Hello Everyone,

This file represents my first effort at Web publishing and travel writing. I'll be making regular entries here to record my impressions of Thailand and Japan. Feedback or commentary via Email will be welcomed!

This file will be accessible at: (add it to your bookmarks!) http://hsunext.physics.yale.edu/~hsu/asia.txt

This site is also MIRRORED in Japan at: http://musashi.phys.metro-u.ac.jp/~hsu/asia.txt (This version is directly linked to the file asia.txt on the machine musashi here. You will therefore always see the most recent version of the file at this address. But please don't use this if you can get to hsunext -- the internet connection here is slow and we don't want to use up the bandwith.)

A map of Thailand can be found at: http://www.globetrotting.co.uk/south.htm

Here is my itinerary: (I am flying on Northwest Airlines)

May 21 JFK--Tokyo--Bangkok

May 22 arrive Bangkok, spend 12 hours at an airport hotel (I'll need to recover), and then fly to the island of Ko Samui on Bangkok Air.

I will stay at the Comfort Inn at the Bangkok Airport: (Phone) 66 2552 8921 and the Samui Resotel (`Munchies Resort') on Ko Samui: Phone/Address: Chaweng Beach, Ko Samui Suratthani, 84320, Thailand. Tel: 6677-422374 Fax: 6677-422421 email: resotel@loxinfo.co.th

I will probably make a trip to the island of Ko Pha Ngan for the full moon festival. If I get tired of beaches, monkeys and coconuts I'll return to Bangkok and then travel north, possibly to Chiang Mai.

June 2 Bangkok--Tokyo I will be staying at the International House at Tokyo Metropolitan University in Minami-Ohsawa (western part of Tokyo). My host there is another physics professor, Noriaki Kitazawa. Phone: 0426-77-2523.

Aug 4 Tokyo--Honolulu I will be staying at the Comfort Inn, Honolulu, on beautiful Waikiki beach. Phone: (808)-946-8355

Aug 11 Honolulu--JFK I will be recuperating in the Payne-Whitney Gymnasium complex at Yale.

MADE IT TO TOKYO!

I am now in Tokyo, at Tokyo Metropolitan University to be exact. I can be reached via email at my usual address -- I am forwarding the mail to my account here, which is hsu@musashi.phys.metro-u.ac.jp (you don't really need to know this -- just continue writing to me at hsunext). My phone numbers: 0426-77-3001 (lv. msg, 9 AM-9 PM) 0426-77-3011 (home) 0426-77-2501 (office)

THAILAND REPORT:

I'll keep this brief for the moment, and try to add some more later. Thailand was definitely all it was cracked up to be! It was beautiful, exotic and friendly. (I am referring to the country here, but all three apply to the women as well!)

I spent most of my visit on Ko Samui. I liked it so much that I ended up only spending one night in Bangkok (poetic, no?) before leaving for Tokyo.

Samui is incredibly beautiful. There are long, sandy beaches as well as secluded rocky alcoves. The interior of the island is covered with mountains/jungle, and coconut groves. Among the exotic life forms I encountered were monkeys, lizards (big and small -- some from Deutschland :) ) and exotic birds.

I was lucky enough to meet some locals as well as expats on the island. The two most fascinating things for me were (1)learning about the lives of "real" Thais, and (2) getting the expat's stories. How does someone decide to drop everything and relocate to this little island in the Gulf of Thailand!? (I admit, it has its appeal!)

Two of my favorite people on the island were a Brit expat named Dave Stewart and his Thai girlfriend Eed (her nickname - Thai names are very long so they all have shorter nicknames). David runs (believe it or not) the Go Internet Cafe near Chaweng beach. It's a most congenial place (they have a site which you can easily find -- just search for samui internet and cafe with Altavista), and I spent a lot of time chatting with them.

I also got to know some of the local merchants who have their businesses near David's. I was invited to some of their informal dinners, which they have outside at dusk, and also to go out carousing with them at some real Thai places.

