Into the World:
The Random Thoughts in My Mind

Roppongi, in some ways, is a rather special entertainment district, even for a Tokyo that is inundated with many special entertainment districts .  With many embassies nearby, it became a preferred hang-out of moneyed expats.  Many clubs and bars that cater to foreign clientele and many Japanese who are keen on a more "international" lifestyle make the neighborhood both high-end in terms of prices but also rather shady in terms of the people that frequent its many crowded back alleys and underground haunts.  There are plenty of options for those seeking to be entertained in however ways.

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.

At the Aigun Historical Museum, patriotism is the main theme.  Situated on the ruins of the Aigun fortress, the walled city that was destroyed by Russians, it documents how the land north of the Amur River was lost and the details of the atrocities against Chinese civilians perpetuated by Russian troops.  The underlying message is one that ask visitors to contribute to strengthening of the Chinese nation so that the Chinese people can no longer be bullied by foreigners in the future.  The museum's collection of pictures detailing national leaders who visited the site allude to official support for the project.

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.

At the main museum in Blagoveshchensk, a massive mural greets the visitors.  The mural depicts in dramatic fashion Russian and Chinese officials signing off on the Treaty of Aigun, which granted land north of the Amur River to the Russian Empire, and for the first time, made the region, with Blagoveshchensk its capital, formally part of Russia.  Three Chinese visitors were standing in front of the mural.  One let out a sigh, "this is when we lost Outer Manchuria forever," he noted rather dismayingly.

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. 

Thee are many similarities between the Russian and the Chinese train systems. Inherited from the soviet system, both feature overnight trains marked by densely packed bunk beds that allow more than fifty people to fit into each train carriage. Ability to crisscross large distances overnight allow such sleeper trains to become a popular means of travel for common people in both countries. The communal nature of the carriages means that individual travelers must be quite OK with lack of privacy for extended period of time.

It is hard to imagine a more wilderness-filled stretch of land between two major cities.  The city of Khabarovsk, population half a million, and Komsomolsk, population 300,000, are separated by a two-lane highway running through a beautiful piece of untouched nature.  On a clear autumn drive, the eight-hour drive is an almost unbroken forest of yellow-leaved trees, with white, strong, and thick trunks as far as the eyes can see.  They are only punctuated by the occasional tributaries of the mighty Amur River.