Yes, girls can play football too

Who says time travel is impossible? I’ve set the Wayback Machine for 22 September, 2007, the place, Tianjin, China. Some photos by me, some by D.

It really was just coincidence that the Women’s World Cup was taking place in China at the time while D would be here. But it was a happy coincidence, and we took advantage of it. We saw a couple of games in Portland, Oregon back in 2003, including that embarrassing match where the US lost to Germany in the semifinals.

The first game that fit the travel schedule was on 22 September in Tianjin. As is usual with such things, we didn’t know what teams would be playing at the time the tickets were purchased. Buying them was a little adventure on its own. Tickets were available through Emma, one of Ticketmaster’s partners here in China, but they haven’t been upgraded to our computer systems yet. I first went online to buy tickets, and managed to get to the event and pick out my seats. But when I went to pay, I found that they couldn’t take a credit card online, so I selected the option to reserve the tickets and pay for them at the local Emma box office, which happens to be close to where I live.

I went into the box office the next day with an appropriate amount of cash and showed the woman my printed receipt. She looked all over in the computer and could not find my order. So I finally decided to just order again – it’s not like I’d paid for them yet. We found the seats and she printed out the tickets for the equivalent of about $25. I should mention that the temperature in the box office was extremely uncomfortable and I’m glad I didn’t melt in the time it took.

There’s a nice new train that runs between Beijing and Tianjin several times a day, so we opted for that. It’s only about a 40 minute trip, but getting to it turned out to be another adventure. A coworker who is from Tianjin told us there was no need to buy train tickets in advance – just go to the Beijing station and get tickets there. What he didn’t tell us is how many thousand other people would be doing the same thing at the same time. There were 20 or so ticket windows open on the outside of the station with a huge mob of people crowded around them more or less in lines. The signs were all in Chinese, and while I know the characters for Tianjin, any instructions about what could be purchased where were completely indecipherable.
We went around the side and eventually found another set of ticket windows. One of them was labeled in English TICKET SALES FOR FOREIGNERS. The line was not that long, and I purchased two tickets for Tianjin on a train leaving in less than an hour, from some track or other that I couldn’t make out on the ticket. We followed the crowd into the station proper and up the stairs to the waiting areas. The signs were confusing and we ended up waiting for a while in entirely the wrong place. I eventually found an information booth, showed them a ticket, and asked “Where?” in Chinese. They pointed my in the right direction. As we made our way to the track, we passed a nice little booth selling Tianjin tickets. If only we’d known.
The train was pretty nice, a lot like the shinkansen in Japan. We had reserved seats, which were spacious and comfortable. Unfortunately there’s not a lot to see along this journey.
The station in Tianjin was quite a contrast to the one in Beijing. For one thing, it’s not a building. There are stairs and ramps to take you over the tracks to the platforms, which are covered but not enclosed. I can imagine this is pretty unpleasant in the winter time. The taxi area there is a massive free-for-all, with dozens of aging little Chinese cars crowded together and drivers shouting out for passengers. In Beijing the taxis are all Volkswagens, Hyundais, and Citroens, and even the smallest of those is bigger than the average Tianjin taxi. We picked one at random and showed the woman the hotel’s address. She took us on a long roundabout path that seemed to circle the outside of the entire city before heading into town.

It was my goal to save some money on the hotel in order to have more available for other travel, but the tactic backfired in this case. We were at a Home Inn, which is like China’s equivalent of a Motel 6. Chinese friends have told me they are simple but clean, and reliable around the nation. This one was kind of run down and in the midst of refurbishment, with the smell of fresh paint permeating the building. The staff spoke almost no English, and my Chinese wasn’t a lot of help. Somehow we got checked in and the proper foreigner registration papers got filled out.
See for yourself. Not exactly what we’re used to.

By the time we were checked in and settled, it was mid-afternoon. I hadn’t made any plans for the part of the day before the game started, so we wandered around looking at the city. We came across this – I’m still not sure what it is.
Notice the window washer guys up on the slope.
And the elaborate safety system they have to avoid falls.
There were people with radio controlled boats in the pond.