I know all the guys out there want to hear about the Thai women. Let me just make the following comments:

(1) Many of them are beautiful. They range from very East-Asian looking in the north (i.e. like Chinese), to much more exotic in the south (dark, with almost south-Asian or Indian features).

(2) Many of them are prostitutes. I found this out by accident on my first night there. I thought I could escape the nasty Bangkok bar scene by heading south, but I discovered that lots (not all) of the local girls who you might meet at the disco are also "working", albeit part-time and in a free-lance capacity. The girl I met, Noi, was very attractive, and told me she worked cleaning toilets at the airport! She was conservatively dressed, and nice enough to show me around the various discos in Hat Chaweng (the biggest tourist area), but in the end wanted money for you know what. It's important to remember that most Thais are pretty poor -- making $100-200 US per month. The going rate for a night with a semi-pro is about $20-60 dollars, depending on how good-looking/ experienced she is. Also, the semi-pro girls can be choosy, rejecting anybody they don't like. Someone like me -- a reasonable looking guy who is not a fat German tourist -- might be approached by quite a few girls on any given night at a club.

(3) Most are not prostitutes. Before you all go crazy, remember that MOST Thai women are very conservative (more so than American women), and wouldn't dream of asking for money for sex. It's just that in the touristed areas you are going to meet a lot more of type (2) above. I eventually met some women of type (3), and believe me they are charming. One of these women that I met, named AhWee (short for Jurahwee), was half-Chinese, and had lived in Malaysia as well as Thailand. (She said she once placed second in a Miss Malaysia contest, and I had no reason to doubt this :) ) She didn't speak much English, but was fluent in Mandarin Chinese, so I got to practice my Chinese with her. Believe it or not, I could communicate a lot better with her in Chinese than I could with the typical Thai girl in their broken English. AhWee's story is very sad -- both parents are dead, her mother after a long illness which used up most of the family's money. The place which she shares with another woman is TINY, with primitive bathroom and cooking arrangements, but it was immaculate.

Whenever I get to know people in developing countries, I can't help but feel frustrated about the hardships they face and the fact that there is very little I can do to help them. I hope you Wall St. fatcats think about these poor people every now and then when you light up a $20 cigar.

Final comment: Thailand is definitely a place where the mystery of the Orient persists. Although the country is developing rapidly, the people still retain much from their Buddhist heritage. Aside from the touts and hustlers, everyone I met was incredibly friendly. But more than this, there is a certain level of tolerance (and even fatalism) in Thailand that I do not detect as much in East-Asian cultures (China, Korea, Japan). There did not seem to be much resentment toward the rich farang (foreign) tourists -- not even for the fat old German walking down the street with his 20 year old, beautiful Thai "girlfriend". The only condemnation of the prostitutes I heard was extremely mild, and then only from the more conservative Thai women. Usually they would just say "I could not do that" rather than "what that woman does is wrong".

NOTES ON MUAY THAI

Muay Thai, or Thai boxing, is the martial art practiced in Thailand. It is extremely popular there, and fights are held in almost every provincial locale. It is a striking art, consisting of punches, kicks, knees and elbows. The last two are considered the most effective. Thai boxing has a good reputation in the U.S. martial arts community -- its representatives have done well in pro boxing competition (under regular boxing rules), producing several world champions in the lighter weight categories. Most shootfighters and NHB (no holds barred) fighters train in Muay Thai or regular boxing to complement their grappling skills.

I visited two schools on Samui, and attended a six fight card at the local Chaweng stadium. At the schools, I was impressed by the perfect technique displayed by kids only 10 years old. There were several farang (foreigners) training at the schools, although none of them had skills comparable to the Thai fighters. The schools are all outdoors, and training starts at dusk. It's quite a sight to see 20-30 men and boys hitting/kicking bags and sparring while the sun sets over palm trees in the background.

I have not quite decided how formidable these guys would be against a skilled grappler. I think a good wrestler of equal size (most of these Thai fighters are small -- the biggest I saw was maybe 155) could take one of these guys to the ground 4 out of 5 times without getting knocked out. From there it would be an easy win, as these guys have no clue about how to fight on the mat. However, the 5th time would be ugly, as these guys throw wicked knees to the head. The main question is how these odds would change if the Thai fighter had more training in avoiding takedowns.

