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Spent last week in Qingdao (Tsingtao), China for work. It was a pretty short and busy trip but it was nice to get to travel again, especially in a place where I’m mostly illiterate and unable to communicate without pointing at pictures or making Hadouken-like motions with my arms. That’s always kind of fun.

On Monday afternoon I arrived at Narita a little bit later than planned, but it didn’t matter since my flight was delayed over 2 hours. I got a 1000 yen food voucher that I used at Subway to get a foot-long smoked turkey and avocado sub, which was way too much food but it was free so no foul. Finally got to Beijing where of course I had missed my connecting flight due to the delay, but it was easy enough for Air China to put me on another flight to Qingdao. This was unfortunately also the very last flight out of the Beijing airport, meaning I had a few more hours to kill in an airport. It was pretty late at night so most of the shops were closed but they had a KFC open where I got a sandwich and “9 Lives Juice” which was a fruit juice blend and not a magical potion. There was snow on the ground in Beijing.

From the Qingdao airport I took a taxi to my hotel, which was like a 40 minute ride but since it’s China and not Japan the fare was less than USD $12. Slept and spent the week attending a conference for work which was fairly uneventful except for one night where I was taken out by a client to a really nice dinner with about 12 people, only 1 of whom spoke English. Chinese dinner parties are awesome because the theme always seems to be “let’s order more food than we could ever possibly eat.” Probably because food and things are so cheap, this is a good way to throw a good party and kind of show off to your guests. There was all kinds of different dishes including tons of good seafood since Qingdao is a coastal city. Got to try conch and sea cucumber for the first time. The restaurant we went to was also a few doors down from the Tsingtao beer brewery, so we had pitchers of fresh beer all over the table. I actually don’t really even like Tsingtao beer in bottles, but the 2 varieties they had at the dinner must have been different from what’s in the bottles. Had a wheat ale-tasting one and a dark lager that tasted a lot like chocolate. Both were some of the best beers I’ve had ever.

Everyday I’d be at the conference until the late afternoon, come back to the hotel to get changed, then walk around and explore the area. There was a Carrefour across the street and a Jusco down the road, plus some smaller shops and a lot of restaurants in the area near my hotel. Walked through a few market streets but nothing big like in Hong Kong. They did the sailing events or something for the 2008 Beijing Olympics in Qingdao so they city was pretty cleaned up – maybe getting rid of or at least relocating street markets was part of that. I saw 2 street markets that were more like flea markets, with hawkers setting up their stuff on tarps on the street. Probably so they can all pack up and run if the cops come to shut them down? Speaking of the Olympics, on my last night in town I walked to the pier area where the sailing events all took place and it was pretty nice. They had a huge boardwalk area with really modern architecture, and this sweet “Olympics” pier that took about 15 minutes to walk to the end of. The bottom level of this pier had restaurants and bars, but the top part was just a giant elevated walkway with the flags of the world, each with its own spotlight. It’s hard to explain but it was pretty awesome looking especially walking down at night.

No other big stories from Qingdao but my second night in town I walked into some random restaurant that had pictures of their menu on the wall. I chose a dish that looked like huge plate of beef and vegetables with some chili peppers. When it came out, I realized that the amount of beef and vegetables was almost equal to the amount of garlic and hot red and green chilies. This thing was ultra mouth-searing spicy, but it was amazing and I ate almost all of it. I’m glad I ordered a bowl of white rice to go with it. Also tried a kaiten-sushi in China for the first time ever, which wasn’t bad but was closer to American sushi than real Japanese. They had a lot of crazy rolls with random ingredients in them. Not as good as Kappa.

Coming back into Narita on Friday night I got an extra long inspection at customs. The officer even commented something like “so you’ve been to China quite a few times, huh?” I wonder if this was just a coincidence or if having the super thick passport has something to do with it. I don’t think I’ve ever had to even open my bag up at customs. Oh well.

My passport is maxed out. No more blank pages. Well, there are two or three pages in the back that are blank but I didn’t realize until today that these are special pages only for amendments or stuff to your passport. I’ve got no more blank pages for visas/stamps. Normally this would be an awesome thing – a fine accomplishment for a world traveler. But today it helped make my morning a huge pain in the ass.

I’m heading to Qingdao, China next week. I was planning on going to the Chinese embassy last Friday to get my visa, but I realized that you have to already have your roundtrip airplane ticket and hotel reservation made to apply. I didn’t have that, so I booked them over the weekend. This morning, I headed to the embassy to apply for the visa. They’re only open from 9AM-12 noon, and the place is about an hour away from me, so it’s already a little inconvenient. I planned on getting there at 11-ish, and to play it on the safe side I grabbed a taxi from the station since I didn’t remember how to get there and didn’t feel like wandering around lost in the cold wind and rain. As an added bonus I found the long-lost sixth Great Lake separating me from the taxi, which I discovered by using my foot as a measuring device. The depth was “knee.” The taxi was also far away enough that I needed to step into the water with my other foot too, which ensured I would be squishing my way around town the rest of the day.

