The $48 Hamburger

I'm in the wonderful mountains of Hakone, happily ensconced in a room with a view. More about this place later, but first a bit of catching up from Osaka. I'm a Bostonian, so for me Boston is the standard definition of "city." And it stretches the imagination to think that "city" could describe both Osaka and Boston -- the scale is so t5otally, entirely different. Osaka goes on and on and on and on and on, non-stop, block after block after block after mind-numbing block. I stayed at the Swissotel in Namba for 2 nights, then moved to the Ritz-Carlton near Osaka station. Was supposed to stay for 2 nights, but found it a bit too posh for my mood and left after just 1. The Ritz did provide me, however, with a Hamburger to Remember. The Ritz Carlton brand has multiple faces. In Boston, there is, or rather there was, the Old Ritz, a formal, often dowdy, place where ladies of a certain age would go to have tea. Then some years ago came a New Ritz, just as upscale but appealing to a far more contemporary crowd. The bar is funky, the decor is modern, and it feels like a place for the living more than for the dead. The Osaka Ritz, alas, is more along the lines of Boston's Old Ritz. The wall hangings are of fruit or old birds, and that pretty much describes the patrons, as well. Anyway, I arrived there at 11:30 and was told that my room wouldn't be ready for a couple of hours. I'm still gimpy, the Ritz isn't exactly in the middle of a shopping area for normal people (a Ferrari-Maserati dealership is on the Ritz's building's ground floor, and there's a Bvlgari store on the next corner), so it seemed like a reasonable idea to find a bite to eat in the hotel. "Can I get a sandwich or light lunch in this room," I asked the hostess at the Tea Room. "Of course," sez she, escorting me to a table. Dressed in a mostly clean Eddie Bauer t-shirt and jeans, I might easily be mistaken for the nouveau pauvre who had lost all their money over the past few months and had sold their pearls and/or children. Anyway, the menu offered a hamburger, and that's what I ordered. It cost 4500 Yen, or about $48. It wasn't just a good hamburger, it was a fantastic hamburger. On a sesame roll. With lettuce, tomato, some sort of interesting sauce, and foie gras. That's right, foie gras. If I'd seen that it had foie gras, I wouldn't have ordered it, but I didn't, so I did. And after a brief acknowledgment to both the unfortunate cow and even more unfortunate goose, I enjoyed that burger. It didn't simply come with French fries, it came with 3 different kinds of fries. There was a pile of shoestring fries, then there were 4 steak fries on top of the pile. Next to that were 3 slices of fried potato-onion things. And the water glass kept getting refilled, with lemon-scented water. Before this experience, I believe that the most I paid for a burger was $16 or $18, at the Bristol Lounge in the Four Seasons in Boston. Darned good burger, that one, even if it's served with only 1 type of fries. So now I'm at the Hyatt in Gora, and getting here is a pile of fun. From Osaka (or Tokyo, for that matter), you take the bullet train to Odawara, then change to a local train going to a place called Hakone-Yumoto. That's where the real fun begins, as you get on a mountain-climbing train that ingeniously handles switchbacks -- instead of trying to make a hairpin turn, the train zig-zags up the mountain, with the front of the train becoming the back of the train many times over. Confused? Well so was I, and I haven't figured out how to explain it, so you'll just have to come here yourself.

No Place for Old Men

The trip from Chengdu to Osaka seemed like it would be long, but not difficult. The 2.5 hour flight from Chengdu to Shanghai would leave at 7.45, then a 2-hour layover in Shanghai, and a 2-hour flight to Osaka. From the Osaka airport, there's a train to the city center, and my hotel sits on top of the train station. Piece of cake.

First problem was at Chengdu airport, where the agent tells me I can't check my bags through to Osaka. Huh? The two flights would be on different airlines, but they are both Star Alliance airlines, and Im on a single ticket from Chengdu to Osaka. No go sez the agent, I can only check your bag to Shanghai.

