Replaying the Classics - Mass Effect 3

In May of this year I began this series Replaying the Classics by replaying Mass Effect 2. Immediately thereafter I was confronted by the question of whether or not I would also replay Mass Effect 3. I kind of wanted to, but it would have been a substantial time commitment and there were quite a few other games that I felt a stronger desire to replay, so I put it to the side. As I got closer to my departure for Asia it became clear that I wouldn’t have time to complete it before leaving and as I published the Vanquish edition of Replaying the Classics in August it looked like it just wasn’t going to happen. When I got back from Asia, however, I started to feel this urge to replay Mass Effect 3, like I had an obligation to do so. Somehow I needed to replay this game before I could move forward and start playing games that had come out more recently. Leaving it behind was no longer an option. Thus I fired up the PS3 and began my ascent of the final mountain in this first season of Replaying the Classics. If you’ve not read my Replaying the Classics entry on Mass Effect 2 I highly recommend doing so before going any further, but if you’re up to date then let’s take a seat in our comfy chairs one more time while I tell you about Mass Effect 3.

Thoughts and Prayers

Whenever a terrible event occurs it’s common for people who are not closely tied to the event to convey their sympathy by saying their thoughts and prayers are with the victims of whatever happened. In recent times this expression has come under increased criticism. Particularly online, I’ve seen more and more people becoming upset whenever “thoughts and prayers” is used and raging about how useless thoughts and prayers are. I’ve been thinking about this phenomenon and in my mind it makes complete sense. Our society is becoming increasingly secular and materialistic, so its no wonder people are putting less and less stock in thoughts and prayers. If the material universe really is all that there is, then thoughts and prayers truly are worthless. All you are doing is bouncing around electrical impulses in your brain or speaking words that disappear into the air. You’re doing nothing to help the victims of the tragedy—perhaps even less than nothing. In that light, the rage against “thoughts and prayers” is completely understandable.

Personally I would disagree with the people trashing “thoughts and prayers.” Even if the secular materialistic assumption of the nature of the universe is true, thinking and praying about a tragic event can help people focus their minds on that event and it may spur them on to find ways to help, and might even be the catalyst to coming up with ways to prevent future tragedies. On top of that, if the secular materialist assumption of the universe is false, then thoughts and prayers could have massive potential. Indeed, if a person is not able to aid another person in trouble, then thoughts and prayers might be the best thing they can do for them.

In thinking about the fuss over “thoughts and prayers” I’m reminded of a conversation I had with a friend many years ago about prayer and the existence of God. We both agreed that if God does not exist then prayer is possibly the stupidest thing we do, but if God does exist then prayer is possibly the most powerful thing we do. We are either wasting our breath, or we are talking to the divine sovereign of the universe.

I’ve upgraded to the PS4 Pro

Back in June of this year I wrote about how I was thinking of upgrading from my PS4 to a PS4 Pro. This month I finally pulled the trigger and made the purchase. It took me awhile to get around to backing up my data from the PS4 and transferring it over to the PS4 Pro, but it’s done now and I stand ready to get back into serious gaming sometime after I return to Colorado. True, I still don’t have a 4K HDR TV yet, which I’ll need to truly experience all that the PS4 Pro has to offer, but my plan is to buy one at some point in the first half of 2018. When that day comes I’ll have another tech milestone to commemorate.

Video Game Prices

The standard new-release price of AAA video games in America has been stuck at $60.00 for over a decade now despite both the increased costs of video game development and the normal process of inflation. Before the start of the PS4/Xbox One/Nintendo Switch console generation I had been wondering if perhaps the price of games would go up to $70.00 but instead they’ve stayed put where they are. As a consumer I like this as it means games are effectively cheaper to buy than they’ve ever been, but as a gamer I’m a little concerned about what this might mean for the industry. Personally I’d be ok with the standard price of AAA games going up to $70.00 to account changes that have happened over the last ten years (and if means a reduction or elimination of microtransactions in AAA games). Another possibility I would be amenable to is a broader spectrum of game prices. Some games like GTA could easily justify a price of $80 or even $100 given the sheer amount of content they deliver, while other smaller games could be released at $30 or $40 or whatever is appropriate.

Back Home Again

I’m back at my parents’ house for a week to spend Christmas with the family. Other than helping my parents with various things and seeing one or two friends there’s not a lot to do here. Hopefully I can use this time to be extra productive on important projects like the new website, a certain upcoming blog post, and my work of fiction. Being home somehow brings out my really lazy side, however, so it will be a struggle to actually get things done.

Net Neutrality

Like many people, I’m concerned about the FCC’s recent repeal of Net Neutrality rules. That said, I do wonder if maybe people are going a bit overboard in their predictions of how dire our Internet situations are going to be. All the wailing and gnashing of teeth reminds me of what happened when Trump won the presidential election and people were acting like all of America had suddenly transformed into a version of early 1900s Alabama. Yes, bad things could happen from the repeal of Net Neutrality, but I don’t think it will be quite the apocalypse that people are predicting. Our online lives may become harder, but we’ll survive, and if things really do go down the drain maybe we can find a way to get Net Neutrality reinstated.

Christmas Lists

My family has a practice where everyone submits suggestions for gifts they would like to receive for Christmas. You aren’t guaranteed to get everything on it, but you know you’ll get at least a few things and it saves everyone the trouble of trying to figure out what to get for each other.

When I was young, I loved making my Christmas List. There were so many toys, games, and other things I wanted. In fact, the hard part of making the list was selecting what exactly to put on the list since drafting a full page of stuff would be seen as being greedy.

These days, creating a Christmas List is really hard. This is partly because my desire (and available storage space) for possessions has dramatically shrunk since I was a kid, and partly because some of the few things I want these days are expensive and I’m not going to ask my family to pay for anything like that. One of the other things that makes creating Christmas Lists hard for me is that my gaming hobby, which should be a veritable fountain of Christmas List suggestions, is off-limits. I don’t know why, but I can’t bring myself to ask my family to get me video games for Christmas. Years ago I put a game on my list and got it on Christmas, but I felt so guilty about it that I resolved never to do it again. Am I secretly ashamed of my passion for playing and writing about video games? If so, maybe I should put a game on this year’s list to try to put a dent in that mental wall.

At the time of my writing this post I’m in the middle of agonizing over this year’s Christmas List. I should have tried to make one prior to Black Friday so my family could take advantage of any sales on stuff I wanted but it’s been really hard to think up stuff for it. Hopefully by the time you’re reading this I’ve been able to come up with something suitable to send out to my family.

Re: Do you need to be good at video games to write or talk about them professionally?

You know what? I’m having second thoughts about last Friday’s post and I take back the part about having an affinity for games to discuss them professionally. You don’t need to be a gamer or even like video games to say something about them. If there’s anything we’ve learned from Anita Sarkeesian it’s that you can be a charlatan peddling half-truths and still professionally talk about video games.

In fact, you don’t even have to be good at writing or talking to discuss games, or have meaningful or coherent thoughts on them. Heck, look at what I do on this website!

Do you need to be good at video games to write or talk about them professionally?

That’s a question that’s existed in the background for a long time in the video games world. Earlier this year the question was brought back to the forefront by events surrounding the game Cuphead. In particular, a viral video of a games journalist having a very hard time completing Cuphead’s tutorial reinvigorated the debate over the relationship between a person’s skill in gaming and their ability to speak about it on a professional level. Like so many other things I write about, I’m late to this party and it’s no longer a hot topic, but I’ve been wanting to publish my own opinion on it since the most recent ruckus erupted and now I’m finally getting around to it.

Do you need to be good at video games to write or talk about them professionally? My answer to that question is no, and let me explain my line of thinking on this. In my opinion you don’t need to be good at video games to write or talk about them professionally, you just need to have an affinity for gaming and be good at writing or talking. You might not be good at specific genres of video games, or even video games in general, but if you’re passionate about them, have something worthwhile to say, and are able to communicate your message well then by all means I would think that you can discuss video games professionally. One of my favorite gaming personalities summed up a lot of my thoughts earlier this month with the tweet below:

But wait, what if you’re really bad at video games, to the point where you have difficulty finishing a game of average difficulty? Even then I would say that you could still write or talk about video games, though you might be more limited in what you can discuss. Perhaps you got stuck at a certain point in a game and couldn’t finish it. In that case you can write or talk about what you experienced—just be up front and honest about not getting to the end. Obviously you couldn’t give a game a comprehensive review, but you could still have something meaningful to say about the chunk of the game you completed. If it’s interesting, then put your thoughts out there and don’t worry about your relative skill in gaming.

The Collapse of NeoGaf

Yesterday I wrote about the torrent of sexual misconduct allegations that rushed through the gaming community and took down many people. One of those persons was Tyler Malka, the owner of NeoGaf. I might have visited NeoGaf once, but otherwise I avoided it like the plague due to its reputation for spewing forth some of the most vile and vitriolic online behavior in the gaming world. NeoGaf collapsed not long after Tyler Malka was accused of sexual assault, which is notable due to his supposed commitment to stamping out misogyny in gaming, and normally I’d let the death of a website go without comment but for NeoGaf I make an exception. Seeing a place as contemptible as NeoGaf go up in flames was undeniably satisfying. True, there will always be hate and harassment online, and the remnants of NeoGaf have started a new website that might turn out to be even worse than NeoGaf, but for once we got to see a bastion of wickedness destroyed.

