“Wanna see some titties?” 5 – 6 July, 2012

After a nice night with the maids, I awoke the following morning at a more reasonable hour, rather than the unacceptable noontime of the previous day. So, you know, like, 10 AM. I’m getting better. First stop of the day: The Tokyo Tower. This is Japan’s version of the Eiffel Tower. It stands a convenient 333 meters tall and has served since the 1960’s to help with TV and radio broadcasting through the greater Tokyo area. As of late, it has proven itself to no longer be tall enough for some of said functions, but that’s why we have the Sky Tree now. These aren’t just for looking pretty, guys. It’s all about the TV (and maybe some radio)!!!

The subway stations are super informative here. In fact, they were like this in other Asian cities. Each one has a map of the surrounding neighborhood and a list of every point of interest. It also breaks down the points of interest by which exit you should leave the subway for best access to that point. Convenient, yes. My only complaint about these maps is that they were all oriented with respect to the reader in the station, not north = up. This is great if you don’t have much sense of direction and want to know just to turn right or left from where you’re standing. This was detrimental to me, though, because I make plans with maps where north is up, and whenever I’m trying to figure out where I am, I reference myself to the north. These maps in the subway repeatedly turned me around and confused me when I compared with what I had in my head from my itinerary maps. Oh, woe is me…

Anyway, the informative site list in the station near Tokyo Tower mentioned that the Russian Embassy is nearby. I decided it would be fun to go see that at some point this morning, if there was anything special about it that was worth seeing. I hadn’t had breakfast yet, so when I popped out of the station, I started looking around for a place to eat. I was in a pretty business-y area, and it seemed that everyone but me was in black slacks, a white shirt, and a tie. There were a couple Starbucks and other western fare. I walked past some Japanese food stands but they had long lines, and I didn’t feel like waiting at the moment. So I headed in the direction of the Tower. Then, to my right, there was a random wooded staircase going up a hill, and I could’t see where it went. What would Brian Boitano do? Climb it, of course. Because in Tokyo, when you’re flanked by symbols of modernity on all sides, you need not look far for a quick spiritual escape. I climbed the stairs and reached a small tree-covered courtyard to a building that could have been a shrine, a small temple, or a teahouse. I didn’t stay to find out, because I saw something more interesting rising up through the trees beyond it. I had no idea what this building was, but it looked straight out of a sci-fi movie.

I needed to get a better look, but I couldn’t from this vantage point, so I made me way back down the steps and headed down the main street and turned on a side street that I hoped would take me to this structure. Sure enough, I arrived at the Reiyukai Shakaden Temple. I stood in awe of it, not sure if I should go in or not. I decided not to, took some pictures, and left. It turns out that the Reiyukai Shakaden is an offshoot religion (or order of some sort) of Buddhism, though it is completely a layperson religion. I’m not sure how that works, because it has monks. And I thought monks weren’t considered laity… It is dedicated to peace and education. From the description in front of the temple, it seemed like it was some special order like a Japanese version of the Freemasons. But later research explained that it wasn’t a special group of influential rich guys or anything. The temple itself has an 8 meter tall Buddha statue carved from one block of wood and stores 400 tons of drinking water for who-knows-what kind of emergency. They also welcome visitors, so I should have gone in. Let that be a lesson to you all. Brian Boitano would have entered the temple. You should too.

Reyukai Shakaden Temple

Ironically, after leaving the temple and heading toward the Tokyo Tower, I passed the Tokyo Masonic Building. So I guess the Masons weren’t so far away. Since this seems to be the area of town with a lot of embassies and thus a lot of influential diplomats, it makes sense that this building would be here. I read Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol recently, so I guess I also have Masons on my mind. I continued up and over another hill, and BOOM, Tokyo Tower. The tower has a large building beneath it that is filled with shopping, eating, and even an “amusement park” area. Maybe I’ll get food here afterward. I bought the double ticket package that goes up to the main observation deck at 150 meters and the “special” observation deck at 250 meters. At 150 meters, I would find out that it was useless to go up to the top because of a dense haze that limited visibility to only about a mile. Alas, I would not get to see Mt. Fuji on this trip. That’s okay… I’ll climb it some other time. Then I’ll definitely be able to “see” it.

I got in the elevator with an unfortunate-looking family of all gingers. I nearly missed being a full ginger, though the redness of my facial hair might suggest otherwise. My skin still has the ability to develop a little bit of color. I count myself very lucky. As soon as the elevator door closed, a bunch of multi-colored flashing lights turned on, a la Cash Cab, and a booming announcer’s voice welcomed us to the Tokyo Tower. I think it freaked out one of the little ginger kids for a second. Poor, soulless little tyke…

Overall, I didn’t have the chance to be that impressed by the tower, with such a poor view. I know it wasn’t the tower’s fault, so I’m not blaming it, at the risk of hurting its feelings. But apparently they have live music some evenings in the observation deck, which is a first that I’ve seen for a tower, especially one without a restaurant on top. So, points to the tower for that. I did manage to see a huge temple that wasn’t on my itinerary, and I figured I should see that while in the area, so that’s also a plus for the tower. And I got a view of the Reiyukai Shakaden temple from above, which is a lot different than the view from below.

Reiyuki Shakaden Temple, from the Tokyo Tower

After a brief time at the upper observation deck, I headed back down to the building below. They dropped us off on the upper deck of the building, at the “amusement park,” which consisted of a few tiny toddler rides. Nothing amusing for little-old me. I wanted food. So I headed down the stairs to MY amusement park: the food court. My hungry eyes immediately alit upon a place called Pink Dot. It was really, really pink. I mean, pretend that you are in a baby girl’s nursery room, and pretend that the entire room suddenly lit up with fluorescence. Nope, still not pink enough. It served gourmet waffle and pancake meals. Bingo! I ordered a caramel banana pancake, and for the five minutes that it took me to greedily devour this culinary masterpiece, I swear that time stopped…

Caramel Banana Pancake

 I was surrounded by Japanese school kids who kept looking over at me. Was I eating too fast? Was I making some inadvertently impolite gestures? Was I just really cute? Yeah, it must be the last one.

After the meal, which was gone entirely too fast, I set off in search of the big temple I had seen from the tower. After taking a few wrong turns through some small parks and gardens (very tranquil, though), I finally found how to get to the temple. I arrived and it was a worthwhile site. It’s called Zojo-ji, probably because when you see it you want to say, “Gee!” in response to its magnificence. It is the main temple of the Chinzai sect of the Shingon school. So, obviously, it’s kind of a big deal. I’d say it was my favorite temple in Japan. It also gave me a vantage point from which to shoot a picture of one of the many things that makes Japan so awesome: Its ability to seamlessly blend the modern and the traditional, the technological and the spiritual. I’m proud of this one. It’s deep and stuff.

Temple and Tower. Artsiest thing I've ever done. But not really.

After that, I wanted to find the Russian Embassy. I really thought for some reason that it might be interesting. One of the tourist maps on the street eventually pointed me in the right direction. I had a lady stop and ask me about the Zojo-ji Temple and how to get to it. For some reason, even when I’m a tourist in a foreign land, I still look like a guy who knows where he’s going. I get asked directions all the time when I’m in Krasnoyarsk, and I feel bad because I usually cannot understand what they’re asking me. I guess this means I’m a confident-looking traveler. I also hope this means people won’t try to mess with me and rip me off in some way.

I eventually find the Russian embassy and it’s no fun at all. There’s also a big wall blocking my view of it. There are a bunch of white people waiting in line at one of the gates, probably for various consular reasons. I don’t think I’ve ever actually been inside an embassy. I wondered where the US embassy was around here. I never come across US embassies when I travel. I saw the UK embassy in Rome, but that was about the closest I’ve gotten. I decided that in the future, if I do happen to see a US embassy, I will enter and say, “What’s up, America?” Yes, that’s what I’ll do. And then they’ll say, “Can I help you?” and I will respond, “No thanks. I just wanted to say hi to America. Hi!” and then I will leave.

After passing the embassy, I continued onward down the same street, toward what turned out to be Roppongi, the neighborhood where the foreigners go to party. This means I was probably not going to be too enthralled by it. I did, however, see some sort of shuttle coaster-type ride on the top of a building. Think half-pipe style. It wasn’t working, though. I would later learn that after building it they decided it would be too noisy and then never opened it. Bastards.

Ride on top of a building.

After the crowds started building up a bit, I sought shelter in my beloved subway system and headed toward my next destination, the Meiji-Jingu Shrine. This was definitely a more tourist-filled area, but there were also plenty of Japanese people as well. To get to the shrine, after passing beneath a large wooden gate (I thought of the entrance to Jurassic Park for some reason, but no doors), I had to walk down a large and long, tree-shaded path. Although the path was as wide as, say, a good-sized road, the gorgeous canopy of deciduous trees managed to stretch over nearly the entire path. This pale sun-avoider was a happy guy.

Pretty shaded path 

Along the way I passed large collections of barrels of sake and a bunch of different types of French wine. They were offerings to the enshrined deities of Emperor Meiji and his Empress. I’ll spring for a bunch of alcohol in my afterlife as well, but I’ll have them poor it straight in the coffin. None of this “displaying for all to see” shit.

French Wines

When I reached the shrine, I decided it was nice, but it wasn’t as cool as the other temples I had seen here. Definitely not what I expected after the long walk. But hey, it’s an essential stop in the tour of Tokyo. I trudged back to the subway station and decided to head back in the direction of the hotel. I was meeting my friend Collin later that evening at Ueno station, which isn’t so far from the station by my hotel.

