Everywhere you look in Akihabara Electric Town, there are shops large and small selling manga and anime——animations, comics, books, videos, drawings, games, dolls, and an endless assortment of anime paraphernalia. I know virtually nothing of manga or anime beyond the fact that they exist and are very popular with people a lot younger than I. That said, I enjoyed walking around to see what was on offer. Tokyo’s electric town also has Bic Camera, a five story emporium dedicated to every kind of electronics imaginable. The floor devoted to photography was downright astonishing. It took an act of will to escape with my bank account intact.
French travelers walk through Tokyo’s Ueno Park on a rainy day.
My first day in Tokyo had consisted of disembarking from my very red-eye flight at about 7:30 in the morning, making my way from the airport to the city, and then wandering around the neighborhood of my hotel a bit bleary eyed until 2:50 in the afternoon at which time I passed the hotel’s check-in goal post. Since check-in time was 3pm, I guess the hotel had cut me some slack after all, though you will have to pardon me for not being particularly grateful. Whatever, within moments of entering my room, I lay down for a much needed nap.
I woke up to find my stomach growling, but before setting off to look for dinner, I stopped to explore my room, a fast journey indeed. On the hotel’s booking page, Agoda listed the room size at 11.5 sq meters. That’s roughly 125 sq feet for those who are still wedded to inches, feet, and miles. In a word: small. As one entered the room, there was a hallway on the left and the door to a very efficiently organized bathroom on the right. The room then “opened up” to a single bed on the right and on the left a narrow desk/counter complete with flat screen TV, a refrigerator underneath and other amenities one expects to find in a good quality budget hotel room. The bed and the desk were divided by a rather narrow walkway. Though a little soft for my taste, the bed was comfortable and plenty roomy enough, even for my rather too abundant physique. I put my luggage on the floor at the far end of the room where there was a window. Years of living in crowded China taught me to travel light; today my travel gear consists of a single, small carry-on bag, and a small back pack, even when I go on longer trips. For those of you who can’t take even a one week journey without an enormous suitcase, budget hotels in Japanese cities are probably not for you. Everything in the room was spotlessly clean, and as I would learn during the days that followed, housekeeping was capable and meticulous. For the record, despite being annoyed at the long wait to check-in (3pm was check-in time for all of the hotels I considered in Japan), I was very satisfied with the New Ueno Hotel——friendly, efficient, clean, and quiet, all in a great location.
I had delicious grilled eel for dinner.
The next day (9 Oct) I was awake early. I am always awake early these days——I suppose one of the dubious perks of being a senior citizen. It was cloudy and the small street behind the hotel was wet, but there was a man walking along the street without an umbrella. Encouraged, I put my camera in the back pack and took off for more exploration. When I got downstairs to leave the hotel, I realized that the man I had seen with no umbrella was either eccentric or looking for a place to buy an umbrella to replace the one he had misplaced. It was not raining hard, but I needed to open my umbrella as I struck out walking in the direction of Ueno Park.
I entered the park and stood under a canopy created by huge trees lining the park paths. Wet but beautiful. Suddenly, the steady but light rain gave way to an absolute downpour. I beat a hasty retreat to Ueno Station where I sought out coffee and a chance to get upset reading news from the United States on my phone. A while later, full of caffeine and bile, I found the rain had subsided and I set out again. Even on a wet somewhat gloomy morning, Ueno Park is beautiful.
Kiyomizu Kannon-dō Temple in Ueno Park
As the rain gave no indication of stopping, nor did the day give any indication of clearing up, I decided this would be an ideal time to visit the Tokyo National Museum, one of several museums in Ueno Park. The flaw in this plan became more apparent as the path towards the museum became more and more crowded the closer I got to my destination. Not surprisingly, plenty of other people shared my idea. Not in the mood for a very crowded museum visit, it seemed time to end my walk and find a quiet, dry place to consider what I would do later in the day.
My Vietnam Airlines flight to Tokyo (Narita) left Da Nang at just past midnight on 8 October and arrived at 7:30 the same morning. There is a two hour time difference between Japan and Vietnam; flight time was roughly five and a half hours. Narita is some distance from Tokyo, and there are a number of options for covering the distance. Taxi or car service would have busted my trip budget before I checked into my hotel, so they were out. My choices boiled down to an express train taking 50 minutes for around $20 or a limited express train (i.e., a train that makes several fewer stops than a local train) taking about an hour and fifteen minutes and costing about $7.
I opted for the $7 ride, first because I am cheap about expenses like this, and second, during a trip to Japan I would rather spend my money on sashimi than spending an additional $13 to save 25 to 30 minutes on a train ride. A third not unimportant consideration: Whichever train I chose, I would be arriving at my destination in Tokyo a bit before 10:30am and check-in time at my hotel was 3pm. Three o’clock? A bit late in the day for a check-in time, don’t you think? But all of the three hotels I booked in Japan had check-in at 3pm and check-out at 10am. And the place in Tokyo would not cut me even a little slack. Four and a half hours wandering around the hotel’s neighborhood on a couple hours of sleep after an all-night plane ride made for one grumpy curmudgeon by the time 3pm rolled around.
By the way, have I mentioned it was raining? I have lived almost 35 years in East and Southeast Asia, and this was my first visit to Japan. Rain on the first day of that long-awaited visit was definitely not on my wish list. It was not a hard driving rain, but it was hard enough that I used an umbrella, among various reasons, because I didn’t want my new, well-engineered, expensive, water-resistant but not waterproof camera directly exposed to the rain as I walked around waiting for check-in time for my hotel room to roll around. And just to dot this particular “i”, holding a camera and composing a photo while juggling an umbrella is not really my idea of a good time. Grumpy curmudgeon indeed.
