Into the World:
The Random Thoughts in My Mind

Walk around the backstreets of the main tourist cities of Samarkand, Bukhara, and Khiva in Uzbekistan, and one would never be too far away from a "hotel" or "hostel" sign hanging from a building. On some streets, it almost seem as if every single building has been converted into family guesthouses seeking to get in on the roaring foreign tourist trade. Along with restaurants and to a lesser extent, tour companies and independent guides, tourist revenue is trickling down the most entrepreneurial members of the local society.

One of Uzbekistan's most evocative sights is Registan, a trio of 14th century madrasas that are famed for their beautiful blue tile work and geometric decorations. As Uzbekistan open up to foreign tourists, it is becoming the major draw to the city of Samarkand, a major Silk Road city frequently mentioned in Western classics on the topic of Central Asia. And sure enough, on a Saturday, the complex is full of tourists from across Asia, Europe, and America getting a firsthand look at the famed destination.

To say Okinawa represents a subset of Japanese culture is to ignore how the local culture is influenced by its historical relationships with its other neighbors. Even today, such influences are felt in daily lives. Foods with distinctive Chinese names like s anpin (香片, jasmine tea) and  chinsuko (金楚糕, lard cookies) are not found in the local cultures of other Japanese regions, while the tendency to eat meat as they are in big pieces (pig feet and pork belly especially) reminds visitors more of Southeast Asia than the meticulously processed cuisines of mainland Japan.

From first sight, Yomitan, on the northeastern coast of Okinawa's main island, is a rather odd village.  Among the small plots of sugarcane fields are five or six-stories-tall apartment blocks that would not be out of place in any major city in the world.  Instead of rustic local eateries, its coastal areas and main streets are lined with luxury resorts and high-end restaurants that cater to holidaymakers from across Japan and the world beyond.  With so many guesthouses and shops in the village, it is difficult to imagine anyone actually making a living doing anything related to farming.

One of the greatest merits of East Asian languages is that much information can be packed into short standalone phrases that are easily remembered by even the laymen without the need for detailed explanations.  The ability for information to be communicated so concisely and densely means that it is possible for the phrases to be used as new concepts themselves, without the need to create alternative shorter codes that have equivalent meanings.  The idea of densely packed phrases acting as linguistic codes is so common that people in this part of the world do not even think about it.

The microbrewery in the center of Takayama city felt a bit out of the place.  Despite being surrounded by wooden buildings from more than century ago, the clientele of the little bar and restaurant is distinctly un-Japanese.  When I visited the location for dinner at 8pm on a Saturday, none of the people inside were Japanese.  Perhaps attracted by the reputation of their brews, white couples in the fifties and sixties occupied most of the tables and the counter, trying more than half a dozen unique beers the microbrewery had on tap.

A few years ago when I was living and working in Taiwan , I applied for a position at Uber Taiwan as an Operations Manager.  Uber was just entering the Taiwanese market and usual as it is for the firm, aggressively expanding into major cities with lofty goals of overhauling the entire transport market.  In the interview for the position, I noted that the advantage of a global platform like Uber is its universality.  Because it is the same platform for anyone anywhere (with perhaps the exception of language), it can open up a foreign country for new foreign residents and travelers with little prior knowledge of the new destination.

Having joined many tours in the past, I come to see certain patterns on how they are organized.  That is especially true for shorter tours, where the ability of the guide to make the trip entertaining seems to be one of the primary criteria to evaluate whether the tour is worthwhile.  The sights might be great, but without proper presentation of them, it is hard to say that people who paid good money to be on the tour actually gained much from being on the tour as compared to just going around and looking at the same sights by themselves.

For someone who has not been to one of the most famous "shows" for tourists in Tokyo, it could be a bit difficult to understand what all the fuss is really about.  The Robot Restaurant in Kabukicho, the reputed red-light district of Tokyo, offers a robot-themed show, about one-and-a-half hours long, for 8000 Yen (slightly less than 80 USD at the current exchange rate).  Dinners-in-a-box that look (and taste) like they are sourced directly from the local convenience stores sell for a highly inflated 1000-2000 Yen each on top of the 8000-yen entrance fee.  Extra spending is needed for canned drinks and popcorn, going for 500-1000 yen each.

Looking at brochures that Japanese governments and private firms create (in English and other foreign languages) targetting visitors to the country, there is often a tendency to resort to extreme ways in describing some highlights.  Phrases like "the best food," the "most beautiful temple," and the "best preserved natural landscape" abounds, both when the said brochures try to compare themselves to other, similar attractions across Japan and in other countries.  Such emphasis on the extreme can seriously distort the image of the country in ways that are, in the long term, detrimental to attracting more tourists from abroad.