I stopped first in Akihabara, because I hadn’t gotten a chance to fully admire all of the color and electricity last night while I was enjoying MaiDreamin. I walked around a bit, and in addition to the maid-type of girls that stood outside, there were dozens of other girls dressed up in a myriad of outfits, all trying to entice passersby to who-knows-what. Like my maid experience. Most of them were just cute, not sexy. Ok, some of them were kind of sexy.

Akihabara

I stopped to grab a hotdog from this place that had a menu with 100 differently prepared hot dogs. I wished I could’ve stayed there and ordered hot dog after hot dog on the menu, but I just got their main specialty dog. I also failed majorly to take a picture of the giant happy hot dog figure out front. Curse my stomach for distracting my documentation!

I went back to the hotel to check Facebook and make sure I knew exactly where to meet Collin, though it would turn out that I would fail at properly doing so anyway. Reason number 693473 why I need to acquire a smart phone. But that would make life too easy, now, wouldn't it? When it came time to meet up, we were in totally different areas of the station. Eventually we met outside the Hard Rock Café, in the station. I had been confused, because I had just seen the big Hard Rock earlier in Roppongi, and I didn’t realize they would have a little one in a train station. Boom, wrong again.

Collin and I know each other only from an extremely brief period when I experimented with club gymnastics for a week. I was looking for a way to practice and learn some aerial tricks that I would then incorporate into parkour/free-running adventures. At this point, I’m still too chicken to try a flip off of a raised platform that’s not into a swimming pool, even though I know I can get all the way around and not land on my head. But, well, the fear exists. I obviously didn’t spend enough time with the gymnastics. But anyway, Collin teaches English in Japan, and, as fellow expats, we’ve followed each other’s international lives via Facebook. He was going to take the next day off of work in order to hang out with me, for which I was grateful. Traveling alone has its perks, but it really is nice to see other people you know.

We ended up back in Roppongi, and now that it was nighttime, the drunkards were out in full force. By this time it was about midnight and we were starving. I followed Collin as he combed the streets, looking for something that we both might like. The big issue about Roppongi is that it is filled with a bunch of African men that all try to talk you into going into their club and seeing the girls. We got a lot of, “Hey, you guys wanna see some titties? I know you wanna see some titties!” They all try really hard to get buddy-buddy with you, many of them leading with a handshake. I learned to avoid the handshake, because it would make me feel obligated to listen to the guy as he advertised his great “deal.” Some of the guys would grab our shoulders, and Collin got to the point where he had to rudely tell the guys, “Don’t touch me!” in Japanese. I response in Japanese to these guys would usually shut them up because it showed that we weren’t just dumb foreigners who could be conned into a good time. Of course, part of me kind of wanted to see what these strip (or whatever) clubs might have inside, but I had read somewhere that a Japanese strip club is just like any American strip club, which didn’t appeal to me. I’d prefer something cute and fun like MaiDreamin again. It’s amazing though, how a place like this could turn someone racist. It was only black guys who would accost us on the sidewalks. Apparently the Japanese are so polite that you’d never find one out with that behavior. Even the girls outside in Akihabara were never forward about things, they’d never forcefully approach you, and often they seemed too shy to even hand out their flyers unless you physically approached to take one.

We eventually arrived at a shabu-shabu restaurant that happened to have an all-you-can-eat and all-you-can-drink special. My kind of place! Shabu-shabu is a cook-at-your-table type of meal, where they provide a pot of broth that you then boil at your table, and then you add your meat and veggies and whatever ingredients you want to it. Then you dip the cooked pieces in some sauce and enjoy. Shabu-shabu is actually onomatopoeia that refers to the sound that the cooking meat makes. Collin explained to me about much of the super cute double-word onomatopoeia that appears in this language. Again, this country and language are just a big barrel of cuteness. Even when you answer the phone, you say, “Moshi-moshi,” which is much cuter than hello. We also ordered down the list of drinks off the drinks menu, going through several different kinds of makkuli (a Korean rice wine drink). We never made it past the makkuli on that menu.

Collin’s love of Japan and the Japanese is obvious, and frankly, it only helped to further ruin Russia for me, because the rude Russian attitude had started getting really old, really fast. I mean, I’ve got some great Russian friends, and I’ve met a lot of really nice people, but you have to work hard to get to the point where they become nice to you. It’s hard to find someone who’s just nice because it’s the proper thing to do around strangers. The Japanese culture is so concerned with politeness, and I have yet to see anything bad about it. Even coming off a crowded subway train, a man accidentally stepped on the edge of my foot, and he found it necessary to stop rushing along with the crowd and apologize profusely to me. All I could do was smile and bow my head and say, “Don’t worry about it,” in English. Another thing I noticed is the ease with which Collin has already grasped much of the Japanese language. I had been working hard to learn Russian for awhile, and then I stopped during my school in Tyumen, surrounded by other English-speaking employees, and I never really started up again. A big issue for me is practice. It’s hard to practice the Russian with other Russians, because they aren’t very receptive to someone who doesn’t have a good grasp of the language. As a matter of fact, I’ve been met with ridicule from some strangers when I try to say something and it’s not right. And their usual assumption is that I’m just not very smart. And I HATE it when people treat me like I’m dumb. This all makes me less enthusiastic to practice speaking Russian in public. I see Collin, though, who is willing to talk to any strangers, asking for directions, or anything like that. And these people are all so friendly and positively responsive to him. I think it has inspired me to get serious about my Russian again, although I don’t know how much longer I’ll be in Russia. I have at least one more shift, then hopefully my promotion, after which I’ll probably request a transfer; just because I need some new work experiences (Russian land drilling is dead-end work if you want to move up at all in the company).

Shabu-Shabu

After a long meal of stuffing ourselves, slowly getting drunk, splashing orange broth on my white polo, and talking up Japan while simultaneously bashing Russia, the restaurant decided it was about time to close. So we settled up and went back out on the street to more overly drunk foreigners and more guys asking us about our preference for titties. Since it was well into the wee morning hours, we decided to at least check out some of the actual nightlife of this neighborhood. We came across a couple of clubs with a significant crowd loitering about outside. One of them was called Jumanji 55 and had a statue of Predator out front. Just for that non-sensical-ness (and maybe for the fact that there was some pretty good-looking women going in and out, I decided we should try this place. Unfortunately, they were IDing people, which is not a common occurrence here, because Collin didn’t even bring an ID with him, so alas, we couldn’t see what wonders awaited us in Jumanji 55. We were, however, allowed into the next door club New Planet, which gave two complimentary drinks with the cover charge.

New Planet was quite small, and it was too loud to really have a conversation, so we grabbed some drinks and just stood watching all the silly people inside. There were a bunch of skinny European guys, some with haircuts that reminded me of Anthony Michael Hall in The Breakfast Club, many of whom were trying to dance and get with other girls who were trying to dance alone. I wasn’t quite drunk enough to go attempt some dancing. Not tonight, at least.

After we had had our fill of beverages (in the form of Long Islands, just to make it count) and we’d hung around long enough to feel quite tired (around 4 AM), we decided it was time to get some sleep. We hailed a cab and took it back to Collin’s friend’s apartment in Azabu, where we were going to stay the night. (My hotel didn’t allow “guests,” nor would there really be any space in that tiny room for another body.) Azabu is one of the most expensive places to live in Tokyo, and Collin’s friend apparently lives there just to say he lives there, despite having a tiny apartment. I guess they can be pretty status-oriented here. After getting dropped off by the cab, we happened to see a guy passed out in the street. Like, he was near the sidewalk, but not nearly close enough to be out of harm’s way from a driver that’s not paying close enough attention. Collin started shaking the guy, trying to wake him up, saying, “Excuse Me,” and, “Good Morning,” among other things to try and get this guy up. The guy finally sat up, before his head drooped forward into his arms. Collin was about ready to have me help carry this guy onto the sidewalk, when a policewoman on a bike rode up and asked if we had called them. No we hadn’t, but somebody had at least seen the guy and called it in. We were happy to be relieved by the nice officer lady and we went on our merry drunken way to the apartment where I promptly passed out on the floor.

We woke up groggily a few hours later so as not to overstay our welcome. Collin was hung-over, but I didn’t feel all that badly. I did stuff myself with shabu-shabu, so that might have contributed to my better condition. We journeyed back to my hotel, where I was able to change out of my shabu-shabu-stained white polo into another shirt and some shorts for the long day ahead.  Today, we’ll be meeting up with Collin’s Chinese friend, 宋志恒 (That’s how it’s spelled on Facebook. I don’t know any Chinese characters.), and we’ll go to Kamakura and Yokohama.

We’re meeting 宋志恒 in one of the train stations on the way there, and it turns out to be even harder to meet up with him than it was for me and Collin last night. “Look for an Asian!” Collin says. Oh yeah, that won’t be too difficult here…. We eventually find him and then we hop on the next train to Kamakura. Kamakura is right on the beach, and it gives me a chance to catch my first glimpse of the Pacific from the western side. Again, the weather isn’t very cooperative today, and it’s not a very good day to be going to the beach. But why should the weather ever slow us down! No sir, through rain or sleet or the dark of night, we shall see the sites! But first, let’s eat. So we went to an Italian restaurant. The Japanese are a proud culture culinary-wise, like the French, so you can always count on the food to be presented well and for them to not totally fuck up foods of other cultures. And sure enough, the Italian food is delectable. There’s a huge group of rowdy school children packing most of the restaurant, and of course they’re staring at us. Again, it must be because I’m cute. Collin says it's unusual to see a class of kids as rowdy as this one. Japanese children are usually much better behaved. An older couple at the table next to us is impressed by Collin’s Japanese when he orders food. I’m quite jealous of these skills, but I just hope that if foreign friends ever visit me in Russia, I’ll be able to look like I know what I’m doing when ordering food. If only the waitresses would ever actually listen to me when I order…

After a lovely meal, we head down to the beach to play and maybe go swimming. The sand is an ugly dark gray color, and again, the color of the sky isn’t helping, but we decide to make the best of it and have a good time anyway. The water’s actually kind of warm, but I don’t end up going any more than knee-deep. Collin shows us up with some gymnastics skills, doing a few aerials and then a round-off into a back-flip. I do one of my poor man’s excuses for a front handspring and then fail at several attempts at a hand stand, afraid to fall on my ass and get covered in this dirty sand, which doesn’t seem to brush off as easily as other beach sand.

