So the first part of this post will be food p0rn, shots from tonight’s dinner in a small restaurant on a side street in the Shinbashi area.

I was told that this huge poster represents rankings of the small sushi restaurants in Tokyo. It is produced quarterly. I was given one as a souvenier because, apparently, this place ranked pretty highly. It’s a large sheet – laid it out on the bed for the photo.

We started with dried soba:

Sashimi – I could have eaten this entire platter myself but had to share with 4 other people:

Salad – the white chunks are not tofu or chicken, they’re grilled tuna:

A Japanese take on a classic Chinese dish, sweet and sour pork:

Our waitress, caught at an inopportune moment. She’s holding the ingredients for hotpot, or is it called nabe here?

Here it is:

I was so full after this (and a little tipsy after drinking half a bottle of sake myself) so I didn’t bother to photograph the last course, congee.

After dinner, raining fairly heavily so just back to the hotel. But after that, eventually over to the branch of Tsutaya in Roppongi Hills. (Sorry, didn’t have camera with me.) This shop is open from 07:00 to 28:00, which I presume means until 4 AM.

The ground floor is a Starbucks and a bookshop that is primarily devoted to art, design, photography and architecture, with huge sections on food and travel. Think about that for a minute. An art book store open till 4 AM 7 days a week. Think we’ll see anything like this in HK soon? It is to laugh.

Upstairs is a CD/DVD shop.

Next door is Foo:D Magazine, a 24 hour grocery store run by Seiyu (which is partly owned by Wal*Mart). The shop concentrates on imported and higher end stuff, including excellent departments for meat, fish, cheese and a bakery (though the bakery shelves were empty at midnight).

Now please don’t think I’m turning into Brian Donovan but here are shots of three of the more unusual snacks I picked up – well, unusual varieties of brand names we all know well, but only available in Japan as far as I know:

And that’s about it. Work, lunch and dinner with colleagues, no bars, no girls, about to get into bed with just a book.

Some quick shots from the main crossing in Shibuya. Note that there are three large video screens on separate buildings (only two of each visible in each shot) and they are synchronized to each play the same thing. This is not silent – there are outdoor speakers blasting the soundtrack to whatever ad is playing.

The huge crowd of people, coming down Centa-Gai (Center Street) waiting for the light to change to cross over to the Shibuya train station and Hachiko, the statue of the faithful little dog, a popular meeting place.

Tokyo Tower in Roppongi – a replica of the Eiffel Tower, but bigger.

So in Tokyo now. I hate that I seem to get upgrades on shorter flights – who needs business class for a one hour flight? – but for this four hour flight, no upgrade, no empty seat next to me, and leg room in these A330s is nonexistent. As Lewis Black once said, the seats were clearly designed by a dwarf with scoliosis who was very pissed off that day.

As always, my first night spent at HMV and Tower in Shibuya. I would be there yet except those stores close at 11 and my backpack was full. As usual, bought too much. Anything that sounded reasonably interesting and had Japan-only bonus tracks. Plus some UK/US stuff not too easily found in HK. Too bad I didn’t back my DVD-drive for my laptop or I could put this stuff on the iPod now. Some highlights:

Union of Knives – Violence and Birdsong – kind of J&M Chain-ish?

Neutral Milk Hotel – In the Aeroplane Over the Sea

Rodrigo y Gabriela

Prefab Sprout – Steve McQueen legacy edition

Songs the Bonzo Dog Band Taught Us – original versions of songs the Bonzos covered

Johnny Thunders & Patty Palladin – Copy Cats. Finally on CD. Almost jumped up and down and spun in circles when I saw it at HMV. Thank you!

Omar Rodrigues Lopez – Se Dice Bisonte. No Bufalo. Big guitars. Some electronics.

Fields – Everything Last Winter – tuneful

Mumm-Ra – These Things Move in Threes – also tuneful

Charlotte Gainsbourg – 5:55 – er, um, chanteuseful?

