Sea Day Snores

18052019

Day at sea. The WiFi is pretty poor on the ship. We have 1 login for the 4 of us and connectivity is an issue, so it is hard to get through these posts.

I try to write them into a Google doc and then cut+paste into the blog as I get better internet.

As far as the day goes, we slept in late, and spent the day reading and watching the sea.

Given that this is a smaller ship, there is less to do on these slow days. Only one outdoor and one indoor bar, with few drink specials, the dining room, the buffet and a small snack bar. I appreciate the smaller vessel.for other reasons, the tours are more intimate, onboarding/offloading is quick and easy with only 200 other passengers.l, and most importantly the vessel can sneak into ports closer to the destination.

Also the cabins are very spacious, this combined with having my parents here, leads us to be spending more time in our cabin hanging out that out n about getting happy hours and playing Scrabble. Also they print the New York times crossword, which is wayyy harder than the one Holland America was printing for us. And it's no fun being bad at crosswords.

I don't remember what dinner was, or what time we finally went to bed. But the day was generally uneventful.

c'est la vie

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We woke up in time for laura to watch the world series, and we got some laundry done, so we have enough socks and underwear for another 10 days.

We went back to the super mall train station thing because the density of available restaurants, for late lunch early dinner. Where we ate some Tongkatsu, which is a Kyoto specialty, a breaded fried pork loin. It was delicious, and came with a light shredded cabbage salad, bowl of Miso and a bowl of rice. This place kinda had an olive garden vibe, as the soup, salad, and rice was all you can eat. The meat is breaded in panko, and then fried in vegetable oil so it's not as heavy, and it is served on a little grate, so it's not hanging out in its own grease all day.

Then we hopped the train with our rail passes to Inari, which is where the Fushimi Inari Taisha is. Which is a complex of shrines dedicated to Inari, the idol of rice, and business.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fushimi_Inari-taisha

The first structures were built there in the 800s, with the main shrine being constructed in 1499.

Its original importance was designated when one of the emperors of the 900s decreed that important events be recorded and stored by the monks of prominent shrines, including this one.

This complex is huge and had shrines all over the mountain. Big ones and small ones, cemeteries akin to the ones seen in Tokyo.

They also had fox sculptures everywhere, the fox is considered a messenger. I suppose because healthy communication is a good business practice?

The first part of this walk was very pleasant, walking through the torii that have been donated by businesses across Japan for centuries.

And then we veered off because the sign said "top of mountain" this took is off the main path, through the wood and away from tourists.

It was beautiful, and bring away from guides of tourists is always great. Did I mention it was a national holiday? Culture day, so everyone was going and doing culture stuff, and given this place is 2 stops away from Kyoto, it was pretty busy.

While walking it started getting darker, and the path less defined, fortunately the sub-shrines let us know we were on the right track.

And then we really got off the path, and there were stairs, so many, uneven, illrepaired stairs
But this was good, because it meant we were getting close. Despite the evening chill, we started sweating out all the pork we just ate. And just when it was seemingly too dark to continue, we reached the top.

It was neat, we felt accomplished, but honestly it looked just like all the shrines we came upon on the way up, and there were no views, so it felt a little anticlimactic.

So we headed down the hill. And came o a sweeping view of the city.

And the walked the rest of the way down
I guess we just took the hard way up.

We left the shrine path through a different area than we entered. We were in a residential neighborhood, with sign of the shrine out train station but gaggles it other tourists also lost. We eventually found the shrine and got some stuffed pancake pastries and trained home.

We decided we wanted to check out the bar scene in the area. Unfortunately, not speaking any Japanese or having a fixer, we used trip adviser.

You know who rates stuff on trip advisor? Western tourists.

You know who you should trust for good local bars? Locals.

Notice how those two populations are mutually exclusive.

The first bar we went to was said to be a great craft beer place. That sounded great, we had only had the Japanese domestic macro brews, good to try something new. They had about 8 drafts of crafts, all priced the same based on size of the beer. And all sizes were small, not taster small but like too small to enjoy, and expensive. 11.75USD per pint, except they served like 8 oz.

I really wanted to like this place, it's called Tadg's, it sounds great on the internet, I'm telling you right now, if you are from the US, particularly places that take pride in their craft/micro brew scene,you will be disappointed. The selection is OK, and the prices are through the roof. Honestly stick to 500ml bottles of Sapporo.

I think craft beer here is kind of more like wine bars in the States. Where people pay alot of money, for stuff that is only marginally better than what they normally get. Almost like a Veblen good?