Male Feminist Allies (and Gamergate)

Author’s Note: Apologies in advance for the memes. I realize some might see them as mean but I find them rather fitting in the context of today’s post.

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The same wildfire of sexual harassment and assault allegations that blazed through Hollywood and Washington also scorched the gaming world. A fast, sudden torrent of accusations saw a number of persons in the gaming community forced out of their jobs or livelihoods and ushered into the status of social pariahs. The hits just kept coming, and there was even a period of about two weeks where it seemed that not a single day went by without at least one person being exposed for their sexual misdeeds.

Being on vacation in Asia during peak accusation season, I wasn’t able to keep up with events as much as I would have liked, but there was one thing that really stood out to me as I tried to follow along via Twitter. I couldn’t help but notice the sheer number of Males Feminist Allies and members of the anti-Gamergate community who were being accused. Men who had spent years virtue signaling their commitment to uplifting women and proclaiming the misogyny of Gamergate were now being exposed as sex predators. As several Internet commentators put it, the witch hunters had become witches, hunted. Day after day, more and more of them were outed, and soon I was waking up each morning wondering who was the latest target of accusations. Perhaps the most incredible thing to watch during the whole season of allegations was how proponents of the “listen and believe” movement were trying to make exceptions for themselves and their friends when they were the ones being accused of sexual misconduct. The very monster they had been feeding was now eating them alive. Had there not been terrible misdeeds committed that were leading to all these accusations it would have been funny in a really messed up way to watch the massacre.

It’s been a few weeks since I noticed any big accusations in the gaming world, so perhaps the storm is over, for now. Should another one blow up, however, I have a sneaking suspicion that we’ll see more “allies” revealed not to be allies at all.

They both should go

Author's Note: This post was written prior to the outcome of the Alabama election.

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There haven’t been as many politicians as entertainers who have been caught up in sexual misconduct scandals, but two big ones are currently prominent in the spotlight: (now former) Democratic Senator Al Franken and Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore. Both have had credible sexual misconduct allegations made against them, and in the case of Al Franken we have photographic proof of one of his misdeeds. Recently the Democratic Party finally threw Al Franken under the bus in what appears to be a political maneuver to gain the moral high ground and make Republicans look bad for not doing the same to Roy Moore. Time will tell whether or not this strategy works.

Personally, I think both of these men should go. I realize that I’m probably in the minority for having this opinion, but I believe character is an integral part of a person’s qualifications for leadership. When a person has multiple credible sexual misconduct accusations made against them it speaks volumes to their character and in my view makes them unfit to hold high public office. The Democrats were right to pressure Al Franken into resigning, though their motives are very suspect given how long it took them to get around to doing it. Republicans ought to do the same to Roy Moore and demand he withdraw from the Senate race. These men cannot be our leaders. Had they confessed and repented of their deeds back when they first happened then we could be talking today about giving them a second chance, but right now they are unqualified.

As an addition at the end here, let me also say how disgusting it was in the early days of the controversies to read people trying to defend Al Franken and Roy Moore on purely political grounds. The line of reasoning seems to be that pushing them out will set a bad precedent and could potentially hurt either the Democratic or Republican Party in a really bad way in the future. Both Al Franken and Roy Moore come from states that are pretty safe bets for their respective parties, but what if a senator from a swing state gets forced out and the party loses a crucial vote for their legislation? Never mind the women who have been hurt or the blatant hypocrisy that will be committed—the party comes before principles.

Harvey Weinstein and the Entertainment Industry

Back in October the American movie industry was rocked by a slew of allegations of sexual harassment and assault that were made by multiple actresses against film mogul Harvey Weinstein. Within just a few weeks Harvey Weinstein’s professional career was left in utter ruins and the turmoil surrounding him was only just the beginning of the storm. Since Harvey Weinstein’s fall, dozens of other men from various parts of the entertainment industry, the press, and the political world have been fired, resigned, or put under intense scrutiny due to the wave of sexual harassment and assault accusations that has swept the country. The purging flame is still burning and I suspect we’ve got awhile longer before it dies down.

As I’ve watched all this drama unfold, a question that’s been running through my mind is whether anyone is honestly surprised by it. In particularly I wonder if anyone is shocked that most of the allegations seem to be coming out of the entertainment industry. It’s no secret that the entertainment industry has been morally bankrupt for a long time and I think a lot of us had suspected that stuff like this was rampant behind the scenes, and now we’re starting to get the proof. Part of me is hopeful that the tsunami of sexual harassment and assault allegations will wash away the filth and make the entertainment industry a more upright and respectable place, but another part of me is extremely pessimistic and thinks that the entertainment industry fundamentally rotten at its core and will never really change. Indeed, another part of me thinks we haven’t even seen the worst allegations come out yet.

Why can’t we have both conversations?

Whenever there’s an Islamic terrorist attack in America there’s a general unwillingness by much of the political Left to discuss the inherent role of Islamic ideology in the attacks. Likewise, whenever there’s a mass shooting by a non-Muslim there’s a general unwillingness by much of the political Right to discuss gun violence in America. My question is why can’t we have both conversations? These are both important topics and I don’t think we’re doing ourselves any favors by pretending that there’s nothing to say about them. Let’s have both the Right and the Left compromise, granting each other a serious conversation about one important issue in exchange for having a serious conversation about the other. In the process the truth will rise to the surface and we’ll all be better for it.

“But wait,” you say, “the other side is hateful and/or stupid. We can’t give a platform to something like that.” Ok, there might be persons in both camps who could be called either of those things, but if the other side truly is as bigoted and/or moronic as you believe, then you have nothing to fear from them talking. All you have to do is wait. Given enough time to talk, an idiot and/or a hater will expose themselves for what they truly are and will see their influence rapidly diminish. So let each side talk. If those railing about Islam are just idiotic Islamaphobic bigots then let them make their case and just watch as they hang themselves with their own words. In the same manner, if those persons screaming about gun violence are just stupid haters of liberty then allow them to take the podium and sit back while they embarrass themselves into irrelevance. After they’re done babbling their nonsense your side can walk up, easily refute their bad arguments, and sit back down knowing the other side came out of this exposed for fools they are while your side is vindicated. Again, you have nothing to fear from letting the other side talk, and you have nothing to lose but a little time. And hey, doing so might be your best chance to show them the truth and change their mind or maybe they’ll show you the truth and change your mind. Wouldn’t you want to know if you’re wrong?

When you can put up your Christmas decorations

Ok, so this isn't a current event but I felt I needed to publish this sooner rather than later. I love Christmas, but I don’t like how each year it seems like Christmas-related decorating and commercialization are started earlier. If I were some sort of absolute monarch I’d decree that it was illegal to put up Christmas stuffs until 8:00am of the day after Thanksgiving. Christmas stuffs would have to come down by the end of the first full week of January (this rule would exist solely to stop people from being sneaky and being able to have Christmas decorations up prior to Thanksgiving by never taking them down during the prior year). Yes, Christmas is wonderful, but its “season” must have its proper place on the calendar, and that place is not prior to Thanksgiving.

Would I like to see Trump impeached?

If you’ve been reading this blog for about the past two years you know I’m no fan of Donald Trump, primarily due to his character, or to be more accurate, his lack of character. I didn’t like him when he was a contender for the Republican nomination, I didn’t like him as a candidate for the presidency, and I don’t like him now as the President of the United States. Even though I consider myself a little right of center on the political spectrum I wouldn’t mind seeing him impeached and replaced with Mike Pence. I realize that a lot of people have issues with Mike Pence, but I think everyone would agree that he’s a much more stable, predictable, and honorable man than Donald Trump. Actually, now that I think of it, I’d be willing to bet that a fair number of Republicans would be ok with this too, since Mike Pence, unlike Donald Trump, is an actual Republican.

Are the dominos starting to fall?

Much of the political Left and the mainstream media have been unrelenting over the past year in their quest to get Donald Trump removed from office. Despite their best efforts however, Trump is still safely the President of the United States. I don’t see Trump getting impeached anytime in the foreseeable future, but there have been a few smaller developments that maybe indicate that we’re seeing the first dominos starting to fall. Maybe.