In the fights I watched, there were a lot of clinches. One particularly instructive fight was between a farang (say, 150 lbs) and a Thai (say, 135 lbs). The Thai fighter had much better skills, and landed a ton of round kicks to the farang's ribs and stomach. However, the fight went the five round distance, so the kicks weren't decisive, although the farang's ribs were red by the end and he probably hurt like hell the next day. On the other hand, they clinched all the time, and sometimes the farang would throw the Thai (he had a weight advantage). In a real fight, the farang would probably have kicked the Thai guy's ass after the fight hit the floor. But under the rules, the ref kept them standing and the Thai figher won an easy decision. Incidentally, in the 6 fights I saw there was one decisive, nasty knockout, and one fight which was stopped on a cut. The rest went the distance.

Visiting the schools was very interesting. I was really getting itchy to step in and see whether I could shoot successfully on these guys and take them down, without getting KO'd. (I could just imagine the look of shock on one of their faces just before I choked them out!) But of course, I didn't want to take the chance of getting hurt while on vacation. You can get training there for 150 Baht ($6 US) per session. An American guy I met on the island went in for one session and ended up jamming his wrist while throwing a punch at a trainer wearing focus mitts. He was shaking his wrist and wincing for the next few days. But this guy had no previous fighting experience at all. By the way, it is so damn hot on the island that the average person would collapse after a few minutes of sparring. It's no wonder the fighters are so light -- they can't keep weight on while training under those conditions.

ONE NIGHT IN BANGKOK

I'm a little dubious about reporting all of this here, but what good is a travel diary if you have to censor the good parts?

Yes, I spent one night in Bangkok (my last night in Thailand), and yes I took the opportunity to check on all the reported sexual mayhem that goes on in that city. I'm not saying that I participated, but I definitely got a good look.

My flight to Tokyo was to depart at 6:00 AM in the morning, so I had to be at the airport by 4:00 AM. I had just flown into Bangkok's domestic airport from Ko Samui at about 6:30 PM. David Stewart, my friend who owns the internet cafe on Samui, suggested I just sit tight at the airport hotel and try to arrive in Tokyo in good shape. However, David is an old Thailand hand, and has seen Bangkok many times. I on the other hand, had only one night...

Surrounded by annoying touts and aggressive taxi drivers at the airport, I consulted my guidebook and found a hotel called the Nana Hotel, which is on Sukhumvit Rd (a central part of Bangkok, and near all of the "action"). Hopping a cab there took only 20 minutes -- note that you should avoid all the aggressive taxi drivers at the airport and take a regular city cab from the cab station, which is cheaper. The rate at Nana is 1000 Baht per night (US $40), but it is a pretty nice hotel with huge beds (don't ask me whether this is deliberate on their part), satellite TV and room service. It certainly felt luxurious compared to my bungalow on Samui. The uniformed staff there were also pretty efficient.

Now, those of you who are familiar with Bangkok will be laughing pretty hard since you know that the Nana hotel is across the street from the famed "Nana Entertainment Complex", which is one of Bangkok`s largest concentrations of girlie bars. Of course, I knew this too -- being on a tight schedule I wanted to be able to conduct my research as efficiently as possible.

OK, so the fun starts. I have a quick dinner at the hotel, then walk across the street to check out the "Entertainment Complex". It's a great time to visit because it's dinner time for all the girls there as well. Nana is a big three story building built around a big central courtyard. On the first two levels are girlie bars, beer gardens, a video arcade, etc. (There is also a hair salon/beauty parlor tucked into one of the corners. I guess the girls need to look their best! I bet not too many visitors notice this.) The third level is actually an internal hotel, with rooms which are rented by the hour! I got to see most of the staff sitting around the courtyard and surrounding terrace, having family-style Thai dinner. The same girls that would appear so overtly sexual a few hours later were busy eating, or washing and chopping vegetables or applying their makeup. Most of them were dressed casually in t-shirts and jeans. It was really quite a contrast to what I saw later!