Before too long we were getting hungry, so we headed towards what looked like a commercial area. We found hotels, shops, and banks, but not a single restaurant that was open between lunch and dinner.
There was a cool little food street off to one side of the main street, but the only place that was open had a big private party going on. Starving, we finally decided to just find a taxi and head to the stadium, reasoning that there must be food in that area.

It turned out to be a pretty short taxi ride, and there was a shopping center across from the stadium grounds with a few restaurants. We picked Mr. Pizza, where they had a really strange selection of pizzas, and, luckily, beer as well.

When we finished eating, it was still a little early to go to the game, so we wandered around the shopping area for a bit and then made our way to the ticket gate.
Tianjin Olympic Stadium is a very nice looking futuristic structure set way back from the street. They could use a shuttle bus to take attendees from the ticket entrance to the stadium.
In what I’m learning is typical Chinese fashion, there are very few concessions located inside. They had soft drinks (which they pour out of the bottles into paper cups for you) and popcorn. That’s it.
There were a few pitifully stocked souvenir stands, but mostly the huge concourse was just open space. I wonder if they’ll make any changes for the Olympics – certainly Americans and Europeans are used to having more options (and opportunities to spend money). D reported unhappily that the restrooms featured only Asian-style squatters – no Western-style toilets at all – another thing that could use some attention before hordes of foreigners arrive next summer.

We got to our seats pretty early – pretty much the first to arrive in our section, so we got to watch other people come in. One thing we noticed was security. Each section had two security guys in the front row as well as one in the back. At each gate entrance there were a few more, and a bunch down on the field. Mind you, these are not burly, gun-toting ruffians, but mostly young guys in ill-fitting uniforms. Many of them were in a more casual uniform consisting of a polo shirt.
There were no smoking signs, and an announcement was made that smoking was prohibited inside the stadium, but we seemed to be located in the chain smokers’ section. All around us for virtually the entire game people were puffing away. The security guard behind us paid no attention to that – I think he may have even lent his lighter to someone. Smoking is so pervasive here, and Chinese people so oblivious to (if not outright contemptuous of) behavior laws, that such rules come off as mere window dressing, much like the security procedures at the Barcelona game. In fact, trains and subways are about the only places I haven’t seen anyone smoking. As an aside, I’ve noticed lately that many taxis in Beijing now have green stickers in them for no smoking, but most of them still reek after years of it.
It’s easy to fraternize with the enemy when you’re actually from a neutral country.
One of the more entertaining parts of the event (at least at first) was a big British guy wearing a read and white wig and with a flag draped over his shoulders. He was continually shouting England slogans, starting football songs, and bad-mouthing the Americans. His loud swearing probably would have got him kicked out of an American venue, but since it was in English and not Chinese, he was allowed to carry on. Our section seemed to consist mostly of England supporters, though a lot of them were Chinese.
At halftime, Mr. England was quite the celebrity. Lots of people wanted their picture taken with him.

I spoke a little with the guy next to me (the one with Mr. England in the earlier picture). He was a student at Tianjin Sports University (or something like that), and some of his classmates were down on the field chasing the out of bounds balls. He was pretty non-committal about the two teams, though he had some England gear.
He pointed to a big group cheering for the US above us, and said they were also classmates.
And this picture is just too cute to leave out.
Oh, yes, there was a football match, too.

As any of you know who pay attention to such things, the US stomped the Brits handily. The poor English team just never got their act together, and the keeper in particular made some hideous bumbles. I expect she was weighing her alternative career options after the ordeal ended.
Even the most enthusiastic fan felt the pain of England’s poor performance.

After leaving the stadium, it took quite a while to catch a taxi, but eventually we got back to the hotel and ended up watching a part of some old black and white Chinese movie that seemed to be glorifying the revolution.

The next morning we checked out early, which turned out to be a chore. I had used a credit card for the deposit but wanted to pay the bill with cash, but nobody seemed to know how to void the credit card transaction. Plastic money is still a fairly new (or at least relatively uncommon) thing here, especially in places not frequented by foreigners.