Four of Trump’s former associates have now gone down. Two of them—former campaign manager Paul Manafort and former campaign aide Rick Gates—have been indicted. The other two—former national security advisor Michael Flynn and former foreign policy advisor George Papadopoulos—have plead guilty to lying to the FBI about their communications with Russian officials. All of them had their ties to Trump severed prior to their indictments or plea bargains, so we can’t say any current member of the Trump Administration has been taken down, but perhaps whatever information they give to Robert Mueller’s investigation will lead to some significant charges in the future. Or maybe it won’t. It’s still too early to say. Special investigations like the one we have going on now take a long time to produce anything big, and it could be years before the investigation wraps up. There’s also a very real possibility that the investigation will take down members of Trump’s administration, but not Trump himself. To my knowledge there’s currently no evidence that Trump has done anything worthy of impeachment. Maybe that will change tomorrow or next month with a bombshell announcement that changes everything, but I wouldn’t count on it. In the meantime, those screaming for Trump to be removed from office better learn to be patient and not get their hopes up too much.

Catching up on news and events

I’ve been writing exclusively about my trip to Asia since September and a lot has happened in the world since that time. Originally I had planned on devoting a single week to writing about topics of interest to me that have transpired in the last two to three months but I think I’m going to need a little more than a week to do that, so I’m not placing any sort of time restrictions on these catch-up writing pieces. Starting tomorrow I’ll be publishing on things I missed while writing about Asia and I’ll stop when I feel satisfied.

Asia 2017 Finale

For all of November I’ve been sharing stories from my trip to Asia, but now that we have transitioned to December I feel that it’s time to call an official end to #Asia2017. I could keep sharing little tidbits from Japan and Korea through to the end of the year about the journey but a man can only keep living in the past for so long, and it’s time for me to leave the subject behind, at least for the foreseeable future. With that said, today I though I’d share some final details on my trip that I don’t believe have been mentioned yet.

Let’s start with the route of my journey. Back in June of this year I published a writing piece with what my itinerary was looking like at the time. My actual route turned out a little different though some parts were similar to the original idea. Below is a map with some poorly drawn arrows to help visualize where I went. I’ve colored coded the lines to help make the route easier to follow. Start with the blue lines, and then follow the green lines, then the red lines, and finally the yellow line.

Click to enlarge

Written out, the route was:

Tokyo & Kamakura —> Nikko & Lake Chuzenji —> Hakodate & Onuma Park —> Sapporo & Otaru —> Kanazawa —> Kyoto —> Osaka & Nara —> Hiroshima & Himeji —> Miyajima —> Nagasaki —> Itoshima —> Fukuoka —> Seoul & the DMZ —> Busan —> Jeju Island —> Busan (again) —> Tokyo (again)

The journey was six week long, and my goal was to keep the total cost of the trip to under $5,000. Before and during my time in Asia I kept a very meticulous record of all my spending and last weekend I finally got around to tallying up all my expenses. The final costs of #Asia2017 was….

$4,766.82

Now, the actual final cost is probably a little higher or a little lower than that due to changes in the exchange rate of the Japanese Yen and Korean Won, but I don’t think it’s significantly higher or lower. I was actually a little surprised when I got that final number because while I was overseas it felt like I was spending a lot of money and I had a bad feeling that I was going to go over my budget goal, but it would seem my fears were unwarranted.

The so-called language barrier didn’t prove to be that big of a problem for me. Part of that had to do with the fact that I’m not the type to strike up conversations with strangers, but another part was that I have the advantage of being a native English speaker and English is currently a common second language in that part of the world. While in both Japan and Korea I came across a lot of dual-language signs and audio announcements and the little bits of Japanese and Korean I knew were enough to get me through most situations. When my feeble language skills failed, the Google Translate app on my phone worked surprisingly well, especially the microphone feature which allowed me to speak English into my phone and have a Japanese or Korean translation come out.

Since returning to America I’ve had people ask me if I’d like to travel again to Japan and/or Korea. The answer is a definite yes. I wouldn’t consider myself any sort of japanophile or koreanophile, but I did enjoy my times in both Japan and Korea and would like to see more of each country. Money, of course, is always the greatest restriction and I don’t see a return trip to either country within at least the next year or two, but one day I’d like to return. Some things like Tokyo and Seoul I’d want to see again, but there’s also so much that I didn’t have time to experience this time around. My Suica card (for the Tokyo metro) is valid for ten years and has a little bit of money left on it, plus I have a 1,000 yen bill (and a few Korean coins) that I didn’t use before leaving Asia, so I sort of have a down-payment for the next journey. One day I’ll return. Count on it.

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And with that the stories from Asia 2017 are officially concluded. On Monday I’ll return to my normal inane ramblings. Hope you enjoyed the ride.

Driving on Jeju Island

I’ve driven a car for many years in America, but my first time driving overseas happened in Korea while on Jeju Island. A friend of mine had strongly recommended that I rent a car on Jeju because the public transit there isn’t as good as much of the rest of Korea, so I made a reservation in advance. My car was a little white Chevy Spark. I didn’t name it Sparky—that seemed too obvious—but I wanted to stick with an electrical theme, so I named it Lightning. Thus, every time I got in that car I could say that it was time to ride the lightning.

Koreans drive on the same side of the road as Americans and road conditions there are good. Gas is definitely more expense on the island and thankfully I got through my time on Jeju needing only to refuel just before returning my car to the rental office. While I didn’t have any issues with Korean drivers I do think they are slightly more aggressive than we are. This is best seen at the myriad number of intersections on Jeju that just have flashing yellow lights for all incoming directions, so drivers have to figure out among themselves who has the right of way.

There are almost no cops on patrol on Jeju’s roads, and the ones that are there drive around with their police lights constantly on. I found this really weird and at one point I thought a motorcycle cop was stopping me but he just drove past after I pulled over. Perhaps to make up for its scarcity of police officers, Jeju has radar cameras in plentiful abundance. Thankfully my car’s GPS warned me whenever I was approaching one so I avoided getting any speeding tickets. Locals tend to go well over the speed limit on Jeju’s roads, slowing down just before hitting a radar camera and then speeding back up once they’ve cleared it.

Jeju Island isn’t that big, but it still can take some time to drive to various places and while driving along I sampled some Korean radio. I found quite a mix of stations while on the island, though some of the stations could only be received in certain regions. Among others, I came across an English language station, a hip-hop station, talk-radio station, a classical music station, and even a station whose offerings I can only describe as the Korean version of American country music.

I can’t really say I have any really crazy stories from driving on Jeju, but I do have one really embarrassing one. After picking up my rental car I started driving towards my hostel, which was on the south side of the island. It was getting late and at first I wasn’t sure if my car’s lights were on, but as it got darker it became clear that they were not. Somehow, someway, my idiot gaijin self couldn’t figure out how to turn on the headlights of my car. Thanks to my good vision I could still make out the road as I was going down the highway, but I knew it was really dangerous to be driving at night with only the parking lights on. Along the side of the road were these concrete barriers with gaps between them that I kept missing as I passed. Eventually I caught one of the gaps and safely pulled over. A minute later I found the headlight dial, slapped myself in the forehead for being so stupid, and then drove for another 30 minutes to the hostel. Please don’t tell any Jeju cops (or my rental car company) about this incident.

Lake Chuzenji

Sometimes the side trip turns out to be more enjoyable than the main event. That was the case when I was in Japan up in the mountain town of Nikko. I had come there primarily to see the Toshogu Shrine and some of the other shrines and temples nearby it, and while I was there I had also planned to take the bus over to Lake Chuzenji. The Toshogu Shrine was great, as expected, but real highlight for me of my time in Nikko was my short time at the lake. I got off the bus at the Ryuzu Waterfalls just north of the lake and after taking some photos I made my way down to the shore.

After all the hustle and bustle of Tokyo it had been quite a change to come to the town of Nikko, and an even bigger change to be walking along a lake up in the mountains. If nothing else it was definitely the quietest part of my time in Japan. Though I could occasionally hear a car go by on the road, I saw hardly anyone while walking the trail around the lake, with the most notable sighting being that of a small group of people who were flying a drone. Birds chirped, waves gently lapped against the shore, and the breeze blew through the trees. Since I had arrived in the mid-afternoon I didn’t have as much time at Lake Chuzenji as I would have liked, and being on the north side of the lake the sun was at times in a bad position for photos, but my visit was easily worth more than the price of the bus ticket I paid to get there. If I’m ever back in Nikko I’ll try to set aside most of a day to do a full circuit around Lake Chuzenji. It’s not what most people come to Nikko to see, but it’s something I’d recommend to anyone who’s in the area.

Helpful Koreans

Yesterday I wrote about Korea’s problem with suicide. It’s a very serious problem, but it’s not the whole story of the Korean people and their society. There are also many positive things about Korea, one of which being that the Korean people are very helpful and generous to foreigners like myself. I was in Korea for only about ten days, but during that short time I regularly had locals going out of their way to assist me if it looked like I needed the help. Probably the best example of this was when I was on Jeju Island and couldn’t get my car’s GPS to locate a particular beach that I was trying to get to. I was in a parking lot trying unsuccessfully to get a route to that beach when a young Korean man walked up to my car and asked if I needed assistance. After explaining my predicament he offered to help and then typed in the proper Korean name of the beach in my GPS, which got me the route I needed. Seriously, instances like this happened enough times that I could swear that at least some portion of the Korean population is on patrol for foreigners needing help.

