Tale of two rooms

My accommodation on Gili Trawangan has had some high highs and some low lows. I arrived on Gili Trawangan on Friday, mid-morning. I found myself in the middle of backpacker land, with so much cheap tourist activity that it was hard to tell where we were. Want to watch a movie on the beach in a crappy cheap shack with a 10 inch monitor in black and white? This is your place!

Not mine, though, so I headed north, to the quieter and more deserted part of the island. My first destination: Karma Kayak, a bungalow and restaurant place recommended by my friends Leena and Nick. After a 30 minute trudge with backpacks on my front and back, I arrive there, a bit of a sweaty mess. But, "we're full," says the very nice young man who comes out to talk to me. Based on his recommendation, I head to Alam Gili, just a couple of doors down.

There, I am met with similarly bad news. "All we have is the two-level bungalow suite for 950,000 rupiah," I am told. Yikes, that is well, well, well outside of my price range. All of the smaller, cheaper bungalows are full. But, a ray of hope! Tomorrow, one is empty and I can have it. And, has this guy got a deal for me. I can head down to the bungalows next door for 150,000 rupiah, very basic. Then come back the next day and check in to my nicer bungalow for 500,000 rupiah. I am tired, it is hot, and so I agree.

Then we go to Nusa Tiga, the cheap place next door. I drop my stuff in the room, too exhausted to look around. I head out for the day.

Then I return that night. Whoops - this place is really nasty. There is no sink, just a hole in the counter. The toilet does not work. The shower is cold and, get this, saltwater (ever wondering how to get less clean from clean water? make sure it is saltwater...). And the ceiling looks like (a) it is going to cave in and (b) it is infested with spiders. Oh, and there is no lock on the door, just a rusty sliding knob. Welcome home, I say to myself.

After a pretty bad night of sleep and a crappy saltwater shower, I really want to get out of this place. So I zip up my never-unpacked luggage and head to Alam Gili, figuring that they own me one for that awful night. And, well, they deliver. The place is AMAZING. It is like a huge garden, with a small little plunge pool that is the temperature of heaven. And the room, the room! My verandah alone is spectacular, with day bed, fan, and fresh fruit. My bathroom, wow, the shower is open air with plants around it, the sink exists and comes stocked with soaps. This is pretty rad.

So, all's well that ends well. I am definitely glad I stayed in the order above and not vice versa. I also started to understand, a little bit more, the niceties of a beach vacation.

Dive! Down! Dive!

Ah, scuba diving. It is like temporarily entering another world. For one, gravity becomes very strange, lighter, and I have 360 degrees of motion available to me on all three axes. For two, the creatures down there are fascinating just to watch. On land, I never spend much time watching a fish eat. But down below! It just seems more worthwhile down there.

So, here on Gili Trawangan, I knew I had to dive. I went to Blue Marlin Dive and saddled up for their first dive of the morning, a 9am dive to Halik dive site. It had been at least one year since I last dove, so I'm trying to remind myself of all the tips and tricks of diving properly. And it goes off without a hitch. Down we go. There is coral (a bit destroyed, but still) of all types: brain, bucket, spiny, and more that I don't know the name of. There are fish: parrotfish, angelfish, and more, all different colors. One blue nearly translucent fish really caught my eye and I followed her around for as long as I could. And then - my tank was at the "time to go up" point of 500 bar. What? I just got down here. The divemaster sends me up and up I go, pausing at 5m for 3 minutes to avoid the bends. I surface. Here I swim around with my mask and regulator on, staring at the depths below. This is almost as cool as the dive - there are schools of fish circling around. The boat draws near and they ask "why are you up so soon, everything ok?" Yup, everything was fine, I was just gulping air down like there was no tomorrow.

So I have to go again. After a quick refuel and reair stop back at home base, we head out to Bounty, so named for an abandoned resort on Gili Meno. We go down again. This time it feels more natural, and I am calmer, breathing but not gulping. We drift on the slope and come to a sunken pier. Now it is covered in neat coral and fish dart in and out. We float past and the divemaster points out a lionfish - one of those dark red and white fish with lots of spines that look a bit like a mane. It is so nice and so peaceful. We come up. It's been 42 minutes - and I wasn't the reason we had to surface! Feels like this whole diving thing is coming back to me. I am now so pumped to dive Tulamben off the east coast of Bali, where there is an accessible shipwreck. Stay tuned...