Land in Shanghai, plane parks at the furthest gate, about 20 or 30 miles from the terminal. The terminal is hot, of course, and half of the (few to begin with) moving walkways turn out to be non-moving walkways. Eventually reach the baggage claim, then start searching for the departure area, for which there are no signs. By this point, I am in a foul mood. Reach the check-in a full 45 minutes after the plane had parked at the gate, politely told the check-in agent that it was preposterous that I had to reclaim bags and check in again. She smiled, told me that "unfortunately" Shanghai airport does not have any interline baggage facilities. Are you kidding me!?!?!?!

So I get my boarding pass, head off to go through immigration and security, and 30 yards before the immigration line a muscle gives way in my calf and I go down like a shot, Fuck, fuck, ten thousand fucks, ten million curses on every goddamned Chinese who decided that Shanghai airport would be some 3rd world outpost.

So now I am here in Osaka, hobbling. Hobbling down the hotel corridor and the streets, like a Dickensian wretch.

Are you feeling sorry for me yet? Don't waste your time: I still managed to enjoy some great sushi today, got myself to a modest park where the cherry blossoms were in full bloom, and I'm making the best of it. Hoping that another night's rest will help.

Free-form traffic, Unfortunate confusion, a Deal with the Devil

Today's theme was to explore Chengdu. Chengdu sitting in the dead center of China, has 7 million people and is the center of Szechuan, which is now spelled Sichuan, some of the time. Jin Li Street is a wonderful spot, I was told, so I bundled myself in a taxi and off I went.

Getting there is half the fun. I don't know any way to describe traffic patterns in China. Lane markings are on the road, but they might as well have a picture of Snow White and the 7 Dwarfs (Dwarves?) for all the attention that anyone pays to the markings. Right turn on red is allowed, as is pretty much anything else on red. The streets have cars and buses, also plenty of bicycles, motor scooters, 3-wheeled cycles (motorized and non-), occasional animals, and other various surprises. Drivers stay on the right side of the road, unless they feel like being on the other side. Anything that's paved, or remotely flat, is fair game. And pedestrians might as well have targets painted on them. But it all seems to work, somehow.

Jin Li Street is sort of a Chinese faux Quincy Market. Reproductions of old buildings, filled with shops and eating places. It looks kitschy at first glance, but it is very much an area where people seem to enjoy hanging out and walking around. Some of the food stalls looked downright terrific (though, admittedly, most were serving up stuff that looked frightening to this Westerner).

Jin Li didn't hold my attention for very long, so it was off to Chun Xi Road, the main downtown shopping area and roughly the equivalent of Boylston St or Fifth Avenue. Lots of shops, lots of pedestrian streets, lots of people window-shopping down the sidewalks, groups of women and men and teenagers doing their respective things. In short, indistinguishable from any similar street in Boston or Brussels or Johannesburg.

One major difference was the complete absence of Western faces. Now I saw plenty of blue-eyed devils at the panda center yesterday, and there's a smattering of us at the hotel where I'm staying. But I saw exactly 0 in Chun Xi. Around this time I needed to buy a bottle of water, found a nearby stand, and handed over 5 Yuan for the 2 Yuan bottle. No deal, said the shopkeeper. Now I had vaguely heard that some shops do not like to give change, that they need exact amounts, but this seemed odd. Anyway, I abandoned that place and headed over to the WoWo, which seems like a local 7-11 chain. Got the same response!! Feeling completely at a loss (look, the burden is on me to speak Chinese, not on the Chengdoobies to speak English), I skulked off, found a Starbucks (!), and bought a coffee for 15 Yuan (about $2.25).

Took a cab back to the hotel, fare was 9 Yuan, and I gave the cabbie 2 5's. Now I get histrionics from the cab driver! I have him drive me around to the entrance where there's a doorman, who I know can act as interpreter. And the cheerful doorman informed me that the 5 Yuan notes that I'd been trying to use are actually worth 1/2 of 1 Yuan. Oh.

I was confused. See the 5's on the left? They're halfs. The ones on the right, with the smiling Chairman, they're the real 5's.

Chengdu is the main city of Szechuan, and that means that it's the capital of Szechuan cooking. And I have had some great food here. The signature Szuchuan dish is Mabo Dofu, which is fried tofu in an incredibly spicy and mouth-numbing sauce. The sauce includes some type of "meat," and it's almost surely best not to inquire further. They have a fantastic sense of knowing how to create foods that are viciously spicy while at the same time being insanely delicious.