Korean Suicide Rates

Wow. I knew South Korea (and Japan) had a problem with suicide in its society but I didn’t realize just how bad it was. As I learned while I was over there, South Korea has the highest suicide rate amongst the OECD nations, and the second highest suicide rate in the globe. The pressure to be smart, successful, beautiful, etc. is incredibly intense in South Korea and puts some Koreans in a hell that they see no way of escaping except to just end it all. Perhaps most horrifyingly, Korean suicide trends extend to the very young. While in Busan I was told about an eight year-old boy who had killed himself earlier this year because he couldn’t handle the intense stress related to his schooling. Eight years old. Let that sink in. A little kid who ought have had his whole life ahead of him instead chose to snuff himself out. He stared into the abyss of his existence and couldn’t find a reason to live. In today’s Korea that sort of broken hopelessness is all too common. Korea’s unrelenting drive to excel in everything has created one of the world’s most advanced countries, but at the cost of driving some members of its society to the point of despair and beyond.

“Hello, how are you?”

Generally speaking, I found that Japanese people keep to themselves and don’t try to initiate conversation with gaijin like myself (and no, this did not upset me). There was one notable exception to this general rule, however. At least two dozen or so times I had small children—normally part of some sort of school group—either pass me by or walk over to me and say “Hello, how are you?” Some of those instances were part of school projects they were completing (see my Origami Crane post from last month) but other times they didn’t seem to have any agenda. These kids didn’t know enough English to actually carry a conversation and our little chat usually ended after I gave them a reply. Perhaps they haven’t been fully trained in Japanese societal norms yet, perhaps they wanted to practice what little English they knew, or perhaps they found some sort of humor in speaking with me. As a bumbling gaijin idiot, I certainly can’t discount that last possibility.

Thanksgiving 2017

Today is Thanksgiving here in the United States, and I thought I’d take a break from my random stories about Asia to do something fitting for a day about being thankful. What I’ve got for you today is a mini-sequel to my Pockets Full of Soup writing piece from earlier this year. If you haven’t read that post already I’d suggest not going any further with this writing piece until you’ve done so.

Ok, I’m going to assume that you’re now familiar with the Pockets Full of Soup post. My sequel today is a very brief tribute to another person I’m thankful for in my life. His name is Ed.

I think I first met Ed a few weeks into my Freshman Year of college but it wasn’t until my later college days when we became closer friends. During those days he and some of his friends would hold a weekly game night at his apartment and we bonded over things like gaming and hilarious internet videos. Ed loved to host people in his home. He was also a gifted teacher, passing on a lot of practical wisdom to me such as living frugally and prioritizing what’s really important in life. I can also thank him for nudging me towards my first journey to Europe and the many insights he gave that influenced the way I travel to this very day. Perhaps most importantly, however, Ed held me to account during a particularly egregious moral failing of mine. That was probably the single greatest act of friendship he ever gave me. A true friend doesn’t look the other way or sugarcoat the situation when you’ve messed up real bad.

Happy Thanksgiving to any and all who are reading this. I hope this is a blessed day for you, and I especially hope you’ve got people in your life that you’re thankful for too.

Missing out on e-sports

In any extended overseas trip there will inevitably be times when things don’t go according to plan, and for me one of those times was when I missed out on experiencing e-sports in Seoul. E-sports is a big deal in Korea and I had intended on going to one of Seoul’s e-sports stadiums while I was there to watch whatever was being played. The day after I arrived in Seoul I looked online to see what the e-sports schedule was for the week and saw that two days later there were the semi-final matches of an Overwatch tournament. Ticket prices were very cheap, but when I followed the link to purchase a seat I found that they were all sold out. My heart sank a little, but mostly what I felt at that moment was disappointment with myself. I had made a very rookie mistake in not looking for a ticket far in advance and had no one to blame but myself for the situation. On the day of the matches I had meant to show up at the stadium to see if there were any unreserved tickets available, but I got bogged down in other things and wasn’t able to get over to the stadium. I had missed out on e-sports in Seoul. Next time I’m there I won’t make the same mistake.

Japanese and Korean smart phone usage

Many laments have been written over the past few years related to Americans’ unhealthy habits with smart phones. Our society is becoming increasingly addicted to our phones and face-to-face human interactions are suffering as a consequence. I’m not immune to bad phone habits and at times I catch myself checking Twitter too often. That said, as bad as America’s phone problems have become, they are nothing compared to what I saw in Japan and Korea. Their phone habits make ours seem healthy by comparison. I have never seen such large swaths of people basking in the glow on their phone screens. Particularly in places like Tokyo and Seoul you can get on subways, walk into restaurants, or just be wandering around town and see a legion of craned necks and hands holding small objects that dispense electronic cocaine. America certainly needs to improve its phone habits, but I suppose we can take a bit of solace in that we haven’t yet reached Japanese or Korean levels of phone addiction.

Japanese men and shorts

There’s something interesting about Japanese society that I couldn’t help but notice while I was overseas: very few Japanese men wear shorts. Young boys wear them, but I hardly saw any guys above the age of middle or high school who weren’t wearing pants. At first I thought it was just some sort of regional thing, but it held true everywhere I went in Japan. Even way out west in Kyushu where it can get really warm I saw almost no men in shorts. I have no idea why this is, but Japanese men just aren’t big on them.

Visiting the DMZ

On my final full day in Seoul I took a tour of the Korean DMZ. Early in the morning I got up and headed over to the USO office at Camp Kim. You can only visit the DMZ as part of a tour group and the group I was in had about 40 people total. Coming along with us was a Korean woman who served as our guide for much of the tour. It’s only a 45 minute bus ride from Seoul to the DMZ, which really gives you a good understanding of just how close South Korea’s capital is to the border and why Seoul would likely be badly damaged if war ever broke out. The first part of our tour took us through Camp Bonifas and we passed near a village that’s close to the DMZ. From what we were told, the villagers are farmers who are paid by the government to cultivate the land and are completely exempt from taxation and military service, however they also don’t have as many freedoms as other Koreans and have hardly anything to spend their money on. Soon we came to the Joint Security Area (JSA) where the two Koreas actually meet. The DMZ extends for two kilometers in either direction from the border and is full of mines, but at the JSA there is a small cluster of buildings right on the border that are meant to facilitate talks between the two nations. Blue buildings belong to the United Nations and gray buildings belong to North Korea. Right on the border itself are six meeting houses, three blue and three gray. A concrete slab in the middle of that row of six buildings marks the border. About 100 yards away from us, in front of a large building we could see a single North Korean guard. In reality there are many more North Koreans at the DMZ, however nearly all of them are out of sight. There was some sort of music playing in the distance, which I assume was propaganda music but I don’t know which side was playing it. Since we couldn’t move around much I wasn’t able to get the angle I wanted for my photos, but I got a few half decent shots like the one below.

We next entered one of the blue meeting houses. Inside are tables and chairs used during talks, and since it sits right on the border you are technically inside North Korea if you walk to the far side of the room. A pair of South Korean guards keep watch over the room and we were told not to interact with or stand directly next to them. I walked to the far side and thus entered North Korean territory, however inside that room it doesn’t really hit you that you’re in North Korea. Below is a photo of what the room looked like.

Soon our time was up and we had to leave the JSA. As we were walking to our bus I saw a very expensive BMW pull up and a civilian got out. The soldier who was walking with us had explained earlier at Camp Bonifas that the villagers who live near the DMZ oftentimes buy fancy cars because those cars are among the very few luxuries they are actually able to purchase, so I assume that civilian was one of the people living by the DMZ. The next place our bus took us to was Dorasan Station, the final South Korean train station on the train line that used to connect North and South Korea but is currently not in service. South Korea still hasn’t given up hope on Dorasan one day being in use again, so it’s kept very tidy for a place whose only visitors are tour groups like mine. Out on the train platforms you can see a train car that was imported from Germany whose original usage was as a peace car during the Cold War. South Korea used it during the years that the train line operated but now it sits outside as a mini-museum.

After a lunch break our tour proceeded to a lookout post from which we could stare out onto North Korea. The border line curves back and forth across the land, but it’s not too hard to tell where the North Korean side is because North Korea cut down most of the trees on their side of the border, both for fuel and to create an open no-man’s land. The rail line from Dorasan Station could be seen off to the left and to the right you could see the giant North Korean flagpole tower and the empty village that they use to broadcast propaganda across the border. Far off in the distance was North Korea’s third largest city, whose name escapes me at the moment. It had a number of taller buildings, though from what we were told, none of them have elevators because North Korea can’t generate the electricity that would be needed to power them. South Korean propaganda music was playing over nearby loudspeakers, so this might have been what I heard at the JSA but I’m not sure. It was an odd feeling to be staring out at what is probably the most repressive country on the entire planet. To this day I still can’t quite describe it.