Now, what exactly did I see later? My better judgement precludes me from giving you more than the following outline, but let me say that I didn't exactly arrive in Tokyo in great shape...

(1) Massage Parlor: I visited one of the infamous massage parlors (or "aquariums" as one of my American friends referred to them) in which the girls sit behind a glass wall and are selected by number. This was a pretty depressing sight, and it was made more unpleasant by the two Thai guys (employees), who were aggressively trying to get me to make a choice. I had allowed myself to be taken there by a cabbie in front of the hotel. Both he and the bellhop who brought up my bags had glossy color brochures describing the place (they get paid to bring people in). I had always wanted to see one of these places, although I had no intention of actually doing anything. The clientele consisted of the occasional farang (European), plus lots of guys who were probably Malaysian or Taiwanese Chinese businessmen, and Japanese. Most were older, except a couple of pimply-faced young Japanese guys. The girls looked sad, and the Thai guys were getting mad that I wouldn't commit myself, so I left.

By the way, I had a real problem here convincing those two moronic Thai guys that I wasn't Japanese. The price they were quoting me for a "session" was absurdly high -- 3000 Baht or US $120.

(2) Girlie bars: I was a little intimidated at first by these places (although, it turns out, for no reason -- they are actually very friendly places). Basically, they are fronts for prostitution. You watch the girls parade around and dance on stage, and if you like one you pay a "bar fine" to the bar to take them out. The deal you make with the girl is between the two of you. The bar fines were around 500 Baht (US $20) and the ("short time") rate for one of the many extremely attractive girls was about 1,500 Baht (US $60). I have to say that there were many, many stunning girls at these places, some very young (under 20).

As an amusing aside, as I was wandering around trying to muster the nerve to enter one of these places, I met two Indian guys from Madras -- Vikram and Reddy. They were young guys, both in college in Madras, and obviously from the upper class -- they were in Thailand to attend some kind of tennis camp (!?!), and both aspired to attend business school in the US. Vikram and Reddy were as overwhelmed by the scene as I, and since three is safer than one, we decided to check out the bars together.

This turned out to be a big mistake for me, as it turns out that Indians have a bad reputation in Thailand. We got treated pretty badly, and I later figured out that the bar girls do not like to be taken home by Indians. I don't know exactly why this is, but it became pretty apparent as time went on. Vikram wanted to attribute this to our lack of white skin, but he was clearly wrong as the other East Asians among the clientele were doing fine, and I was treated very well after I parted company with him and Reddy.

(3) The Nana Hotel scene. The late night scene at my hotel was pretty amusing. By day, it looks like any other international hotel, with posh cocktail lounge, uniformed staff, clocks behind the check-in counter showing the times around the world, etc. At night the place is crazy. Guys are running around the hallways shepherding beautiful girls to their rooms. The staff is looking on, amused. There are all kinds of misunderstandings, confusions and comical interactions between the girls and the clients, since usually they don't share fluency in a common language.

Perhaps the funniest thing I saw was the following. In order to understand this story you first have to know that in Thailand there are many transvestites called katoey, who are surgically altered and look uncannily like women. The Thai are extremely tolerant of these individuals, and they often work at girlie or cabaret bars. Now, before going to Thailand I had heard stories about these katoey, and frankly was very skeptical that they could pass as women. Let me tell you right now -- they can, and do! The katoey even go so far as to have their adam's apples surgically reduced. Until recently, this was the last best way to spot one. I spoke personally to MANY farang that had been fooled and accidentally went to bed with a katoey. One guy I met on Samui, a husky Brit expat who is the proprietor of a bar that boasts a katoey revue, is actually married to a katoey! (The guy is heterosexual, but apparently likes being with the katoey.) Several times on Samui I caught myself looking lasciviously at a "girl" who later turned out to be katoey!