I was not surprised that the taxi ride to the train station was much shorter than the one when we arrived. In the waiting area, we sat as far as we could from the restrooms, but the urine and cleaner odor was still pervasive and there wasn’t much ventilation. And unfortunately, the odor followed us onto the train. The nice new high-speed train had a very smelly restroom on it, and whenever someone left the door open to the end of car area (which was basically anytime anyone passed through since it didn’t close by itself) we got a stench like a Honey Bucket that hasn’t been emptied in weeks combined with the sharp edge of industrial cleaners.

Upon arrival back in Beijing, we found the chaos of the train station unabated. The taxi queue was an unorganized mess of shoving, so we crossed the street to try our luck there, only to find zones where taxis are apparently not allowed to stop or have to pay to pass. After what seemed like ages we finally caught one willing to pick us up, and we were on our way back to Seasons Park.

All in all, it was an exhausting and rather unpleasant weekend aside from the football match itself. Tianjin was not a very impressive city, but I’m willing to believe we just ended up in a dull part of town and it actually has something to offer. But I’m in no hurry to find out.

Be my Yokohama

I return to the obscure pop culture references for a title, and catch up on the last bits of my trip to Japan. Pretend the date is 3 September.

I didn’t really see any of Yokohama outside of the short distance from my hotel to the convention center, but there are a few pictures I took in that area which seem worth sharing.
On the way to the convention center, I walked past this large sculpture located between two buildings.
This was not one of those buildings, though it was close by. If I remember correctly, it’s called the Landmark Tower, and it’s, well, a landmark. For a thousand yen you can take the elevator up to the top, where there’s an observation deck, a restaurant, and live jazz, but I didn’t.
The city is proud of its maritime heritage. This is the Nippon Maru Yokohama.
I saw a big group of school children doing exercises next to it one morning. It's probably too small to see, but they're in this picture. I think it was some kind of school outing where they went onto the ship and learned about being sailors.

The return to Beijing was relatively uneventful. I took the Yokohama local train one stop from my hotel, and got on the fast train at Yokohama Station to go directly to Narita Airport, where I discovered a massive line waiting to check in with Air China. I managed to make it to my gate with a few minutes to spare, and in a couple hours I was back in China. I am somewhat intrigued that my booking of a flight from Shanghai to Tokyo plus a flight from Tokyo to Beijing was called a “round trip” ticket.

Better City, Better Life

And now for the continuing stoooory of a doctor who’s gone to the dogs – oops, sorry, wrong story. (And a very obscure pop culture reference.) Our hero was last seen slaving over a hot computer in a Shanghai hotel room, wondering if he would be able to wake up in time to get to the airport, and looking forward to riding the maglev train again.

I had heard horror stories about Shanghai rush hour traffic, so I got up well before six and was checking out of the hotel a bit after seven. There was a taxi driver hanging around, and he asked if I was going to Pudong Airport. I pulled out my little maglev ticket with the picture of the train and pointed to it. He made a “Pfft!” sort of noise, obviously believing I should stick with the tried and true taxi to the airport. I stuck to my story and said I wanted to go to the train station. Then he pulled out his trump card. The train doesn’t start running until 9:00. I found this hard to believe, but in the absence of hard evidence one way or the other, I felt stuck. I asked how much he would charge to get there. He said ¥150, which was more than the train would have cost, but not outrageous. I was a little suspicious that he could be lying to me about the train just to get a lucrative fare, but I got in. Traffic wasn’t really that bad, and he took kind of a roundabout way (probably to avoid bottlenecks). I have to admit that we paralleled the maglev track for quite a way and I never saw a single train go by. I had read that Shanghai’s maglev, while an engineering marvel and thoroughly cool, is regarded in many circles as an expensive bid for prestige, and ridership has never been very good. If the blasted thing doesn’t run until nine in the morning, I’d say that takes a serious bite out of its practicality. According to Wikipedia, it starts at 7:00 and runs till 9:00pm but I know that is inaccurate, since it ran until 10:00pm when I arrived. Maybe I did get taken for a ride.
Did I mention that Pudong Airport is really big? I got there way too early, so I killed some time in the coffee shop and did some reading.
Once again I found myself in a shuttle bus going across the tarmac to board a plane. My ticket said Air China, but this was the plane. Dragon Air is based out of Hong Kong, and code shares with Air China on certain routes.