Anyways the second bar completely and utterly made up for that flop. F.S.N. bar. It's a bar ran by a French expat, mostly full of French, less so other foreigners, and a hand full of Japanese. Philippe made a bar that was exactly what he wanted in a bar, because apparently no one else did it that way. And it works. It's above a clubby bar, has a big glass wall behind the bar, with a patio, that he grows vegetables in, that he uses in the one dish type he serves that day. The place is super cozy and we will probably go back because they have a live band coming this weekend.

https://www.tripadvisor.com/Restaurant_Review-g298564-d8600265-Reviews-Chez_Philippe_FSN_Bar-Kyoto_Kyoto_Prefecture_Kinki.html

Philippe was super cool, kept his skull chalice full of beer and made a good brandy old fashioned on his first attempt, and a great one on his second.

We got caught up in conversation with Philippe, an Australian guy who works for a yeast factory and has lived and traveled all over, and another French expat that has been living in Kyoto for 26 years.

We talked about all kinds of stuff, US politics, changes in Japan, rise of China, how big the US is, the weather, traveling, and where to eat. The other Frenchman, whose name I don't remember, and may not have even gotten drew us a map, and being as it was 245, and we were all ready to go home soon, he walked us to he restaurants he was talking about to ensure we knew where they were. We then got ramen with him, at a place he had been to periodically over the last quarter century.

He was very greatful for the ramen, we thought the 6USD bowl of soup didn't cover the knowledge he imparted us for the Kyoto area.

After that we walked briskly home, and passed out in the Ryokan.

Historians, cooler than you think

16712 today we had yet more class, which was unexciting, however after talking to claudia, i will be moving up to the advanced class. i described my predicament in my current class, that there is lots of grammar, and i believe i would better benefit from being treated like a child (learning the language from scratch, conversationally) than being shown grammar charts. my issue is i dont know the names of these tenses and forms in English, so i cant draw comparisons. charting a sentence as to where the subject and object and verb (those are all things in sentences right?) and identifying gerunds, isnt going to help, because i dont know what those are. however (despite my heavy use of slang here) i believe i have a better than tenuous grasp of English. if i were to speak spanish, and be corrected on the spot when using the wrong form/tense i would more quickly/comfortably acquire fluency (hence my being treated like a child, you dont show a Johnny 3 year old [or whenever you teach kids to speak] a grammar chart with the appropriate endings and conjugations when he says "i eated lunch today at school, and it was good" you correct him "no Johnny 3 year old, you ATE lunch today at school, and it was good" anyways, we will see how this class goes, if it goes horribly awry, i can always swallow my pride and drop down, ill probably never see these people again... after our normal language class we had a history lesson, this one covered 1880 through 1955. which goes through the modernization process (building of railroads, use of refrigerated boats to ship foodstuffs overseas) to the squalor that was the first quarter of the twentieth century, and the rise of Peron, and Peronismo. while the history is all cool n stuff, it can be easily found on the internet ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_Per%C3%B3n ). but you cant learn about our history professor on the internet (probably, i dunno i didnt look very hard). he is actually an ethnic Hungarian, speaks Hungarian, Polish, English, Spanish, Portuguese, French and i think he said something about a minimal knowledge of German too. anyways, he was quite knowledgeable, and after class i pestered him about the rise of Argentina (the whole becoming the breadbasket of Europe while Europe was busy industrializing/killing each other, in the last half of the nineteenth century), and the Argentine attitude during World War One, and views on US Imperialism of the late nineteenth century, and what the next lecture will be on. i may end up grilling him on the Falklands/Melvinas conflict as i believe that will be what my project will be on. after class we went to get a new phone, as the roommate managed to lose it in the 2 hours that he had it (literally the only 2 hours it has been in his possession it was lost). and the two of us wandered our way back to the commuter station, and happened upon two of the girls in our neighborhood, chatted on the train, and then in a pastryshop eating, you guessed it pastries, and drinking coffee. now im home, bout to go read more, sorry there aint no pretty pictures to look at, maybe tomorrow (but probably not)