When NOT to trust your phone

Sometimes your sixth sense is right. Usually that's when repeatedly disregard it. Let me explain...

I had a car pickup coming for 7am in the morning on Friday to take me to the coast and from there to the Gili Islands, a chain of three little islands off the northwestern coast of Lombok. I'm using my phone as an alarm clock on this trip. As I settled in on Thursday evening, I looked at it after I finished dinner, lingered and got home. It said 7:46pm. I definitely thought, "there's no way this can be right" and definitely proceeded to do nothing about it. I set my alarm for 6.

My alarm goes off at 6. I rouse myself and head to the shower. As I'm coming out, I hear someone outside of my bungalow yelling in, "hello?" After I collect myself, I head out where a angry man tells me that I am very late, it is nearly 7:30 in the morning. OH NO! My heart rate jumps from a resting rate to panic mode. I dearly want to get to the Gilis at this time or else it probably won't make sense to go. "Just a minute, I'm coming, I'm coming," I tell the man. "Hurry," he says. Alright! Throw all my stuff in my bag and away I go. Make it with barely five minutes to spare, after a 45 minute drive. Whew!

And, it turns out, all of this is because I turned on my phone to SMS someone, and it picked up the local time. Except it picked up the local time in Jakarta, which is not the local time in Bali. Hello, Indosat? Could you PLEASE remedy this? Thanks.

Just under the surface, brimming with tradition

One thing I really like so far about Ubud is that it is finding an interesting blend of tourism and tradition. I'm not able to dig that deep into the culture (no Bahasa Indonesian tongue) but still I can see that culture, and in particular Balinese Hindu ritual, permeates throughout.

Two quick examples. First, walking along the sidewalk becomes an exercise in not stepping on the offerings that are out in front of each shop or house. These little trays are filled with incense and small bits of food and are laid out daily. Similarly, a couple of times on each block there will be a break in retail and a shrine or entrance to a temple will appear. These too are maintained daily, with elaborate structures made from bamboo and other materials used.

Second, a handful of times I have seen shops shuttered, with little handmade signs in the window. They read: "Sorry, we're closed today on account of ceremony. See you tomorrow!" The interesting thing here is, as far as I can tell, this happens regularly, and is not just for one or two holidays when everyone takes religious observance.

I read somewhere that the Balinese calendar is incredibly complex. Apparently, there are concurrent 10-day, 9-day, 8-day, 7-day, 6-day, 5-day, 4-day, 3-day, 2-day, and 1-day weeks running. And each of those week systems has their own set of holidays. This results in many many days requiring special religious observance of some kind. Even with Ubud having a fair amount of tourist infrastructure, it is really neat to see some balance with traditional culture - here's to hoping it can be maintained as tourism seems to only increase in these parts.

A lovely walk among fields of (not yet golden) rice

After my long lunch at Sari Organik, I continued to venture north, into the Ubud Kaja (or "north Ubud") rice paddy walk. Essentially, it's a 5km total walk, north up the west side of a river and then south down the east side. Very quickly, the town of Ubud fades into rice paddy agriculture. And it is beautiful. The rice is about knee high, and it is everywhere. The path sometimes seems to be overtaken by it. Out to my left the rice paddies continue as far as the eye can see. Squinting, I see them climb an incline by virtue of terracing.

The other thing immediately noticeable about the rice paddies is that there is water EVERYWHERE. It is literally coming out of the ground, except for the meter-wide path on which I walk. All the fields of rice are flooded with it. In addition, there are rushing streams that weave in between the different fields. When I venture closer to the river, I see a corralled stream flowing strongly to a break, where it is split into two.

The other thing about the river is that it is nothing less than a full-on jungle. It is teeming with green life, all over the place. There is a particular tree (or growth on a tree) that results in vines hanging down. It looks like a weeping willow on steroids. And it's a bit of a pain to walk through. But it is also a sight to behold.

Nothing all that eventful happened on the walk, just a lovely stroll.

When one door closes....

Some word from the mainland has reached me: The class at Harvard for the inaugural Doctor of Education Leadership program has checked in full. No room for me from the waitlist. Darn!

Well, with that door closed, the next one has opened. The question is, where does it lead...

Potential door #1: Become a teacher and start this fall, likely in math and likely in high school

Potential door #2: Find other useful work in the fast-moving field of education reform

Potential door #3: Pursue cooking school and then loop back to one of the doors prior

Or potential door #4: Something else entirely and / or some creative mix of the above

Your ideas are welcomed in comments!