Yes we do!

There are a couple families with some little naked kids running around in the sand. It made me reminisce about my young childhood living in Holland, where kids could run around naked like this and it wasn’t that big a deal. In the US, this behavior would be met with disapproval by many onlookers. But it’s just natural and cute here. No shame in that.

After we’ve had enough of the beach, we head to see Kamakura’s big Buddha statue, which is the big tourist attraction in this area. Yep, other white people all around. Oh well. We walk there barefoot, to try and let the sand naturally brush off our feet, in the end I think it just imbedded itself into the bottoms of my feet. I put my socks and shoes back on and I think the soles of my feet were thoroughly exfoliated by residual sand for the rest of the day.

The Buddha was big and beautiful, but it started to rain a little, and none of us had umbrellas (I left mine at the hotel), so we didn’t stay long. I didn't leave without making a few "Big Booty" jokes, though.What? You've never played the game Big Booty? Shame on you!

Big Buddha, Big Buddha, Big Buddha!

We boarded the train back to Yokohama, and we stepped off into a very sleek, modern city. There was a wild metal sculpture just outside the train station that reminded me of a roller coaster. In fact looking across the nearby harbor, there was a small amusement area with a couple roller coasters and a huge Ferris wheel. I wondered if the roller coasters were open…

Cool sculpture, yo!

We rode a long covered moving sidewalk for awhile after the train station. It made me feel like I was in the Jetsons, where they just ride big conveyor belts everywhere. But the moving sidewalk did end and we went into a shopping center. Collin wanted to get his gay on and check out some clothing deals for a little bit, so I went along with it, refusing to buy anything, though, because I must refuse materialism that is beyond what my poor backpack can carry. Then we went to the Pokemon store, where I knew I had to buy a little merchandise for the proof of authentic Japan!

We left the shopping center and walked gradually toward to the roller coaster. I started to really hope that it was working today. I haven’t gotten the chance to really ride roller coasters outside the US, save for my first ever coaster in Holland, the Kikkerachtbaan in Duinrell. It didn’t seem to be running, but we went to check out the amusement center anyway (I won’t call it a park because it wasn’t one). The place was called Yokohama Cosmoworld. The roller coaster was referred to as the “Diving Coaster: Vanish” because it dropped down into an underground (possibly underwater?) tunnel, of course reappearing a couple seconds later nearby. It wasn’t much; just a couple drops and a helix, but I needed some coasters back in my life. We decided to check out the other much smaller “Spinning Coaster,” which was a wild mouse style ride with hair pin turns and cars that could spin freely. Collin has an aversion to spinning rides, so he sat it out while  宋志恒 and I rode it. It was cute and fun, and by the time it was over, it looked like Diving Coaster had started working again. So we dashed over to that ride. There turned out to be shoulder harnesses, despite a lack of inversions. Tisk tisk. Too constraining methinks. Judging by the track structure, I would have concluded that this ride was designed by TOGO International, but I wasn’t sure, after dealing with the unnecessary shoulder harnesses. It turns out to be a product of Senyo Kogyo Company, which I’ve never heard of. Sure enough, it’s not too crazy. But it’s just enough to pump me up for the rest of the day and also give my feet a rest. It turns out my feet are really starting to bother me from some new shoes I had bought before this trip. Apparently they do not provide good walking support. Damn.

Vanish!

Suddenly, Collin and  宋志恒  become really excited about something in the arcade section of Cosmoworld. I wasn't sure what, so I just followed along. We made our way into an area with a bunch of photo booths, all covered with pictures of different models. Collin picked one and shouted to get in. Ok, so it was a silly photo booth. Big deal…. After doing a bunch of silly, quirky pictures, we weren't done yet, though. There’s a big photo editing process where you can add a bunch of other items to your picture, draw things in it, customize them personally to your liking. Anybody remember Gameboy Camera? It came out sometime in the late 1990’s and featured the ability to add a bunch of cute silly things to pictures that you took of people. I realized that that was an entirely Japanese thing. They LOVE this stuff. It’s called Purikura and it’s an essential Japanese activity. It’s also another cute name, because it makes me picture a purring kitten whenever I see the word. After Collin and 宋志恒  had thoroughly flamboyant-ized our already-questionable photos, we printed them and left.

One of the lesser-edited pictures.

It was dinner time, and we headed to Yokohama’s Chinatown, since we had a real Chinese guy with us to talk to the restaurateurs and possibly snag a good deal, or at least pick out a tasty option. There were a lot of people outside advertising their restaurants, and we eventually picked one that gave us an all-you-can-eat and a drink bar option. And this was the most authentic Chinese food I had ever eaten. I find that I actually enjoy Americanized Chinese food a lot better. This stuff has an awkward smell and kind of a bland taste. But the Chinese don’t miss too many body parts. I found myself eating pig’s ears and chicken’s feet, among other things. 宋志恒  ate so excitedly, whereas Collin and I were like, “Ok, this is weird, but whatever.” Ear wasn't that great; just really cartilaginous, as one would expect ear to be. But we ate and ate and I could barely finish everything that was brought to the table. It was still a worthwhile meal.

Alas, we had reached the end of our Japanese adventure. Collin had to work in the morning and had a lengthy train ride to get back to his apartment outside Tokyo. I had originally thought that, it being Friday night, I would go out and party until the morning again, but maybe the food had done me in and I was just ready to sleep. I hated to be a Friday night party pooper, but I was travelling tomorrow, after all. So I should get some sleep. We boarded the same train together, and then  宋志恒  left, and soon I left. Despite all that I know I didn’t get to do, this had been a very complete visit to at least the Tokyo Metro Area.

I arrived back at my solitary confinement hotel room and laid back, relaxed, and slept thoroughly until morning. Next stop, Taipei!

Why I love the Japanese: They’re cute, cuddly, and ready to please! 3 – 4 July, 2012

(Any diehard Monty Python fans among you will recognize that the title line was meant to describe Chinese, not Japanese, people. In this case, though, I’d say it was far more appropriate for the Japanese.)

So, apparently Khabarovsk has an international terminal… I had been sitting in the main terminal of the airport for awhile, and then I noticed that my noon flight was not on the departures list. Once I hit the 2 hour mark before my flight, I decided to ask someone about the flight, and then they said International Terminal. Hmph, well, I’m glad that there was nothing anywhere communicating that fact to me… On my online itineraries, each of my Asia airports tell me which terminal I’ll be flying into or out of, but for Khabarovsk it said “unknown.” I assumed that meant that they dealt with it all in the same terminal. Nope. Wrong again. In the US, even if you’re embarking on an international flight, if you’re flying on a major domestic airline (in Russia’s case, Aeroflot or even Vladivostok), you tend to depart from the same terminal as other flights of that airline, with the international terminal only handling incoming flights or foreign airlines. Well, nope, because they put us through a basically useless customs area for our outgoing flight. Any goods to declare before leaving Russia? Oh, wait, you all live in Russia? Nevermind.

Upon my arrival to the international terminal, which was only handling my noon flight and another one at 7pm, I fell in line behind a large school group that was going to Tokyo, having studied a bit about Japan, or Japanese, or something like that. It was my mistake to go behind them, because the customs officials wouldn’t let anyone else through until they had finished checking in everybody for from that group. When I finally got to check-in, the lady took a ridiculously long time to check me in. This is why I would prefer online check-in, but the Aeroflot website said, “Hell, No!” when I tried. So, apparently they just picked seats by filling in from the front to the back of the plane. I got no preferential treatment for my status and was squeezed in next to two boys from that class. Only upon disembarking at Tokyo did I realize that that the last 5 rows of the plane were completely empty and I could have found a roomier seat. Most other airlines will fill up all the window and aisle seats first before putting people in the middle seats. So many reasons to shake my head on this flight…

Filling in our required customs and disembarkation info, they asked for my hotel address and number and my departing flight number. Unfortunately, all that information was packed in my bag, which I had checked, because the lady at the counter refused to acknowledge it as a carry-on, despite my having fit it in every overhead bin I have thus faced while traveling with it. I just put “Hotel in Taito” and “Korean Air to Seoul” for my answers, and hoped I would be ok.

We landed in Tokyo and I would find out later that there had been a 5.4 magnitude earthquake an hour before we landed. Of course, that’s nothing in this here country. Japanese people were at the airplane exit waiting to greet us with big happy smiles, like they were genuinely happy to have visitors. I could already tell that my welcoming to this country would be a positive one, and definitely a far cry from the relative fuck you that Russia says to outsiders. We boarded the bus that took us to the customs location, and at Passport Control, a Japanese lady was guiding people where to go, and she did so in English. This definitely freaked some of the Russian students out, who probably were not prepared to be hearing someone from a non-English country giving instructions in English. I’ve come to realize that if you’re white and in Asia, they will assume that they can speak English to you if they know it. I’m so glad that they realize here the international importance of learning English. I’m not trying to be a dick… I mean, if you live long-term in a country, you should damn well try to learn the language, but it’s nice to vacation briefly and have a common language, or at least someone who’s very willing to speak all that they know from school. I was happy to be able to step in and translate for the bewildered Russians, though (like a boss!). The passport control officer took my picture and my fingerprints. He also laughed when I told him I didn’t remember my exact flight number or the name or address of my hotel, but I had the destination and the neighborhood. He smiled and said have a great trip. That was a huge contrast compared to my first passport control in Moscow where the man didn’t speak or smile and did a lot of staring at my documentation and me. I would get the same friendliness from the customs man who checked my bag over after I retrieved it.

