Osaka to kyoto and back again

My mama probably remembers very well our late night outings for cream puffs. Sometimes a girl just needs a puff and my mother knows that I need them more than most girls. In this regard (and many others for that matter) Japan was for me. Japan offers me cream puffs just about as much as I take her picture.

We arrived in Japan early in the afternoon. The airport always tells you a bit about a new place but it is really when you emerge from the comfort of it that you learn the truth about a place. We all boarded our bus and headed off towards Kyoto. As much as I wished to enjoy the scenery I promptly fell asleep and did not awake until we were in the city. This was no problem though because I get to commute two hours from Osaka to Kyoto everyday and this provides plenty of “viewing time”.

We are presently students at the “Kyoto School of Art and Design”. On a daily basis I am reminded of how much I miss art school. Sometimes I immensely regret my choice of education because of this and I have to remind myself that if it was not for UPS I would not even have the chance to regret it. If it was not for UPS I would not have the best host family in the world. I would not have my own bike to ride around Osaka. I would not live within walking distance of 3 bike shops. I would not be learning Japanese in a comfortable exciting setting, eating wonderful home-cooked food that I cannot pronounce, spending time learning about the tea ceremony from my host mother (she used to practice) or all about making shoji doors (my host father owns his own shoji door company), and I would definitely not be eating the best cream puffs of my life in tiny shops with stacks of books. Japan is everything I expected and nothing I expected all at the same time. It is brilliant. It is historical and modern. It is clean and organized but also busy and mysterious. I enjoy my little 3rd floor bedroom with three walls of shoji screens that let the light in early in the morning. Stephanie and I share the top floor and spend our time conversing as best we can with our host family and going to museums and parks. We play a version of charades that always results in laughter. Japan is laughter. Japan is polite and bright with smiles. I am learning new phrases everyday and using them incorrectly as much as correctly. I enjoy the two trains and the bus that Stephanie and I take to our school everyday. We eat bread before we leave and two hours later we eat bread before school… and I eat cream puffs every chance I get.

MOMA and more

China remains a blur of cities. Small nine million people sized cities and large cities like Beijing and Shanghai all blend together to form my view of this strange, vibrant, loud country.

Xian reminds me of Tacoma. In this “home” of a city we stay in a fairly large hotel that overlooks the drum tower used in the time of he cities birth. This tower is beautiful and traditional in its structure and colors. The view from my window is vast with old and new. At night the city is bright with lights and during the day children fly strings of kites in the square. We go out to explore the city with cameras and dreams of new clothes. We find a wonderful market and buy chocolate, fruits and whiskey and cokes pre-made in tiny glass bottles. The highlight of our visit is a trip to the terracotta soldiers. We take a bus to the grounds and walk along wet paths until we emerge in front of huge buildings housing the find. We learn of the farmers who discovered the first detachable soldier head as they dug a well. We walk all around the huge plot of land that has become the museum. It begins to rain as we walk from building to building seeing all the rows of heads, bodies, horses, and bronze works. My camera surprises me and carefully captures the scene even and mood.

The overnight train leads us to Shanghai and we find that Shanghai is big beyond words. It is loud, crowded and so pleasantly comfortable that I fall right into the pace and structure of the city. There is the comfort of starbucks and a hotel with internet. I begin to plan for all the art I will see here. I make a list of 5 museums and galleries that I must see. I notice the vast size of the city upon planning this and our group outing to the TV tower and various temples reiterate this the concept of “vast” as I have never known it.