So here's the story: a guy is walking across the street to my hotel with a very pretty girl who he has just taken out of one of the Nana bars. As he's crossing the street, he hears one of the tuk-tuk (motorbike taxi) drivers yell "katoey!" (this is often how helpful bystanders help out a confused farang, I think, although the driver may actually have shouted something else). In this case, I saw the girl and I am SURE she was not a katoey. But the farang hears what the guy shouted, and he turns to the girl and asks "Are you katoey?!" Now, the girl doesn't speak much english, and she obviously doesn't understand what the guy is asking. She just nods her head. He asks again, this time in a louder voice, and again the girl nods her head! This is too much for the guy, who yells "I can't go with you!" and runs into the hotel lobby, leaving the girl standing in the big double doorway. She had no idea what just happened! (The hotel staff are looking on, suppressing smiles.)

A final amusing thing is the 24 hr coffee shop. This is apparently a place where cheap-ass farangs can go afterhours to meet girls and avoid paying a bar fine. As I was leaving the hotel at 3:45 AM, I stopped there to get a glass of milk and some toast (I swear to God) on my way to the airport. The coffee shop was half-full of working girls from across the street, having breakfast and hanging out, with a few farang mixed in. Believe it or not, I was approached right at the counter of the shop, as I was drinking my milk.

TOKYO TIDBITS:

OK, here I am at Tokyo Metropolitan University, on the western outskirts of Tokyo. The campus was built very recently, and the buildings have a hyper-modern feel to them. Despite the fact that the school term is still in session, the campus seems rather uncrowded. The only place that I see large concentrations of people is at the lunch cafeteria. So far the weather has been very mild, almost chilly sometimes, which is a welcome relief after Thailand.

I live in the International House, only a few hundred meters from the physics building, and a five minute walk to the sports complex. The sports complex has a pool, B-ball courts, a small weight room, and of course a judo room. Today (6/5/97) I approached the captain of the judo team about working out with the club. He didn't speak too much English, but I think we understood each other. He had even heard of Gracie Jiujitsu (my style).

My hosts here are three extremely nice guys, all particle theorists: Noriaki Kitazawa, Osamu Yasuda and Hisakazu Minakata. Noriaki will be visiting us at Yale next year, and Osamu and Hisakazu have both spent time in the U.S. They have been holding my hand as I adjust to life in Japan. Osamu is the most direct and frank Japanese I have ever met (possibly a product of his 5 years as a postdoc in the U.S., but I'm sure his unique personality plays a role). One of his first questions to me was "So, what are you gonna do in Tokyo? Are you going to do any work?" :) Apparently Osamu's theory was that I was only coming here to sample the nightlife and chase Japanese women. How he got that impression I cannot imagine...

The food here is terrific, although the portions are small and I am fighting hard not to lose weight. Osamu is vastly amused that I can't tell the difference between the cafeteria Japanese food and what we had the other day for lunch at a local restaurant.

This weekend I am supposed to visit Kamakura, a historic site near Tokyo with one of the largest Buddha sculptures in Japan. My guide will be a stewardess from ANA (All Nippon Airways) named Akiko. Akiko introduced herself to me on the flight out here, and offered to show me around Tokyo. I swear this is how it happened -- I was minding my own business, standing at the back of the plane and stretching my legs. She first asked me if I wanted anything to drink. I demurely accepted a glass of water, and then we started talking... Akiko is fluent in English, her father being an English instructor in Tokyo. (In case you are wondering, I got switched to the ANA flight from Northwest because they had some engine trouble and their flight was delayed. It was completely fortuitous.)

(NB: I just inserted some new stuff above on my night in Bangkok, so look up there if you haven't read it (and want to) 6/6/97 .)

KAMAKURA CHAMELEON (6/7/97)

I just returned from Kamakura, a small city about 60 km south of Tokyo that was once the de facto capital of Japan (when it was under military rule from roughly 1100-1300 AD). The town boasts a large number (I only saw a fraction) of temples (Buddhist), shrines (Shinto) and (I am told) the most impressive Buddha sculpture in Japan. It also has a beach, but this turned out to be pretty nasty -- certainly nothing exciting after Thailand. What surprised me most about the town is that it is heavily wooded and hilly. My friend Akiko and I spent a lot of our time there literally hiking through the woods from historic site to historic site.