An organic farm-to-table restaurant with a view

Nearly a kilometer north of any pavement lies a lovely building on stilts. Within is a restaurant serving the freshest of fresh organic food. Without is largely rice paddies, with the exception of the restaurant's own organic farm (and experimental rice fields). Called Sari Organik, this compound is a lovely stop about one-fifth of the way into a rice paddy walk north of Ubud.

I started with the Thai salad, a mix of fresh lettuces, cucumber, grated carrot, and huge slices of fresh young coconut. The dressing was similarly Thai, with lemon, coconut, and oil as the main notes. Some fresh homemade bread with twin butters and a "Purple haze" smoothie, a mix of, among other things, berries, tofu, and mint, rounded out the starter course. Both were good, but not great. The fresh coconut was nice, smooth and subtle. But the rest of the salad, including the dressing, lacked any bursts of flavor. The smoothie had some fun flavors but was so grainy as to be hard to drink. The bread was very yummy but too few.

So, I moved on to the main course, Greek grilled vegetable plate with fish. This time I paired it with the "green cleanser" drink, which had broccoli and apple, among others. This scored much higher marks. The grilled veggies and fish were cooked well. More importantly, they were covered in a delicious light oil seasoning that really brought out the natural flavors of the food and paired it with notes of fresh herbs. The fries were more than they looked too, a mix of regular and sweet potatoes. And the green cleanser was scrumptious and fantastic at beating back a hangover-induced lull.

Of course, the view of the rice paddies and the absent sound of traffic weren't so shabby either!

BBQ? Really good? In Bali?!?!?!?!

In an attempt to build from our delicious roast pork lunch, me and friends of friends Leena and Nick planned a dinner at the famous barbecue joint in town, Naughty Nuri's. Named for the female proprietor, the moniker could also sub in for the food. This is luxurious dirty dining, at its best.

First off, the entrance to this place, much like lunch, leaves nothing to the imagination. There is a large charcoal grill out front, and racks of pork ribs decorate it like an epicurean xylophone. I joined my new friends, and we ordered some drinks. Having just walked what felt like 4 miles, I went for a beer. They went for martinis, gin. And they were rewarded for their boldness. The martinis were full to the brim and then some, with surface tension alone keeping the liquid in the glass. Better still, they were smooth, utterly drinkable martinis. After one sip, I was ready for one of my own.

To pair with these loaded drinks, we needed meat. We settled on two racks of ribs and a pork sausage. The ribs were fall off the bone tender, lathered in a sauce that turned out to be little more than sweet soy. And, wow, were they good. After eating the juicy and tender pork, I licked each bone and all of my fingers - couldn't waste a drop! The sausage was a lovely change of pace. Very creamy, it tasted like a mix between a good ballpark frank and a pork brat. It went down easily.

I had gotten my martini to help the ribs go down. And now, more than a little tipsy, I needed more food to balance it all out. There was only one solution: this mouthwatering burger. This medium-rare beauty was so juicy and filled with perfect garnishes. Thick-cut bacon, lettuce, tomato, onion, and melty cheese rounded out by a bun that could match the insides. This was the perfect chaser to the evening.

Two other things, non-culinary, made this a really fun meal. One was that we met Bryan, one of the co-owners along with Nuri, and he regaled us with stories from the early days. Fun! Two was the kitsch up in various places, including this neat sign, riffing off the ubiquitous beer logo for the local Bintang beer.

From there, well, the night continued but the food stopped. Stories for another time...

Whole Pig, Indonesia-style

Having done the Whole Pig thing not a month ago in San Francisco, I was delighted to hear of a restaurant famous for whole roasted pig in the center of Bali, in Ubud. It has become so famous that it even was the showpiece for an episode of Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations. And, as it turned out, it is famous with really good, really juicy, really porky reasons.

To start with, the front entrance to this place leaves nothing to the imagination. There, you have several of the cooks chopping up a pig from its whole state, with the next pig at the ready.

Then, you sit down at one of the many, always full tables. Everybody orders the same thing: mixed pig plate. We also had some complementary iced tea with the meal.

The pig, oh the pork. This was tender, juicy, roast pork at its absolute best. It is apparently brined in coconut milk water for 8 hours, then slow roasted and basted for another 8, continuously. That's right, the spit never stops spinning and the juice never stops basting. And you can tell when you eat it, it is so rich and flavorful. And spicy! Wow, they aren't kidding with the chiles in this pork, it's powerful stuff. It required a second iced tea and it demanded to be eaten in full.