What I love best is standing on the bank of the Bund. I stand on the English side and stare out towards the Pudong side. This side has so many new buildings that a panoramic inspection of the scene would be confusing. New vs. old is highlighted with extreme color. The new area of Shanghai intrigues me so much that I almost jump with excitement when I discover that The Shanghai Zendai Modern Art Museum (the MOMA) is located on the other side of the Bund from us. I convince Todd and Rachel to come with me (it was’t too hard really) and on our free day we venture to the subway and begin our adventure. It is relatively flawless and after a short ride, some walking and lunch at a greek restaurant (who knew!?) we are in the MOMA (on free admission day no less… this means we get avigato’s later!!) enjoying a show called E-arts Shanghai. This exhibit is a city ide exhibit all about electronic arts. The show is wonderful, exciting, and interesting. I begin to feel inspired and wish that I was home with all Tacoma to support my habit. Instead I buy a book and we head home. That evening Jeff, Rachel and I go to an underground bar and have a few drinks. On the way we find a chocolate mouse tart and drink Chamay white beer. We are pleased beyond words as we enter the cute tiny bar of which we have sought. We relax and enjoy each others company in the warmth of the tiny hidden bar.

The next day we find ourselves packed and ready for the new tastes of Japan.

we find ourselves in a little valley

"not if the earth could look like this, he thought. Not if he could hear the hope and the promise like a voice, with leaves, tree trunks and rocks instead of words. but he knew that the earth looked like this only because he had seen no sign of men for hours; he was alone, riding his bicycle down a forgotten trail through the hills of Pennsylvania where he had never been before, where he could feel the fresh wonder of an untouched world."

It is Ayn Rand who best describes the Wutai Shan valley.

tour days

My dreams here are driven. They follow patterns that elaborate on each other. Each new bed is like a new interpretation of the same things, and I wake up every morning with multifaceted viewpoints.

Everywhere we go now, we are fed with buffets. Buffet breakfast, lunch, dinner with tea and coca-cola. The amount of food is overwhelming and we leave so much of it to waste despite our attempts to ingest all that we can. At some point now I begin to avoid the meals and return to my room to eat crackers and peanut butter. We watch cute anime films and drink strong tea on hotel beds. This seems to sustain us and I continue living healthily.

One morning Rachel, Allison, and I head out in the early hours to visit the Temple of Heaven. This place is like an outdoor YMCA but with a beautiful, pristine, temple setting. There are groups of retired friends playing hacky-sack, practicing Tai Chi, laughing, dancing, chatting and stretching. The air of the place is wonderful and we travel through the groups taking it all in. We are the youngest people there by at least 30 years but the situation feels right so we walk and smile and don’t even take any pictures. Finally we have to take a taxi to school and all through class I am imagining myself in other places.

These days we are tourists. We are tourists in a perfectly beautiful post Olympics Beijing. We all find it hard to follow the man with the blue flag. These days we only do what is on the plan and our plans last all day with little room for rest. We wake, get on a bus, get dropped off, listen to a tour, get back on the bus, get dropped off... the regiment is draining. We make due somehow and this way we see the Forbidden City, the Great Wall, the Ming Tombs and many other attractions. These moments are when I can really see the 19 million people in Beijing.

The crowds at the Forbidden City are amazing. We follow literally thousands of people through small arches that spit us out into vast courtyards, hidden niches, and gardens that lose all their peaceful qualities when jam packed with people. There are groups of school children all dressed in their blue or red sweat suits. There are many foreign tourists, but even more Chinese tourists all gathering, crowding for a glimpse of a royal thrown or the beautiful royal relics. A few of us pay a little extra money to enter a museum section of the city. Here they have collections of jewelry, Buddhist paraphernalia, and huge royal seals. We visit temples with titles like "Mental Cultivation Temple" and "Spiritual Cultivation Temple". It is relaxing here and we stay for a moment and sit as a tiny group enjoying the "cultivation".

The Great Wall requires a bit of a drive out of the ring roads of Beijing and up through the surrounding hills. We drive on the same route as the Olympic cycling teams did. All along the road up to the Great Wall I notice little painted bikes on the road bearers. These lead us past the huge, shiny, Olympic Velodrome. I try to convince our tour guide to stop at this amazing location, but those tour guides... they stick to the plan... do or die. Finally we get to the entrance and we all stumble off the bus and stand in a huddle as we wait to file in. The wall appears smaller than I imagined, but as I begin to climb up the stairs and ramps I realize that although it is short, at times it is very steep. The tour is nice because we are left to our own devises for much of it and allowed to climb and explore at our own pace. I find myself wondering how I got here. I plot all of the planes, buses, passport stamps and footsteps it took for me to get to a place with so much history. It is almost as if I would have forgotten if I had not looked up past the wall, passed the hills, passed the city in the distance, to realize I did not recognize anything. The realization that absolutely nothing in my sight was familiar to me, but that I was standing on a structure familiar in concept to almost everyone was worth all the travel. We are poor tourists in both senses of the word and we never buy anything. I always take pictures though. They are far better.