The final part of our tour that day was a visit to the Third Tunnel. In the years after the signing of the ceasefire that (mostly) ended the Korean War, the North Koreans dug multiple tunnels under the border that would have allowed them to funnel thousands of troops into South Korea in the event of war breaking out again. The Third Tunnel was the third such tunnel that the South Koreans discovered, hence the name. It is deep underground and getting to it involves a long walk down another tunnel that South Korea dug so that people could go down and see it. No one’s sure just how many of these tunnels exist and it’s thought that there are many more that haven’t been discovered yet. No photos are allowed in the Third Tunnel, so I have nothing to show you of it, but I can give you this photo of the unification monument just outside of the tunnel’s entrance. Koreans are pushing two halves of a sphere back together, with South Koreans on the left and North Koreans on the right.

When we finished our visit at the Third Tunnel it was time to head back to Seoul. We drove along the river that flows through Seoul and out into the ocean and I couldn’t help but notice that the riverbanks were covered in barbed wire and watch posts. The Cold War may officially be over in most of the world, but it is still very much alive in Korea. If you are ever in South Korea and have the chance to take a DMZ tour I’d highly recommend going. It’s one thing to talk about North Korea—it’s quite another to see it for yourself.

Getting off the gaijin trail

I visited a lot of places in Japan, and all of them are pretty well known and get at least a decent amount of foreign visitors… except one. Towards the end of primary trek across Japan I stayed for a day and a half in Itoshima, a town just west of Fukuoka on the island of Kyushu. There’s practically nothing there to make it worthy of a tourist’s visit and consequently hardly any foreigners show up, and that is exactly why I paid the town a visit. I wanted to get off the gaijin trail and see what small-town Japan was like, as well as do a little bicycling in the area. Well, I can safely say that I got off the gaijin trail. Itoshima isn’t used to seeing foreign visitors, so I was getting glances everywhere I went. They weren’t looks of animosity or frustration, but rather curiosity. Young children in particular, having not yet been trained to avoid staring, couldn’t keep their eyes off of me and seemed quite fascinated by the bumbling gaijin idiot that had shown up in their town. As for Itoshima itself, the town is a lot like many other towns you can find across the developed world, except the lack of fellow gaijin made everything strangely novel and exciting. I have no doubt that if I stayed longer then the novelty would quickly wear off, but for those 1.5 days where I was walking and cycling around Itoshima and the surrounding region I felt like I had discovered some sort of uncharted territory in Japan. It was a thrill completely unlike anything I got in the rest of the country.

Just as a note at the end here I realize that by writing about Itoshima there’s a chance I might be contributing to Itoshima getting “discovered” by the tourist horde, though I think it’s unlikely Itoshima will ever have to deal with the tour bus crowds. I could see it becoming a more popular cycling destination, but that’s about it. Should the worst happen, however, and Itoshima gets “ruined” then I offer my humble apologies to the good people of Itoshima for bringing the unwashed gaijin hordes to their doorsteps.

Squid Sashimi

I’m a man with a notoriously narrow food palate, but while in Asia I made a concerted effort to try out foods that I’d normally be unwilling to eat. Probably the most notable instance of this was when I ate squid sashimi in the town of Hakodate. In Hakodate’s Morning Market there is an area with a tank full of squid that fishermen have brought in from the sea that day. For the price of about 800 yen you can catch one yourself and then have it chopped up for your eating pleasure. A guy working at the hostel I was staying at recommended that I try it, and at first I was hesitant, but after awhile I convinced myself that it would be good cultural experience and it would likely be the best squid I ever have, so if I didn’t like the squid I ate then I would know that squid just isn’t for me. I paid my fee to the old man running the operation and was given the small fishing rod used to catch the squid. At the end of line attached to the fishing rod is a small hook that you drop into the water and when a squid passes by you simply raise the line and try to hook the squid by the fins at the top. It’s a task that’s easier said than done, but after a few attempts I nabbed my squid and it was taken over to the chef who worked his knife magic to prepare my meal. Below is a photo of the final product.

The parts of the squid that you eat are the muscular upper regions and the tentacles, along with these brown pod-like things that I’m not sure what they were. I didn’t particularly like the pods but the other parts weren’t bad. The tentacles were notable both for being the meatiest part of the squid and because they weren’t fully dead; when I poked them with my chopsticks they would wriggle around a little (and if you put them in soy sauce they move even more). I can’t really describe the flavor of the squid because there’s nothing I’ve eaten in the past that seems like a good comparison. Granted, with my narrow palate that isn’t really a surprise. What I can say, however, is that the squid I ate that day was the freshest animal product I’ve ever eaten. It was very much alive when I caught it and a minute later it was diced up on my plate.

“You’re ruining Asia for yourself!”

Back when I was planning my trip I think I had somewhere in my mind that going to Japan and Korea would be a good introduction to Asia. Perhaps I did or perhaps I didn’t, but one thing that is for sure is that while I was in Korea I met someone who disagreed with that idea. In the city of Busan I was talking to a Korean woman and I laid out the itinerary of my trip. After hearing all of it she was strangely horrified and said “You’re ruining Asia for yourself!” Being very perplexed at this statement, I asked her what she meant and she explained that, in her opinion, by visiting first the two most advanced nations on the continent (both technologically and socially) I would find myself a bit disappointed should I ever travel to other parts of Asia. My immediate reflex was to reject this line of thinking, and today I’m still skeptical of it, but I do have to concede there is a tiny bit of truth embedded in what she said. Having experienced Asia’s two most developed countries I might feel a tinge of dissatisfaction that other parts of the continent don’t have all the things Japan and Korea do. That dissatisfaction would likely dissipate quickly but it might still pop up from time to time.

@japan_irl

While traveling across Japan I stumbled upon a Twitter profile that helped keep me entertained during some of the more mundane moments of my trip. That Twitter profile is @japan_irl. It’s run by a fellow gaijin living in Japan and it’s primarily dedicated to poking fun at people who either have absurdly delusional ideas of what Japan and Japanese people are like, and people who somehow think that moving to Japan will solve all their life problems. If you enjoy cringe humor you might want to give this Twitter account a look.

Japan or Korea?

I’ve had a few people ask me which country I liked more: Japan or Korea. My answer has been Japan, but I always have to add a qualification to my answer because I think Korea is at a disadvantage in this contest. On my trip across the two countries I spent a bit over 80% of my time in Japan and hence I saw and experienced a lot more of Japan than Korea. I did see and experience good things in Korea, but Japan brings so much more to the table in my memory of the journey that Korea has a hard time making its case. Maybe if I had split my time a bit more evenly between the two then Korea could have a more fair shot at claiming my preference. Regardless, the winner is Japan and that’s the answer I’ll continue giving whenever people ask me which country I liked more, even if that answer has a large asterisk next to it.

America the (supposed) Wild West

I knew that I’d have at least a couple of conversations on American political and social issues while in Asia, and sure enough I did. No surprise, the presidency of Donald Trump was a common theme, but there was another topic that stands out in my memory. Just as many Americans (myself included) have misconceptions about what life is like in Japan and Korea, many people from those nations have misconceptions about what life is like in America, and perhaps most troubling is the idea that America is the Wild West with everyone carrying guns and violence breaking out all the time on every single street corner in the country. Events like the recent Las Vegas massacre reinforce this image and some people in Japan and Korea are scared to visit America for fear of being shot. While I agreed that gun violence in America is far too high and I sympathized with those who were concerned about traveling to America, I also felt compelled to clear up some of their misconceptions. I shared my knowledge of gun violence statistics, as well as my own perspective on American society and the problems it faces. Hopefully I helped some rethink their preconceptions of America, just as a few Japanese and Koreans helped me rethink my own preconceptions of their countries.

Re: What the heck are you carrying?

I’ve been thinking over the writing piece I did on my fellow gaijin carrying too much baggage on their journeys, and I want to make a small addition to what I wrote there. Namely, I want to note that there’s an interesting divide between different groups of gaijin and how they overburden themselves. Western gaijin (i.e. North Americans, Europeans, Australians, etc.) are the ones who tend to be the ones going around with the double backpack setup. Eastern gaijin (i.e. Chinese, Indians, etc.) more often commit the sin of having too much roller luggage. I can’t speak for how African, South American, or Middle Eastern gaijin tend to overburden themselves, since I didn’t see that many of them.

What did he see?

Yesterday I wrote my experience reading the mind of another person. It’s been about a month since then and there’s a question that’s been bugging me as I’ve been thinking over the whole incident. I saw through him, but since our eyes were locked for that brief moment he was also staring into me. Was he able to see through me, and if so what did he see?

