brian + japan = ?

Ambidexterity, Here I Come

I broke my wrist snowboarding. Naturally, mom advised getting wristguards two days before the incident. It was shamefully retarded. I was trying to make my way down the mini half-pipe at our local haunt, Makomanai. I made it to the bottom and was riding out very slowly when I managed to catch an edge and threw my hands out to break my fall, smacking my right wrist on the concrete-hard ice. Ow. The break is really minor, didn't look like much on the x-ray, but I'm apparently out for 3-4 weeks. On the upside, maybe this'll be a catalyst for some sort of personal Renaissance. Or turn me into a 500-pound recluse. Wanna sign my cast?

New Zealand, Episode III: One Hike to Rule Them All

ChristAfter Christa Christpleasant Christmas Christin Christchurch, I hopped on a bus to Queenstown. Not just any bus. A bus owned and operated by the fabulous "Atomic Shuttles". While the owners, operators, and buses certainly seemed to consist of atoms, the trip was a major letdown. With a name like "atomic", one should reasonably expect a futuristic experience: a smooth ride, sentient ashtrays, freeze-dried ice cream, and chrome chrome chrome. What I got was nauseating driving and cramped seating. These would have been acceptable on their own, but the Official Atomic Shuttles Soundtrack broke this camel's back. We were treated to a selection of popular music so diverse - from the fucking Grease soundtrack to Buena Vista Social Club - that I was annoyed 95% of the time and singing along the other five. In all honesty, I'd rather just be annoyed the entire time. Coming up with an appropriate analogy to express my feelings on the issue is tough. Maybe it's like going to Taco Bell and, having lost your wallet, being forced to eat a few Border Fryz out of the dumpster when you could be getting the tried-and-true Grilled Stuft Burrito (Steak), a Chicken Quesadilla, and a large Mountain Dew - a bargain at $6.52! - then going home to watch Alias. OK, that was less an analogy than a shout-out to Chuck. Anyway, yeah. Better to just steer clear of Taco Bell and Atomic Shuttles altogether.

Queenstown is a tourist trap, and not in the charming run-down way Moab, Utah is a tourist trap. Being a tourist, I guess I should've been in my element, but I just wanted to flee. After a day to prepare for the Rees-Dart, I did just that. But not before taking a picture of this statue, which I found hilarious.

The guy is Mr. Rees, a farmer who settled in the area and enjoyed animal husbandry, if you get my drift. Eventually the government bought Rees' land for use as a tourism pamphlet landfill, a purpose it still serves to this day.

So, armed with heaps of granola bars and a walking stick (my knees were killing me after the St. James), I hopped on another bus that took me to the Rees-Dart trailhead. The Rees-Dart is a four-day tramp that runs up the Rees River, then down the Dart River. It was unfuckingbelievablyawesome. I will tell the tale chronologically through pictures, captions and occasional non-caption blurbs. Ready?.

Go. The tramp starts on a flat running beside the Rees River. Large stretches of this section required slogging through sweet delicious mud. It was...dirty. Especially after the time I failed to prod the suspicious-looking bit of muck in front of me and ended-up waist-deep in the stuff! My shorts will never be the same.

In spite of the mud, the walk was already amazing. All those whitish lines in the trees? Waterfalls from melting snow. They were everywhere. Hella cool.

This one's for you, Japan.

Eventually the trail moved away from The Big Muddy and into ferny groves...

...and picturesque beech forests...

...complete with melt-off rivulets, creeks, streams, brooks, rivers (and their associated waterfalls) of their own! This was the point at which I decided buying the $1100 Sapporo-to-Christchurch flight and enduring the Official Atomic Shuttles Soundtrack were totally worthwhile.

Eventually I emerged from the forest. And the backpacking-humping closet. Mom, Dad, I'm sorry I kept this part of my life from you for so long.

At this point the weather started getting sketchy. The driver who carted me and my fellow trampers to the trailhead claimed that the forecast was for an Apocalyptic Deluge of Death. Hoping to avoid getting soaked - and, more importantly, to avoid a forced confrontation with my keraunophobia - I hauled ass to the hut of the day and managed to make it just as the rain (not nearly as nasty as forescasted) began to fall.

Day Two promised a hike over the Rees Saddle, an ascent of maybe 500 meters, nothing Captain Sissyboy couldn't handle. The weather looked a little dicey, though. This pic is looking back the way I came from.