I set off to find the train and it was simple enough. Most everything has an accompanying English translation (it’s one thing to be expected to learn Cyrillic—the alphabet’s not all that difficult—but I’m glad the Japanese don’t expect us to know their characters). When I wanted to find an ATM, the lady at the information desk knew perfect English, too. And everybody here smiles back when I smile at them! In Russia, you can be looked upon with suspicion for smiling too much, because it’s a rare occurrence. Here, they love to be polite and helpful and they love that I enjoy it and would do the same for them. What a country!

I boarded the train, unsure if it was in fact mine, but there was an old couple sitting across from me who was very interested in what I was doing and where I was going. They wanted to make sure I knew where I was going. The train came above ground outside the airport and I was greeted with beautiful, greenery in the form of lush bamboo forests. Not bad for the most populous metro area in the world. When I started dozing off, the nice old couple made sure I was awake to get off at the right stop to change trains. I boarded another train, continuing onward to Ueno, where I would switch to the subway system. At one point a man sat down across from me who I would peg as some sort of university liberal arts professor, based on the way he dressed, with green and blue plaid pants and a matching necktie. It was I style I longed to duplicate. But where would I ever find such pants?

I eventually reached my metro stop at Minami Senju station in the Taito ward of Tokyo. I took out my trusty “travel logistics” packet I had made up, showing all my intended destinations of interest and how to get there (mostly just Google map thumbnails showing the place and the nearest metro station). I set off for my hotel, which was going to be several blocks south. The sky had gone from sunny at the airport to gloomy white now. I could already tell that the humidity was not going to agree with me. Walking down the street, I could see the great Sky Tree tower directly to the south, though it was being eclipsed somewhat by the increasingly dense clouds. As it turned out, the street blocks were very small, because Tokyo just really is that compact, and in no time I had reached the 7-11 behind which my hotel was nestled somewhere. Asians love their 7-11’s. I’m so happy already. But… no Slurpees….

I came upon the little Hotel New Koyo, where I had booked a simple “Japanese-style” room. I believed that meant a futon for a bed. It turns out it would also mean a bed-sized room. The man at the front desk reminded me of Mr. Miyagi when we first meet him in the first Karate Kid movie. He sported the same facial hair, a sleeveless shirt, and of course the hotel employment. Yes, I had met Pat Morita reincarnate. I was welcomed both as Mr. Kyle and Kyle-san, to my delight, and was given the little tour of the hotel. I couldn’t help but chuckle when I opened the door to my room. Folded up in the corner with a pillow and a blanket was more like the type of padding I would put on a lawn chair than a futon, but it would have to do. The floor of the room had the feeling of woven wicker, and the walls were bare, except for some hooks for hanging. In another corner was a wardrobe about the size of a filing cabinet and a table/desk space with a tiny flatscreen TV atop it. Not to be un-Japaned, there was a complimentary pair of Crocs for me to wear around the building. Home Sweet Home, I thought. I laid out the sleeping pad and it was comfortable enough. I figured with the all the exploring I would do, I would have no trouble falling asleep at night. Living on the floor did, however, make the ceiling seem especially high, and that added to the openness of the space.

I took this picture from the doorway. Note the umbrella and the backpack in the foreground for size.

The size didn’t really bother me. It’s just another mark of the Japanese efficiency that is so refreshing to me after dealing with red-tape and backwards logic in Russia. I am very impressed with the Japanese skill at space-saving in a country that has less land area than British Columbia, is covered in many parts by uninhabitable mountains, but still manages to fit 127 million people. And, I would rarely feel the pressure of crowds here compared to most large cities I’ve travelled in. The only item I came across that went against these impressions was when retrieving a drink from a vending machine. In western vending machines, when you get your item, you just push inward on the door cover and grab your item in one smooth motion. In Japan, you have to lift the door cover and then snake under it to grab your item out. But I decided if this is the only thing in this country that I can find to complain about, they’re doing pretty well.

After doing some stuff online, I decided to head out and see what sightseeing I could do on my first evening. It was raining outside, but I had luckily brought my rain jacket for such an occasion. My trip is too short to waste avoiding the rain! It was absolutely pouring though, and my shorts were quickly being soaked through, so I bought an umbrella at the first place I saw one. I had grouped my sightseeing destinations by part of town, and I figured I would see the stuff that was in my general area first. That meant the Sky Tree, Asakusa, Sensoji Temple, and maybe some gardens if I got the chance. I subwayed over to the Sky Tree, which involved having to take many escalators up out of a large new upscale shopping center, the likes of which I need to avoid for affordability’s sake. The Sky Tree is a very impressive structure, putting the formerly dominating Tokyo Tower to shame, as it almost twice as tall. If only it had a prettier daytime coloring than this drab grayness that is made no better by gray sky around it. It was so popular when it first opened that tickets to go to the top were sold out for months, and apparently it’s still damned-near-impossible to expect to go up if you just show up. I decided I wouldn’t even bother. I’ll go up in the Tokyo Tower later in the week. This weather wouldn’t make for a very good view anyway.

Sky Tree

I wandered around the whole Sky Tree Center, trying to get a few different vantage points for pictures, and then I spotted a Japanese McDonalds. It is completely silly of me, but I try to get to a McDonalds in every country I visit, just for the hell of it, and sometimes to compare options and such. Recent exceptions have been Iceland and the Vatican, which were both lacking in a Mickey D’s. Usually I order a Big Mac, and this time was no different. The lady at the counter didn’t speak English, but they have pictures of all the menu items for just such a situation. She also made an “L” with her hand to signal if I wanted a large meal or not. The ease with which we were still able to communicate, based on just an enthusiasm for the exchange, was just so refreshing (ordering McDonalds in Russia is not so fun). Along with my meal, I got a free Coca-Cola glass as part of their promotional giveaway for something or other, possibly related to the Olympics. It was like I was getting an adult Happy Meal toy. I ate up on the second floor, looking out over the street at passersby. This was the first McDonalds I could ever remember that played classical piano music. I think it was something of the late classical, early romantic style, like Schubert. It was very nice. There were other people at their tables treating it as a café of sorts, reading books or newspapers long after finishing their meals. The whole premise under which fast food had developed, the idea of food-on-the-go, was given the middle finger and repackaged into a pleasant and relaxing evening here. I was impressed. I went to the bathroom and encountered my first high tech Japanese toilet. I correctly guessed how to flush it, but I avoided all other buttons, mostly after seeing sit-coms and movies where people encounter such toilets and end up being inadvertently drenched by unexpectedly powerful bidet settings. I decided to keep the cup. It might come in handy to me later. And I went on my merry way.

I re-emerged from the subway station to discover that it was already completely dark outside after 7pm. My time in Siberia had made me forget about the whole “night” thing. I had worked 6 weeks in Vankor without ever seeing the sun completely below the horizon, and now here I was back in the dark of night. I was not about to let this put a damper on my evening sight-seeing, though. I followed the tourist maps to Sensoji Temple. First, I passed through the temple gate, a beautiful piece of Japanese art in and of itself, and then down a shop-lined lane to the main temple square. All the shops were closed up, but to provide something interesting to passersby while closed, all the closed doors were painted with various historical Japanese scenes. Some were of battles, some just of wildlife, all unique. I reached the temple and wallowed in my godless insignificance before it. To my left was a magnificent, golden, four-story pagoda, and in front of me the steps led up to the shrine within the temple. No pictures were allowed of the inside, and I agreed. People would have no reason to come if they already knew what surprises lie inside! ;-)

Setting on the steps beneath the massive sweeping eaves of the temple was a group of Americans. Whether they were students or tourists, I do not know. I didn’t talk to them. Maybe I was giving off a creepy loner vibe, by myself on this dark and rainy night, or maybe I just didn’t feel like talking to other Americans. Maybe both. I was accustomed to being either the only, or one of just a handful of, Americans in my location in Russia. I liked it to stay that way. Especially in Asia, where white people stand out more, I liked standing out alone. I also started to realize that, being an expat, I would inadvertently look upon tourists with a level of unfair contempt. This is completely silly, because here in Japan, I am just another tourist, taking pictures of random things that make me go “oooh” and “aaah,” but just because I currently live overseas, subconsciously something in me might actually be looking down upon other westerners I meet here. Of course, I don’t even know their backstories. They could be expats as well. Who says they live in America, just because they’re sporting American accents, clothes, and walking around with maps and cameras? It is at this point that I take note not to let myself turn into a holier-than-thou asshole just because I was lucky enough to get to live and work overseas. In fact I thank my lucky stars every day of vacation for a job that gave me such good vacation time. American jobs would never give out vacation the way mine does. Yes I am thankful for what I’ve been given, but I remain wary of the person I might become if I’m not careful and don’t take a step back every now and then to look at this amazing opportunity I’ve been given…

Sensoji Temple

After getting my fill of the temple, I explored a nearby garden. It was very dark and I couldn’t take in all of its splendor, but it had a nice stream running through it, with the obligatory arcing footbridge of the style that Monet made famous. Except I am coming to realize that many of these footbridges I’ve seen in Japanese gardens weren’t actually accessible by foot. Or maybe the particular ones I came across were just for show. I’m not really sure. Either way, I never got to walk across one.