In addition to the roast pork, we also received a big chunk of pig skin, with that delicious crispy exterior / fatty interior combination that I love so much from duck recipes. Additionally, there was scrumptious pig intestine, deep fried into a little golf ball sized chunk that was initially crunchy but then gave way and melted in my mouth. It is likely there were one or two other parts of the pig on the plate, but in my ecstasy I missed noticing them separately.

For those of you who love pig, check out this close up of the lovely crispy skin.

Peanut sauce makes anything better

For my first dinner in Ubud, I am excited to try a warung popular with locals and budget-minded expats alike. Called Mangga Madu, it specializes in Indonesian and has a nice patio a bit east of town. On the walk on the way there, I came across this very neat statue at a roundabout.

Though it's dark, you might be able to make out a sea warrior, some goblin-like creatures, and additional ornamentation. I took it as an auspicious sign.

I started with drinks, plural. A large Bintang, perfectly refreshing with the heat and moisture in the air. And, to complement, a home-brewed hot ginger beer drink. The ginger beverage was excellent, like a cross between a Reed's Extra Ginger Brew and a hot toddy. Felt like a perfect amuse bouche to get me ready for dinner.

For the main course, I had nasi pecel madu, a rice and noodle concoction with vegetables, peanut sauce, and an assortment of side dishes. This one included tempeh (upper left, looks like a granola bar), prawn cracker, soybean cracker, and some tofu. It was good, but alas not magical. If anything it needed a bit more spice - surprisingly, the sambal that came with it didn't add much heat.

How NOT to leave Sanur

Fresh off of my waterlogged experience of hunting for lunch, I resolve to actually pay for transportation to get me to the shuttle bus stand to head to Ubud. Especially with all of my stuff, I think this is going to be a good deal. And I'm excited to try out the bemo, an Indonesian quasi-public form of transportation. The vehicle is a uncomfortable and small minivan that has had its rear seats ripped out and replaced with benches along the side. And the door is very small and always open. These cruise up and down the main streets in town, with rides for ~3,000 rupiah. Occasionally, they head on intra-city routes. I flag one down.

"Warung Pojok?" "Yes." "How much?" "10,000 rupiah." "No, 3,000 rupiah" "Ok, 5,000 rupiah." "Ok." (It was pouring!)

I get in and we drive north. Some more tourists flag him down, and he stops and they get in. then, inexplicably, he turns around and starts driving south, away from my destination. Hmmmm. After a while, they pay and get out, and he continues to drive south. We head all the way to the southern end of town (I'm headed to the northern end). We finally hit a roundabout and he turns around and we head back to where we started, hopefully on the way to my destination. Passing a hotel with a handful of tourists exiting, he pulls over and stops. He yells to each of them, individually, "Transport?" No takers. We wait some more, and another batch come, still no takers. At last, he hits the gas and we continue.

Now he wants to sell me a ride to Ubud. "What's the price?" "100,000 rupiah." Yikes, that is not worth it, and he's certainly not my best friend at this point. I demur, time and again, and he goes as low as 80,000 rupiah. Nope, no deal, buddy. We reach the McDonald's in the north of town. "Warung Pojok, over there," he points into a mess of rain and traffic. "Where, I can't see it," I reply. He drives forward another two blocks, there, across the street. It does say Warung Pojok, but it does not look like a shuttle bus stop. Resigned, I get out and pay the man. He drives off, and I consult my map. Sure enough, we're a good five long blocks shy of the Warung Pojok to which I'm headed, which he must have known. Ugh. I strap on my pack, raise my umbrella, and hike through the rain for 20 minutes. Finally.

"Is this the Perama shuttle stop?"

"Yes."

"When's the next shuttle bus to Ubud?"

"1:45pm."

"What time is it now?"

"2pm."

Thank god for island time. To Ubud!

New beard!

Well, this whole start from scratch thing is finally starting to pay off.

First, here's shot 2 of the beardtracker that was from April 11, in a bullet train in Japan:

And, here's the fresh-ish shot, from April 20, at my bungalow in Ubud:

A hilarious and wet slog to some pretty good and pretty spicy chicken

I wake up on Wednesday determined to build on my good food experience from the night market. And I have a destination! A hot anonymous tip about some stunning, and stunningly cheap, nasi campur in the interior of Sanur. I am excited!