A bit farther up the track now. When you travel alone, selfies are the only way to fly. Please try to ignore the sexiness oozing off of my then-unshowered-for-four-days body and note the patches of white, snow-like stuff behind me. Huh? Snow?!?!?! No one told me there was going to be snow.

But there it was, and I was getting closer to big heaps of it. Most of the ascent was a gentle climb, but the last 100 meters...yowza. Very steep, very covered with snow, and thus very slippery. Slow going. But fun in that "this is kind of dangerous, I should probably have crampons to avoid falling to an icy death" way.

Alas, icy death falling was avoided, and I reached the snowy 1447-meter summit! And then had someone take a picture of me as I wished for polarized sunglasses and a repetoire of non-stupid-looking facial expressions. It was actually snowing up there, a welcome surprise, even though I wasn't really prepared for it!

After a few granola bars and these absurdly crumbly hummus + cheese-stuffed pitas I made for lunch, it was descent time!

Always time for another selfie. Sigh.

Does anyone remember Slim Goodbody? He had this song about the digestive system that went "Down, down, down, downdy-down" a zillion times and that was pretty much the song. Good shit! (Ha!)

The lovely Mt. Cook Lily, nowhere near the lovely Mt. Cook (the tallest mountain in NZ, I think). The spiky-looking plant behind the flowers reminded me of yucca plants. It certainly stabbed me as painfully as yucca have in the past. But apparently it's called Spaniard. Which just makes me wonder: how in the fuck did Gladiator win an Oscar for Best Picture?

Eventually we reached a nifty swing bridge that led to the swanky Dart Hut, of which I took zero pictures because I am dumb.

No two ways about it, Day Three was the Best Day of Hiking Ever. I did a day trip to see the Dart Glacier and the Cascade Saddle. After about an hour and a half of moraine, I got a nice view of the glacier. Incidentally, I could not have asked for better weather on this day, and really, the entire tramp. The South Island's west coast is usually very rainy, and I barely saw a drop. Lucky lucky lucky.

After some glacier-viewin', the trudge up to the Cascade Saddle began. Steep, snowy, and slippery. Not really dangerous, just hard work, and, not having been blessed with the work ethic of my parents, I thought about bailing a few times. Thankfully, I didn't. The view was ridiculously cool. This picture was taken by a Swiss guy who was completely insane - he literally ran and pranced his way back down the trail without so much as a stumble (did I mention it was steep and slippery?) like some kind of wacky extinct snow gazelle. Just watching it made my knees hurt. Oh, I think that's Mount Aspiring behind me. Yay, mountains!

The view down from the saddle.

The Dart Glacier, viewed from the saddle, included only to make this page take longer to load.

Nifty But Wideish Picture! Clicky!
Panoramic view from the Cascade Saddle.

After soaking up the natural amazingness, I made my way back down to the glacier-viewing spot, where I ran into four Kiwi gals eating lunch. Kinda beat, I sat down and chatted for a bit. Then we heard a freaky rumbling. Sounded kinda like an earthquake. Eventually we realized that it was an avalanche happening near the glacier. Talk about right place, right time. Holy shit. We sat there for a good half-hour talking, snacking, and watching avalanches without a care in the world. Best Lunch Ever. This is a pic of the best of the avies; that river of snow wasn't there 30 seconds before I took the pic. Kinda hard to capture on film, but it was pretty incredible to see.

Because the terrain was pretty rocky, the trail was usually marked by cairns. Most of them were standard, small, 5-10 rockers like the one in the lower-left here...

...but some folks were more ambitious. Jenga, anyone?

You may want to stop here, the rest of the hike was fairly tame. Day Four took me across Cattle Flat. No cow pies here, though. The Dart River is on the right. Oh, Day Four also happened to be New Year's Eve. I chilled the lone beer I brought along in the river, enjoyed it at about 8PM, ended up ringing in the new year in sandfly-infested Daley's Flat Hut playing Asshole with a Netherlander, three Germans, and two Kiwis. Wow, that sounded filthy.

God Bless the individual who came up with timers on cameras. Without it, evidence of my impeccable fashion decisions would be lost forever. I wear short shorts.

And then it was done.