“This place isn’t authentic”

Have you ever had a moment where you locked eyes with another person and knew exactly what their thoughts were? These instances are not common, but I think we all can point to at least one time where it’s happened. My most recent experience of this occurring happened in Hiroshima, Japan. In the early afternoon one day I decided to try out a Japanese dish called okonomiyaki. In Hiroshima there’s a building full of small restaurants that serve okonomiyaki and after a few minutes of research I picked one that appeared to have a type of okonomiyaki that I might like. On the second floor of the building I found the restaurant I was looking for and I took a seat. The lady who ran the place didn’t speak a word of English so I had to make use of Google Translate to supplement my limited knowledge of Japanese. The meal was prepared and I started eating. When I first sat down I was the only customer at the restaurant but as I ate a number of people passed by. Most were just looking around. At one point, however, a western gaijin couple came by and I locked eyes with the man. In that very moment I swear to you that I could read his thoughts, and they were roughly this: “Wait, there’s a westerner sitting at this restaurant. If there’s a westerner here, then this restaurant must have sold out to the tourist crowd. This place isn’t authentic.” We stared at each other for less than a second before breaking it off. He motioned to his girl to move on and they promptly did. When they were gone I marveled at what had just happened. For a brief moment I had seen right through into his mind. Sadly, what I had seen was the sort of travel attitude that I so very much detest. My meal, however, wasn’t going to eat itself, so I went back to munching and shortly thereafter a couple of Japanese people took a seat near me to have their own okomiyaki meals. After finishing my meal and leaving the building I largely forgot about the incident and it wasn’t until recently that it’s come back to being on my mind.

7-Eleven

7-Eleven stores are all over Japan and Korea, and I gotta say, they’re a step up from their American cousins. Japanese and Korean 7-Elevens have fairly good food, reliable ATMs that work with foreign debit cards, and very friendly staff that (at least pretend to) care about giving you good service. In Japan 7-Eleven even has its own delivery service you can use to ship items to any other 7-Eleven in the country (I don’t know if Korean 7-Elevens do this too). Of course, if you’re wanting to create a great meal or find a better selection of random stuff then you would go to an actual supermarket or department store, but you could do far worse than going to 7-Eleven. I guess what you could say is that 7-Elevens (and other convenience stores) in Japan and Korea are strangely, well, convenient.

The Dream Pill

At a friend’s suggestion, I purchased a small bottle of melatonin pills prior to my departure for Asia to help with any sleeping troubles I might encounter. Melatonin pills come in varying dosages, and not knowing how my body would react to them I decided to get the lowest dose I could find, which was 3mg per pill. I’m honestly not sure whether or not the melatonin pills helped me fall asleep, (maybe I need a higher dosage) but one thing they were effective in doing was causing me to dream. Nearly every single night I used a melatonin pill I would have a vivid, memorable dream that stuck with me for some time after I woke up. Because of this I started calling melatonin the “Dream Pill.”

Food Expenditures

I still haven’t gotten around to calculating the total costs of my trip to Asia, but I’ve got a hunch that I spent more on food during this trip than during a comparable period of time from my two previous expeditions to Europe. It could be maturity, or it could be recklessness, but I strangely felt freer on this journey to try lots of foods and drinks and not feel bad if I wound up spending money on something I didn’t like. There is also the possibility that food is simply more expensive in Japan and Korea and that could also have contributed to the sense I had of increased culinary spending. Regardless, I don’t think I have any major regrets about how I spent money on food, and I can say that I managed to step a little outside my normal food preferences.

Back on Schedule

A week ago I flew from Tokyo back to America, and last Saturday I finally returned to Colorado. Originally I had planned on resuming my normal publishing schedule yesterday, however when I looked at my current number of published writing pieces I realized that if I waited until today I could keep myself on the track that I was before departure, wherein every Friday post brings the total number of published posts to a number evenly divisible by five. Yes, I’m that obsessive about trivial things like that. Anyways, I’ve got a decent number of small stories related to my Asia trip. They should occupy the next two weeks of this website’s content, and maybe a little more if I think up more things worth sharing. Hopefully you enjoy them.

Sugar Toast

In addition to milk tea, the Japanese have introduced me to another culinary novelty that I call sugar toast. Well, actually, it might not be accurate to say that the Japanese as a whole have introduced me to it; I merely saw a Japanese guy sprinkle a little sugar on his toast one day. In any case, I was struck by the simple genius of sugar toast and ever since that day I've regularly been creating it myself when I have the opportunity. Granted, I'm probably applying more sugar than the average Japanese person, but let's not allow that fact to overshadow the expansion of my culinary horizons.

Milk Tea

While in Japan I developed an odd obsession with milk tea. I say that it's odd because milk tea isn't the greatest thing I've ever tasted but I kept finding myself buying it whenever I found a version/brand of milk tea that I hadn't tried yet. Right now I'm in Korea and milk tea isn't as common out here so my consumption has dramatically decreased. When I return to Tokyo in a few days, however, milk tea might make a brief comeback. There must be cocaine or something in milk tea, because I can't stop drinking it when it's available.

"Not many of you come out here."

You know you're in a place off the beaten trail when you're getting a lot of looks from the locals and the guy at the checkout area of the neighborhood grocery store tells you in shaky English that "Not many of you come out here."

Origami Crane

About ten days ago I was walking along when a little Japanese boy walked up and asked if he could interview me. This sort of thing had already happened to me several times in Japan, so I knew what was going to happen. Japanese kids across the country are gathering data from foreigners, I assume for either an innocent school project or nefarious government monitoring, asking basic questions like where people are from and why they came to Japan. I answered his questions, but at the end something different happened that had not happened before that time, and has not been repeated since. He gave me a small origami crane as a token gift for helping him complete his task. It's not a particularly special origami crane, but today I realized that I've been carrying it around with me ever since that day. By all measures I ought to leave it behind somewhere, or just dispose of it. For whatever reason, I've kept it with me and can't bring myself to trash the little thing.

What the heck are you carrying?

There is a great evil I have observed under the sun, and it weighs heavily on my fellow gaijin. I have seen far too many travelers carrying an absurd amount of cargo on their journey. A common sight is that of a person wearing a large backpack on their back and a smaller backpack on their front. As one who can go months on end with just a single medium-sized backpack, I sometimes want to walk up to my fellow gaijin and ask them what the heck they are carrying that requires so much cargo space. It doesn't make sense, and they're only making things harder on themselves.

"Sorry, I don't actually speak Japanese"

A major travel milestone was passed not too long ago. It was the sort of milestone that I didn't know existed until I passed it. When checking out of my hostel in Sapporo, I said "good morning" to the front desk person in Japanese. Apparently, my pronunciation was good enough that she assumed I spoke Japanese to me and proceeded to talk to me in Japanese. I immediately told her "Sorry, I don't actually speak Japanese" at which point she said "Oh," and then switched to English. As I left the hostel and started on my way to the Sapporo airport, realized what had just happened. I had fooled a Japanese person into thinking that I spoke Japanese. Check that one off the list of travel goals.

Occupation: Writer

Each time I've checked into an accommodation I've had to fill out a small form to give my basic information. One of the items that's always asked is my occupation. Technically I'm unemployed at the moment, but I don't believe a man can only have a vocation in the context of regular employment, so I don't state that I'm unemployed. Also, the Japanese probably don't like the idea of unemployed foreigners showing up in their country for extended periods of time. Instead of stating that I'm unemployed, on every single info sheet I've claimed that I'm a writer, which is a true statement. My means of earning money will inevitably change many times over my life, but writing is my true occupation, and I will continue saying that I'm a writer throughout this entire trip.

Japanese Face Masks

If you've seen photos of people in Japan, you've probably noticed that some of them wear face masks. The reasons for doing so are mundane, ranging from reducing the spread of disease and protecting against seasonal allergies to merely hiding an undesirable facial blemish. I, however, decided to concoct an alternative and much more exciting reason for the Japanese to wear face masks. The "true" (i.e. totally fake) reason some Japanese people wear face masks is that they are descendants of ancient ninja clans. One of the most sacred rules of being part of a ninja clan is that your face below the eyes must be hidden. In older times ninjas would dress up in their usual black attire to meet this requirement, but those sorts of outfits have gone out of fashion in the modern era, so ninja descendants instead dress in contemporary clothes but wear the face masks to stay true to their heritage. And now you know why some Japanese people wear face masks.

My Fellow Gaijin

As some of you may know, the term "gaijin" is a Japanese word that refers to a foreigner that the Japanese don't like. Although a derogatory term, I have fully embraced it as a joke, since humor is one of the most effective tools for neutralizing the power of things like it. I say this just so everyone knows that if I use the word gaijin I am doing so knowing full well what it means but also demonstrating that it has no ability to hurt me or others if we simply disarm it. With that intro out of the way, lets get to today's writing piece.

Sometimes I joke about being a travel snob, but there is one way in which I sort of am. I cannot deny that it feels good to be the only western tourist in an area out here in Japan. It's like I've found a little place that no other westerner knows about and I can brag about it when I get back home. When another (western) gaijin shows up or I arrive somewhere and find it already populated by gaijin, I sometimes feel strangely disappointed, and maybe even frustrated. Interestingly, I know I'm not alone in this feeling, as I've clearly seen it on my fellow gaijins' faces when they arrive somewhere and then notice that I'm already there. They thought they had come across their own special spot in Japan, but nope, some other gaijin ruined it all for them by his mere presence. Psychologically, I'm guessing that this all goes back to the appeal of secret knowledge and that a lot of us want to feel like we've got a one-up on other people by knowing about a hidden place that others aren't aware of. I'm unfortunately not above this level of pettiness yet, but hopefully by the end of the trip I'll embrace the fact that it's perfectly fine (and expected) to be seeing my fellow gaijin wherever I go on this trip.