I went back down the street from whence I came, to a huge covered market street. I decided to walk down and see what might catch my eye along the way. This trip will have a lot of window shopping and not much buying in it. My money goes to food and travel. I have to stave off the urge to acquire anything of a materialistic ilk. Unexpectedly but happily, I did see something special in a cage in front of a novelty toy store.

Weasel!

It’s a Weasel! (At least that’s what we called it back when.) My friend Caley brought one to school a couple times in elementary school, and it was full of silly fun. All it is is a furry tail of something that is attached to a plastic ball with a motorized mechanism in it that causes the ball to roll all over in random directions. The tail thing would therefore be whipped around and around every which way, in such a way that it looked like a weasel-type critter trying unsuccessfully and comically to get control of a ball. It was just the kind of mindless entertainment that we could find to do as kids without resorting to video games.

I soon decided I was tired from travelling and had seen all I could see on this stormy night. So I went back to my little solitary confinement-sized room and hit the hay.

My plan the next morning had been to wake up really early and go to the Tsukiji Fish Market, but plans are for sissies. No, that’s not true. I just overslept until about noon. I guess I needed that. When I did finally get my lazy ass out of bed, I grabbed breakfast from the 7-11 in the form of a crab sandwich, which was tasty, and I managed to get down to Tsukiji. I didn’t do much market browsing, but there was a cool giant fish…

Big fish = more fun!

I also remember walking past an American family (walking past = me trying to get around and away from the crowd) and a lady saying to me, “Overwhelming, isn’t it?” I don’t know if she was talking about the choices of foods to buy, the sheer amount of everything, or just the number of people there. I just said, “Yep.” And surged onward.

After I decided I’d seen enough market, I looked at my trusty itinerary/map setup and decided I would go to the Imperial Palace Gardens, which I figured meant that I would also go to the Imperial Palace. A short Subway ride later and I was strolling through the now blazing afternoon heat to the Palace Gardens. I crossed a moat and entered through the gate on the east side, and passed the guardhouse to find that there was no entrance fee, but I had to pick up an entrance token anyway that I would later return upon exiting. I walked in behind a couple guys that could pass for live-action versions of the Comic Book Guy from The Simpsons. This came as no surprise to me, because of all the countries in the world, Japan has this special place in the hearts of all comic book, video game, and animation lovers. So expected to (and did) see many people whose outer appearance fit said description.

Imagine him in real life. I saw several of these guys.

The gardens were vast and tidy. In Japanese fashion they weren’t overly ornate and there was nothing excessive, just serene beauty. Here I was in the middle of the world’s largest metro area and in a vast garden where the only sound I heard was the squawking of crows (or crazy Asian versions of crows that made sounds much more annoying than your typical “kaw”). I spent most of my time trying to stay in the shade, because my poor head had forgotten over the last 8 months what direct sunlight was like. Sunscreen had not crossed my mind of things I needed, but my Siberian paleness was about to suffer the consequences majorly. After I was satisfied with the pictures I took, I made my way back to the subway station, deciding I should just go back to the hotel and wait out the worst of the sun. Maybe I’d fetch my umbrella there and use it as a parasol, because I’d seen even the men doing that in Japan. Though I hadn’t seen a white man pull it off… I wasn’t sure I wanted to risk the ridiculing eyes of passersby. First, I just needed to get out of the sun and buy some sunscreen.

Imperial Palace Gardens

I never thought I’d be so keen on seeking the air-conditioned cars of the subway, but the humidity will do that to you. Ugh, part of me thinks I’d like to continue working in the arctic, if I can’t even handle vacation in this kind of weather… damned warm-blooded-ness! I need to stop being such a baby, though, because this is the furthest north I’ll be on my trip. It’ll only get muggier from here on out!

I went back to my hotel room, which itself wasn’t air-conditioned, but it was cool enough. I remembered that Hulu was supposed to be available in Japan now. In my mind this meant that Hulu.com could now stream videos in Japan. I had several series whose last 3 or 4 episodes I missed on my last vacation and really wanted to see through to the end. As it turns out, it meant there is now a Hulu.jp, with an entirely different set of streamable media. They didn’t have any of the shows I wanted to watch, and Hulu.com still wouldn’t stream. Oh poopsies. So I took a nap.

I got up again in evening time and decided that I wanted to see something that was a lot more local (meaning less white people). I spoke to the Miyagi look-alike at the front desk and he suggested taking the subway to Kagurazaka. This was a place he said that had a lot of great places to eat and would seem like a tourist place, but it’s kind of like the tourist spot for locals. I wasn’t sure what he meant by that, but I went. I came out of the subway on a long street lined with lots and lots of restaurants. Many of them were French or Italian-themed. I guess he meant that this was where the locals could go for good European food. I realized I was starving and that I hadn’t had anything since breakfast, so I stopped at a sushi stand that was giving away end-of-the-day wares for half-price. My kind of deal. I ended up buying three to-go trays worth of sushi, and then I went to look for a place to eat it. I journeyed down a side street and entered a small park. Although it was now after dark, I wasn’t too worried because there was a man and his little boy kicking a soccer ball back and forth. I sat on a wall out of the way of everyone and chowed down on my feast. I heard fireworks going off but the surrounding buildings blocked my view. It was the 4^th of July, after all. I should see some fireworks. But these were part of a July event in Tokyo in which different neighborhoods apparently set off fireworks and have contests for who has the best show. At least I heard fireworks on the 4^th…

After finishing my feast and grunting at how full I now was, I left the park. My next destination was another locally-loved place that was suggest to me. I headed to the “electric city” of Akihabara. I was told to avoid all the black people outside the establishments, because they all try to rip you off. But a Japanese person would never do that and so if there’s a girl waiting outside somewhere, it’s usually a safe place to go. The place I was supposed to go is called Maidreamin (read that as Maid Dreamin, and not Maid Reamin). He said there should be girls outside it handing out flyers for it and not to worry because they are safe. “You’ll know it when you see it.” It turns out this place was popular enough to have several locations just in this neighborhood. I still wasn’t entirely sure what it entailed once I got inside. The guy said just to watch the girls and have a good time. But the way that he said it, I didn’t think he meant it as some sort of strip club.

The facade of their flagship location in Akihabara

As soon as I had entered Akihabara, I saw one of these “Maids” outside with flyers. I decided, what the hell, I need a real taste of Japan here. The girl outside looked to be somewhere in her teens and she was dressed in what I can only describe as a costume dreamed up by someone with a fetish for dolls and French maids. They weren’t like tiny French maid outfits designed for sexiness per se… Think of if you had a children’s doll and dressed it up as a maid. It’s more like that. The girl smiled at me and handed me a flyer and went in to the building, up to the 6^th floor where I would find out what this place was. I reached the front desk and was greeted with excited and high-pitched welcomes from the hostess maids. They said food was no longer being served. Just drinks. I was ok with that, and I walked in. Like the excited little girls they portrayed, they enthusiastically showed me my seat and menu. After a quick look around, it was apparent that I was the only white guy here. In the center of the big open room was a round stage, and singing and dancing on it was a maid. Not a sexy dance, but just something cute and fun. I can’t really describe at as anything else. All the drunk men around were very excitedly clapping along and many of them knew specific dances to the songs that involved wild, swinging arm motions. A maid came up and asked my name and where I was from. Every one of them spoke in a really high pitched, almost squeaky manner. A later perusal of their website would reveal that the maids are from supposedly from a special happy planet where they are all 17 years old.

I decided to order a Moscow Mule, for the irony of being “from” Russia and now being in Japan. Then a Japanese guy came over from another table and sat in the empty seat next to me and tried to converse with me. Basically he kept trying to ask me if I liked Japan (to which I answered yes), and then he would ask who. And as far as I could tell, I liked all the Japanese so far, so I would answer everyone. This made him happy. He wrote down several places I should visit and then went back to his table. Later on, a big glass of sake would appear for me, and I couldn’t tell of the maid said it was on the house or from that guy. Either way, I was grateful for the free drink. Before I drank each drink, a maid would come up to me and ask me to do some sort of little hand signal that usually involved making a heart shape with my hands. All of this just made me smile incredulously, and after I was thoroughly liquored up, I sat back to watch the show.

More visuals here.

The casual observer may look at all this and conclude that the Japanese are a very pedophilic society, or at least that they have a fetish for the youthful. But in this situation, I failed to feel any ounce of sexuality from any of the girls or the dancers. It was all just cuteness and happiness. Which was fine with me. At the end of the night, nobody is ever in all that great of a mood after leaving a strip club, having blown a bunch of money on girls who pretend to like them (unless of course they happen to go home with one of the dancers). But after leaving Maidreamin, you can’t help but just feel really happy. The website also said explicitly that their goal is to make you happy. It worked. I love Japan!

Bringin' Blog-y Back! 2-3 July 2012

Soooo, as predicted, my Blog met its early demise less than 2 months after its humble beginnings and the development of an even humbler following. If there are any among you who still felt like checking the blog every now and then, anxiously hoping to see another entry from me, have no fear!!! I will now attempt to rejuvenate it, because it is supposed to be about my life adventures, and I am definitely about to embark upon a new adventure—the Far East. (I initially typed “Easy” instead of East. Wouldn’t it be cool to have a New Orleans-like place in Asia that is nicknamed the Far Easy? That’s probably a title Bangkok could very well represent. But, since I won’t be going to Bangkok and now desperately want to refer to some place as the Far Easy, then perhaps that is what I shall dub Macau.)