It rained on my second day in Tokyo as well. Though after that, with the exception of a bit of drizzle in Kyoto, the weather for my remaining 13 days in Japan was lovely.
Along a street near the big Phan Thiết fish market, a group of mostly men were at work untangling the nets used to catch the fish. These days, no natural fibers in sight – the nets are made of a thread-fine synthetic of some kind. After watching for about 10 seconds, I realized I had no clue how these people went about sorting out and making sense of the huge piles of netting they were working with. Better them than me. I would go off the rails completely in a matter of minutes trying to untangle all those tiny threads.
Phan Thiết, a city of more than 200,000 people, lies on the coast of the East Sea about 165km east of Saigon. For ten or twelve km on either side of its urban center, large areas administered by Phan Thiết stretch along the coast. To the east is Mũi Né, a well-known tourist destination drawing both Vietnamese and international visitors to its beaches, sand dunes and recreational activities.
Phan Thiết has a large fishing fleet and a wholesale fish market that sells the fleet’s daily catch early in the morning pretty much every day. It seemed worthwhile to visit the market with cameras, so my Ke Ga host, Mark, and I got ourselves up and on the road to Phan Thiết by 6am. The market was still active when we arrived around 7am, though there were already signs of people getting ready to pack up and go home.
No shortage of hairy eyeballs targeting the guy with the camera.
This guy gave life to the expression “built like a brick shithouse.” He did not have a warm, friendly look on his face, so I decided a profile shot was the better part of valor.
The market was definitely the place to go in Phan Thiết for fashion statements.
The Bà Lê market is close to my home; I do much of my shopping along this market street. Tomorrow is the lunar new year’s eve, and today was the final day to shop before the big holiday. By late morning when this shot was taken, the crowd had already begun to thin out, and by mid-afternoon most of the vendors would be closed up. Tomorrow, there will be a few stands selling their wares at much higher prices than usual, but most of the shops and stands will be closed, in this market, in Hoi An, and for that matter, throughout Vietnam. Tết is definitely holiday number one in Vietnam.
Today, the street was lined with people selling flowers, both various kinds of cut flowers, and some flowering plants in pots. These flowers are beautiful, but not purchased as decoration. They are part of the worship that will take place on the first day of the new year (this Saturday) and at other times during the holiday. My partner, Minh, uses the English word “worship” to describe the activities of Vietnamese families on the first day of Tết. In fact, this day is one of the occasions when families pay respects to their ancestors. In Vietnamese, the expression is cúng tổ tiên. The word “cúng” can certainly be translated “worship,” but the English word comes loaded down with considerable Judeo-Christian baggage that has little to do with Vietnamese practices. I personally prefer “pay respects to” or “honor” ancestors to describe what Vietnamese do on Tết and at other times of the year, though I have no doubt there are people who will disagree with this interpretation.
In any case, many of the market’s transactions consisted of the sales of flowers.
Not everything was flowers. This man is loading his cart with coconuts for delivery to a seller who will make coconut milk drinks for shoppers.
Finally, I am guessing this woman is done with her shopping and thinking, “Let me out of here.” That is certainly what I was thinking by the time I took this shot.
Long Xuyên is a city of some 400,000 people located on the banks of the Hau River (Sông Hậu). The Hau is part of the massive Mekong River delta system of rivers. Long Xuyen is 140km upriver from the coast where the Mekong and its tributaries spill into the East Sea. Even at that distance from the sea, the Hau River is not a small river on its own, but the delta’s main channel, the Mekong River itself, is still larger as it flows by about 20km to the north and east of Long Xuyen.
Long Xuyen is home to a floating market where sellers of local fruits and vegetables meet with buyers on boats in the middle of the Hau River. The man standing on top of the larger boat in the photo above is weighing large bunches of bananas to sell to the man in the smaller boat. He will transport the bananas he buys to the Long Xuyen shore of the river where the bananas will be cut into smaller bunches and be sold to retail buyers in a local wet market.
The floating market opens early and continues to 10 or so in the morning seven days a week. When my brother visited Vietnam in 2018, we made a brief stop in Long Xuyen and took a boat tour through the market. There were a number of boats on the river, though the market area was hardly crowded. We arrived at about 7:30 am on a Sunday morning, and it is very possible Sunday is a slow day.
The friendly young woman in the foreground of the photo below is going from boat to boat in the market selling bowls of noodle soup for breakfast to customers and sellers.
The woman in the next image is making her way to the market area with a selection of drinks for sale.
Hoa My Hung Island sits in the middle of the Hau River, dividing the river into two narrow channels that come together just as the river flows past Long Xuyen. Houses on stilts stand in the water near the river banks. Some households are engaged in fishing, and in addition to having flat bottom fishing boats, some river dwellers use ingenious arrangements of nets deployed below the house to catch or, in some cases, farm fish. Trapdoors in the porches of the houses make both the nets and the catch accessible. I assume most of the people living in these homes depend on the river in one way or another for their livelihoods. Other families may be involved in growing fruits and vegetables on Hoa My Hung Island.
Some houses have satellite dishes providing residents with television and, I presume, internet service.
In the picture below, a family is out fishing. It is Sunday morning so it makes sense that the boy is helping his mom and dad on the weekend. But let’s hope he is able to go to school come Monday morning.
It’s 7:40 in the morning. This man and his beautiful best friend are taking a break on their morning walk.
A population of around 100,000 makes Maribor the second largest city in Slovenia. Located in hill country in the east of the country, Maribor is a quiet, charming small city. Among other things, a local restaurant served up the best pizza I ate during my 24 days in Europe. Reason enough to consider a return visit.
