Beijing - 2010

This is the first post out of three describing my trip to Beijing-Ulaanbaatar-Shanghai during October 2010. I traveled to those places using a multi-city flight operated by Air China. The concept of a multi-city flight comes handy when in order to reach your final destination you need to transfer at a certain airport. In a nutshell, since you are going into the effort of transferring at that place, you may as well stay there for a day or two without incurring extra flight costs. Since I have Spanish passport I needed to obtain visas both for China (double entry) and Mongolia. They were almost as expensive as the flight tickets!

Although I didn't plan it ahead, I arrived to Beijing on the National Day of the People's Republic of China. This is probably not the best time to travel in China since most people get holidays (similar to Japanese Golden Week) and the transport system becomes saturated. Tiananmen Square was packed to the rafters and Chinese were taking pictures of supposedly VIP people passing by in their luxury cars. Only once I got to see Mao's giant poster did I finally realize that I was in China.

Needless to say I did a lot of wandering that day to immerse myself in Beijing's extraordinary cultural diversity. Wangfujing, in the center of Beijing, is a must-visit street full of many kinds of food. By the way, being a pedestrian is dangerous in Beijing. Nobody seems to give a s*it about the traffic lights!!

Practically everybody has seen them in China's documentaries so I was ready to see scorpions being sold as a snack. What I wouldn't expect was to find out that they are all alive. Actually, scorpions were just the top of the iceberg.

China is the homeland of thousands of electronic gadgets. Although one could be critic about their lack of concern regarding to violation of copyrights, I have to admit that I've always appreciated the freedom of use present in Chinese gadgets. By recommendation of a Chinese lab mate, I went to Beijing Northwestern electronic district, Zhongguancun. Originally, my intention was to bargain the price of an Android's powered SmartQ MID. However, I soon realized it was not the best idea (eventually I would buy it through the Internet at allpmp.com if you are interested). Compared to Japanese people, Chinese do have Spanish picaresca and I'm pretty sure I would lose my money if I tried to bargain hehe. Other situations where I witnessed picaresca was on the subway. Some people would literally step on me just to enter first!. Talking about the subway, it was modern, fast and very cheap. Though they had controls at every entrance and sometimes I saw officials recording the passengers with a video-camera.

I spent the night at Happy Dragon hostel which was quite recommendable. If you wake up early in the morning, you will have the chance to get some fresh fruit and vegetables in a nearby street market. To tell the truth, some of the stands in that market where a bit shocking (in particular open-air "dentists"). But generally speaking, my impression was that Chinese people are very hard working and they love making business.

The next day I woke up early to take a bus to the famous Chinese Great Wall. Unfortunately, I was not the only one. Thousands of people were queuing to get on buses that looked like a can of sardines. I gave up the Wall and decided to wander around and see what Beijing had to offer.

Actually it wasn't a bad idea, not at all. Perhaps some of the most interesting views of Beijing I had happened while I was walking through its back streets, out of the beaten path. By the way, I loved Chinese electric motorbikes! They don't make any noise at all!

I arrived by chance to Beihai lake park. I felt it as an Oasis in the middle of the desert.

As I made my way into the park, a beautiful traditional Chinese melody came out of nowhere and filled the air with epic and exoticism all at once. Soon I discovered the source of that pleasant melody. A group of Chinese senior people were gathering around and singing old Chinese songs. I sat down nearby for an hour or so, closed my eyes and tried to imagine China a few centuries ago.

A few meters from there, I found these two amazing guys writing Chinese symbols on the floor with water. Seeing the written symbols fade away as the water evaporates is quite metaphoric. Although Chinese simplified symbols are a bit different from the ones used in Japan, I was able to guess the meaning of many words on signs, etc. I bought a book to learn the Chinese language (Chinese clerks were really persistent!) but I haven't made any progress yet.