I realize that I picked an inconvenient time to bring back this blog. My Facebook newsfeed is over-run now with links to summer travel blogs from friends of mine, which might make my sudden revival seem cliché. When I first started writing back in October, not many other people (read that as friends who are still students) had a blog going, and I could count on all the friends who needed an excuse for procrastination from work to follow my blog. But during the summer, Oh Dear Readers, I expect you to be going outside and playing Frisbee, riding your bike, rafting, camping, climbing, and doing many other things besides reading your long lost compatriot’s blog. Thus, I will write this as if only 5 people will ever read it. That means proofreading will be nill, swearing and other simple language may happen often, and I may not maintain my PG rating of the past. I guess that last part really depends on what neighborhoods of Tokyo I end up frequenting. We’ll just have to wait and see.

I guess I should briefly summarize my life since I last wrote you (I was working on two separate posts for mid-December which I have since lost track of and then, well, 7 months went by…): I had just finished my Base Training in Vankor Field and went for 4 weeks to my “Pre-school” on a rig. As I was the lowly third-hand MWD engineer on the job, I didn’t really do all that much, besides help out with physical labor stuff, because I was always eager for some sort of exercise. I continued all my training lessons and tests online, and I tried to study Russian daily. There was also a pull-up bar in the working unit (trailer) that became my second home. By the end of that shift I could do 26 pull-ups. That is still my record at this point. I end up having too much time off in which I don’t work out and then spend the next shift working my way back up to where I was before.

Night became longer and the sun officially set for 20 days straight. I experienced Christmas by singing Christmas songs to myself while I walked outside in the frigid nights. The Russians celebrate western Christmas-y traditions during New Year’s (New Year’s trees, New Year’s presents, New Year’s (Santa) hats, etc.) and I luckily left the rig and returned to Krasnoyarsk in time for the New Year holiday. Here, I became more acquainted with the Krasnoyarsk night-life and, of course, the women. I also had the chance to know my Krasnoyarsk colleagues a lot better. We had a New Year’s party at work and I drank Champagne at the office, which I wouldn’t consider a very common occurrence in the US. I also learned that cake in this country is superior to cake in America. That’s about the only positive culinary distinction I have found for Russia.

After a nice two week break in the city, I went back to the rig for another 4 weeks of pre-school, in preparation for my actual ENG1 school in Tyumen that started on February 13^th. This was characterized by much of the same experience as the first, except I was given more responsibilities by my mentoring engineer, Mudi, and I mistakenly felt like a Trainee Badass entering my school in February.

I started out ENG1 strong, but I would suffer from constant sleep deprivation, due to my incessant need to participate in everything I can. In addition to throwing-back to college days and pulling all-nighters to prepare for Rig Practice runs, I also tried to work out hard every day and party hard in the city when we had free time. By the end of the 9 weeks of school, I was quite burnt out, but I left having learned a lot, had a lot of wonderful social experiences (things that will NOT be detailed on the internet), met a bunch of new people from both in and outside of my company, and developed lasting lifelong friendships, in the most corny, summer-camp way possible. Of course at the end we all promised to meet up in vacations in different places in the future. And of course, who knows how our vacations will match up, not to mention I am developing my own loner travel agenda that I am more apt to try to force other people to conform to. For now, I will travel alone. It is logistically so much easier, and you know, I like to be in control of situations (like father, like son, hmmm…).

After school, I had 4 weeks off for my first real vacation of my career. It was almost too relaxing, except for the fact that I spent a bunch of time in airports and at multiple times had to wake up at ungodly early hours.  I went to (in the following order) Ann Arbor, Wilmington (Ohio), San Francisco, Boston, Boise, and then Ann Arbor again, before returning to Tyumen for some social fun and then back to real work at Krasnoyarsk. The trip was marred by a double dose of pink eye and strep in Boise, and I missed out on some time in the mountains and seeing some more friends from home. I haven’t even gotten a chance to see the Avengers movie yet!!

I worked another 6 weeks straight in Vankor, experiencing the wonderment of being lead-hand on several jobs and sleeping in 4 hour blocs twice a day. The sun also never set, which was a pleasant but sometimes annoying circumstance. When the sun never goes down, even in the Arctic, it ends up getting really hot. We reached the high 80’s and maybe even into the 90’s at some points, and of course they lack many cooling implements in that part of the world. I did enjoy going outside for walks at 3 or 4 AM when it had managed to cool down a bit. I was also lucky in that I only had to deal with a big bug problem in the last week, because it had been extremely dry for most of my shift. But the last week, it poured daily, and then the sun would come out long enough to tease us and help vitalize the spawning mosquitoes in all the standing water, which would then attack us. I am now much more talented at squashing those buzzing bastards.

And after 5 nice days back in Krasnoyarsk, I am embarking on a quick two-week jaunt through Tokyo, Taipei, Hong Kong / Macau, and Seoul.  I have to be back in Vankor in two weeks, so this is all I can do at this point. I just summarized way too much time in way too small of a space, considering my past propensity to go into excruciating (but hopefully comedic/ironic/slightly entertaining) detail. Mentally, everyday, I still take note of silly observations that I wish I had written down and added to the blog. There are so many… But, luckily, that means there should still be plenty more opportunities for me to comment on what I see and experience. It should be an especially fun time on this trip, because I will just be doing a lot of “seeing.” Were I in Japan for a little longer, I would have added some essential “doing,” like climbing Mt. Fuji and visiting the likes of Fuijkyu Highlands, Nagashima Spaland, and Tokyo Disneyland (the first two are amusement parks, yes). This shall be a quantity over quality trip. Except for what I plan to do in Macau. You’ll see…

I write most of this post from the airport in Khabarovsk (Хабаровск), Russia (second largest city in Russian far east after Vladivostok)—my 5 hour layover between Krasnoyarsk and Tokyo. I got to spend a full Monday in the office, during which I didn’t actually do any real work, too filled with excitement for the upcoming 11pm journey. My first Russian red-eye! Woohoo!! Although I thought I was taking Aeroflot, I found that it was “Operated by” Vladivostok Air, which means it actually was a Vladivostok Air plane and all that. It’s not like in the US where you’d get a Delta or United with the small print saying operated by Mesa or some other silly regional setup, while the plane is still actually a full Delta or United plane with a Delta or United crew, etc. The exterior of this plane was definitely less sleek and more awkward-looking than the nearby Aeroflot jet on the tarmac, but hey, it marks what is already my fifth Russian airline in less than a year (after Aeroflot, UTair, Katekavia, and S7) and now my 7^th Russian airport. And, to date, every domestic flight I’ve had in Russia has served me at least one full meal. Eat your heart out, US budget airlines!! I also just read that Vladivostok code shares with Star Alliance, but if this flight had an Aeroflot flight number and ticket class, I should get Delta credit for it, right? Hmmm, we shall see.

In typical Siberian airport fashion, the “concourse” beyond security is but a glorified waiting room (selling alcohol, at least), and we must take the bus out to the plane. Also, still typically in Russian fashion, nobody has any respect for lines, waiting, letting other people go in front of them, etc. I think it’s especially funny in the case of getting off the bus and boarding the plane. It’s as if people are hoping to get a good seat or something, and it’s only after they get on the plane when they realize there is a specific place for them. I also am now disappointed that this country doesn’t do any sort of priority boarding system. I’m now Silver Elite and want that chance to board early, damnit!! They do announce over the loud speakers when flights are ready for checking in and to let the elderly, handicapped, or people with small children to check in early, but they don't cut those people any slack for boarding. At least they gave me my window seat in the exit row. And for a brief moment, I even thought I would get an empty seat next to me, which I had been lucky to manage on my last few domestic flights. I almost wondered if my elite status also set it up so that they would avoid putting someone next to me if they could, but that was wishful thinking. I’m anxiously waiting for those chance upgrades to first/business class, but I think that won’t come as easily until I snag the Gold status. That’s my next goal. But it might take some end-of-the-year, world-circumnavigation mileage runs to snatch up those last miles. I’m crossing my fingers for a productive fall! 

Fun observation of the day: Upon boarding the Vladivostok Air plane, I was greeted by two bleach-blonde, hair-in-tight-buns, obvious-salon-tanned flight attendants both named Svetlana. Vladivostok Air: furthering Russian stereotypes since 1932!!

Other fun fact: I flew on an A320, which was equipped with retractable overhead TV screens. During the nearly 4 hour flight, they didn’t play anything except the pre-flight safety video. Fail.

Next stop: Tokyo!!!

Base Loaded, 22 Nov – 4 Dec 2011

We started off our base training, checklist in hand, with the various safety inductions and facility familiarizations that everybody must participate in immediately. We were also finding more and more that speaking English was a greater rarity up here. When given our safety talk by the base manager, he had to call in another guy to translate. The guy who came to translate, Anton, seems to be the only guy who consistently smiles around here (besides me, of course), which doesn’t make for the happiest of environments, but have you met anyone who ever came out and actually claimed the Siberian Arctic was fun? I obviously have to change the overall tone, one smile at a time. But I digress. Nearly everyone who we would talk with throughout our base training would preface every conversation with an apology for their English. I would always remind them that it’s still probably better than our Russian. They at least knew all the tool names and procedures in broken English, which is all we really needed, although most Q&A’s were all but useless.

We were placed for the time being in the Surface Lab, the area in charge of maintenance of all sensors and hardware that wasn’t the actual downhole tool equipment. Here we would learn firsthand about all the surface systems by testing, calibrating, assembling, and disassembling them. Initially, the work was painstakingly tedious, checking the continuity and insulation of various cables, but then we got up into more interesting things, like wiring hardware, assembling sensors, setting up the rig site satellite communication system, and basically everything we’d be in charge of knowing out in the field, as combination engineers/technicians.