The international terminal at Harbin’s Airport feels crowded from the early morning. In front of the check-in counters are a few rows of seats in a tiny waiting area, holding a couple of hundreds of people waiting for check-in to start for just two international flights. Once the staff announce that check-in is open, everyone rush through just one X-ray machine that checks their bags before the check-in line. With space limited between the X-ray machine and the check-in counters, lines and crowds pack themselves both in front of and behind the X-ray machine. The scene is repeated after check-in, with passengers lining up again in narrow corridors, first in front of two open security lines, and then two immigrant stamping booths.

In Samuel Huntington's seminal work "Clash of Civilizations," one of the underlying assumptions that there are certain geographical boundaries among the different civilizations he identified.  Certainly, some regions can be considered transition zones where two or more civilizations exist side by side, but ultimately, he sees there being visible defining characteristics that can distinguish one civilization from another.  And when a person goes from one civilization to another, one can easily feel the change and thus need to adapt to the new civilization.

Khabarovsk is a city of more than half a million people, located more than twelve hours by train away from similar-sized Russian cities (Vladivostok to the south, Chita and Ulan-Ude to the east).  This very geographic fact should create a fairly big local market for consumer products that are not easily fulfilled by traveling elsewhere in the country.  People would buy locally simply because there are few choices to go buy somewhere else.  Yet, speaking to the city's Chinese merchants and a different picture emerges. 

Travelers seek out new destinations for a variety of reasons, but it goes without saying that all of them want a positive experience out of getting to the new place.  How to define what is "positive," however, may vary hugely from individual to individual.  For tour guides who are hired by travelers to assist them with exploring the new destination, catering to what the travelers have in mind for a positive experience is certainly needed to ensure the travelers' satisfaction from joining a tour.  But finding out exactly how the positive experience can be had for each individual is no easy matter.

Age 30 can be a convenient marker for many people.  If the twenties is a time for travels and new experiences, the thirties ought to be one that is more grounded.  More stable relationships, more stable jobs, and more stable routines that allow one to grow in a more structured environment.  But for people who have become so used to fluctuations, some voluntary and some not so much, transitioning to more routine-based way of life can be quite challenging, mentally and physically.  Romance and steady environment can help anchor a person to a particular way of life, but without genuine love for the physical location that one is to inhabit, it is rather impossible for keep the anchors steady.

Every time the author travels to the immigration office here in Tokyo, he cannot avoid the feeling that the place is almost designed to spite foreigners living in this fair city. Situated in the midst of the city's commercial warehouse area right next to the Port and stacks of shipping containers, the brutalist concrete monstrosity seems to swallow thousands of foreigners living across the city and the surrounding region, away from the preying sight of locals who no doubt would feel unease from seeing such huge congregations of foreigners in one place.

In an era of the general public being inundated with different kinds of museums displaying a wide variety of exhibits , for any to really stand out from the competitive crowd, new methods are needed to draw in the interest of potential museum-goers.  Factory tours, at the first glance, fit the bill extremely well.  But presenting how everyday products are made from scratch via seeing the process actually at work in a normal setting, factor tours tend to provide a much more interactive experience for the general public, in ways that static displays of words and pictures cannot.

When one thinks of Tokyo, dense, crowded streets full of neon lights and skyscrapers probably come to mind.  And for the central parts of the metropolis, that image is more or less true.  But people, even those who are born and bred in the city, tend to forget that Tokyo actually extends hundreds of kilometers to the south, to the Izu and Ogasawara island chains where sparsely populated and little-visited islands can be found.  Life on these islands cannot be any more different from downtown Tokyo and perhaps anywhere on "mainland" Japan.

One of the little-known idiosyncrasies of the Russian Far East is the presence of a relatively large North Korean population.  The region's low population translates to a chronic shortage of laborers needed for low-paid construction and menial work Russians are reluctant to take up.  In European Russia, Central Asian migrants fill the role, out here the North Koreans play the same role.  Despite ongoing sanctions that dramatically reduced their numbers, North Korean laborers are still preferred by Russian firms for their manageability, diligence, and lack of negative cultural (read: Muslim) influence.

The campus of the Far Eastern Federal University is a gorgeous one.  Situated on the mostly wild Russky Island south of Vladivostok, it is a mishmash of imposing modern buildings connected to the century-old downtown area with spectacular suspension bridges.  Perhaps as a result of its extraordinary setting, it serves as the regular venue of the East Asia Summit that bring together political leaders from Russia and its East Asian neighbors.  But for the importance of the Summit for Russia's Look East economic policy, locals are a bit annoyed by the Summit serving to shut down the city for weeks at a time.