(One of the reasons I am at my office at this ungodly hour (11:03 PM) is that I just returned from the subway station and am starved again (I had dinner at about 7:00 PM), so I stopped here to get some food out of the vending machines. The vending machines in the science building include some amazing ones that will automatically microwave you little packages of noodles, gyoza, shumai and other goodies. I am determined not to lose any more weight this trip, so I decided to eat another meal before turning in.)

Kamakura was very nice, and quite a contrast to the hustle and bustle of Tokyo. Actually, this is not entirely true since at some of the temples/shrines there are so many tourists (mainly from Tokyo or the rest of Japan) that the whole atmosphere is spoiled. At the more remote sites, however, I did feel the intended atmosphere of tranquility. The big Buddha was also quite impressive, towering a good 30-40 feet above the crowds. I don't know if it's just me, but that benevolent, goofy look on Buddha's face always tends to put me at ease. Those Oriental artisans are onto something, I think.

Now, a little commentary on where I REALLY spent most of today: the Tokyo train system! Yes, it took me 1.5 hrs to get to Tokyo station, where I waited an hour or so for Akiko (I was early, but had to allow extra time in case I got lost or something). We then spent an hour riding down to Kamakura, and another hour coming back. She then had to ride 1.5 hours back to Chiba (where ANA keeps its stewardesses -- it's close to Narita), and I had a whopping 2 hours on the way home (the express trains on the Keio line apparently stop running at 8 PM so it takes longer to get back). So, by my calculations, I spent 6.5 hours today within the bowels of the JR (Japan Rail) or Keio line systems! (More time than I spent in Kamakura!)

However, time on the trains is not all bad, as it gives one a great opportunity to observe the Tokyo citizenry. I believe it's a pretty fair cross-section of the population, since pretty much everyone uses the system, unlike New York where above a certain level of affluence usage declines (Tokyo is much bigger than Manhattan so you can't really cab it from one side to the other, plus the subway is safe here). For you fashion trend-spotters, I note that the 70's retro look is huge here -- I saw a lot of bell bottoms, crazy 70's hairdos and retro-looking sneakers. Last time I was here (4-5 years ago?) a lot of the women were wearing skintight micro-mini's (much to my discomfort), but that doesn't seem to be so happening at the moment. (The women I saw dressed like that today were either slightly older or slightly more proletarian than the others.)

Physiognomy-wise, I saw a fair number of tall Japanese today, mostly young guys, in the over 6 ft range. (I imagine I visually encountered several thousand people today, with the tall guys really standing out in the crowd. The tallest guy was maybe 6"6). However, all of these guys were pretty skinny, which is not surprising given the low protein density of even the modern Japanese diet. I would guess that the average American kid gets at least 1.5 times the amount of protein and 3 times the amount of calcium per day as his Japanese counterpart. This is not because the Japanese are poor (far from it), but just a consequence of their eating/culinary habits. For example, a typical dish of noodles or rice here usually doesn't come with more than a few pieces of fish or meat. You seldom see people here wolfing down a quarter or half pound of meat in a sitting like you do back home, although this is changing with the popularity of hamburgers, etc. Of all the thousands of guys I saw today, only a handful looked like they could have played on the line for my high-school football team (I didn't see any athletic-looking guys over 190 lbs).

You can probably tell that I am currently obsessed with food, particularly my protein intake. Let me add out of fairness that I am aware that the Japanese diet is probably healthier than ours and that they have longer life-expectancies than Americans. Still, I seem to be hungry all the time around here and a bowl of noodles with two pieces of chicken floating in it just does not do the trick. And by the way, in my present reduced, pathetic 170lb state, I am hardly a big eater by U.S. standards -- just ask my graduate student Myck Schwetz, who weighs about the same and out-eats me at every meal.