Just one problem: the skies have re-opened and the town is nearly literally flooding. Never fear: I have an umbrella! And a strong desire not to take advantage of the guys every 10 feet asking if I need transport. These legs will work just fine, thank you.

I veer off of the main drag into a set of alleys. Wow, this gets dicey fast, there are places where the road has become a lake. It's really coming down and no one else is out walking. I continue on. I make a wrong turn on one of the alleys, and have to double back. I find my way, and come to the bypass - this is like the Interstate of south Bali. With a median, two lanes each direction, and a lot of traffic, this does not look like it'd be fun to cross on a bright sunny day, let alone one that seems from the set of Little Mermaid, like this one. Nevertheless, I tarry forward.

At last, I can go no further. The sidewalk has become various ponds surrounded by gaping holes, and the bypass remains the bypass. Luckily, there is a warung (local restaurant) right here! And it's got a great name: Warung By-Pass Sanur. It's like the Highway 66 Cafe! I duck in a grab and empty table (not hard to do: they're all empty).

When the waiter comes over, I try to ask him, "What's your favorite?" With that not working, I switch to "What would you eat?" Finally, I resort to hand signals. He points out a couple of things on the menu, though I think he might be doing it just to get rid of me at this point. I settle on some chicken and some rice.

And it's pretty good! The chicken was weirdly cut, so there was a fair amount of trying to find the odd-shaped bones in each piece. But the marinade was delicious, and spicy. If you look close, you can see lots of red chilies just sort of dancing across the chicken. Yum!

So I didn't make it to the place with the hot tip. Perchance I'll get there on my way out of town, we'll see. But this backup did nicely, plenty of spice and it came with a roof!

First real meal, and in a night market, no less!

I have to tell you, I am not immediately high on this Sanur place. Picked because it is less crazy tourists everywhere compared to other places in south Bali (I'm talking to you, Kuta), it feels like there are, well, crazy tourists everywhere. Exhibit A, food wise, is the bizarre, not too tasty, and oh-so-American pizza concoction I have for lunch (unable, as of yet, to find the real stuff). It is called the Volcano Vesuvio, supposedly because it has lots of chillies in addition to the salami and other ingredients. Here is a pic of the pie:

Weird, right? And it turns out not to be (a) spicy at all nor (b) delicious at all. And this, this food, this town, this is not the scene I'm aiming for at this particular time. So I'm pretty excited for my plan to head to Ubud, the cultural capital of Bali, tomorrow.

All that said, I have a great night. I meet up with my sister's friends Aimee and Sascha, and we head to the night market. I had developed a steady addiction to night markets, born from my time in Chiang Rai in northern Thailand in the mid 00s. This night market is on the money. Lots of vendors selling lots of cheap plastic things. A bit of wandering and we find the food section. The awnings are all; about 5 ft 6 tall, giving me a nice hunch as we look for dinner. Good looking fried chicken there, rice with coconut milk over here. We settle on a padang vendor, with a cart that has ~15 or so different dishes on it, all already cooked. You order a dish, they give you some rice, and your choice of small amounts of 4 or 5 of the dishes. It was all cooked this morning. (I don't have a photo yet of the padang stand, but watch this space!)

Following Aimee and Sascha's lead, I just start pointing to the ones that look interesting. Some water spinach, some little green veggies that sort of taste like eggplant, some chicken slathered in sauce. It's all pretty tasty - I think the water spinach took home my prize for the night. Oh, and it's HOT. Like spicy hot. And that's before I used any of the extra sambal (diced red chilies) that came on the side. This was lip-tingling hot, persistently hot, how-am-I-gonna-cool-down-my-mouth hot. And the heat was invigorating - yet another abrupt change from Japan. The heat awakens my palate and cools me down in the tropical climate. I can, oddly enough, feel my blood pressure go down. It's lovely to be eating simple, tasty, hot food in a night market again.

An abrupt transition

Wow, Indonesia is not Japan. I knew that was true, but did I ever feel it upon my entry.

An eight hour flight culminates at Bali's Ngurah Rai Denpasar International Airport. Immediately, I know I have traveled a long ways south. This is one of those airports without air conditioning, where everything has the rough edge of humidity to it. Indeed, from Tokyo to Denpasar is about the same as San Francisco to a bit past Guayaquil, Ecuador, latitudinally speaking.