David Pastorius & Local 518 – no idea if he’s Jaco’s son but he plays like Jaco and the band sounds fierce

Gilles Peterson – 2 disc set of selected tracks from the Fania archives

and assorted others …

Plus a book on the making of Grindhouse and several Japanese tattoo magazines & books, all of which will eventually find their way to Jimmy Wong’s shelves in Bangkok after I’ve searched them for inspiration.

After that, I was amazed to spot a sign for Nanbantei right near Tower. Maybe they’ve been there forever and I just didn’t see it before. Maybe they’re not the best yakitori in Tokyo but they are certainly the most foreigner-friendly. Even this Shibuya branch had an English menu (with lots of things not found on the menu in their HK branch) and an English speaking staff. Several old favorites and tried one new thing – mentaiko stuffed with chicken. All yummy.

And then a stroll through late night Shibuya, seeing some astonishing looking women, not one of whom would even acknowledge my presence.

Just sent to me by a friend. Here’s the link and here’s the intro:

I’m seeking a like-minded woman to share a disastrous 3-9 month relationship with, ending in acrimony, emotional chaos, and possibly legal proceedings.

My name is Lloyd, I live in Chicago , I’m 27 years old, fairly well educated, I hold down a good job and am pretty stable. I’m told I’m fairly good looking, but I’ll let you be the judge of that – I’m generally caring and very honest.

I am looking for an attractive female who will at first give me obsessive love, praise and devotion – but whose paranoia, self-loathing and fear of rejection and abandonment will eventually lead her to alternately push me away and pull me closer in a love/hate cycle that will lead to infidelity, consensual sexual violence, and the eventual emotional breakdown of one or other party – or if we’re lucky – both!

Wonder if this guy reads my blog?

One picture from Kaohsiung that I forgot to post, this 85 story building that dominates the city. The architect is the same man who designed Taipei 101, for now the world’s tallest building.

All over Taichung I saw different ads featuring Kelly Chan for Toto toilet seats. This is not the best one, but it’s the one I got. Can you imagine any western celebrity endorsing toilet seats, especially butt-washing ones? Wanting their image associated with this kind of product? Apparently in Asia either it’s not an issue or Kelly is just that desperate for money. “When you think about taking a shit, think about Kelly! (Or at least her music?)”

The U.S. has “park ‘n ride,” low cost parking lots near commuter rail and bus stations. Here in Taiwan they have the much nicer “kiss and ride.” But apparently you have to bring someone with you for the kiss, they don’t just have people employed to stand there and do that for you.

This is the workstation area at Hotel One in Taichung. 42 inch TV, Sony DVD with 5.1 surround – note the subwoofer in the central base of the workstation area. On the bottom right, note the laser printer in the cabinet. Lastly, on the back of the Aeron-style chair, it says “Enjoy!” I certainly did.

The view from the 36th floor of Hotel One in Taichung. Heavy rains meant the windows were not that clear and it was also difficult to get a shot without my reflection in the glass. Note the bank of low clouds coming in over the mountains. (I’ve now figured out how to get the G7 into manual focus mode, which turns out to be as simple as pushing one button and then using the scroll wheel on the back. In the LCD screen, they provide a magnified area in the center as well as a digital read-out of the selected distance of the focus, making this really as easy as possible. I know this may sound crazy but now I’m wondering if I really need the Nikon D80 or if I should look to sell it.)

In Taipei, half of the sidewalk on all of the main streets is given over to scooter parking. Terrible for pedestrians, especially because these scooters scoot down what’s left of the sidewalk going to and from the parking spots. But of course, if you have a scooter, it means you can park almost anywhere.

Lingerie shop along Fuxing Road. Love this window display!

Last Taipei shot.

Last but not least, no photos unfortunately but I jotted down the Chinglish names of some menu items from the hotpot place in Taichung:

• Selected rectum
• Selected honey cumb
• Selected hog bowel
• Rice nuddles

Of course, I’m actually grateful that they went to the trouble of having an English menu and while it wasn’t the best hotpot I’ve ever had, everything was fresh and tasty and the service there was first rate. Plus I’m glad they would take the trouble to actually select the rectum as opposed to just tossing random pieces of ass at you.