After landing at Narita, I managed to successfully use a cash machine. I bought a train ticket to Sakuragi-cho Station in Yokohama, which involved one transfer at Yokohama Station. I picked up some snacks from the kiosk and waited about an hour for my train. It was no bullet train, but it was nice and comfortable. It was very full, and I didn’t have a window seat, so you don’t get any more shaky pictures of the Japanese countryside. I got to my hotel pretty easily. It’s got a pedestrian bridge over the street that practically joins it to the train station.
The room at the Yokohama Washington Hotel is very small, but clean (aside from a slight cigarette odor) and has all the modern conveniences.
If you take the main room and the bathroom together it’s about the size of the spare bedroom in my apartment.
I changed clothes and walked over to the convention center where the World Science Fiction Convention is taking place, not sure what I’d find there. They were still open for registration, so I picked up my packet.
It included a lovely big Souvenir Book which reads from both covers. You turn it one way and read the English, and reading from the “back” you get the Japanese, since Japanese books are read in the opposite direction. The English side cover features a beautiful painting by Michael Whelan, who is one of the Guests of Honor. SF conventions typically have three GOH’s: a writer, an artist, and a prominent fan, but given the bilingual nature of this con, both Japanese and English were represented in the author and artist categories.
The Japanese side has cover art by Yoshitaka Amano, a well-known Japanese artist, who has done everything from manga to book covers to games.
The center has a full-color gallery of works by the two.

I went downstairs to the large theater just in time to catch the opening ceremony. I didn’t have my camera with me, so you’ll have to take my word for it that it was kind of fun. I saw Robert Silverberg down front before the lights dimmed, so I knew he’d made it, but didn’t manage to get anywhere near him.

The MC was a Japanese voice actress who spoke pretty good English. There was also a translator at the side of the stage to handle the guests’ speeches. One of the first guests was the mayor of Yokohama, who arrived on stage riding a rickshaw. Apparently he’s known for his environment-friendly policies, and he joked about proposing rickshaws to replace cars.

There was a very amusing opening animation piece that took scenes and characters from dozens of famous Japanese movies from Godzilla to anime and mixed them up, with all the monsters, aliens and robots converging on Yokohama. the Guest of Honor speeches started with American author David Brin. He’s one of my favorites (I just finished his second Uplift trilogy a couple months ago), and started his speech with a little bit in phonetic Japanese about being a “crazy foreigner” that got some laughs. He told about how he had just been in Chengdu China for a science fiction convention the previous weekend, and how he sees Asia growing in the SF world just as it is in the real one. The con in Chengdu would have been extremely cool to visit, but timing did not allow.

Japanese author Sakyo Komatsu was up next. He’s a grand master of Japanese SF, and has been writing since the 60s and has been involved in a number of movies. He’s in his 70s, and was wheeled in by an assistant. He gave a fairly long speech that must have been pretty amusing from all the laughs it got from the Japanese in the audience. The translation must not have done it justice.

Whelan and Amano both had speeches, and they were followed by an emotional reminiscence by fan guest Takumi Shibano, who has been at the center of the Japanese SF community since the late 50s. He had the convention chairman in tears, and was pretty choked up himself.

As I walked back to the hotel afterwards, I kept my eyes open for dinner prospects, and happened to walk right by the Hard Rock Café. That works – burger and beer. By this time I probably should have known better than to check my email (Blueberry and mobile phone are both incompatible with the Japanese network). Once again I ended up connecting to Beijing and working late.

Which makes for a good place to take a pause.

Will our hero ever get a break? Will he survive in the Land of SF? Only time (and the next episode) will tell.

Arigato, Fuji-san. Sayonara, Nihon!

Location: Kobe, Tokyo, Beijing
Date: 2007-03-31

Friday morning we checked out of the Hotel Okura and took a taxi to the Shinkansen station. With all our bags, we didn’t want to even try the City Loop bus. The car was a roomy Nissan Cedric, and it cost ¥1300, more than three times what the bus would have. The driver was a speed demon, but my experience with Beijing taxis has made me pretty numb to that.
During the train ride, we were treated to some views of Mt. Fuji.

