The Dark, Dirty Side of Tokyo

My day continues touring Tokyo with Tag, Matt, & Fred. 

Here is Yoyogi Park in Harajuku, one of the few "green spaces" in Tokyo.  This one even has an extensive rose garden!

What is that?!  Grass??  I haven't seen it for months!!  This is amazing!  Most parks have dirt or cement!

A beautiful fountain of Yoyogi Park.  This place is traditionally known for crazy "hippie" entertainers wandering about.  We did see some cool stuff (like wannabe Michael Jackson back-up dancers and Frisbee Olympics), but nothing too bizarre.

On to Shibuya, were I always love to eat dinner at TGIFridays!!  First, I also love to stop by and see Hachiko the famous dog statue.  Today he is being decorated for the Japan World Cup game that was being played a few hours later that day.

Crazy Japan World Cup Fans.  BTW - Japan lost the game and Fred (from France) was impressed that there was no rioting or looting!

Quick break in a silly photo machine!  (LOL... Tag decorated it with "We love Transfreight"!)

Here's Kabukicho in Shinkjuku. 

This is an entertainment district that isn't advertised to foreigners, so I've never been there.

It's a world of difference from all other areas of Japan.  There is trash every where, and it's like law doesn't exist in this area.  It's also known as the "red light district".  Here's a seedy club called Glitter designed exclusively for women clientele.

I can even check out the "working boys" before I enter.  My first thought was... "These are guys?  What's with the long hair?"  Yikes!!

Here's a poster for just a few of the "working girls".  I'm kind of disturbed by the one with the machine gun...

Quite an education for me, and I can see why they don't want foreigners hanging out in this area.  It was decidedly creepy and sleazy. 

I leave you with one more fun photo booth pic.  Can you believe that it wasn't even my suggestion to take these pics?!  That is definitely one cool thing about Japan :)  They love pics maybe even more than me!!

We have another full day of exploring Tokyo left, so stay tuned!!

Biz Trip to KY Update

I'm back from my whirlwind trip to Kentucky, and I'm finally feeling like myself again. I think a combination of the jet lag and busy schedule last week really caught up to me earlier this week!
It's tough to get me and 18 men at the right place at the right time for several days in a row!! I was stressed out to say the least! But my meeting was a success, and here's a few photos to prove it...
Kerri and her crew of (mostly) foreigners. If we count Canadians as "foreigners", then there is only one other American citizen in attendance!
Jazzy Kerri and Jazzy Dani at the bowling event on St. Patty's Day. It was total chaos, but everyone liked that you could smoke non-stop and seemed to enjoy themselves!!

Pretty funny to see a bunch of guys in suits taking up 5 lanes at the bowling alley!

My final day in Kentucky, I had some "free" time. I use that term loosely because I still had plenty of work meetings, and I felt guilty for not playing tour guide for the few foreigners left in town.

But in true American style, by the evening I got over my guilt and spent some time at Turfway Park betting on the ponies with my friends. (I won 4 races!) Finally we rounded out the busy week by going to a new (to me) bar in Covington. There were stained glass windows all over the place, including the ceilings. I found it slightly unsettling that we were drinking underneath all of these reminders of Jesus, the Disciples, and the Virgin Mary. The bar didn't look like a former Catholic church, but who knows?!

Here's a gift I received this week from a Mitsui visitor from Vancouver, Canada. He felt bad that he was unable to attend my big meeting last week, and I must have really made a nice impression on him through all of my emails!!

It's a special Canadian dollar from the 2010 Olympics, and I'm the only one in the office who received one! (Can anyone say "American Princess"?!) The best part about the whole thing is that if you live in Japan you may actually believe that the Olympics are still happening... I fell asleep last night watching the women's curling event on TV once again!

Quick trip to Hong Kong & China

On Friday I went to China and finally saw some familiar faces from Mitsui and Transfreight. We had a full day of visiting our sister company, Transfreight China, and a plant tour of their customer, Toyota China. Both facilities are in Guangzhou, but there were no flights into Guangzhou, so that's why I had to fly into Hong Kong and then take a 2-hour car ride.

You may recall in a earlier blog that I said Hong Kong is part of China, but not really. I don't have much to say about Hong Kong since I was there for a whole 6 hours. It was dark when I arrived and still dark when I left, but in Hong Kong they drive on the left side of the road. So when we went through the border of China, then the road switched to driving on the right side!! Every time we came to a toll booth, the driver had to put the vehicle in park, get out, walk around the car, and swipe his card! The whole thing was so silly!!

