Trying out Yahoo! 360°

(This was originally posted to my Yahoo! 360° blog)

Unfortunately, the site that was hosting my blog, TrailBlazing.org, has unexpectedly gone down, and its maintainer, my friend Francis, doesn’t have time to track down the problem. Plus, I don’t want him to spend time fixing something that, essentially, only I was using. So I’m now posting new entries here, on Yahoo! 360°.

Besides hosting blogs, Yahoo 360° is also a social networking site like Friendster or Orkut, and it pulls in your contacts from Yahoo Messenger (which is a relief, I really don’t want to enter my contacts in yet another place). Eventually, I imagine it will integrate more tightly into Yahoo’s other sites, especially del.icio.us for social bookmarking, and Flickr for photo sharing — which I’ve also been meaning to try out.

Unfortunately, at first glance it doesn’t look like it will be easy to import my old blog entries in here, so once I can get them, I’ll probably put them up in a separate web site somewhere.

Asia trip reactions: Food

Not surprisingly, we got some great food touring Asia. A few meals stand out in my mind. In Tokyo, we ate at a teppanyaki restaurant, complete with our own chef [photos]. The beef, with a lot of marbling, was tender and flavorful, but also quite greasy — you can’t eat as much of that beef as you would normal beef. Unfortunately, it was also quite expensive — over US$110 per person. Well, we were on vacation, so I didn’t feel too bad, as long as every other meal wasn’t going to be this pricey.

In Osaka, Matt’s brother’s friend Koji took us to a kaiten-zushi restaurant. It’s like a sushi boat place, except that the plates were simply on a conveyer belt. We ate plate after plate after plate — I’ve never had so much toro (fatty tuna). In fact, I had never had toro before. Anyway, total bill: about US$9 per person. We were flabbergasted. Most food in Japan isn’t cheaper than in the U.S., but sushi is! By the way, Koji didn’t expect us to be so familiar with sushi — he was really surprised that I knew what hamachi was.

Koji’s girlfriend Kyoko took us to her favorite ramen restaurant, Golden Dragon Ramen 金龍ラーメン [photos] There are two items on the menu: ramen with pork, and ramen with more pork. To order, you get a ticket from a vending machine [photo] and give it to the staff. It’s also cheaper than ramen in the U.S. (about US$5 for the normal ramen).

In Hong Kong, we ran across a Cantonese noodle shop called Tsim Chai Kee 沾仔記 [photo]. The menu is simple [photo]: three types of noodles (egg, rice, and rice vermicelli) and soup, with one or more toppings: prawn wontons, fish balls, and beef. Vegetables with oyster sauce. That’s it! The wontons were huge: a fresh giant shrimp with a thin wonton wrapper. The fish balls were also gigantic, and the beef was very fresh. Total cost: less than US$3.

In Taichung, my cousin Mingshu took us to a hot pot restaurant called Mala Wang 麻辣王, which means “the hot-and-spicy king” [photo]. We got half spicy and half plain. Mingshu asked for the spicy to be at the low end, and then he still skimmed the hot oil off the broth. Only then could the rest of us tolerate us (I know, we’re wimps). The broth was so flavorful that I didn’t need to use my soy sauce-and-satay mixture. Mingshu eats there so often he’s a VIP customer.

In Taipei, at the Shilin Night Market, we had fried chicken at Hot Star Fried Chicken stand 豪大大雞排 [photo]. A chicken is halved and then mostly deboned, leaving only part of the breastbone. Each piece is then flattened, breaded with Taiwanese seasonings, and deep fried. The finished piece is put in a paper bag. Cost: about US$1.50. Our only mistake was getting one piece each, leaving little room for the other night market food.

My uncle to us to “the best beef noodle soup restaurant” in Taipei, Lao Zhang Niurou Mian 老張牛肉麵 (“Old Chang’s Beef Noodle”). It was quite good, and we got seated at the same table with another family, which made for interesting conversation — between my uncle and them. Unfortunately, I came down with a stomach illness the next day, which meant congee for the next few days (ugh).