After another three and a half hours on the Hikari, we were back at Tokyo Station, where we lugged our stuff to another platform and took a local to the Shimbashi Station. We checked in back at the Park Hotel Tokyo for one last night, and this time we got a room on a different side of the building.
It was still early in the day, so we took the Metro back up to Asakusa to finish off buying souvenirs and gifts. What a difference a few days made! The trees were in bloom this time.
And for the cat lovers out there, just imagine spending time and money here.
Here’s another example of information food. I do not doubt that the actual dish resembles this pretty closely. Yum!
It was dark by the time we got back to our room, and the view seemed worthy of a few megabytes worth of digital image storage.
I think I’ve seen this on a postcard. Wow.
After dropping off our purchases and taking a bunch of pictures, we went out for dinner at a Japanese noodle place, then took a detour into a Ginza toy shop, where I saw this robot soccer game. Didn’t buy it though. We finished off the evening at the Rose & Crown, a “Victorian Pub” in the Shiodome area. We saw a couple of other Rose & Crown locations around Tokyo. They have Suntory Black on tap, which is a fine tasting beer. We had been here a couple times before. Oddly enough, a pint of beer here is more expensive than almost any food item on the menu. Anyway, it was a comfortable end to our last full day in Japan.

The next morning we checked out of our room, then had a few hours to kill before the shuttle bus out to the airport. We spent it at the French bakery, Tully’s, and the Wave CD store in the Shiodome underground complex.

That’s about it. I’ll revisit the subject of Japan in future posts with thoughts about the country and its culture, as well as more comparisons with China. The flight back to Beijing was uneventful (since a delayed departure is a non-event). Mr. Y met me at the airport and drove me to Seasons Park, where I arrived around 11:30 pm. My plants seem to have survived, and it was very chilly inside. I turned up the thermostat only to have it blow cool air. No, I didn’t forget to pay a bill. The calendar says it’s spring, so they’ve switched off the heating units in all the apartments. Given that it’s still not that warm outside, this means sweaters and blankets.

I’ve spent all day doing laundry, getting a few essential groceries, and catching up on blog posts. And now it’s time for dinner.

More science fiction

Location: Kobe, Takarazuka, Kyoto
Date: 2007-03-29

At the risk of seeming like obsessive otaku, I must divulge that our next excursion was to the Tezuka Osamu Memorial Museum in Takarazuka. Tezuka was the creator of Astro Boy (known as Atom in Japan) and countless other manga, and is regarded as one of the founding fathers of comics and anime. Certainly his influence is easy to see in most anime, even if it’s only characters with big eyes and strange hair.

We left the Okura Hotel and walked up to the Sannomiya Station, stopping at Starbucks for coffee and pastries on the way (had to get the coffee mention in). It took a half hour or so to get to the relatively small town of Takarazuka. There was a sign pointing the way to the museum at the station’s exit, but after that, we didn’t see any more signs. We were standing on a corner looking confused when a nice older woman asked us in very good English what we were looking for. We told her and she walked with us up the street and pointed to the museum. “I’ve never been inside,” she said, “so I don’t know where the entrance is.”
Finding the entrance was easy. We went to the statue of the Phoenix (title character of a long-running series), and there it was.
The walkway up to the door is done like a Walk of Fame, with the “imagined footprints” of Tezuka’s characters in the cement. OK, it’s actually marble and they’re carved not imprinted.
For those not familiar with Tezuka, I’m not really sure how to describe him. In a way, he’s like the Walt Disney of Japan, except that he mostly stuck to still images, producing thousands and thousands of pages of stories in a career that spanned four decades. Having grown up in wartime, he developed a deep feeling that all life is precious, and that positive attitude carries through all his work. It’s not without conflict, but situations in his stories are often resolved without resorting to violence. His work Adolf is a strange and intriguing indictment of racism told in the lives of three characters, all named Adolf, one of whom became the leader of Germany, and in spite of his own Jewish roots, set about to purify the white race by eliminating the others.