Arrival in Japan

Two days ago I landed in Japan. Things have been busy since then but I wanted to publish a post confirming my arrival, so here I am typing this out on my phone while watching some sumo matches in Tokyo's sumo arena. Whenever I'm able to write something more substantial I will, but until then just know that I'm alive and well.

The day before departure

Today I’m at my parents’ house in California awaiting my departure to Asia. Tomorrow I will board an 11-hour flight that will take me straight to Tokyo. Then the whirlwind adventure begins. I will publish writing pieces to this website whenever possible while I’m overseas, but I ask for your patience as there will likely be many times when a several days go by without anything going up. When I get back from Asia I’ll hopefully have a full plate of stories to write about and share with you.

Wolfhounds

I’ve known for many years that my grandfather fought in the Korean War but until recently I didn’t know much about his service. My grandfather never talked about his time in the Army and I had gotten the impression that it was a difficult subject that he didn’t want to relive, but with my upcoming visit to Korea I thought I ought to take a chance and gently probe him for some details. A few days ago I called my grandfather on the phone and after talking about we were both doing and my trip to Asia I posed some general questions to him. To my surprise he didn’t seem to have any issue with answering my inquiries. It may be because I avoided any questions about specific combat experiences, or maybe this whole time I’ve misjudged his feelings towards discussing the war. Whatever the case, I’m glad I got what few details I did. Being in his late 80s, my grandfather’s memory is starting to fail him, and the little bit of military paperwork he has stored at his house doesn’t say much, but I got just enough to start reconstructing the basics of his time in Korea.

My grandfather wasn’t sure which Army division his unit was in, but he remembered that he was part of the 27th Infantry Regiment, which is known as the Wolfhounds. Going online, I found that the Wolfhounds were (and still are) part of the US Army’s 25th Infantry Division, and that they have a fairly interesting origin story. The Wolfhounds got their name in 1918 during the Russian Civil War when they were part of the American Expeditionary Force deployed to Siberia. Although nothing much politically came of the expedition, the 27th Infantry Regiment gained a reputation for their relentless pursuit of the Bolsheviks and thus the Wolfhounds name came about. The Wolfhounds insignia is a Wolf’s head and has the Latin phrase Nec Aspera Torrent, which translates to something along the lines of “Frightened by no difficulties” or “No fear on Earth.” The latter translation sounds a bit cooler, so I’ll take that one. In 1950, during the early parts of the Korean War, they saw heavy action defending the perimeter around Pusan, and over the course of the war the Wolfhounds took part in all ten of the campaigns undertaken by the 25th Division. My grandfather entered the Korean War sometime in 1951, and it must have been late 1951 because he said at that time the war had become a stalemate near the 38th Parallel. As a Staff Sergeant he had a squad of men under his command and his platoon used a combination of 57mm rifles and mortars. He thinks it was the regiment’s 4th Platoon but he’s not certain. His area of the war was somewhere near what today is the DMZ, with no major towns nearby. That doesn’t help me narrow down his unit’s location but I guess that means he wasn’t anywhere near Seoul. Speaking of Seoul, he did get to visit the city sometime in either 1952 or 1953 and he said there wasn’t much left of it at the time, which isn’t surprising given that it changed hands four times during the war. The Seoul I’m going to see in a few weeks will be a whole world apart from what he saw. I told my grandfather that I would be visiting the Korean War Memorial in Seoul and if there was any sort of plaque or monument to either the 25th Division or the 27th Regiment I’d get a photo of it.

At that point our conversation started to wrap up and I soon said goodbye to my grandfather. Our chat had lasted about 23 minutes, but in those 23 minutes I had gotten more information on my grandfather’s time in the Army than the past 23 years. I’m hopeful that after I get back from Korea I’ll be able to follow up with my grandfather and maybe dive a little deeper into his experience, though if I hit the limit of what he wants to talk about I’ll have to respect his wishes. Regardless, I now have another little piece of my family’s history that I didn’t previously know about, and should for some reason anyone ever ask me about my grandfather’s time in the Korean War, I can tell them that he was a Wolfhound.

Uncharted 4 Survival Mode

With all the stress of work and travel preparations I have found gaming to be an even more welcome diversion than usual lately. The trouble has been that I’ve been feeling like playing something new, but I committed myself to not start any new games until after I get back from Asia. Thankfully Uncharted 4 had me covered and solved my little conundrum by giving me a new experience in a game I’d already played. Earlier this year Uncharted 4’s developer Naughty Dog released a new multiplayer cooperative mode called Survival, in which three players have to survive waves of enemies, sometimes while completing particular tasks and sometimes with special modifiers to the gameplay. I had never tried out Survival Mode up until now, but that clearly was a mistake because I’m really digging it. In fact, I had to pull myself away from Survival Mode last Saturday because I was going overboard and spending too much time on it. I wish I had tried out Survival mode earlier and had more time to play it, but I suppose it’s better to be late than to never show up at all.

I’m gonna watch some fat guys push each other around

My ticket to the Tokyo national sumo tournament arrived in the mail. I was starting to get worried that it wouldn’t show up in time before I left, but it thankfully cleared US customs quickly and showed up at my residence with a few days to spare. This ticket represents one of the few splurges I’m making on my Asia trip and will hopefully make for a good story to one day publish here.

Not Enough Time

I am in the final days of planning for my trip to Asia. Much of my efforts are now focused of gathering ideas of things to see and do while in the various places I’ll be visiting and it’s clear that even though I’ll be Japan and Korea for six weeks it’s simply not enough time to do everything I’d like. I knew at the beginning of planning that this would be the case, but it’s still a little saddening. Well, I guess anything I miss I’ll just have to put on a list of things to hit should I ever get a chance to go back.

Joel Osteen’s House

Joel Osteen found himself in the headlines during the ongoing crisis in Houston when word got out that his mega-church was closed when floodwaters overtook the city. Consequently he has been under a deluge of criticism, and one of the most common comments I’ve seen and heard about him lately is the fact that he owns a house that is valued at about ten to fifteen million dollars. I’m no fan of the Prosperity Gospel ideology that Joel Osteen peddles, but when people bring up in isolation the fact that he owns an expensive house my first reaction is to say “And?” I fully understand the point people are trying to make, but I think they’re making that point poorly. Joel Osteen owning a house worth ten to fifteen million dollars does not, by itself, damn him. Being rich doesn’t necessarily mean you’re a bad person, and there’s no rule that says religious leaders have to be poor. The relevant issues would be how Joel Osteen got rich and, more importantly under the current circumstances, whether or not he is using his wealth to help the Houston community during the flooding. When you bring up the value of Joel Osteen’s house you should immediately follow it with some sort of comment about how he should use the resources available to a rich person like him to bring aid to the displaced people of Houston. You could also mention that it’s reasonable to expect that Joel Osteen would be trying to help out, given that he’s a minister. If, however, you merely keep parroting the line about him owning an expensive house as if that were somehow evil in and of itself, then you show yourself to be rather lazy in making an argument, and you might even be exposing yourself as having some sort of inherent disdain for rich people.

12 Years Ago

12 years ago yesterday, my college roommates sat me down in front of a computer and made me join Facebook. The social network had existed for a few months at that point, however up until that day I had been hesitant to join because I had seen how it could consume peoples’ lives. On that day, however, my roommates told me to get with the program and I gave in. In the 12 years since that day I’ve seen Facebook dramatically change from the relatively innocent and fun-loving platform into the global empire that it is today. Several times during those 12 years I’ve thought about quitting, but here I am, still a member after all this time. Yesterday Facebook provided me with a fun little video celebrating my anniversary, which I suppose I should thank Facebook for since I would have completely missed the date had it not told me. So much has happened since that fateful day 12 years ago, and I can’t help but wonder at what Facebook, and indeed the world will look like in the next 12 years.

Writing Project - August 2017 Update

As expected, there wasn’t much writing this month due to everything going with my job and preparation for my expedition to Asia, but one significant thing was accomplished. There is a particular action I want a particular character of my story to take, however at first glance that action appears completely irrational. For the longest time the reasoning behind the character’s decision has eluded me, but this month I finally figured out how to make it work. Maybe in the future I’ll change the logic of the decision again, but I at least have a fallback reason in case nothing better comes to mind.

Seeing as how I’m going to be overseas for most of the next two months, I think it’s fair to say that I won’t have any more project updates for September or October. Come November, however, I’ll be back at it, and I should have more time to dedicate to this little quest of mine.

Small Tasks

All the “big” things to do before leaving for Asia have been accomplished. My flights are purchased, my accommodations are booked, my car on Jeju Island is reserved, travel notices have been put on my credit cards, my Japan Rail Pass has been received, spending money is loaded into the bank account I use for travel, etc., etc. All that’s left are myriad small tasks. On my whiteboard I keep a running list of those minor things and erase them as they are accomplished (and sometimes I add things that I realize I need to get done). At this point, however, if I left for Asia tomorrow I could go there confident knowing that everything really important is taken care of.