One of the lab workers, a cute blonde girl (and possibly the only one on the base at that point, because ALL the men would come by and flirt with her), always had music playing. This music consisted mostly of techno remixes of popular American songs, notably Lady Gaga. Of course, I would sing along to this stuff in my customary falsetto. This usually incited more of the standard giggly Russian girl reactions, though I felt they were more positive than the ones I had received in my shopping excursions. She was, up to that point, one of the easiest Russians to speak with, mostly because she was enthusiastic about knowing English better, and she was impressed that I had figured out how to read Russian Cyrillic. It really isn’t that hard, once you know the sound every character makes. It’s super phonetic in that way. She thought it was funny that I could read it without knowing what it meant. But I find many languages actually have consistent enough pronunciation rules to be able to read stuff, despite not knowing its meaning (French, Spanish, Portuguese…), with the big exception being English. Silly English, where all of our rules have several exceptions. Her favorite word that didn’t make sense was “through.” I wasn’t about to tell her about all the other ways “-ough” can end up sounding in English.

Jeff and I, the little perverts we are, started having some unintentional innuendo fun with the language stuff, to make things more enjoyable. Our lab mentor, as I will now refer to her, pronounced the word, “important” like “impotent.” I don’t blame her. I rarely get the proper syllabic stresses in Russian words on the first try, but I’d always smile when she’d explain how “impotent” a certain action or device was. There was also a moment when, after being shown how to assemble something, she then asked both of us with a smile, “Want to screw?” If she hadn’t been handing me a screwdriver at that moment, I might’ve said something I shouldn’t. Jeff and I both discussed it with big smiles on our faces later. We were both starting to feel the effects of being in a very male-dominated environment, away from any sort of dating or whatever, and it was starting to take its toll on our conversation topics, which turned more and more to discussions about women. It made me wonder at what point I’d get my first vacation back to the US.

It also doesn’t help that this whole industry is filled with innuendo, as far as the terms go. Some of my favorite industry standards: “Rate of Penetration,” “Stick-up,” “Nut Plug,” and “Pull-out-of-hole.” Ok, I’m sorry. But I’m a guy!

Our first Thursday on the base was American Thanksgiving. People from home asked if I would be celebrating it in Russia. There is no Thanksgiving in Russia. Russians will celebrate it in the US, thankful that they are no longer in Russia. But it just doesn’t happen here. Luckily, I wasn’t heartbroken. I’ve never thought too highly about Thanksgiving, other than the four-day weekend from school. Since I was no longer in school and I was now working seven days a week, why think about a weekend? I just had to not get distracted by all my asshole friends on Facebook reveling in their excitement about the holiday. I hate to be a Debby Downer about Thanksgiving, but seriously, I’ve always thought traditional Thanksgiving food was sub-par (as far as type of food is concerned, not quality of preparation), except for dessert. I love pumpkin pie and everything that comes with it. But turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, etc. I don’t consider gourmet dining. My ideal Thanksgiving would consist of Thai food. That’s something for which I ALWAYS give thanks when I eat it. Just ask the employees at the restaurant “No Thai!” in Ann Arbor, a block from my house on Catherine Street last year. They saw me all the time, and I was always grateful.

For lunch that day, though, Jeff decided to get as close to Thanksgiving-like as he could, and he ordered chicken and potatoes. They happened to also have some cranberry-like juice, so he basically had all the mainstays except for stuffing and pumpkin pie. He kept wondering if they had turkey, but last time I checked, turkey was a North American native, and it was asking too much of Siberia to hope for anything other than chicken. But anyway, here’s what the meal looked like.

I think I had liver or something instead. They prepare their liver well here.

Everybody on the base had to go to a standing meeting in the workshop that evening. The maintenance manager carried on in both English and Russian, but the man talks so softly, I don’t even think that Russians who were more than 10 feet away from him could even understand him. The tone of his voice was so disinterested-sounded that it was difficult to tell whether he actually cared about what he was talking about. Our lab mentor made a comment to him at the end of his monologue, something to the effect of explaining that it was Thanksgiving in America. He looked over at Jeff and me, the only Americans in the room, and said, in a long, drawn-out, very sarcastic-sounding way, “Congratulations.” Everybody, including me, chuckled, and then he said, “We don’t have that in Russia.”

I said, “I know. That’s okay,” and went on my merry way.

A cute and unexpected surprise that would greet us to and from meals on several occasions was this Russian Polar Bear…

His name is Белый, pronounced kind of like “beel-y,” which is Russian for “white.” He always was looking for food or warmth, and he was in the habit of following Jeff and me back to the Surface Lab.

Apparently someone on another company’s base owned him, but I guess we just treated him really well on our side.

I’ve also noticed something negative (in my opinion) about Russian girls compared to American girls. Sure, they are on the whole quite attractive, and they dress well, but I’ve noticed that they are just physically really weak. Maybe it’s just the ones I’ve encountered, but I feel like American girls are definitely better at lifting things. This became apparent when I’d be asked to move certain items that a girl had to push and drag really hard across the floor (she didn’t even look like someone I’d consider "weak"), and then I’d lift it and realize it’s not all that heavy. Plenty of American girls I know would not have a problem carrying it. Maybe here they’re just always used to men being more chivalrous and doing the heavy lifting for them; maybe they didn’t get enough of the proper nutrients growing up; and/or maybe they might not be of that independent American woman mindset of, “I can do this myself. I don’t need a man.” I have thus determined that I like that about American women. I like that they can be strong and kick some ass. As long as they’re not stronger than I am. :-) That's not to say I won't help a girl out if she needs some heavy lifting done. I'm just saying a like strong(er) women.


I hope that last paragraph didn't just make me look like too much of an asshole, but I think this is just another example of one of my "Fun Observations Upon Which I've Drawn Hasty Generalizations that I Don't Necessarily Believe Completely."

I was somewhat disappointed to also learn that I would not be back in America for any portion of the holidays. I had heard from various higher-ups in various positions (not my own manager, who was on vacation) that we would be able to take a vacation home around New Year’s time. I also saw on my scheduling that I was set to leave Vankor at about December 28^th. I figured, “Hey cool, I get to go home a couple weeks at that point.” It made sense to me to get a break at that point, because after that, I’d have another month before ENG-1 and then nine weeks of ENG-1 without a break. But my manager came back from vacation and shot me down. I do get a break, but I have to stay in Krasnoyarsk. He suggested going skiing. But unfortunately I’m a bit of a skiing snob and the Krasnoyarsk skiing resort only has about 1000 vertical feet, which won’t do it for me, especially since the last place I went skiing was here.

Sickle Couloir (left side strip of snow) on Horstman Peak, Sawtooth Range, Idaho

Oh well, this just means I get nearly a month of vacation from Mid-April onward. On this first trip, I will be hitting up a few locations in the US. After this, though, my breaks are going to span the whole world. There are so many places to go on my list… Japan, Thailand, Australia, New Zealand, Machu Picchu, skiing in the Alps and the Canadian Rockies and even Sochi where the 2014 Winter Olympics will be held, climbing mountains on every continent… to name just a few. But I need a hamburger of the size and juicyness that only an American joint can offer. The borsch here is good, but man, I was thinking about the double major burger from Quickie Burger in Ann Arbor, or anything from Big Jud’s (which I stupidly didn’t manage to make it to before leaving Boise, grrrrrr), or …. Okay I have to stop because I’m suddenly starving. Time to go eat something.

Hardcore in Vankor!! 21 November 2011

This is unacceptable, I know. Over three weeks without posting. So I’m not so good at this blogging thing. Or perhaps I just have stuff to do. I guess it’s just lower on my priority list than learning my job, learning Russian, keeping up with US pop culture and politics (one of my pre-expat promises to myself), and exercising. I thought I would be better at posting a lot of short things often, but my inability to take an observation/experience and say, “Oh yeah! I’d better blog about it now!” keeps hindering me.

I’ll have you know, though, that in my absence from the blogosphere I have in fact managed to be quite productive. I’ve completed all the online coursework required of me to complete “pre-school” and I still have more than two months until my ENG-1 school starts in mid-February. I also have been getting used to life on a rig in the arctic, where internet pages load at dial-up speed, among other things. And, I’m trying to memorize and retain at least 100 new Russian words a week. That’s not too lofty of a goal is it? More on my other “things-to-accomplish-while-secluded-in-the-middle-of-nowhere” later…

So, on the 21^st of November, we (Jeff and I) woke up bright and early to catch our cab to the airport. Because of our Russian deficiencies and our never having chartered to a rig before, we were joined up with a Russian technician, Ilgiz, who would lead us through all the tough spots. He was in the cab that picked us up and he pretty much made our always-hectic experience bearable.

There’s something about trunk space in the cars in Russia that makes me feel like I pack too heavily. I even left my large duffle in the apartment and was down to just my backpacking pack and laptop bag, but the cab driver had to work hard to stuff our belongings in the small hatchback of the car (not as embarrassing as the cab ride when we arrived in Krasnoyarsk, when my large duffle had to sit by itself in the front seat). I’ve definitely learned my lesson and will be eschewing my large duffle for something much smaller (or nothing at all) upon my return to the US. I’ll probably get a nice shoulder-strap kind of bag that would basically be a large laptop bag with room for more stuff. The backpacks we got to carry our laptops don’t have enough space for much more than the laptop and some papers, and I carry it in my hand anyway, because I already have a backpack. That just about covers the packing topic

So, anyway, we got to the airport, Cheremshanka, which is different than Krasnoyarsk’s main airport, Yemilyenova. It might as well be the same airport, because it happens to be right next door. But Cheremshanka just handles the little planes, and we of course are riding a charter flight on a prop plane. Woohoo! There’s something about aging prop planes that makes me just want to jump out of a plane without a parachute, because I might fare better that way. But seriously, these are Antonov 24’s and they are the ol’ Russkij Standard. It’s like taking a Greyhound bus in the air.