After a hard day's work, we went out for a traditional Chinese dinner where 12 people sat at a round table and shared food from the center. It reminded me of Japan because the dishes never seemed to stop coming. There were so many options, and you could just grab whatever you wanted with your chopsticks! I tried pretty much everything except this fish head below. They really wanted me to dig out and eat the cheek meat, but I declined. The theme the entire night was "This dish is really good for you." Uh, well, I didn't see anyone else scrambling for this cheek meat after I declined it! I think they just mess with me some times to see much how I will believe!

Oh yeah, one plate of chicken came with even the head on it!!

After dinner we walked around the streets of Guangzhou, checking out the sights and window shopping. The Chinese are preparing for the New Year on February 14th, and they often celebrate this holiday for a whole week! Everyone loves the Year of the Tiger!!

Me and my trainer, Kawakami. I thought it was so funny to see Pizza Hut in Chinese characters!!

In one area there was a row of glass boxes and you could see a street below. This is the original street from the "Song Dynasty" from the years 960-1279 A.D.!! It's crazy to imagine the depth of the history in China and that so much of it still remains!

Trees decorated with lights and red lanterns for the Chinese New Year.

The company "361 Degrees" is a big sponsor of the Asian Olympic games, which will take place in Guangzhou in late 2010.

I love these cute cartoon characters supporting the 2010 Asian Olympic games, too!!

China was very interesting, but the air quality in Guangzhou is terrible. Visibility is poor due to smog and haze, so much you often can't see the top of skyscrapers and towers. I heard that one Mitsui guy from Japan lived there for 7 years, and when he came back his doctor told him he needed to stop smoking. But this guy wasn't a smoker!! His lungs were damaged from sucking in all of the secondhand smoke and dirty air!

You had to insert your room key in the hotel elevator and then select the floor you wanted to go to. My companions are convinced it's because the Chinese government is tracking everyone and wants to know when you are in your room or not!! It is a little sketchy... when I tried to used the internet, many sites were completely inaccessible, such as facebook, youtube, blogspot, and others!

Finally, I wasn't sure they were going to let me leave China. The Immigrations officer was really studying my passport and then me, and then back and forth again. Finally she asked "Is this really you?" I said yes. And she responded by saying the photo didn't look like me and that person was fat!! My travel buddies thought this was hysterical! I was kind of offended, but then it's better to hear that I look fat in an old photo rather than hearing that I look fat in person, I guess! I pulled my hair back, tried to form a double chin, and finally they let me get on the plane!!

India: New Delhi & Gurgaon

Welcome to the last stop on my tour of India! The capital city of New Delhi and the surrounding countryside of Gurgaon, where the Transystem crossdock is located. Below is a picture from my hotel room. Although the weather is much cooler here (high 60's rather than 80's), you can still see how hazy it is. I'm unsure why the air quality is so poor considering they don't have a lot of industry to pollute the air.

Delhi was a mix of more modern and oddly more traditional India all in one. For instance, some of their roads were much better. One road even had separate lanes for motorcycles, cars, and buses, divided by curb-like medians. I'm not saying there weren't still a mixture of vehicles on the roads, but at least there was an attempt for some order. There were also many U-turns, kind of like "Michigan lefts", where you pass a place and then have to wait for a break in the median and backtrack. I will kindly refer to them as "Delhi rights". Also of note is Delhi has a traffic problem (shocking), so no trucks are allowed in the city limits during daylight hours. All supplier pick ups for Toyota must occur at night, which is different than Bangalore where truck driving was banned at night since it's unsafe.

Many women were wearing jeans or slacks, and not the traditional saree. But then again, I saw a lot of people with scarves (men and women) covering their heads (not faces). At first I thought it was to protect against the "cold" weather, but they remained hooded even during the sunniest, warmest part of the day.

Here's a nice pool at the final hotel. Had the weather been warmer and this been a pleasure trip, I would have loved to spend some time there :)

Above and below are a couple photos of Indian infrastructure in progress. They are way behind with technology, building materials, processes, etc. People say that India is the place to be for future growth, and although it lags behind the rests of the world by 20 years (I'd say more), the overpopulation is a blessing because it provides a strong, available workforce to build highways and buildings.

In fact, one Indian told me that they're not really affected by the recession like America or other parts of the world because they have few exports & imports and can rely on themselves. (Uh, yeah, sure... that's the reason... or it could be that people don't have money to spend even during the "good" times.)