Got to the Chinese embassy, waited a while, then presented my finished paperwork and passport, at which point it was explained that I’m an idiot who should have read the actual passport text: the last two pages are for special amendments only and NOT for normal visas or stamps. So my passport hasn’t had any fully blank visa pages since July, and I find this out with less than 7 days before I’m supposed to go to China. Chinese embassy can’t let me apply for a visa with no blank space, so I’m referred to the US embassy who can add the necessary pages. Went into the hallway to call the US embassy, with a nice receptionist who transferred me to the passport department. No one picked up at the passport section, even after I navigated through 3 levels of their phone menu system, with each stage having what seemed like a 10 minute message of instructions, menu options, and probably the entire United States Constitution. The long menu at least let me know that the passport section is only open from 9-12 and 2-4, which is 2 hours better than China.

Either way I figure I should get out of there and head over to the US embassy, in hopes of getting helped during that 2 hour afternoon window of service. I already know I’m going to have to come back to Tokyo at least two more times this week. At this point I was getting pretty pissed off, walking back out into the pouring rain down the street screaming obscenities and making other weird noises. Probably not the best of choices since I was walking past Chinese guards who were likely armed and looking for an excuse to shoot someone cursing in English and growling like a dinosaur.

Finally got through to the US embassy, was told that they usually require a web reservation and all reservations for today were full. I explained my situation and they told me I could come and wait, but there was no guarantee they could help me. Chinese visa takes 4 days to process or 2-3 days with the extra 3000 yen rush charge, so I figured I needed to try and get my passport fixed ASAP. Grabbed lunch and entered the US embassy at 2, waited in line for about 45 minutes before I got helped, which wasn’t really that bad. During my waiting I got to observe some military wife who reminded me how annoying people can be, as she seemed unable to shut up. In between her sentences she spat out a constant stream of “OK”s and “yeah”s, and even when she was walking out of the lobby to the passport photo booth she was talking to herself the entire way. There was also what appeared to be an American guy with his Japanese wife and their kid applying for a passport. The kid was maybe 14 and had the rattiest rat-tail I’ve ever seen, going all the way to his waist. I hope he gets refused entry into the US – we’ve got enough of that kind of people as it is.

At first they were going to mail my passport back to me in “5-10 days” but I told them my story and they said I could come get it tomorrow. Of course it only takes 1 day; all they’re doing is putting a few extra pages in the passport! But I was at least grateful they could do it for me. I’m going to go back tomorrow morning to pick up my passport, then head back to the Chinese embassy. It doesn’t help that there’s a typhoon on the forecast.

But yeah in short it’s pretty sweet that I filled up my passport. But if anyone else is getting close don’t make the mistake that I did in assuming the last 2 pages are just normal visa pages. You can apply to get extra pages for free if you’re getting close. At least I didn’t find this out trying to get back into the US for X-Mas or something.

Saw a lot of ol’ Nick “NR7000” Roberts the past few weeks. You remember that guy, right? He’s still down in the boonies of Hyogo spending most of his time with literally thousands of young children. First he came up to Chiba at the beginning of the Japanese Obon holiday week in August. As soon as he arrived in Tokyo we went to make a long overdue visit (pilgrimage?) to our good friend the Mayor. No, no – I don’t mean the mayor of Tokyo. I of course am referring to the Mayor of Namja Town, who is way cooler, has his own army of Namderbirds, names his districts descriptively by the foods they serve, and wears a monocle. Also he is a cat. And not a bigot like the mayor of Tokyo – oops!

Nick’s visit up here was pretty much just for eating and drinking, which we did pretty much constantly when not sleeping or playing video games of some kind. Nick was skeptical about the sweet all you can order pizza place at first, but after trying it I think he realized why me and Blanchard talked it up so much. Teriyaki chicken pizza, even with the weird Japanese mayonnaise on it, is awesome. The next night we took him to Y’s, followed by karaoke until 5AM, which effectively destroyed Nick’s body (and stomach) for days to come. A job well done, everyone.

Then almost ridiculously soon after Nick’s visit up here, I went down last weekend to check out the NR7000 home field down in Ono city, Hyogo. There is a very descriptive Wikipedia page for it here. Got to check out Osaka and Kobe as well, so it was a good weekend visit to Kansai. As with most reunion trips, we were mostly gorging ourselves the whole time I was down there, primarily at the Ono favorite kushiage and yakitori places. Both were way awesome. Kushiage I got to try last year, but the Ono yakitori place was closed for renovations or something last year so I got to try it this time. Nick was very disappointed that they didn’t have the fried cheese he always orders, but everything else was way good. I think all shop keepers in Ono automatically give Nick an offering of a huge plate of french fries wherever he goes, cause it seemed to just show up without even getting ordered.