Thursday lunch at a small restaurant down some tiny lane somewhere in Taipei, with a guy who used to be a major in the Taiwan air force, so he’s taken “Major” as his English name. I was told he’s an expert on Taipei restaurants and based on this choice, I have no reason to doubt that. I didn’t recognize about half the dishes, was told the place was a mixture of Taiwanese and Sichuan food. He asked if I could handle spicy, I told him of course, so he ordered a bowl of beef swimming in chili oil, and then seemed fairly shocked when I told him I didn’t think it was very spicy (but it was delicious and I told him that, too).

Thursday afternoon shopping at Costco in Taipei. Bought so much stuff that I also bought a rolling duffel bag to hold it. This was in an area just outside the city, perhaps 10 square blocks, that was packed with multi-story hypermarkets and discount outlet malls. Carrefour, RT Mart, factory outlet clothing and furniture palaces, huge auto supply shops and so on. Why don’t we have shopping on this scale in HK? There’s room in New Territories and enough people have cars. It’s because the billionaires and real estate cartels that really run HK won’t allow this kind of free market access and choice. And the government won’t do anything about it because they don’t have to answer to the public.

Thursday night, ladies night at Brass Monkey in Taipei. I was there from around 9 till almost 3. Interesting, young crowd. I was done in by being too honest and by losing track of how much I was drinking.

As things were warming up, I noticed a lady who stood out from the crowd for two reasons. The first is that she was noticeably older than the rest of the women there, most of whom were in their 20s and she was at least 40. The second reason was that she was wearing an extremely short skirt and, whatever her age, had amazing legs. She was standing on her own, kept looking at her mobile phone in annoyance. Finally I went over and said, “You’re waiting for someone, right?” She said yes. “Well whoever you’re waiting for is an idiot,” and she looked a little bit shocked at that. I continued, “No man should let such a beautiful lady wait alone in a bar for so long.” She almost smiled but also clearly was not willing to continue the conversation. Later I noted that she was meeting a woman, not a man. And even later I noticed her leaving the bar and going home alone.

Fortunately by then I had recovered my balance and met someone, not my dream girl by any means but good spirit, fun. “I’m not young, I’m old! I’m almost 40!” she told me. And it turned out that “almost 40″ meant 34. She wanted me to watch some rugby game with her on Saturday, I confessed I was leaving on Friday, at that point probably too drunk to even attempt a lie. But phone numbers exchanged, various SMS’s received from her today.

Friday morning up early. I generally don’t get hangovers but this morning was darned close. I was gonna walk around for a bit before heading to the airport, but stepping out of the hotel door (yes, it is Les Suites, one of my favorite hotels in the world) it was so freaking hot that I gave up on that idea. Yes, even worse than HK. Absofuckinglutely baking on the streets.

Dragonair has moved to the new Terminal 2 at CKS Airport. It’s a huge improvement over the decrepit Terminal 1 but HK and Changi have little to fear from it.

At one duty free counter, the girl refused to sell me a carton of cigarettes after seeing I was going to HK, limit of just 3 packs for residents (and why does HK have such a ridiculously low limit?). But she didn’t know I was a resident and didn’t speak any English so I couldn’t explain to her the “mistake” she was making, that tourists can bring in entire cartons. I simply went to the next shop, where they assumed that I was simply a tourist heading to HK and sold me whatever I wanted.

Dragonair upgraded me to business class but printed the boarding pass on an economy ticket, so I didn’t know I was upgraded till I got on the plane. Looked at the seat number, looked at the seat, looked at the ticket, sat down, kept waiting for someone to make me move. At any rate, business class on a one hour flight seems like a waste.