On one street corner, I saw some Indians making several brick walls by hand. It looked like it would fall over with one good kick. It didn't look like a "real" job with organized labor, so I wondered where the materials (bricks and mortar) came from?? The cool part was the women would carry bricks on their head (2x2 as tall as they could reach), and then bring them over to the men who were doing the laying.

Here's one example of "Hindi English". In India, each state has it's own basic language, and since the 20 states can't understand each other, they rely on English as the common back-up language. There were several signs that I saw misspelled, or else just sounded strange. For instance, they say: "expired" instead of died, "diversion" instead of detour, and in Hindi "yesterday" and "tomorrow" are the same word but you listen to the tense to understand which one it should really be. So the driver would say weird things like "We will meet at 9am yesterday?". Lastly, they love the word "Enclave". It was all over signs and bus stops, and after looking it up on http://www.m-w.com/ I guess they are using it correctly. But it did make me miss my car!

Our last stop was the Gurgaon crossdock. I took a picture of the "neighborhood" just outside the dock door because I was a minor celebrity there. Apparently some 10-year-old spotted me walking around inside the building and kept calling out things like "hey lady". Next thing you know, he's gathered his whole family, and there were like 12-15 Indian people peering over this brick wall to get a glimpse at the white lady. I felt like Princess Diana and thought about taking a step out from the shadows of the dock and giving a wave, but alas something at work brought me back to the real reason I was there, and I quickly forgot about my spectators.

New Delhi and Gurgaon also had the worst beggars. They would wander through the streets banging on windows and knocking on car doors for money at intersections or in traffic jams. I always knew some unsavory thing was about to happen when the driver would hit the auto door locks!! Some of the more enterprising people would be trying to sell goods to the passengers in cars. The items, I'm sure, were all "hot", and were weird things like toy airplanes, cloth napkins, multi-phone charges, head massagers, shoes, etc. The most popular one for me was "People" magazine. Apparently, everyone thought the white lady really needed some reading material.

The final hotel we stayed at was very swanky with EVERY staff member calling me Miss Green. I must say it was a little unnerving. Some times I just wanted to fly under the radar. They would pick me out and want to give me special treatment. I was selecting my food from the breakfast buffet, and the waiter wanted to bring a traditional Indian breakfast out for Miss Green. I told him no, that I wasn't very hungry, but alas it still arrived at my table a few minutes later. And all of the waiters and staff watched me eat it and waited for my reaction!!

Lastly, kids will be kids no matter where you are in the world. I saw a few Indian kids arguing in the street. What looked like a big sister then pushed her little brother into a mud puddle. LOL. Those things made me smile :) Every once in awhile a kid would spot me in the car and wave from the school bus. Of course I would wave back. Then we'd be stuck in traffic or at another intersection, and word would spread so more kids would start waving and smiling, and I'd have to do more waving back. As long as they were in a bus and not begging for money, I thought it was cute!!

India: Bangalore & Bidadi

Wow, so much to say about India. It has been overwhelming so far. I'm having trouble putting it in words, but I'll try my best! But first... the trip. We need to work up to the main event! Nagoya Airport. For everyone who wondered how I would manage by myself in December, mystery solved. All signs are also in English. Oddly enough all pilot's announcements have been in English, and the first flight attendants announcements are also in English. The Nagoya airport is beautiful. I keep forgetting that Nagoya is a port city (since by apartment is nowhere near it), and the airport is actually on a man-made island since they ran out of space on the mainland!! It is also fairly new. Opened in summer 2005.

Me and my travel buddy, Jacky. (Real name: Quan Wen, Mitsui trainee from China.) This is the first trip to India for both of us. We do have some language barriers, though. Jacky speaks Chinese and Japanese, and is learning English. While I, of course, speak only English, and am learning Japanese. We make quite the dynamic duo!! The Japanese immigration people were giving me visa issues at the airport and required me to pay the 3000 yen to leave (about $33). LOL. I will have to investigate so I don't have these problems with my next flight! My hotel room in India. A king-sized bed!! I forgot what is was like to sleep like royalty!

Bathroom. Notice the cool window from the bathtub looking into the bedroom!

View from hotel room.

Here starts the fun of my drive to work. I apologize that all of my pics are taken through a window of a car, but it's probably better for me that way! Kids walking to school.

Auto-rickshaws. These things are every where, kind of like an Indian taxi. We were told never to take public transportation. We actually hired a driver for the entire day through the hotel. Same goes for a ride from the airport. The hotel will send a driver with a sign for you.