The night before I came back to the U.S., my cousin Jane took my dad, grandmother, and me to a Hakka restaurant in Hukou called Ke Po Lou 客婆樓. Hakka food is not common in the U.S. (the only one I know of is Ton Kiang 東江 in San Francisco), so some of the dishes were unfamiliar. For example, the fried fish dish consisted of filets of whole small fish, battered and deep fried. The shape was like a very large French fry — long and rectangular. The fish itself was very soft and pillowy — almost like a French fry! The boiled cabbage came with a strong orange-flavored sauce with the consistency of mustard. All of it was very tasty, but since I was still sick, I literally ate only a nibble of each dish. Sigh.

Asia trip reactions: Language

Even though the Japanese are polite and want to help you, it can be hard to communicate with them because their English is quite bad. Now, I don’t expect the entire country to be fluent in a foreign language. But, for example, Yodobashi Camera is a gigantic Japanese electronics store that makes Fry’s Electronics look like Radio Shack. They have announcements in English and Spanish, so they know they attract visitors from all over. But we were hard pressed to find one service person who could speak decent English in a store with six floors.

Taiwan isn’t that great either, but my Mandarin helped me out, so I didn’t notice it as much. In Hong Kong, you can get by in English without much problem — I consider it the world’s largest “Chinatown.”

By the way, before the trip, I thought I would be most comfortable in Japan and least comfortable in Taiwan, from a language standpoint, because I’m not “supposed to know” Japanese and I’m “supposed to know” Chinese. But it didn’t end up that way. I had failed to learn even the simplest words in Japanese, like “sorry,” “excuse me,” and “where is the…?” And since I am Asian, the Japanese would expect me to be able to say something, not my white friend Matt, who did more of the talking.

Meanwhile, in Taiwan, my Mandarin helped me out greatly, even though it’s very rudimentary and rusty. In fact, I was praised twice on the same day for my Chinese. It must have been my pronunciation, because they complemented me after they saw me forget very simple words (like “pork”). And I could finally communicate somewhat with my uncles and aunts, most of whom can’t speak English well. They all said how my Chinese had improved over the last time I was there (in 1997), and even my dad said it was better. If I were there for a few months, I’m sure it would get that much better. But I’d still watch CNN or the Discovery Channel in Taiwan anyway…

Asia trip reactions: Discipline and Politeness

You’ve probably heard that the Japanese are very disciplined. It’s true. Matt and I saw this while in the front car of a Tokyo subway train, where we could see into the driver’s cab. He sat up straight, in his uniform and gloves, and was constantly on alert. He regularly pointed at either his instrument panel or the green traffic light, presumably to force himself to take notice of his surroundings, and you could tell he was very focused on his job.

In the back of another subway train sat a woman who made sure passengers got on and off the train safely. While on the train, she had nothing to do, but always sat upright looking straight out the window. No slouching, no staring at her fingernails, just self-discipline big time.

It’s also true that the Japanese are very polite. The service at all levels was absolutely superb. In Osaka, Matt had lost something at a store and tried to call its lost-and-found department. When he couldn’t get through, a hotel employee kept trying for 15 minutes before getting through, without us asking. Michael said that his standards for service were permanently raised by going to Japan.

Hong Kong and Taiwan are a different story. The higher-end places are still often okay, but many other places are loud and brusque, if not downright rude. In Taiwan, I asked a bus driver in Mandarin where a particular bus stop was, and when I asked for clarification, he started yelling at me. And this was at the end of the line, so it’s not like I was holding up the bus. In Japan, the bus driver would be apologizing that he couldn’t walk me over to the bus stop himself.

Smart cards for transit

Both Hong Kong and Taipei have RFID smart cards available for paying fares on subways and buses. Taipei even knocks 20% off of each subway ride. You don’t need to take the card out, just hover your wallet over the reader. It’s amazingly convenient. The Bay Area desperately needs something like this, especially since we have over two dozen transit agencies (which is stupid, but that’s another topic). The Metropolitan Transportation Commission has been testing such a system, TransLink, for almost four years. Let’s go people! What’s the holdup?