There was a guide brochure in English, but almost none of the museum’s exhibits had anything but Japanese, so we just browsed and looked at the pictures. There were some very detailed drawings and paintings of insects from his youth, and some examples of early cartooning. His signature style of caricature developed early, with exaggerated hairstyles and bulbous noses.

The museum featured a library where large shelves were filled with copies of Tezuka’s works in a variety of languages. To my knowledge, some of them have still never appeared in English. We went into the little theater and watched a documentary film about Tezuka which was all in Japanese.
When we got back outside (after suffering much damage in the gift shop), we paused to take pictures of the “footprints” and statues, and I saw this man walk by with a cat on his shoulder.
The town of Takarazuka, like most of the places we visited, had a lot of art in public places. This statue, along with a similar companion, framed the approach to a bridge over a river.
We took our haul back to the hotel in Kobe, and made a spur of the moment decision to take the bullet train to Kyoto. We had originally planned to stay in Kyoto instead of Kobe, but it seemed that every hotel in Kyoto was booked solid during our time frame. And since we had rail passes, the trip would cost us nothing extra. We had just missed the City Loop bus, so we foolishly decided to walk to the station, which turned out to be further than we expected. It took us 45 minutes and was mostly uphill.
While we waited for the Hikari to arrive, I looked out the platform’s back window and saw the “ropeway” gondola cars going up the hill above town. We never did get a chance to go up there. The view of the harbor is supposed to be spectacular.
Boy are we glad we made the trip. Here’s a view of the interior of the Kyoto Station Building. There are many levels of shopping and dining, plus a nice hotel and a theater currently showing the musical Contact.
This is what part of it looks like from the outside.
Oddly enough, the Kyoto Station was home to Tezuka Osamu World, basically a gift shop and small theater. Maybe we knew in advance that it would be there.
Among many other businesses at the Kyoto Station was this dessert shop that had some wares on display. It attracted quite a crowd.
Across the street from the station is the Kyoto Tower Hotel. I’m not sure how the hotel got its name, but it has this thing stuck on top of it.
Also from the station, we could see a temple a few blocks away. It was getting pretty dark, but we walked down and snapped a few pictures. This is one of D’s.
Mine didn’t really turn out at all, except this one looking back towards the station showing the contrast of old and new. According to the sign, much of this construction dates from 1895, though it was rebuilt from structures dating from the 1600s.
We hopped back on the Shinkansen for Kobe and tried a short ride on that city’s subway to get us closer to our part of town. For dinner, we picked a Korean restaurant that turned out to be a small adventure of its own. The place was packed, and the only seats for us were in the back, on the raised platform where you take off your shoes and sit on the floor at low tables. With no English on the menu, and very little from the staff, we managed to order “whatever’s good” along with a couple of beers. “Chicken” was one word the waiter knew, and we told him spicy was OK. There are gas lines installed under the platform, and he set up a little burner on our table. A woman brought out a wok with meat, vegetables, and sauce in it and lit the burner. She returned every so often to stir it, and then signaled to us that it was done. It was spicy, but not unreasonably hot, and delicious. One other notable thing about the restaurant was that the chopsticks were metal. I was afraid they would be slippery and difficult to use, but I managed just fine.

Right next to us was a party of about twenty celebrating something. At first I thought it might be a birthday, since we saw cake, but when it came to the end of the meal, four or five different people gave speeches.
After we left the restaurant, we passed a dessert place (there seemed to be lots of them around) and went in for cake and coffee. Not as fancy as the creations of the place in Kyoto Station, but very good nonetheless.

Then D’s sharp eye caught an HMV sign, and we went in to experience some more Japanese culture. I neglected to mention our visit to a huge Tower Records store in Tokyo. Yes, Tower Records. The American company may have closed all its stores, but the Japanese chain was bought out and continues to this day under the same name. We went crazy in the Tokyo store, so you would think we didn’t need another CD store – or you would think that if you didn’t know us very well. More purchases to fill up the luggage. I found a single with Puffy covering “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” and a CD+DVD from the show Nana featuring Anna Tsuchiya, a singer I like a lot.

Was that a full day or what?