And that's where the Faustian part kicks in, the Deal with the Devil. You eat this stuff, it is delicious beyond all wild possibility, and you know that you will pay the price. But that price will be paid later. (Not a whole lot later, but later.) And the deal is done.

That's it for today. Glad to see that the Sox have a nearly insurmountable lead over the Yankees and Rays. Off to Japan tomorrow.

PandaPix ipsa loquitur

These are all from the panda breeding center in Chengdu, which, alas, seems to be mostly a glorified zoo. All of the beasts are in captivity, and none will be released to the wild. In a nearby center, at Wolong, there are efforts to release pandas.

So I can either drone on with silly facts about panda, or I can just show the pictures. (The one at the bottom is a red panda.)

Beijing

Spring has begun to arrive here: white and purple blossoms are out, though the trees are still bare. On first impressions, Beijing is a jaw-dropping place, not so much by its style than by its scale. Everything is everywhere: people, buildings that stretch up and sideways, more people, boulevards ten lanes wide, an airport that seems to be the size of Delaware.

The city center goes on forever -- think of Bangkok times 20. Many of the spots best known to tourists -- the Forbidden City, Tienanman Square, the Great Hall of the People -- are close to each other, but most of the rest require taxi or subway rides from one to the other.


It is about a mile from my hotel to Tienanmen Sq, and yesterday's weather was perfect: sunny, 75 degrees, just a hint of a breeze. The walk was a good one: I took one of the small alleyways (hutongs) instead of the main street, and that was a good choice: storefronts everywhere selling groceries, bric-a-brac, cooked [and decidedly unidentifiable] food, and plenty of people of all ages ambling along, a hotel with a seemingly ironic name, and who knows what all else.

Tienanmen Square defies description. When you talk about "scale," TS is at one end of some scale, and I have no clue what that scale might be. It is rectangular, a lot of football fields wide by many times more football fields long. It's mostly open except for a few monuments scattered here and there, a big building in the middle, megazillions of people hanging around, and, maybe above all, the slightly faded picture of Chairman Mao Zedong overlooking the scene. Other than the need to pass quickly through a security checkpoint to enter the Square, there's little or no visible security presence.

This is not a beautiful city on a macro level, not in the way that Paris is strikingly beautiful, or that the New York skyline or Hong Kong's Victoria Harbor are beautiful. But as you peel away the layers, it becomes more and more interesting. Not many older buildings have survived, and until recently those that were built were created for function, not for design. That has changed: like crocuses sprouting up in expanses of dead and matted grass, new and interesting buildings dot Beijing's cityscape.


I don't know how qualified I am to be an architecture critic (Art Vandelay was my classmate at Architecture School), but some of the buildings strike me as more successful than others. This is a new office building a block from my hotel, and I think it's a welcome sight. It looks sturdy and functional, fits in as if it has been there all the time, yet is has a certain panache that says "I'm a bit special." Not a bad place to work or to notice as a landmark while you're stuck in traffic.

I'm less enthused about the National Grand Theater, an enormous place that is more or less Beijing's Lincoln Center (3 huge performance spaces under a single titanium dome). It certainly catches your eye, but I don't know that the design is timeless: 50 years from now, will people marvel at it, as they do for the Empire State Building or the Eiffel Tower, or will they roll their eyes and hold their noses, as they do for the Pompidou Center?

I'm at the Grand Mercure Xidan hotel, a good but certainly not top-notch place. It was incredibly cheap ($45/night, prepaid, during a 50%-off sale that the Accor chain ran about a month ago). It's 5 minutes from the Xidan subway stop and walkable to the Tienanman area, so the location is excellent. Staff are pleasant and speak English unusually well; the clientele is overwhelmingly Western.






I am not staying at the Xinyu Wonderful Hotel, but my guess is that it’s got its merits and is extremely affordable.