The Beijing train station is hectic and crowded. After we all come together with our bags and our buddies we file onto a tiny train and squeeze into the next 6 hours of our lives. We slowly putter our way towards Detong in four person sleepers. We cut through the country, in and out of tunnels. We talk about nothing too serious. We share our sparse future plans and some of us read while some of us rest. I fall asleep easily to the lull of a moving train and the sound of rollers on track. We arrive and carry our packs up and down and out into the evening. It is always so rewarding arriving in a new place. I discover a sense of accomplishment watching all the packs bob up and down in front of me. But it is not until we get to our destination that I can really be pleased. I lye on my bed with all of my things in two little bags and I look out the window. This is the new view for a while.

It is raining out now. My roommate Rachel sleeps and I write about all sorts of past loves. There are no sounds but my pen on this paper and the ping of the rain on glazed tile roofs. I wish to go about in it on a bike. I wish to touch the earth and the sky at the same time.

Greetings to Beijing!

We left UB when it was still dark out. Driving to the airport I am watching the stars thinking how here I am oriented differently yet they still remain stars. This leads me to thinking about the Saul Williams poem, that Saul Williams song when he says, “you contemplate the setting sun, unaware of your disorientation. Disorient, turned away from the east, shifting currents.” And I have to wonder why I have stayed away from here so long, why I have not come sooner.

The sun rises half way through our flight and it is beautiful. We fly over Beijing and watch the smoke stacks poke through the smog. My first view of China is one still pink and yellow with the morning’s sun.

This city has an incredible feeling. It could be the shear amount of living bodies bustling and talking and laughing. It could be the tiny picturesque brick framed neighborhoods with courtyards (Hutongs) or the old men smoking and playing board games. It could be the streets that circle the square in neat rings or a city almost completely run by Volkswagens. It could be the boys reading tiny books as they sit on there bikes…waiting, or it could be the fact that the moment we stepped off of the plane… boys on bikes! Girls on bikes! Old women on bikes! Couples on tandems! Grocery men on bikes! Paper-boys on bikes! Bikes! Bike lanes wider than the streets... bike lights that appear in tiny bicycle shapes… underground bike tunnels! Yippee!


All I can do to keep from screaming my joyous excitement is to imagine being on a bike again. When we arrive at our hostel we walk down a fairly wide alley lined with Volkswagens. We walk into our hostel courtyard and there… all lined up on a nice brick wall… a row of little white bikes! I ask our guide and he informs me that they are free to ride, and I am overwhelmed with excitement! Later as Todd, Safa, Norah and I pedal through the city I know that this is why I came here. This is where I am oriented. I am collected, calm, and unbound, piloting my way through more bikes than I have ever ridden with. I am firmly planted as a present part of this city. I am secretly comforted that I have not lost my bike riding skills and I after a bit I allow myself to ride faster and look around. I put my camera on Auto and shoot with one hand for a while as my other guides me past the city’s afternoon duties. Our little bike team (the Bodhi Riders), plot a route, go in circles, go underground, get a little lost, get back on track, steer down a cool alley, pull over to take pictures of art, get a bit lost, fix derailed chains, stop and eat food we order without direction, and a few hours later emerge from a clump of beautifully active hutong’s to find we are home.

goodbye Mongolia!