I emerge from immigration, after the requisite stamp-stamp-stamp and pay for a tourist visa, to an arrival area just full of people. 11:30 pm and this looks like rush hour. The skies have opened up and it is pouring, pouring the kind of pour that only happens in places that get monsoons.

With flat-rate taxi secured, I wait for my ride. A handful of gents ask where I am going, I say Sanur. Oh, where are you staying there, they ask. I reply "Hotel Bali Rita". Blank stares. "Hotel Bali Rita?" I start to wonder if this hotel even exists. I had had an impossible to hear and even harder to communicate conversation with someone at the hotel via Skype about 12 hours earlier. Finally, one of these guys says the "R-r-r-r-r-r-rita?" Oh, do they roll their "r"s here.

About a half-hour later, my taxi driver and I are cruising the main street in Sanur, looking for the hotel. We go up and down, until I whip out my Rough Guide and we realize it's another half a mile south. We find it, drive down the driveway, and I mosey up to the front desk. It's empty. My driver helpfully looks around and finds the desk clerk slumbering away. He rouses, and we begin to talk. It's clear there is no record of my reservation, ugh. He says they have a room, that is 400,000 rupiah (about 10,000 to 1 USD). I deter, as I had been quoted a rate of 300,000, confirmed, when I phoned earlier. As we're talking about two nights, he says "800". I say no, "600" as I'd been promised. He says ok "750". I say no, "600, we're not negotiating". He leaves. He comes back 10 minutes later. "700?" No, "600". Finally, finally, he relents. He brings me my towel and I stagger and fall on to the bed. I will have to switch to negotiations style travelling!

At the end of that first two hours on Bali soil, Japan, with my rail pass, San Francisco weather, and fixed prices, could not be farther away.

Sayonara, Japan: some reflections on my time there

Though it was a last-minute addition to the itinerary, Japan turned out to be a splendid place for the start of this journey. Here are a couple of things I'll remember from the place:

The uniform and ubiquitous courtesy: Everywhere I went, I was always greeted with a smile. The shopkeeper's greeting - Irashimasse! - echoed from every store I saw. And, I truly mean every: I cannot think of a time when this did not happen. A couple of folks even went above and beyond this, helping a foreign stranger with no grasp of the language to find his way. There was the 7-11 cashier who, upon being asked where a local restaurant was, proceeded to escort me to the establishment more than two blocks away, asking for nothing more than a arigato-gozai-mas at the end. There was the baseball ticket taker at the Carp game who, when he saw my look of confusion as to where my seat was, proceeded to walk me up two ramps, halfway around the stadium, into my section, down to my row, and to point out my single seat. Wow.

The smart use of limited space: In such a small (physically) country, with a bunch of people, they have come up with some ingenious ways to use space well. There is of course the capsule hotel, which got its justice in a previous post. Even traditional Japanese architecture and culture seem designed to make fabulous use of the limited space. Japanese rooms with tatami mats are sparse, all doors are sliding doors, and no-one wears shoes. These all cause the space to expand. Perhaps most importantly, as explained by Yasuko, Japanese interior culture and design is defined by looking at a space while sitting on the floor. This brings all the furnishings into focus and really opens up the overhead space. Even better, some tables look like coffee tables, very low to the ground, but when you sit on the ground you discover a pit underneath the table where your (shoe-less) feet go. Ingenious!

The precision of the food: The dedication put into food design and eating in this culture! It was like a match made in heaven for me. I even coined my favorite word for describing it, sometimes meaning it seriously and sometimes when things were a bit over-done: precious. But it's true! When a department store food court creates so much food that look like works of art, well, it's precious. When to-go bought dishes come with ice packs, mini bottles of soy sauce, and the like, well, it's precious. And, when you behold some of the plating and originality of some of the dishes I and my friends sampled, well, that is certainly precious. I do not think I will have so many meals that were worth remembering in such a short time for a long time to come (and, yes, that is a challenge, future countries...).

1 country down, 7+ to go! Selamat datang, Indonesia!

Courting traveller's karma

Several times on this trip, I've had to put myself at the mercy of the travelling deities to come through. And, remarkably, they have - especially when I've given over control. Some stories!