Getting here from Boston was even more of a pain that expected, due to horrendous weather between Boston and NY on Friday. What should have been the simplest part of the trip - the shuttle from Boston to La Guardia -- turned out to be the most troublesome. Sparing you most of the details, I got to Logan at 3 and checked in for the 4pm shuttle. That one got canceled, and I flew to New York on the 5pm shuttle which boarded at 6.30 and arrived at 8.45. My suitcase, unfortunately, did not take that flight. Happy ending: suitcase showed up on the 8pm shuttle that got in only 30 mins after the 5pm shuttle, and we all made it over to JFK for the flight to Korea. Yeah, there are direct flights from NY to Beijing, but I routed through Korea so that I could start a round-the-world ticket there. Flight to Seoul and connecting flight to Beijing were long but uneventful. Trip in total took 33 hours (all times Boston time):

Leave Billerica: Friday, 2.30pm

Take off from Logan: Friday, 7.45pm

Arrive JFK: Friday, 10.00pm

Take off from JFK: Saturday, 1.15am

Arrive Seoul (Incheon): Saturday 3.45pm

Take off from Seoul: Sat., 7.30pm

Arrive Beijing airport: Sat, 9.30pm

Arrive Hotel: Sat, 11.30pm (which was Sunday morning at 11.30, Beijing time)


Slept a lot en route and took a short nap when I got here, then spent most of Sunday afternoon walking to and around Tienanman. Slept soundly Sunday night (I'm writing this on Monday am), and looking forward to a quiet morning before heading off to Chengdu later today.

Yes, I know, I know, this is far too brief a stop in Beijing. Next time I'll stay longer.

Hoshinoya

Hoshinoya is a resort in the town of Karuizawa, about an hour from Tokyo on the Shinkansen line to Nagano. It is a blissful place and a great spot to chill out, sort of the anti-Tokyo.

Hoshinoya is an onsen (hot springs) resort built along -- or just about on top of -- a river, and water influences everything. You hear the sound of water everywhere when you're outside -- listen carefully and the sound is coming from multiple directions. There are two communal baths for guests, one a traditional indoor/outdoor onsen, and the other an indoor "meditation spa." The latter is special, and includes a set of rooms that grow increasingly dark.

There are 3 restaurants -- casual Japanese, formal Japanese, and casual French. I've stuck to the 2 Japanese ones (including a kaiseki room service set); the food and presentation were perfectly acceptable, but by no means exceptional.

The room accommodations are contemporary and comfortable. My room has an entryway, a bedroom with platform bed, living area with table and day bed, and a terrace with small table and day bed. As I recall, there are several different room styles available. Hoshinoya is not a small place by any means (maybe 50-60 suites?), and not all of the terraces seem especially private. The midweek clientele includes lots of families. As best I can tell, I'm the only Westerner here, but many of the staff do speak some English.

Karuizawa is at about 1000m/3300ft, so it's chillier than Tokyo. Fall colors have just begun, and there are plenty of trails for walking and enjoying the scenery. A few more photos:

Kyoto: washout

Kyoto was a soggy washout. I had planned to spend the day walking through the traditional, historic parts of town, taking some wonderful photos to preserve the memories of a distant journey, but Nature has intervened. A daylong shitmist and ear-level clouds kept me to the covered shopping streets. The best finds were a bookstore with a good selection of English-language titles (the 7th floor of the BAL store, on Kawaramachi), a bar named Fenway Park, and a surprisingly good conveyor-sushi place. Every plate at the latter was 173 Yen (about $1.60) -- cheap enough and good enough for a serious pig-out.

The place where I stayed, the Kyoto Hotel Okura, is comfortable enough, but someone really ought to tell the management that the 1950s are over. The bellmen and bellwomen (ok, they wouldn't have had bellwomen in the 50s) all wear these ridiculous gray and burgundy uniforms with little hats that would be a parody of itself if it weren't, which it isn't. But the hotel's location is dead solid perfect -- next to Gion, 2 steps from the main shopping streets, and connected directly to the subway.

This country does so many things right, it's amazing. All of the trains and subways run *exactly* on time. (It made the news yesterday when one of the bullet train lines had a 2-hour delay.) And for those who don't like to schlep luggage, they offer this fantastic service where you can forward your suitcase(s) overnight to your next hotel. It's all cheap and convenient, and it makes travel infinitely simpler.