Tonight, started out at Heat and then checked out Underground HK at Galaxy. So freaking weird. The HK indie bands and the people who follow them and lots of hookers sitting at the bar. And poor Sammy, he’s so sad, I’m telling him it’s great that he’s trying something new with the bar and look how packed the place is (and it was, too) and he looks like he’s gonna cry. The first act was two guys with acoustic guitars singing weepy folky stuff, the singer looking like Elvis Costello in a dutchboy cap. One song about “how do I find the words to make you love me,” the next about needing a reason to keep on living. Oh boo fucking hoo. My friend kept shouting “Show me the money!” at them. The next band was kind of power trio-ish but the songs were tuneless (especially odd in a bar of hookers that a band couldn’t manage a hook?) and we decided we’d had enough. Also I was not thrilled to discover that while most people were paying a very reasonable $50 cover charge for the bands, the hookers were allowed in for free. They should charge everyone the $50 and this will keep the hookers out until after the show is over. Otherwise, this is not gonna work too well.

So over to Laguna, Joe Banana, Fuckwick. I didn’t mean to have any alcohol tonight but eventually my resolve weakened. All the travel and drinking isn’t affecting my ability to conduct business but I found that certain parts of my body aren’t functioning as well as usual right now.

Thursday morning, holiday in HK but working day here in Taiwan.

Aside from the great hotel in Taichung, a nice spicy hotpot dinner. After which we went driving around endlessly in circles for an hour. Our two local hosts don’t make big salaries and had no ideas which bars might be good. The town is filled with KTV joints with hostesses and the betelnut stands, with girls who dress like hookers even if they’re not, close early. At 10 we went to some recommended music bar and at 10:30 we found a lounge bar and at 11 we stumbled upon some Brit-style pub – all of these places were empty and we were told they wouldn’t be busy till at least 1 AM. Back to the hotel bar for a drink – also empty and my attempts to lure the girl from the front desk who’d checked me in were in vain – and finally a (legit) massage at a nearby sauna.

Wednesday, train to Taipei, upgraded to a suite at the hotel, can’t complain there. Wednesday night, just wanting some simple western food for a change, had dinner at Hooters, one block from my hotel. Ended up talking with some American guy who’d spent 11 weeks in Taipei, took a weekend break to HK and ended up in the go-go bars along Lockhart. By the time he got pointed in the right direction (Sunday morning at the Bridge), it was time for him to fly out.

I was going to go to Carnegies but friends insisted I join them at some “piano bar” which was having its anniversary party. Turns out it’s another overpriced hostess bar. The girl sitting with me spoke very good English and physically was very much my type, but I decided against enquiring about prices. The special event for the anniversary was that the club brought in two strippers – a very amateurish onstage performance in which they alternated dancing energetically and then staring at each other wondering what to do next. After stripping down to just g-strings and boots, they went around table to table, room to room, doing a series of table and lap dances. They removed most of my clothes and then poured ice cubes down my shorts, to the great delight of everyone in the place except for, well, the guy who was getting ice cubes poured down his shorts.

At 1 AM, finally over to Carnegies, which was packed tight, all asses to elbows. I couldn’t quite work out the scene there and the music was really too loud to try to talk to anyone. The girls who seemed to be working there all looked old and hard. And no eye contact with any of the girls who didn’t seem to be working, not for lack of trying. To add insult to injury, on returning back to my hotel, another taxi was dropping off some fat old guy with a huge mustache and a very cute young lady.

At 4 AM, received an SMS from an HK girl who’d done a very evil thing to me about 3 weeks ago. Claimed she’d lost my number and only just found it and could I ever forgive her? I have not replied.

Tonight, ladies night at Brass Monkey, might give it a try. Friday back home, get to spend 4 whole days at home before the next trip (Tokyo) and hopefully after that a week at home before the next next trip (Sydney).

If you should find yourself in Taichung, Taiwan, there is a new hotel called Hotel One and, one hour after check-in, I’m finding it to be a pretty freaking amazing hotel. Not quite sure of the rate but I’m sure it’s under US$200 per night and if this was in Tokyo it would be at least three times that.

Start with a 42 inch plasma TV. Sony DVD with six speaker surround sound with connections for my iPod and my laptop. Free wireless internet throughout the hotel. Laser printer in the room. Huge bathtub right alongside the window looking out on the city from the 36th floor. Rain forest showerhead. This is just crying out for a party that I won’t be having since I’m just here for one night.