There were about five separate charter flights taking off to Vankor this morning, and Ilgiz thankfully was there to let us know when our flight had been called to board. As had become standard in the non-metropolis cities, upon going through security, the “concourse” was just a waiting room, and these waiting rooms have become increasingly smaller. Security, I think, was also just a formality here. Since this wasn’t a commercial airline flight, and we were all just going to work, I don’t think it really mattered what we brought with us, as long as they would allow it into Vankor. Everyone in the waiting room, save for one tall pretty woman in a mini skirt and high-heeled boots (presumably someone with a desk job, but you never know…), was a tired-looking man. Nobody seemed excited to be ending their days off and heading back to the arctic to spend the end of the year. I wondered why... I, for one, was giddy as a schoolgirl.

It’s the little things in life—like going further north than you’ve ever gone (nearly 70°), or riding in a helicopter for the first time—that really make it special. Even though the journey was probably going to be a logistical drag, as most things are out here, I was looking forward to some special experiences. When they called our flight, I excitedly tried to be the first person on the bus, not that it mattered, really. We sped along, down the tarmac, and came upon a real beauty.

Not the actual plane (it was slightly less perfect looking). I think this is just a plastic miniature...  But the type is the important thing!

The baggage system was pretty simple: wait in line and then toss yours into the behind-the-cockpit cargo area. Then we had to walk around and board the plane from the back. Still failing at being pushy and shovy (I’m going to make it a real word, damnit!) in these Russian lines, I was one of the last to get my bag into cargo and board the plan. So of course I got to sit at the back. That gave me a great view of the plane as a whole, and from the inside, save for the round windows, it really did look like a Greyhound bus. The windows were perfect circles, instead of the modern ellipsoid, and they were complete with little curtains instead of the standard sliding cover. The overhead storage spaces, like a bus, were open-shelf-like instead of shut-able bins. I knew this was going to be a good time. At least our stewardess was attractive, which has also been a pretty consistent Russian standard.

The window was pretty scraped up, so it was difficult to get any good pictures looking out, but I would soon find out that it wouldn’t matter, since the normal view out of the plane was either the white snow or the white clouds. Here we are getting ready to take off. For a moment it seemed as if our engines weren’t going to work properly and that they needed to be manually jumped.

I don't think that cord will be long enough....

When the plane set off down the runway, I was confused because I figured it probably needed to go faster to actually lift off, even though it was a prop plane and all. Jeff, too, was slightly confused, having served for 4 years in the Air Force and knowing a thing or two about flying. I wondered if the engines really were broken and couldn't operate at full capacity. We slowed down at the end of the runway, luckily, and then the plane did a U-turn. As it turned out, there just weren't any taxiways, so we had to taxi down the runway in one direction to take off in the other. Then the propellers really went wild, and we actually gained significant speed and took off.

Hey, look! The Arctic!

Like I said, there wasn’t much to look at below us for the 2 to 3 hour flight. It was white, and there were a lot of frozen bodies of water, suggesting that this huge area was all just muddy marshland in the summer time. That’ll be annoying and buggy, come June, or whenever their “summer” starts here. Our in-flight meal consisted of a good-sized container of pâté with not enough things on which to spread it. I like pâté, but I wasn’t about to eat it plain, so I ended up just wasting half the container after exhausting the various bread and cracker resources on my food tray. Jeff didn’t even eat his once I told him it was liver. At least there’s no fear of going hungry when flying in Russia.

I tried to sleep for most of the flight, because I hadn’t really slept the last night. But before I knew it, we were touching down on the snowy runways in Igarka. Igarka is the nearest town to Vankor Field (in Russia, 80 miles is "near"). It was once the site of a major gulag and the destination of a quickly-abandoned railroad-building attempt. It is now known as the main aerial access point to the area’s oil industry and for its award-winning permafrost museum. I fear I will never spend enough time in Igarka to get to see this museum. Upon deplaning, we were met by several people who split us up and escorted us to our helicopters, big orange ones. They looked sturdy enough...

Upon boarding the helicopter, I decided the look on the outside was just for show. If somebody had shown me pictures of the inside and outside of this helicopter side-by-side, I wouldn’t have believed they were the same vehicle. There was a bench against the left and right walls, along which we all--twenty of us--had to squeeze. I made the mistake of picking the end, thinking half my body what get some breathing room from this decision. Unfortunately, I spent the length of the flight struggling to stay in my seat. They squeezed the absolute maximum amount of people they could onto these choppers.

Looking back at our plane from the helicopter. That's the noontime sun up there.

The takeoff was another funny thing. It took awhile for the pilot to decide that he actually wanted to go, but then when he did, we did some moves I wasn't expecting. First we started to lift off vertically, which I expected, but then we came back down for a bit, unexpectedly. The chopper turned, facing down the airport runway, and then, like a plane, it began to speed forward along the ground, before lifting off diagonally as if it needed all that forward momentum to fly properly. Jeff also didn't recognize this as standard procedure. Of course, the US Air Force has been known to utilize slightly more advanced flight technology than what we saw here today. In Soviet Russia, procedure standardizes YOU!

So my first ever helicopter ride wasn’t all that exciting. I didn’t get to look out the window, because the bench faced inward and I didn’t feel like twisting my neck around every time I wanted to look out, so I leaned forward, putting my head in my lap, and tried to get some rest.

Two hours later, we landed at Vankor. The 2 pm sun was not very high, as I expected. I got my first taste of arctic “weather” when an unexpected approaching helicopter flew not more than twenty feet above my head and whipped up a bunch of snow into my face. That woke me up. We entered the little guard house, passing through security, where we had to have both a laptop pass and a personal pass, and then we found Ilgiz on the other side, who had been separated from us in between the plane and helicopters. He led us out to the company’s Mitsubishi truck that we would take to the base.

It turned out to be a rather long drive. Vankor is the largest oil field in East Siberia, and despite having only begun in 2008, the facilities were extensive. It was apparently one of the largest construction projects in all of Russia, and it was even important enough that Putin attended the groundbreaking ceremony. The field is 40 km long, and the speed limit on its roads is only about 40 kph, so it was slow-going, because our base was at a different end of the complex than the Rosneft/Vankorneft hotel-like building near the guardhouse and helipads. We passed rig after rig, each one giving off a mystifying gas flare. “This is it,” I told myself. Pipelines of all sizes lined and crossed over the road. Massive trucks with incredibly-sized tires for the purposes of transporting who-knows-what drove past along the road.  

We reached our base, and it was a pretty good-sized site. Most every building was a trailer, except for the main workshop area. This was going to be like Hollywood!!!! Except that I would not only live in a trailer, but I would work in a trailer too. We were directed to the DD (Directional Driller) Coordinator’s office (trailer) to receive our instructions on what to do next. We were handed our linens and told where our living unit was (the trailer right next door). We had to stay on the base to complete a specific amount of training requirements before being let loose to a rig (and another identical working unit (trailer) and living unit (trailer)). Ok, so living in a trailer isn’t all that bad except for A) whenever someone enters and leaves they slam the door shut, which shakes the whole thing and makes it impossible to fall asleep, and B) there’s no toilet, and the options are one of the three stalls of real toilets in the workshop building (one female seat, one male seat, and a urinal) or what I will cover in the next paragraph.

This is where I bring up toilet talk. Warning, the next image may scare you. Our other option was this thing, which was a hundred yard walk from the trailer:

It smells nastier than it looks. People tend to use these sh*tholes to smoke while they’re relieving themselves, apparently, because the smell of cigarette smoke hits you almost as strongly as that ripe sewage scent. It wouldn’t be that bad if it weren’t for that the smell seems to follow you on the way out. I would be fine with going in, breathing through my mouth for a little bit, and then GTFO, but the reason the smell is so bad is because it is literally in the air, attaching itself to the body the longer it’s in there. I actually appreciate the arctic wind for this, because I can open up my jacket, spread my arms, and hope that the smell will be carried away after exiting one of these. But I can’t help but feel like I smell like it later on, and I hope it’s just all in my head or that other people don’t end up smelling me too.

The solution, obviously, was to avoid the sh*thole. So, for number 2, I’d make the journey into the workshop building, where I had to don coveralls, hard hat, and safety glasses, but it was a small price to pay to not smell like Andy Dufresne probably did after his escape from Shawshank. And for number one, I would’ve been fine just going outside somewhere, but the Russians already gave me enough crap about my blatant disregard for excessively warm clothing, that the idea of getting caught out in the open with my manhood out would probably get me a stern talking-to. I didn’t feel like having one of those so early in my employment, so I adopted Jeff’s Air Force-tested method of peeing in a bottle. This was really only used at nighttime, to avoid the hassle of getting out of bed, and getting warm clothes on just to take a leak. And I always have to pee like a racehorse in the morning.

Later, at the rig, the only option was a sh*thole (a smaller one than in the picture, where people often missed (number 2 as well as 1)), and there were no water bottles provided, so I man up and do it the way God intended.

Okay, enough about poo. Back to our adventure!

We got our little tour of the base, and then we got to go pick up our personal supply of PPE (personal protective equipment). And damn, do I look good!!!

The parkas are so big and warm, I really don’t have to wear anything else. This was tested and proven during a few nighttime sh*thole trips (pre-bottle usage) in which I could be found trudging along through the snow in just my boots, shorts and a parka. The parka goes down to my knees, so I probably looked naked to any passersby. There was only one, and he said something to me in Russian before I ducked away to my trailer.

Then, we went to bed at a decent time, ready to wake up bright and early and get our base training on!