So much for blogging during my trip

It wasn’t easy finding fast, cheap Internet access throughout my trip, and when I did, I mostly checked up on e-mail. I always take a long time to write (look how long it took me to write my dissertation!) and I decided my time overseas was better spent doing stuff.

But now I’m back, and over the next few entries I’ll talk about my vacation. Instead of doing a day-by-day account, I’ll instead write around themes: language, culture, infrastructure, food, and so on. When I write chronologically, my writing tends to become dry. I recently looked at my journal for my trip to Europe right after high school graduation, and it was so boring I couldn’t keep reading. I hope to avoid that problem this time around.

Yeah, and I’ll post pictures too.

1st Day of Japan-Hong Kong-Taiwan trip

I didn’t expect to be able to blog any part of my vacation, but my hotel room on the first night actually has a computer, so here goes. (Typing on a Japanese keyboard is a pain too.)

I thought flying out on Christmas would ensure an empty flight, but I was wrong. The airport was empty, but the flight was pretty full. The airline meals were decent (pork ginger don in for the first meal, pasta and salmon for the second), and we got ice cream for a snack, but I’m surprised we didn’t get instant noodles. I didn’t sleep much, but that just makes me tired for tonight, so hopefully my jet lag will be kept to a minimum. I also saw a light-hearted Japanese comedy film. I have no idea what it’s called, but “Terry’s bar” was in there somewhere, so hopefully a web search later will pin it down. (We landed right before the movie completely ended, but I got the point.)

I sat next to a couple on their way to Beijing, Blaine, who works in international business, and Dong, who teaches fashion marketing at Sacramento State. We arrived at Narita 30 minutes early, and I breezed through immigration and customs.

Matt’s flight was supposed to arrive at 4. The arrivals screen said “15:00” but said “customs” as opposed to “arrived.” What the heck did that mean? Matt told me later that they were taxiing for 30 minutes and then it took him forever to get through customs and immigration. But otherwise our plan worked perfectly, meeting in front of the Japan Rail Office so that we could get our JR passes and reserve shinkansen (bullet train) tickets for the next day to Osaka. We were afraid it’d be hard to get a space during the holiday season, but we were fine.

The train from Narita to Tokyo took a lot longer than Matt and I expected, 1 hour and 15 minutes. It was a little bit of a challenge to navigate our way through the train, subway, and streets, but my rudimentary knowledge of Chinese characters helped a little bit (a lot of the subway maps are only in Japanese). But there is a lot of English on signs around here; so far, I’ve been struck by the lack of culture shock so far. (I’ve also had the urge to bow to everyone around here.)

Matt and I are staying at a nice hotel in Roppongi — the room isn’t big by American standards, but is apparently palatial by Japanese. For dinner, we met up with the other half of the touring group, Michael and John, along with Michael’s friend Scott. Scott took us and his friend Mike to a teppanyaki place in another hotel [photo]. We had some pretty funny conversations; for example, Mike asked that if you were placed in a vat of 80 Proof alcohol, would you eventually absorb enough alcohol through your skin to get alcohol poisoning and die?

It was not cheap: Matt and my meal was about 11,000 yen each (about $110) and everyone else’s about 17,500 yen. The only major difference was that we had prawns instead of lobster. But the beef was melt-in-your-mouth tender, both the filet and the sirloin. All of that marbling (i.e. fat) was bound to do something. My expectations for the sirloin were lower, so it surprised me more. Mike said that Japanese beef is so much richer, you eat a lot less of it. We also had a bunch of sides, topped of with an ice cream or sorbet dessert. We were completely stuffed. I felt like running a lap around Tokyo.

We’ll see how often I can get access to a computer during this trip. Tomorrow we’re off to Osaka. Until next time!

The Shangri-La Diet

Seth Roberts, a UC Berkeley professor in psychology, has an unusual theory on Lose Weight Exercise gain: whenever you eat a food that is flavorful and familiar, your body demands that you bank as many of those calories as possible. What if you could keep your thermostat low by sending fewer flavor signals? He eventually found two ways of doing so: by swallowing a few tablespoons of either unflavored oil or sugar water in between meals, he was a lot less hungry. He and his friends and colleagues have lost Lose Weight Exercise and have not gained it back.