Streets of Bangalore. The man on the left has no pants, more like a plaid towel wrapped around himself. The women always look beautiful, dressed in bright "sarees" (not head-to-toe burkas as I was expecting!) despite their crappy surroundings.

"Time for school, kids!" 3 deep on the motorcycle made me giggle, but it was quite common!

A bunch of locals having breakfast. Shoes are optional everywhere, and if you have them, they were undoubtedly flip-flop style sandals so your tootsies were all dusty and dirty.

Not sure what everyone is waiting for. India has more people than I have ever seen in my life!!

These piles of green fruit (I presume) are everywhere, but even the locals could not tell me what they were! Always a pile of fresh ones (left), and a pile of rotting leftovers (right).

More people just watching traffic go by.

A Hindu temple. Very beautiful.

Mopeds and motorcycles are everywhere, but then again so were buses, cars, and trucks. The distance from the hotel to work was 30 kilometers (~20 miles) took at least 90 minutes. Sometimes 2 full hours. Top speed is 40 kph (~25 mph) in the entire country of India. Even for the truck drivers carrying auto parts or finished vehicles!!

I saw everything on this ride to work. There are sometimes lines on the road, but they mean nothing at all. 2 "lanes" easily becomes 4 (or 5)! Honking was non-stop. I think it was more "I'm coming up on the left side of you"or "I'm behind you", than "Get out of my way". Drivers didn't seem fazed by anything, and people were walking everywhere. In the middle of the road, between cars, etc. I was too afraid to even roll down a window!! This experience beats any other crazy taxi ride I've ever had in Mexico, NYC, or Europe! Unbelievable.

Goats just chilling. I also saw many stray dogs (all the color of dirt) that no one seemed to even notice. Cows were roaming about eating trash from the ditches. (Cows are sacred in India and cannot be served in restaurants without a permit. Even then the only restaurant the locals could name who served beef was Hard Rock Cafe!) Sheep and chickens were also seen. I was told to watch for monkeys, but alas haven't seen one scampering by our Toyota yet.

A cow on the side of the road. Plus some super-skinny locals. I saw plenty of well-fed Indians around, too. I wonder if it's a status thing. Hey, look at me, I'm a fatty because I can afford to eat?! I have no idea... just a theory.

Piles of trash are everywhere.

Some homes we passed on the way to work. These are not slums. These are lush accommodations. I saw many slums in the distance, but never got close enough for photos. As I mentioned before, perhaps it's better that way.

Indian barbecue for dinner. We cooked it right at the table. Pretty yummy, but SUPER spicy. They ordered me special "no spice" skewers, but even those babies packed some heat!! I am told this was the nicest restaurant in town, and the cost for unlimited barbecue appetizers (shown above), a large buffet, and a dessert bar was 500 rupees ($10.80) Everyone was very accommodating and was always concerned that I was enjoying my food. They even let me pick out our lunch spot the 2nd day. I choose the canteen (cafeteria) at work. It is only 1 choice every day (vegetarian curry) for 25 rupees (~$0.50). I figure when in India, better eat like the Indians!!

Kerri & Jacky at work: Transystem, sister company to Transfreight. Lucky that I look so damn cute in a baseball hat since it's part of our safety gear!

They cut the grass by hand here... No joke. This guy has clippers, and he worked on this for hours.

One of the few places there weren't thousands of people around!!! Indian Oil gas station. All over the city, I still haven't seen a sign for the price of fuel.

This woman is carrying sticks on her head. No hands, just balance. And I can barely carry a cup of water with 2 hands from the kitchen to the living room without spilling it.

This arch separates Bidadi (where work and the Toyota plant is located) from the city of Bangalore. It is 6km from here to the hotel, and it took 70 minutes to get to the hotel from this point!! The driver today told me that once you are in the city limits, there are no driving rules, no traffic lights, no streets signs, no LAW!! Just people and vehicles everywhere. Before we reached this arch, the driver pointed out the police on the side of the road to me. There were about 8 officers, and one had a speed gun. The fine for a speeding ticket is 300 rupees (~$6.50). Can you imagine?! People were so paranoid about getting and ticket and fine. As I mentioned, things are cheap here in India, we passed a McDonald's that advertised a "Happy Price Menu" for 22 rupees (~$0.48). One featured item was the McAloo Tikki burger. Since I know they don't serve beef, I googled it: McAloo Tikki burger is a veggie burger made with potatoes, peas, and spices, topped with tomato, onions, and a veggie-tomato mayo. That's it for now, but plenty more tidbits to come. I made "notes" of all the nuttiness, and I still go to Chennai and New Delhi later in the week!