Also went to quite a few of the local hangout “snack” bars, which were a lot less sketch than I had originally assumed. You know it’s a fun weekend when there are so many nicknames created or at least used. Big T, Sidekick, the principal from GTO (myyyyyyy crestaaaaa!!), yakuza dude, and cake nazi. And quite possibly the best nickname/backfire of the whole trip: “juicy.”

I end this post with the best Nick Roberts picture from my trip:

Click to zoom in embarrassingly close.

I ended up getting around a lot more than I had expected while in the US, which partially explains why I didn’t waste as much time as I usually might writing blogs, etc. I’m back in Japan now, and have been for almost a week. It was definitely a great time back this time, and I’m looking forward to my next visit (probably in December). I know within the next few years I’ll be back living in the US and will hopefully get to visit Japan now and then.

I spent most of my time in St. Louis, which was a lot of fun. Played video games at home, saw extended family, met up with friends, and got to drive a lot. You don’t realize how much you miss driving until you don’t do it for several months at a time. And having a GPS navigation system is an awesome addition, especially since I’m terrible at navigating beyond my immediate neighborhood in St. Louis. I blame not living there much.

Drove out to Indiana one day to grab lunch with Frank. Instead of driving all the way to Indy we decided to meet somewhat halfway and chose Terre Haute. Now, if you know anything about the region you know that T.H. is a pretty bad town (no offense….well….), but it was pretty funny I guess. At least I got to hit up the Steak there. The Mexican restaurant we ate in smelled like a public bathroom though.

I also headed to Washington DC for two days for a business meeting, which went pretty well. Also got to see the Natural History Museum of the Smithsonian and rode the metro a lot. It was also on the metro that my dad and I saw this gross woman who was probably around 50 or 60 and had, I am not exaggerating at all, breasts on her stomach. It looked like she had two bowling balls strapped to her belt. It was horrible and hilarious at the same time.

At the end of my trip I stayed in LA for the weekend before heading back to Tokyo. It was great to see everyone in LA and hang out like old times. It also made me pretty jealous that everyone lives in apartments/houses that are several times (not exaggerating) bigger than my apartment here in Japan. That’s definitely one of the big things I’m looking forward to when I move back: having a big place with a nice TV and computer setup. Also having a place where more than one person can come visit at a time would be a major plus.

And I challenge anyone to find food like this in Japan:

…please?

I’ll be heading back to St. Louis this summer from June 26 to July 17, and after that I’ll be in LA until the afternoon of the 20th. Will be back in Japan on the 21st.

Airfare was really cheap so I’m taking advantage of my flexible schedule and coming back to get some real pizza and Mexican food. If you’re going to be around, let me know and we can meet up. There’s also the possibility of a drive out to Indiana if there’s enough demand.

One final post about the Hong Kong/Macau/China trip (probably). I think I covered all the major stuff I did in the overly long entries I wrote before this one. It was a great trip and I definitely want to go back again sometime. I think getting a group of people to go one day would be ideal, since we can just order ridiculous amounts of food and all only pay a few bucks.

Thinking back to HK, I think the subways and trains over there and even in China might rival if not beat the Japanese ones. If there are any Japanese people reading this right now I’m sure they’re thinking to themselves “that’s impossible” but it’s pretty true. HK’s trains seemed cleaner, bigger, and smoother. Sure HK has a lot less area to cover than say, JR East, but I was still really happy with it. I don’t think I ever waited for any train more than 4 or 5 minutes. The only negative is that there are no luggage racks up top in the cars, which doesn’t make sense. There are LCD screens inside the cars that show of course loads of advertisements but also some other programming. Japanese trains pretty much have only weather and stuff, but the train in China had an America’s Funniest Home Videos-type show on that was pretty funny because the category was “animals attacking men below he belt.”

Cell phone etiquette is also totally diferent from Japan. Whereas pretty much everyone in Japan follows the rules of putting their phones on silent or vibrate in public places, HK seems to be the complete opposite. I can’t read much Chinese, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there were signs in the trains saying “Please turn your phone’s ringer ALL THE WAY UP.” There was an almost constant barrage of C-Pop MP3 ringtones anywhere you go, with people always picking up their phones and starting conversations (WEI!) wherever they are, yelling enthusiastically into their handsets. This is probably because the average Cantonese conversation is the same decibel and excitement level as a Japanese person trapped in a burning building full of children. In Japan on the train if someone gets a call you see them cupping their phones to their head as if it were a severed ear, whispering quietly, ashamed that their silent conversation might be inconveniencing someone else.

OK I think that’s everything about the HK trip for now. I need to get to bed.