the Sublime Strategist of All Nations and Times: Stalin

17512 the day started out innocuously enough, Czech language class in the morning, we practiced more of the restaurant conversation bits, then went on to discuss the Austro-Hungarian empire. Harlow went into a little bit the history of Vienna, as we will be heading over there tomorrow. i do like talking about all the court intrigue, and empire-maneuvering the Hapsburgs did, so i was entertained. the classes were in the main building of the university, and it reminded me much of any other university building over 40 yrs old (so mostly not like northeastern). after which me and a few others got burgers, i had a "mexican" which had lettuce, tomatoes, a slice of cheese, home made ketchup, and "guacamole" the guacamole was the consistency of drinkable yogurt, and had hunks of cucumber in it. regardless, it was tasty, we went home, reconvened and headed to the KGB museum up the hill. HOLY SHIT. the museum was ok, a bunch of stuff that he "bought, changed (i think he meant traded) and stole, filled this rather small space. the guy that runs it is russian, spends half his time in "the City of Lenin" (Leningrad {now known as St. Petersburg}) and the other half here in Prague, running this museum. so we walk in, he speaks russian, and poor english, and immediately hands me a PPS ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PPS-43 ). and puts a hat on my head, explaining that this machine gun was designed during "second war". he put a hat on my head, and then went to the wall and pulled a WWII era CZ pistol, and some kinda Makarov to one of my party, a WWI era Nagant revolver to hand to someone else, and then a German MP-40 to the last of us, and takes pictures... all the while explaining briefly what each of the guns was now, i am comfortable with guns, but im not about to accept a firearm from some strange dude operating a tiny KGB museum in Prague, without checking it. i started racking the slide to ensure it was clear, it didnt budge, the safety didnt move, the mag release did nothing and while i have never handled one before, it seemed to be oddly balanced, i still never attempted to pull the trigger. i eventually got my hands on all of the guns, and all of them were misbalanced, with slides that didnt move, they were rendered thoroughly inoperable.

he showed us around and pointed out stuff, "this was the camera used by the NKVD for spying, it was made by NKVD orphan children" "this was the uniform used by NKVD, they had read star, it was not until later that whole red army had red star" there was a womans sniper uniform, covered in what i thought was hay, apparently it was horses cut from the tails of german horses, so the german dogs, who were often trained by officers on horseback, wouldnt smell the snipers out.

pokin around, they had some cool stuff, the guy seemed very knowledgable and very interested in what he was doing. it wasnt until later that myself and Alex (a history major) start to notice he is a little off. he briefly talked about how Trotsky was an American agent, working for US banks... the next section was talking about gulags, how the NKVD was used by Stalin to liquidate the rich Kulaks that refused to give up their land. he explains that Gulag is an acronym for Гла́вное управле́ние исправи́тельно-трудовы́х лагере́й и коло́ний, Chief Administration of Corrective Labor Camps and Colonies. he insisted that they were labor camps, and not concentration camps, that "no one killed anyone there". he extolled the White Sea - Baltic Canal, how the soviet workers dug 140 miles of canals, by hand in 21 months. he also talked about how Khrushchev demonized Stalin, saying that Stalin murdered millions of Soviet citizens, and our guide ardently claimed these were lies, that the great and beautiful Stalin would never do something like that. we meandered through more of the museum. and we decided it would be AWESOME to talk to this guy more, and we approached him as we were leaving, to see if we could get more out of him, he was very nervous, and blamed his reticence on his poor english, he ultimately accepted our email so he could send more info on the KGB and its incarnations, "not the defamation, lies, propaganda and slander like Алекса́ндр Иса́евич Солжени́цын. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksandr_Solzhenitsyn this was bananas. this guy genuinely believed in Stalinist Russia, at one point he mentioned how the higher ups ruined the Soviet Union, that Gorbachev and Kissinger worked together to unmake the country. I really really want to talk to him more, maybe we can get Harlow to come with and translate and ask questions. it was absolutely fascinating, i knew people still idolized Stalin, especially in the post-communist Russia, it was a shit hole, Russia became a superpower under Stalin, i get it but to claim subsequent historians are lairs and propagandists? thats PLANTAINS.

dunno whats goin on for the rest of the night, as i said, we are off to Vienna tomorrow, so i dunno how the internetz will be over there. if you dont hear from me, the internets shit, or the bus esploded or something.

Wednesday 13711

finally we get to something more my style, we met with people from the Belgrade Center for Security Policy (http://www.ccmr-bg.org/cms/view.php?id=2). the organization was created in 1997 focusing on raising the issue of why democratic control of armed forces is necessary, and the role of the Yugoslav forces in the conflicts of the 90s. around the turn of the century (again love that i can say that) the organization shifted its focus, and became more heavily involved in the military, helping to organize events with local and NATO forces for training and dialogue purposes.

the organization has seen that as the state structures develop so have military and security matter.

the primary goal of the center is to observe and rate the progress on reforms of the military apparatus, and has partner/sister organizations in all of the ex-Yugoslav states so that they can produce comparable data.

much like the US (though in different capacities)Serbia is having issues with private security forces, because there are no laws or regulations governing that sector.

the organization puts alot of thought into EU accession, worrying that if Serbia is not brought in soon, it will be left "outside" and reforms, will slow down heavily because there seems to be a lack of responsible political elite interested in pushing through the reforms.



sorry i missed out on the blogging for a few days, we got kinda caught up in fun-having and sleep-catching-up, been watching plenty Batman in my free time, and reading and generally wandering around the city, i also noticed, that a very large number of the chairs in this country, are of the exact same design, i took a pic of the one in my room, and ill see if i can get more pictures of that time of chair...leftovers from a command economy?