I was offered (for additional fee) use of a mobile phone. The phone had two added features – first is that from anywhere in Taiwan I could just dial 8 on that phone and be connected to the hotel, second is that any calls to my room would be forwarded to that phone if I didn’t answer my room phone.

They do in-room check-in here. The girl who brought me up to my room was young, cute and spoke good English. It took me about two minutes to find out that she lives with her parents and doesn’t have a boyfriend at the moment but “dreams” of finding a nice one. She gave me a free drink coupon for the hotel bar and said if I wanted more, just ask her. On leaving the room, she turned and said, “I like you very much” in Mandarin.

And I almost forgot to mention this girl walking through the lobby as we were checking in. Backless dress, but I didn’t need to see the back to see that she wasn’t wearing a bra. Long, curly hair. Cowboy boots. And apparently not a “working girl” as valet parking had brought her car around. And maybe I’m flattering myself but it seems she did look back at me as she was going out the door.

I wonder if I could somehow stretch my trip here out to a few nights or weeks ….

Arrived in Kaohsiung Monday morning. Here’s the view from my hotel room.

And as sunset approaches:

The hotel features a Hello Kitty shop in the lobby:

And a Hello Kitty car parked out front:

As you can see, there’s an Outback Steakhouse near the town’s famous Love River. Fortunately I did not have to eat there.

Here’s a tale about the Love River. Years ago, at night, there would be hookers and pimps on scooters parked by the Love River. The hooker would be wearing a long coat with nothing underneath. The pimp would sell you a match for NT$50. You would then light the match, the hooker would open her coat, and you could look until the match burnt out. Folks, you can’t make this stuff up.

The day was a series of retailer visits. Here at Costco, the watch on top sells for NT$744,000. That’s more than US$22,000. Think about it. You want to spend $22,000 on a watch. Are you gonna go to Costco where you have to fill out the SKU number on a little slip of paper and try to find someone to check stock for you? Seems extremely odd to me.

The new Dream Mall in Kaohsiung features a ferris wheel on top of the mall.

The mall is anchored by the Japanese department store Hankyu. There’s also a Marks & Spencer there. There is a central outdoor courtyard. You can sit outside there but they have ads blasting at top volume, making it an extremely unpleasant experience. I suppose they think the impact is that it will send you running back into the mall for more shopping, but to me it just shows contempt for the customer.

Clouds over the city at sunset, taken from my hotel room. (I am loving the Canon G7.)

For dinner, I was taken to this very local style seafood place. Seemed very popular and I was told that each night by 9 PM they’ll sell out on the most popular dishes.

Some of the selection, if you get there early enough (we got there at 6:30):

While at Costco, we picked up a couple of bottles of wine to go with the dinner. That may help to explain why the focus is a little soft on some of these pictures. We were five people and had 12 dishes. This is “oyster sashimi,” chopped up raw oyster with spring onion, japanese radish, wasabi:

On the left is squid slices, on the right shrimp balls:

This is rice noodle with shredded pumpkin:

Abalone:

The guys hard at work in the kitchen:

We also had fish soup, steamed prawns, steamed crab, a salad that consisted of baby bamboo and bitter melon, plate of roasted bamboo, couple more plates of veggies. Everything was very fresh and tasty.

After dinner, off to karaoke in a hostess club. Sorry, no photos of that! The girls were all tall, all wearing floor-length gowns slit up to the hip on the side. None of them too attractive but none too ugly either; very minimal English spoken. I started to think about the nasty way in which these clubs turn the women into objects, even as I sat there with two women with their arms around me. And in the interest of getting nice tips, these women were quite enthusiastic about their work. They keep pouring whiskey down my throat and when they removed my shirt, I stopped thinking about much of anything ….

Off to Taichung shortly.

Two! Two! Two posts in one.

When I travel to Shanghai, I always book a hotel car to pick me up at the airport. The taxi stand is a free-for-all, practically a melee, and I rarely have the desire to deal with it. Maybe it’s improved in the past year or two, I don’t know.