It was time to make a brief stop and have some Beijing duck for lunch. I was told by Chinese friends that eating out is not a very extended custom in China and it might get risky for a foreigner. I decided to watch my steps on that so most of the time I was eating food bought at the supermarket. As for the Beijing duck, I went to an "expensive" restaurant which looked more or less safe. Also I found a Saizeriya restaurant in the center but I was disappointed when my soup came almost cold! (could it be that the Chinese like it lukewarm?)

I spent the rest of the day enjoying the Forbidden city, a must-see in case you visit Beijing. At night, I went to see a Kung-Fu show in the Red Theatre of Beijing. I wouldn't recommend it. If you want to see a good Kung-Fu show, you have to go and see the Jump show at Seoul!

Despite the overwhelming modernization process (e.g.: I was impressed to see people calling inside the subway, while here in Japan there is no signal), Beijing still conserves its personality and traditions. The culture is different and so the way of thinking. Sometimes that opened my mind about things I used to take for granted.

Next destination: Mongolia!!

Super Comic City - Osaka

The 30th of October of 1998 (Friday) was an important day in my life. La noche temática, a program from the Spanish public TV, emitted a documentary called "La noche de los manga".


Thema Manga, Mangaka - 01/21 - Intro et Sommaire - 1998
アップロード者 Alexkiddmw. - クリエィティブ動画をもっと見る。

The documentary, a co-production between TSR2 and Arte France, had a total duration of 187 minutes and covered in detail the world of Japanese animation and Manga. I was moved by the images, the music and the idea of discovering a new hidden world (am I, after all, another Spanish conqueror? :P). The documentary explained the process of creating manga and animation in Japan. In particular, I recall one scene where thousands of manga amateurs were gathering around in a huge event to sell their self-published material. Back then, attending such an event was a mere dream for me.

Back to reality, a few weeks ago, I was hanging around in Toranoana manga shop when I spotted an interesting book at one of the floors dedicated to dōjinshi 同人誌 (self-publishing) mangas. It was a book about one of those events that I dreamed about a decade ago!! I thought it was time to make those old-good dreams come true!!

And there I was, a few weeks later, in Osaka ready to participate for the first time in a dōjinshi event: the Super Comic City - Kansai 16. The event took place in Intex Osaka, a huge building complex that had plenty of room for the 14.000 stands where Japanese manga amateurs were passionately selling their work. It was organized by Akaboo, a company that prepares similar events during the whole year. It was completely full of people, much more than what I had imagined. Amateur (and not so amateur) artists were selling their own mangas, illustrations, hand-made postcards, badges and even dolls!! Unfortunately, I was not allowed to take pictures inside the building to illustrate it.

Although this time I attended just as a visitor, I would love to attend someday with my own comics. In order to participate as an author you need to fill a form. I found a free magazine called Piggy in Toranoana which includes the forms to apply to many of these events but you can apply directly from Akaboo website. An interesting detail on the application form is that small rectangle on the down-right corner reserved for you to show a catchy cut of your art.

That cut will appear eventually in the event's guide book, which can be bought in advance at the manga shop or directly on the day when the event takes place (the book qualifies as entrance ticket). This is very useful for the attendants to think in advance which stands they want to visit first.

Many of those amateur artists dream of becoming professional manga artists (mangaka) someday. One way to accomplish their goal is to take part in one of the numerous manga contests that are held in Japan. Some of them feature prizes that simply make my jaws drop. For instance, the picture above (extracted from the event's guide book) advertises the Shinjin comic contest, sponsored by Shogakukan, whose biggest prize is 5000000 yen (46572 Eur at 29/Aug/2010).

There are many people that love drawing manga. And many more who love reading them. And of course, "a lot of people" stands for an opportunity for business in a free market society. There exist a plethora of companies to help the artists achieve their goals. From printing companies specialized in amateur mangas to transportation services that can bring your boxes full of manga directly to the building. Inside the building, you can buy all kinds of tools for drawing such as tracing tables, color pens, manga patterns, etc. There is even a service to send home the mangas that you bought.

12 years after watching that documentary, I still feel as if I was discovering a new hidden world...

Hakodate (函館)

A few weeks ago I went to Hakodate (函館), south of Hokkaidou (北海道).