A final note. I know what all of you nasty readers back in the states are thinking: WHAT HAPPENED WITH THE STEWARDESS?!? Well, you guys are going to be disappointed. NO, we didn't check into a "love hotel", and NO, these stewardesses are not (necessarily) loose women out on the prowl. Akiko is a very sweet girl who was nice enough to show me around today. She may be reappearing in this diary, but, please, we're not in Bangkok anymore ;)

(6/8/97)

Due to popular demand, this site is now MIRRORED at http://musashi.phys.metro-u.ac.jp/~hsu/asia.txt

This URL is directly linked to the file asia.txt on my machine (musashi) in Japan, and will therefore have the latest version of the file, warts and all. However, please look on hsunext first if you are in the U.S., as the internet connection from Tokyo runs through a bottleneck and is slow. We don't want to slow it any further!

JIUJITSU VS JUDO (6/9/97)

Today I had my workout with the judo club. It's actually a small club -- there were only four guys there other than me. All were blackbelts, and the team captain is nidan, which means second degree. In Japan it is easy to get to first degree (shodan) but much harder to get to the next level.

I worked out with two guys -- the captain (Matsuka?) and the biggest guy (Mukasa?). They were extremely nice and curious to see what jiujitsu newaza (mat technique) looks like compared to judo. The big guy was about my weight, but shorter. I finished him several times with juji gatame (cross armlock), okuri eri jime (sliding lapel choke) and sankaku jime (triangle choke). They were familiar with the techniques, but probably weren't used to seeing them applied from the guard position.

The captain was much better than the other guy. He's only 65 kg, but very quick and technical (he was using my gi against me all the time, even trying to secure one of my arms by wrapping it in my gi). Against him it was mostly a stalemate -- I couldn't finish him, but he did manage to pass my guard and put me in osaekomi (a hold).

All of this took about an hour (maybe a little less). I could tell I hadn't been on the mat for a while (3 weeks) because I got tired pretty fast. (I lifted weights for 40 minutes beforehand, but that is no excuse.) I'm going back on Wednesday. They are very friendly guys, and invited me to dinner, but I had to refuse in order to have dinner with my colleagues.

FEELING A BIT EEL (6/10/97)

I forgot to mention this little tidbit: the other day Osamu took me for dinner to a place which specializes in unagi (eel). I am a big fan of unagi and had been craving it since I got here. We went to a small place near campus, and each had a dinner consisting of a bowl unagi of over rice, some pickled vegetables and a bowl of soup. The soup had some vegetables and some sort of seafood in it, which at the time I took to be clam or mussel. After I finished the soup, Osamu informed me that what I had just eaten was the genitalia of a male eel! I'm glad he waited until the end to tell me...

The dinner we ordered was Y1800 or about US $15, so pretty similar to what it would cost in the U.S., except that in this case the eel was very fresh and came with the extra goodies! :-)

ERRATUM: Oops! Osamu now tells me that what I actually ate was the eel's liver, not its genitalia. Still a little gross, but not nearly as exciting as before. :-\

JIUJITSU VS JUDO II (6/12/97)

This discussion will get a bit technical, so if you are not a judoka or jiujitsuka you might want to skip some of it.

Yesterday I had my second workout with the TMU club. This time there were six guys there other than me, all with blackbelts. (Curiously, one of the guys with a very old, worn blackbelt was described to me as a "beginner" that they were teaching. I kept asking then if his belt was from karate or some other style, but no, it was in judo.) I got to work out with the big guy (Mukasa) again, as well as with the captain (Matsuka?). It turns out that the big guy is actually in the 95 kg class, which makes him much heavier than me. Previously I had thought we were relatively close in weight. It also turns out that the captain, who is really good, placed second in some collegiate championships (either All-Tokyo or All-Japan, I couldn't be sure) in the 65 kg class. This runs against Osamu's hypothesis that the TMU guys are no good at Judo. Also, I found out that last weekend they had a shiai (competition) with the University of Tokyo (Todai, Osamu's alma mater and the top academic school in Japan) and won!

The fights this time were more interesting. The big guy had worked out some defense against my triangle choke, so he was more effective working against my guard. He managed to pass my guard a few times by putting his weight on me when I went for the triangle, then rotating around to my side. This is all helped by the fact that the judoka like to start newaza in a position which is slightly advantageous to the guy on top -- he gets to control one or both of the bottom player's legs by holding the gi pants. Since we usually don't wear gi's in our practices at Yale this took some getting used to on my part. Last time I more or less dominated the big guy, finishing him easily several times. This time it was more of a stalemate.