Fully Loaded

We’re less than two weeks from my departure, so I’ve been running some final tests. One of the most important of these tests I completed this past weekend when I fully loaded up my backpack to see how well it could hold what I intend to bring with me. Below is a photo of what my backpack looks like with everything in it.

Coming in at 17 pounds and just barely meeting the size requirements for carry-on luggage of every airline that I’ll be using in Asia, this backpack is what I’ll be living out of for six weeks. It’s been with me since my first trip to Europe back in 2012, and it’s comparatively small size (compared to what I see most other backpackers using) forces me to made hard decisions about what I bring with me and be as efficient as possible, but its lack of storage space means I never have to check it at the airport and can always keep it directly on me, which is an unbeatable feature when traveling overseas.

Saturday Overtime

This past Saturday I went into the office to put in a day of working overtime. It was miserable, but if there was one solace in the experience it was that I knew it was my last time doing it at my current job (and, ok, the fact that I was getting paid in overtime hours helped a bit too). When I finally left the office I said goodbye to working weekends. My employer won’t be stealing them from me any longer.

Jeju Island Car Rental

I’ve rented cars a couple of times here in America, but my upcoming trip to Asia will see my first time renting a car in a foreign country. While in Korea I’ll be visiting Jeju Island, and a friend of mine who has been there in the past strongly recommended getting a rental car since public transportation on the island isn’t extensive or frequent enough to get to reliably the various places worth visiting on the island. Last night I made a reservation for the three and a half days that I’ll be on Jeju, so I’ve scratched another thing off the list of items I want to accomplish before departure. No doubt my time driving on Jeju will make for at least one good side story to publish on this blog. Hopefully that story won’t involve any sort of bodily harm or damage to the car.

Final Asia Accommodation Booked

I’ve booked my final accommodations for my trip to Asia. The last two times I traveled overseas I didn’t book every residence in advance, but this trip is much shorter than those so I felt I could get everything squared away before departure. There are still a few last big items to get done before I leave next month, but this feels like a big step forward.

The Great American Eclipse

On Monday the Great American Eclipse passed through my neck of the woods, and to be perfectly honest it was a bit of a letdown. Maybe I bought too much into the hype and had unrealistic expectations. Where I live in Colorado we got about 92% coverage of the sun, but the light didn’t dim much and the only really notable thing that I observed was how tree shadows got a little distorted. Perhaps more interesting than the eclipse itself were all the other people gawking at the sun with their eclipse sunglasses on. I was able to briefly borrow eclipse glasses from another person and look at the sun myself during the brief period of greatest coverage, but for whatever reason I felt nothing. Soon enough the whole thing was over and everyone went back to whatever they were doing prior to standing around outside. Maybe I need to experience a complete, 100% solar eclipse to understand why it’s such a big deal. If there’s one positive thing I took out of Monday’s eclipse, however, it’s that I think I now have a greater appreciation for the amount of light that our sun generates. Even with about 92% of it covered by the moon, there was still enough light coming to Earth that if you weren’t looking up you might think it was merely a cloudy day.

Youtube changes

People have been complaining for a few weeks about changes made to Youtube’s algorithms and suggested videos, and I can say that I’ve noticed some of these changes too. In order to keep myself from spending hours each day on Youtube, I intentionally limit my Youtube viewing to a small number of channels and in the past my Youtube experience had been very convenient because when I loaded Youtube on my web browser I would predominantly see videos from those channels. More recently, however, when I go to Youtube I’m seeing fewer videos from my preferred channels, to the point where sometimes I have search for those channels in order to find their content (a First World Problem, if there ever was one). In the place of some of the videos I’d like to see on my Youtube front page are things I’m not interested in, and also some stuff I really don’t want to watch. Seriously, why does Youtube think I’d be interested in watching wild animals decapitate each other? The majority of things I watch on Youtube are related to video games, so why is all this other stuff showing up? I’m hopeful that with time Youtube will relearn the sorts of things I watch and don’t watch, but for now I’m a bit annoyed.

Replaying the Classics (probably) finished, for now

I’ve been thinking it over and I’m sad to announce that last Friday’s writing piece on Vanquish was probably the last entry in Replaying the Classics for at least until I get back from Asia. There are a few more games that I’d like to replay, chief among them Mass Effect 3, but none of them are short games and I just don’t think I’ll have the time needed to play and write about them before departure. My job sucks up a massive chunk of my time, and preparing for Asia and other life activities are taking up most of the rest, so I can’t make the commitment needed to play those games and give them the writing pieces they deserve. Maybe when I get back from Asia I’ll get one or two more entries in the series done, but for now Replaying the Classics has seen the end of its first season.

Replaying the Classics - Vanquish

As a gaming enthusiast I’m always interested in new gaming experiences, but every once in awhile I feel compelled to go back and put in some serious time replaying some of my favorite games from the preceding years. In that spirit, I have created a new series of writing pieces titled Replaying the Classics, wherein I discuss the games that I have replayed recently. Unlike my Late to the Party series, my goal with these writing pieces is not so much to give a strong analysis of a particular game, but rather to give an informal recounting of a game and to try to convey to the reader why it’s one of my favorites. I do not come to you this time as a game reviewer, but merely as a friend wanting to have a casual chat about what he’s been playing. Today, let’s take a seat in our comfy chairs and talk about Vanquish.

Gangnam Style

In my preparations for Asia, it occurred to me that I still had not experienced the premier cultural export of Korea. Yes, I am talking about the absurdly popular music video Gangnam Style by Korea musical artist Psy. After a few clicks and about 4 minutes I added one more view to the nearly three billion that Gangnam Style already has. With my introduction to Korean pop culture complete, I felt I was officially ready for Korea.

International Driving Permit

I’m planning on renting a car while I’m in Korea this year. To do this I’ll need an International Driving Permit, but luckily there’s a AAA office right near where I work, so recently I paid them a visit and got one. I am now officially ready to rent a car while overseas. A friend of mine cautioned me that Koreans tend to drive aggressively, but I grew up driving in Southern California amongst a large population of Asian drivers, so I say bring it.

Regarding that Google memo

Last week there was another explosion on the Internet that resulted from an internal Google memo in which a Google employee named James Damore discussed some of what he believed were harmful biases going on within the company. Not long after the memo went viral, he was fired. I kept seeing headlines about the memo that all included some version of the phrases “Anti-Diversity Memo” or “Anti-Women Memo” in them, and like a good sheep I took those headlines at face value and didn’t bother diving into the matter. It wasn’t until a day later when I started seeing more and more people calling foul on these headlines that I stopped and took a closer look. Videos and articles were being published contesting the anti-diversity label, with some commenters going so far as to cry fake news. I knew the only way to figure this out was to read the memo myself, in its entirety. Doing so was not as easy as one would have hoped, since some websites were only showing edited versions of the memo, but soon enough I found an unedited version on the website Medium. Strapping myself in, I readied myself for a controversial read.

That mental preparation proved unnecessary. When I got to the end of the ten-page memo the thought in my head was “Wait, that’s it?” Looking over it again I struggled to find what exactly was so bad about this memo. James goes out of his way to be reasonable and takes jabs at both conservatives and liberals. Any claims that the memo is anti-diversity can be thrown out the window with its opening paragraph, with reads

“I value diversity and inclusion, am not denying that sexism exists, and don’t endorse using stereotypes. When addressing the gap in representation in the population, we need to look at population level differences in distributions. If we can't have an honest discussion about this, then we can never truly solve the problem.” (page 1)

The memo goes on to detail the biases that James sees at Google, how Google’s culture has become an ideological echo chamber that suppresses opposing viewpoints, gives some reasons why men and women tend to have different types of job, and concludes with suggestions to boost diversity at Google without resorting to discriminatory hiring practices. Nothing about what he wrote struck me as incorrect or hateful, and there are extensive citations throughout the memo to support his claims. That doesn’t mean that James is right on everything, but we can’t say he was sloppy in his research and presentation.

So, what am I to make of this? I can’t weigh in on whether or not James should have been fired, seeing as how he might have breached a Google protocol that I’m not aware of, but I am forced to admit that the people screaming fake news are right this time. This memo is not anti-diversity or anti-women, and I would recommend you read it for yourself if you can spare the 15 minutes needed to do so. A link to the article on Medium can be found here. To close things out, below is a quote from near the memo’s conclusion, which more or less sums up the memo’s entire point. If you don’t read the whole memo, at least read this.

“I hope it’s clear that I'm not saying that diversity is bad, that Google or society is 100% fair, that we shouldn't try to correct for existing biases, or that minorities have the same experience of those in the majority. My larger point is that we have an intolerance for ideas and evidence that don’t fit a certain ideology. I’m also not saying that we should restrict people to certain gender roles; I’m advocating for quite the opposite: treat people as individuals, not as just another member of their group (tribalism).” (page 8)