Back to Queenstown, back to Christchurch on accursed Atomic Shuttles (complete with identical fucking soundtrack), a night in Christchurch at my beloved Vagabond Backpackers Hostel where I watched Amelie on video and decided to learn the accordion and move to France, back to Seoul where this Engrish gem revealed itself:

(Ah, the mystery!), and back to Sapporo, knees destroyed but otherwise happy. Not the most epic of journeys, but a mighty fine time.

New Zealand, Episode II: Trampa Trampa Trampa

Sorry it took so long to get to Episode II. I spent the three-day weekend snowboarding and jumping out of trees while under the influence of caffeine, nicotine, and alcohol. If that's not an airtight excuse, I don't know what is.

So - my first major tramp was on the Saint James Walkway, which is about 90 minutes north of Christchurch. Because it's regarded as a pretty easy hike (no major elevation changes, no deadly river crossings, no bloodthirsty kiwis), I thought it'd be a good warm-up for the second, more difficult tramp I planned to do. Amazingly, it worked out pretty well.

Depending on your level of ambition, the St. James can be completed in five (reasonable pace), four (speedy pace), or three (Legendary Backpacker pace) days. (Being lazy and out of shape, I opted for five.) It runs through the valleys of several rivers - the Boyle, Anne, Henry, Ada, Maruia, and probably more. Most of the time I was in really cool old beech forests or on notably less-cool grazing land. Apparently the St. James' nickname is the "Cow Pie Trail". This is completely justified.

See?!?!?! Manure was present in such abundance that I was moved to take a picture of it.

They were clearly mocking me. Revenge had to wait until a Burger King was in reasonable walking distance. Because I'm from a fairly agriculture-heavy state, I consider myself an expert on all domesticated animals, and these cows seemed remarkably skittish. They usually fled if I came within 50 feet of them, though there were a few ornery-looking bulls to whom I gave a nice wiiiiiiide berth.

I have no idea how to describe the details of this hike in an interesting fashion, so I'm not going to try. There were some interesting features worth pointing out, though:

Interesting Feature 1: Swing Bridges

Yeah! Sweet sweet Indiana Jones-style action! They're actually a lot of fun to cross when you aren't surrounded by savages on one side and Nazis or something on the other. They definitely live up to their name, especially when it's windy out, but you'd have to work pretty hard to actually fall off of one.

Interesting Feature 2: Huts

Huts may be the single most wonderful aspect of hiking in New Zealand. All tracks maintained by the Department of Conservation have lovely little huts for trampers to spend the night in, usually spaced a day's walk apart (anywhere from 2-8 hours). They're spartan, but have the basics: clean water (collected rainwater or clean stream/river water), a wood or coal-heated stove, and several bunks complete with foam mattresses. All of the huts on the St. James also had 3-4 Reader's Digests on hand! I immediately reverted to my childhood habit of reading through all the reader-submitted joke/story sections and ignoring the rest. But really, the best part about the huts is knowing that you're going to be dry (or at least not get any wetter) that night when you're hiking through a non-stop downpour.

The lovely Boyle Flats Hut.
The bunks. Unless you're sharing the hut with someone who snores (which, luckily, I only experienced once), communal sleepin' is dandy.
The kitchen. Yeah, it's pretty much just a counter to cook on. When the huts are full, the sound of running camp stoves around breakfast and dinner times is almost deafening! This is also where I realized that bringing penne pasta on a camping trip was a really stupid idea. Its shape means it occupies waaaaay more space for its weight than spaghetti, thus takes more water to cook properly, thus takes longer to cook. Lesson learned.
The dining room. Yup, there it is.

Enough allegedly interesting features. On to the allegedly interesting pictures. They're generally lacking in human interest since I was travelling alone. Sowwy.

The Boyle River.
Beech forest.
Some...natural stuff. The orange arrow on the tree was my buddy in that he told me where the trail was so I wouldn't stray and become feral.
Ferns! New Zealand has lots of 'em. It's sort of the logo of every Kiwi's pride and joy, the All Blacks (the national rugby team).
Grass! Scenery! I thought the grove of similar trees in the background was kinda neat.
These trees were covered with evil poky thorns of death. (I discovered this when I grabbed one in an attempt to avoid falling. Falling quickly became preferable.) Anyway, being spiny like cacti, I thought it would be funny to take a New Zealand version of the classic "Lazy Mexican in a Sombrero Sleeping Against a Cactus" picture. I don't think it worked.
Christopher Hut, complete with blue sky and lovely view. This was probably the most beautiful part of the hike.
More mountains! This time in the mist and stuff!