There was the time in the Shibuya neighborhood of Tokyo, one of the busiest and craziest of many busy and crazy neighborhoods, when I needed a locker for my bags. I had just emerged from the train station, K had just left for the airport, and I was solo. I looked around and finally found some coin lockers but...full! I found some more, full also. I walked around and around this station (and it was a big station!) and kept finding more coin lockers and kept finding them full. I could feel myself getting tired and grumpy. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity but may have only been 30 minutes, I stopped. I simply stood outside of the ticket office, next to a bank of lockers, and waited. Lo and behold, within five minutes someone came, got their stuff, and FREED UP A LOCKER! The heavens rejoiced, or, at least, I did.

There was the time when I arrived in Matsue, looking for a place to stay. It was about 4pm. I walked for about 20 minutes to a accommodating looking place across from a temple. The door - locked. I could see no one inside. Hmmmmm. But I wanted a place to stay and it didn't look full. Again, I began to get tired from schlepping my stuff to and fro. All of the other places in my book didn't look close, nor did they look like what I wanted. Just as I was about to venture off, somewhere, anywhere, in search of a place to sleep, a minivan pulled up in front of me. She started talking in Japanese, but also used handsigns to ask if I was trying to get in. I said yes, but shrugged and tried to mimic that it was closed. No, she said, it's mine (pointing to her nose in a local custom that I hope to adopt). Yes! A PLACE TO STAY! And it was nice too, spartan Japanese room with comfortable tatami mat.

There have been countless others too. That Shingo was headed to Kyoto and offered us the chance to stay with him. That Yasuko let us stay on there. That the 7-11 cashier and the baseball station agent helped a poor guy who was oh-so-lost. Let me just hope that traveller's karma is the kind of thing that grows the more it is used!

Assorted food roundup - Japan

Some nibbles that didn't receive the full post treatment.

Meet yudofu. Yudofu is still boiling, fresh tofu. It (he? she?) was really quite tasty, milky and warm. Both K and I were spooning up the last scraps from this paper bowl.

An unlikely site at a train station, this Cafe Du Monde, with the slogan of coffee and beignets, had no beignets. No good. But the substitute pastries weren't all bad.

What's that, you ask? A skewer? Yes, but not just any skewer. A 2980 yen skewer of Kobe beef. Two pieces of meat, perfect for sharing. And worth every yen.

Quick, it's late at night in Okayama, you don't know the town, the hotel check-in person refuses to tell you of an open food establishment. Well, just head out to the rainy streets, wander into some random restaurant-looking place, and have some yakitori (chicken skewers)! These had all the main parts and also, I believe, chicken hearts (second from left).

A contender to vie against Mochi Cream? These stuffed waffles looked absolutely glorious in the display case. Fear not, Mochi Cream lovers, they were not up to snuff, your title still reigns.

Always a sucker for some more RF1, this bento lured me in from the moment I laid eyes on it. And it was delicious. The squid, yum! The eggy, roe-y noodles, yes! The unnamed vegetables in the upper left, why not! They should go into the travel food business and sell their stuff on airplanes in the states.

A gyoza-off in a rather odd setting

My final morning in Japan, this one in Tokyo. And what was left on my luist to do? One more food related adventure. This time, to Gyoza Stadium, in the Namjatown amusement area of the Sunshine City mall. Man, was this place intense!

When I arrived, 5 minutes before the opening of Namjatown, there was a crowd of folks all queued up, just anxious to get inside. There were two types: families with elementary school age kids and early teen / tween packs of girls. Oh, and me.

Inside, there was Gyoza Stadium, of course. There was also a very tacky spa, some small amusment rides, a ghost hunter game that was very popular (and had packs of people running around with Ghostbuster-like wands, looking for hidden ghosts), a dessert festival and udon village. And I'm sure there were parts of this place that I couldn't even understand.

The Gyoza Stadium part was decked out in 1950s Tokyo. Each place had many color pictures of the many types of gyoza on offer. As with the Ramen Museum, they were famous places from around Japan.

I tried three different gyoza, using up all my spare yen.

These were gyoza with miso butter sauce. The sauce was tasty. The gyoza, were, alas, not crispy enough and so came across as soggy and overcooked.

These were super-crispy bare gyoza. They had great crunch and the shell was terrific. The filling was ok, nothing much to mention there. This place also benefited from the ambiance of a picture of their chef with a lion in the background.

Finally, there were these eight cylindrical gyoza. Covered in a soy sauce with scallions, they were great little bits.

I was bummed that I didn't have more time, more money, and more kanji reading ability because there were 11 shops each selling about 20 different types of gyoza!