I am sitting at a pleasant cafe in Ullanbator. This is the same place I met the couple from Beijing, the sculptor studing at Columbia, Don Croner "our great scholar", and the well dressed missionary. There is a blacony that looks out over peace street and i feel the cold air reach me all the way back here, where i sit by the window with a view of an abandoned soviet playground. Last night a small group of girls traveled down the street to a nice lounge. We put on dresses, yak shawls, and our nicest shoes. We sat around a single table drinking good gin in mixed drinks. We talked about Mongolia, home, China, Japan politics, people we were missing. We freely talked about politics- something we would soon not be able to do. At 11:30 we headed back home. I realized that soon even this would be uncommon. By India, we won't be able to be out past dark. It has never been easy being a woman. This trip has highlighted so many things, including my gender.

I have become close with the city. So close in fact, that the Beijing couple ask allison and I, "Do you live here or are you traveling?" . Jane and I find ourselves humming Mongolian songs as we grocery shop. We have gotten good at taking taxi's. We have gotten good at navigating the unmarked streets by foot. I have gotten good at strapping my camera to myself and setting up Fstop, ordering drinks without ice and keeping an eye on my shoes. We have gotten good at watching out for each other.

In the evenings we have Japanese and Chinese language hours. I learn important things like "hello", "thank you", "where is the bathroom?" I learn even more important things like, "Where is the bike shop?" and "TERRIBLE, DISASTER, I got a flat tire!" After this we watch films. It is too dark and too late to go out in UB, so we crowd around any ol' mac and watch vivid, beaitiful, mind altering anime or dark, dry humor comedies and dramas. We have RAD viewing night and a few members of the PACRIM family come to appreciate a good bmx backflip, ass sliding, and a good quality 80's dialogue. I miss my bicycle then. I miss it more then ever. I miss the sounds of clipping in , chain on teeth, and the click of a perfectly shifting campy lever. When this first bite of “missing” happens, I begin to miss faces, my bed, metro coffee, and so I do what I must do to counterbalance this feeling… I plan. I make lists of to do’s, titles like “Art in Beijing”, “Hokkaido Museums”, “Bike Shops in Japan”. I compose lists of artists, museums, universities and programs pertaining to my thesis. I make lists of things to remember and still always… things I would not mind forgetting.

Allison and I go out to explore the city some more. I take photographs of new architecture, young people, the aesthetic structures of mountain/building/sky. I say “one, two, three” as I capture Allison at Suk Battor square. The Mongolian guys smile and laugh, imitating us… “one… two… three…. Smile!” they say.

The couple from Beijing tell us about a section of Beijing, “all artists should go to.” It is an old bomb factory converted into an artist’s community. They give is directions and recommend bars and coffee places. I add these to my lists and at night I listen to “The Notwist” and try to imagine all the unimaginable things I will come to hold in my heart throughout my life.

A week ago I take a look at my list titled, “Must Do: Mongolia”. I plan my last days here according to this. Visit the black market again, the calligraphy museum, Sukbattor, the art museum one last time, get some Gobi chocolate, a curry puff, a camel wool hat. The black market it as good as always. We look at the antigue section. I price door knockers and lapel buttons from soviet times. We look at wool, felt, cashmere vests. We find the Home Depot sections, the Drug Store section, the Best Buy section, and finally the pajama section! I haggle and buy a mens top and bottom. The set is fantastic with black and tan and neon lions, a big “2008” sprawled across the chest… as if I would forget this time and place. Allison buys a handmade lock. Its welding is spectacular and persise. I miss studio, work space, art supplies at my fingertips. I buy some other things too. I wrap they up nicely for the trip to China. They stay as the heart of my bag, the well protected core (This is important, they are gifts). I also keep all the gifts I have received. I keep all the emails I received from girls at Gangus Khan University. I keep the bracelet I was given from the Abbot and his family. I keep the firework rock the Gobi gave me and the tiny, pale, shapely twig the Tereiej national park gifted me. I keep all the bus tickets that Todd, Jane, Safa, and others collect for my art. I keep all the gifts Mongolia gave me that remain inanimate. I keep them in my big black sketchbook. I keep them in me.