OK, so those pictures were pretty weak. The second hike I did, the Rees-Dart, was way better in every possible way, pictures included. But that'll have to wait for Episode III. Sowwy again.

New Zealand, Episode I: No, I Did Not See Any Goddamn Hobbits

In the wild, at least. I saw Return of the King on opening night, though. Given the film's strong New Zealand ties, I expected a wildly enthusiastic crowd to drown out most of the film's dialogue with cries of "that's our grassy tussock, baby!", and "you go, Remarkables Mountain Range!". I was sorely disappointed. I mean, the whole country is dripping with LoTR propaganda and tie-ins; you'd think Gollum was the fucking prime minister ("Nasty, wicked Labor Party, trying to take our precious wheat tariff away!"). The least these damn Kiwis could do is show a little national pride! Still, the film was enjoyable in spite of the fact that the earth's continents managed to hold a Pangea Reunion (Asia: "Dude, I can't believe South America got so wasted!") and re-disperse before anyone left theaters.

Reams of research failed to convince Dubya that greenhouse gases are a problem - not sure what we can do about that. But if he doubts the decay of the ozone layer, we can just bring him to Christchurch, NZ on a sunny day. I was sunburned literally 30 minutes after leaving the airport, and at least half of those minutes were spent in a bus. Yes, this is attributable at least in part to my fair, supple, enchantingly milky-white skin, but the sun really is more potent Way Down South. I swears it!

Flesh-charring UV Rays and Omnipresent Posters of Orlando Bloom Melting My Heart With Those Elven Bedroom Eyes aside, Christchurch is a pretty nice place. I stayed at a backpackers' hostel called the Vagabond, a lovely little place full of lovely normal-sized people.

OK, that picture makes it look like a halfway home for recycling zealots, but it's a really great place. And it's across the street from the Christchurch [Lawn] Bowling Club, with its unexpected Dragonball Z-themed fence to boot!

Anyway, at the (aptly-named) Vagabond I met several other people in my boat - the S.S. I'm Touring NZ Alone But That Doesn't Mean I'm Socially Inept and Incapable of Making Friends, OK? God, Just Leave Me Alone! - and, contrary to our poorly-christened boat, had a great time with them. For the day before we all went our separate ways, anyhow. I haven't done much travelling that involved frequent stays in hostels, but I'm guessing this is sort of the norm: meet cool people, have a fun day together, exchange email addresses, never see each other again. Still, better to be friends for a day than not at all. It's refreshing to know that the world is full of cool people - especially Germans. What the hell? Every German I met was fucking awesome. It's gotta be the beer.

Speaking of which, unlike the Japanese, Kiwis have realized that there are types of beer other than lager, much to the delight of my developing gut. Really, it was nice just to be in a Western-ish country for a little while. Sure, I'm pleased as punch to be back in Japan, but there's something nice about being able to comprehend a menu without resorting to Sesame Street-style sounding out of words. (See the section on Katakana in "Nihon-golicious" for more info - holy shit, I just referenced myself.)

Oh. December and January are the peak tourism months in NZ. Me being me, I had almost nothing planned when I arrived; I just knew I wanted to do a bunch of backpacking (tramping, in Kiwi-ese). Amazingly, I managed to throw together a quality itinerary hours after arriving. After an extra day for pre-tramp prep, I broke up a marriage and hopped on a bus bound for the St. James Walkway with the bride, the tune of "Scarborough Fair" playing all the while. Does anyone else think The Graduate is a really unenjoyable film? Just curious.

Will Brian survive the dreaded swinging bridges of the St. James Walkway? Will the cattle that graze along the trail be lowing, or feasting on his candy-like entrails? To what degree can he overplay the fact that "beech" (tree) sounds like "bitch" in a Hispanic accent? All this and more will be revealed in Episode II: The Spirit's Willing, But The Knees are Genetically Weak or Why The Fuck Did I Bring Penne Pasta? Coming soon!!!

Teensy-Weensy Tip(sy?)

Just a quick note. I heart your comments, but it hurts my heart when you leave them using your real e-mail address. Why? Because the assclowns in the Brotherhood of Spam - possibly the same assclowns who occasionally add spamments to this log - will eventually find it and spam you up in the nether regions of your inbox, and no one likes that action.

Abridged version: leave comments, but use a fake/junk address!