I went there with some of my lab colleagues in order to attend a Japanese conference on Embedded Systems, called SIGEMB (情報処理学会 組込みシステム研究会).

The day we arrived, we noticed that the temperature was not as cool as we expected. In fact it was almost as hot as in Nagoya. Many people go to Hokkaidou during Summer holidays to escape from the excessive heat in other parts of Japan. As the conference started the next day, we had some free time for tourism. The picture above was taken from the Goryōkaku Tower where you can have good views of the city of Hakodate.

The next day, we went to the Future University (未来大学), where the conference was held. The building was surprising at first, spacious and modern. However many of us were wondering how many people would move to such an isolated place as the one where the University is located at. I made a presentation there and in fact, it was my first presentation in Japanese!!. After the presentation I received several questions, also in Japanese. There was one question that I could not understand correctly at first because the accent of the person asking the question (most probably from Osaka 大阪) was a bit difficult for me. There were some interesting presentations. I especially liked one about clone code.

The day after the conference we had some time for ourselves. We took a train to Nanae town (七重町), rented some bicycles and went around the Oonuma lake(大沼湖), which is near an active volcano called Komagatake (駒ヶ岳). Actually, I wanted to climb that volcano but they said that I had to apply at least 3 days in advance!

During the afternoon I went to climb Mt. Hakodate (函館山), which is famous for having one of the best night views in the world. The path to climb it is quite nice and I could see some squirrels. Do not go out of the path because there are snakes. Specially be careful with the so-called mamushi マムシ!

The day had been a bit cloudy so I didn't have the chance to see the long-awaited night views of the city. Instead, I enjoyed the beautiful colors of the sunset while wearing my new t-shirt :D (Note: kuma means bear in Japanese). I went down at night using the cable car.

Now that I am finishing this post I realized that I didn't mentioned anything about food in Hakodate. Trust me, if you ask any Japanese what is worth doing in Hakodate, they will all tell you to eat as much seafood and fish as you can! This is because you can enjoy very fresh seafood at much cheaper prices than in the rest of Japan.

Apart from seafood, there were also some other interesting places that we went for lunch such as Hakodate Genghis Khan (函館ジンギスカン) which is basically a yakiniku (焼肉) restaurant, the Lucky Pierrot hamburguer chain or some place near Oonuma lake (大沼湖) which served a huge dish of ankake yakisoba (あんかけ焼きそば).

Kamikōchi (上高地)

A few weeks ago, I went with Simon to visit a beautiful region in the northern part of the Japan Alps (Nagano prefecture), known as Kamikōchi (上高地).

I took a train from Nagoya (Ltd. Express Shinano) to Matsumoto city. After meeting in Matsumoto (he was coming from Tokyo) we took a bus to Kamikōchi.

We spent our first day walking around the lake and admiring the mountains that were surrounding it. Perhaps the most famous touristic spot there is the views of Mt. Hotaka from the Kappa bridge.

We stayed in a mountain lodge called Nishitoya (nice place, good service and delicious dinner). The next morning we woke up very early and decided that the mountain we wanted to climb was Mt Nishi-hotaka (西穂高岳) with 2908m of altitude.

After an hour or so, we found ourselves in the middle of the snow without appropriate equipment such as crampons (アイゼン). Although it wasn't the first time for me to climb in the snow, it was for Simon.

Our first milestone was Mt. Nishi-Hodoku (西穂独標) at 2701m of altitude.

Here the hike became quite difficult due to the continuous ups and downs through dangerous cliffs and rocks.

We continued for a while because we really wanted to climb Mt Nishi-Hotaka but finally we decided to go back after reaching the Piramid peak (ピラミッドピーク) at 2740m of altitude. We were quite tired, it was becoming increasingly dangerous and we didn't have the necessary equipment. Plus we had to go back early in order to make it for the bus that would bring us back to Matsumoto (松本).

In Matsumoto, I took the opportunity to visit its castle for an hour before coming back to Nagoya. It was a very tiring hike but I am glad that nothing bad happened to us on those cliffs!!