(The last time I took a taxi from the airport, it broke down on the highway. Another taxi driver stopped to pick me up and the two drivers got into a fight and I was almost hit by a truck running to the working taxi and being chased by the first driver. I don’t need that excitement.)

This time, I was staying at the Four Seasons and my driver was a 40-something year old man named Jason. Jason spoke far more English than any Shanghai hotel driver I’ve ever had. And he was patient with what’s left of my Chinese. I mentioned to him on the ride to the hotel that I had studied putonghua for one month at Fudan University. We talked back and forth for the entire ride, in a mixture of English and Chinese. He let me smoke in the limo. He told me his English name and his Chinese name and asked me to specially request him for the return trip to the airport.

On arrival at the hotel, I had no small bills. Normally I would just apologize to the driver and run into the lobby. But I liked this guy too much to stiff him. I tipped Jason 100 RMB. He acted as if that was the largest tip he’d ever received – possibly it was. And in a city where you can get a good meal for under 10 RMB (if you know where to go), 100 will go a long way.

Now, when I leave Shanghai, I generally take a taxi to the airport, depending on the time of day and the weather. (There are no taxis to be had in Shanghai during rush hour or when it rains.) But this time, I decided to book the hotel car and requested that Jason be my driver. Of course he remembered me. And he surprised me by remembering my Chinese name.

I sat in the back seat and closed my eyes. After a short while, he woke me up. It seemed that since we were early and traffic was light, we had some extra time so he decided to take a detour. We were parked outside of the entrance to Fudan University. He thought I’d like to see it again.

(Oh yes, we made it to the airport with plenty of time to spare and Jason received another generous tip.)

Despite what you might have read or heard elsewhere, there are still some extremely nice people in Shanghai.

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Tonight I was supposed to go out but stayed in. I didn’t sleep much the night before. I was hoping to catch up on my sleep on the airplane, but was seated next to a chatty Australian bloke making his first visit to Hong Kong. He talked for most of the flight and I tried my best to answer his questions. So on getting home, I was more tired than I anticipated.

So instead of going out, I watched Darren Aronofsky’s The Fountain. I thought it had the most beautiful trailer of any movie in 2006. However, the movie really polarized audiences. In its debut at a film festival, it was booed at the end. Rotten Tomatoes scores it 50%. So it took me awhile to work up the will to watch it.

Spoilers Ahead:

Here is the plot of the movie in a nutshell. There is a research doctor named Tommy (Hugh Jackman). His beautiful and intelligent wife, Izzi (Rachel Weisz, Aronofsky’s wife), is dying from a brain tumor. She dies. He goes a little crazy. He gets better. End of story.

All accompanied by some incredibly beautiful photography (Matthew Libatique) and production design (James Chinlund).

Okay, there’s this bit that takes place in the 1500s, when Queen Isabella of Spain tells conquistador Tomas to find the tree of life in the New World and that if he does, she will be his Eve. That’s just a re-enactment on screen of the book Izzi is writing when she dies. And there’s a bit set in the far future, as Tommy and Izzi (who is now a tree) travel through the universe in a huge snow globe towards a star worshipped by the Mayans. That’s just Tommy’s subconscious, insane visions.

It’s a trifle of a story, which takes 96 minutes to tell. It attempts to be poetic, elegiac, the stuff that dreams are made of. In the hands of a far better writer, it might have added up to a lot more than it did. It’s not a complete failure but it’s far from a triumph.

In part, there isn’t a lot of chemistry between Jackman and Weisz. She’s radiant, continuing a tradition hearkening back to Ali MacGraw of looking stunningly beautiful as she’s dying from a debilitating disease. He’s grumpy, alternating shouting at people and then apologizing. The relationship is given to us in shorthand and we’re supposed to fill in the missing pieces. We’re supposed to believe that Jackman will be a better person for having gone through this and for having learned the lesson in the book that Weisz was writing, but we don’t really care for him all that much in the first place.

The basic elements are there but a lot of the important pieces are missing, merely hinted at. The result will leave some people scratching their heads, some people bored, only a very tiny few will be emotionally moved.