together a lesson plan that put more pressure on the students to speak out, and also avoided the use of any Japanese at all by anyone in the room. These kinds of classes can be a little more stressful for lower level students, but this was a special case and it worked out fine.

When I arrived at the classroom yesterday the staff in charge of training new employees were gathered in the “teacher’s room” (the lobby outside the classroom) as usual. Normally they give Mr. Yamada a lot of good-natured ribbing about this and that and they try to speak English with me. Their English skills are at the beginner level but they still try hard to speak with me. On this day, they knew that I would be working without a net so to speak, and they insisted on joining me in the classroom to help out.

We went in together, and the class went really well. I was more than a little moved by the staff stepping in to help me out. They are not great speakers of English, but they went in there knowing that the class would be 100% in English. They serve as role models for the students, not only in the classroom but also throughout the factory, and they were taking some risk by helping me out. If they make an English mistake or don’t understand some simple English instruction of mine, they could lose credibility with the students and students might lose motivation to study since even their instructors don’t know English well.

It was a nice thing they did to step up and help out. Since I hadn’t expected any help I designed the lesson so that I could do it all on my own, but my helpers were good at urging students to volunteer, to walk around and make sure they were doing their assignments, and to generally show that English is an important topic worth studying.

I thanked everyone for their help afterwards, and they laughed and said they were happy to do it. Perhaps it is the assistance from people who you least expect that makes the biggest impression. Anyway, it was a class that I won’t forget for a long time.