On the other hand, I did better against the captain. The first time we played, starting with me on top, I choked him out immediately with juji jime (cross choke). He was shocked by this, and told me (through Mukasa, who speaks more English) that he wasn't expecting me to choke him from that position. In truth, I was only able to do it because I am bigger and stronger than him, so I can't take too much credit. In fact, there is a very good counter against this choke that the guy on the bottom can use, which leads to the top guy submitting to juji gatame. I showed this to the captain, and he was impressed -- he had never seen that sequence of moves. Over all I find the submission techniques of these guys a little weak, but their holds (osaekomi) are very strong. The difference is that in jiujitsu we can't win the fight simply by osaekomi, whereas in judo (30 seconds for Ippon!) they can.

Once again they invited me to dinner, but I had to decline due to the big Karaoke outing the butsurigakusha (physicists) had planned!

KARAOKE MANIA (6/12/97)

Last night we all went out for Karaoke. Hisakazu (his wife even joined us at the end), Osamu, Noriaki and five or six graduate students were all in attendance. The place was in a small shopping center across from Minami-Ohsawa station. We had a booth all to ourselves (just like a place I visited in Thailand, only more hi-tech), complete with laserdisc juke box and deep leather couches.

Apparently the grad students do this sort of thing regularly, and it showed because some of them were very good. Actually, all the Japanese were pretty good, singing both English and Japanese songs. Because I was a little late getting back to the department from the dojo I offered to sing first as penance. I started off with a shaky rendition of Sinatra's "New York, New York". Some of the other songs we sang (I only know the English ones) were Bon Jovi's "Livin' on a Prayer", Springsteen's "Born to Run", Simon and Garfunkle's "Bridge Over Troubled Waters" (Osamu and I did our impersonation of Simon and Garfunkle here), and the Eagle's "Hotel California". Osamu did a great job on the the old jazz standard "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes", and Noriaki's favorite seemed to be "I'm on the Top of the World"! We finished at 12:30 AM. By that time, what little voice I had started with was long gone.

Near the Karaoke place there are a lot of video arcade machines. I was extremely impressed by the "Streetfighter"-type games, which displayed much better graphics capabilities than the versions we currently have in the U.S. Actually, the most interesting machine (very popular right now in Japan, coming soon to the U.S.) I saw was an electronic instant photo machine, which takes a group photo, superimposes it on a funny background and then prints out a page of tiny adhesive decals with the photo and background on them! We took a group shot superimposed on a barroom background, and I have several of the decals now in my wallet. The technology is pretty impressive, and it was only Y300 (US $2.50)!

STAND-BY STATUS (6/14/97)

Unfortunately I have nothing very interesting to report from Saturday. Akiko was on stand-by status with ANA and was called up to fly to Beijing. She called me on Friday night to cancel our appointment in Shibuya (we were supposed to see a movie and have dinner). So I spent Saturday at the gym and at my office (gee, a typical physicist's weekend).

Osamu tried to cheer me up by taking me to a video store to rent a movie. We rented Blade Runner, which he had never seen and which I thought he would like. The video store (near TMU) had a pretty elaborate adult section and I should report to the readers of the New York Times that, yes, the "schoolgirl" theme is very much in evidence there. (I'm told that the most popular costumes worn at massage parlors here are schoolgirl, nurse and stewardess!)

Today I am going to meet Masanori Okawa and his girlfriend Eriko in Shinjuku. We're going to wander around a bit and have dinner. Masanori practices shootfighting at a dojo in Asaka. I got in contact with him over the internet when I was searching for places to train at in Tokyo. Unfortunately, Minami-Ohsawa, where I live, is far from any of the jiujitsu or shooto dojos that I would like to train at. Hence my messing around with the judo club here. However, next week I hope to visit Masanori's dojo which is 1.5 hours away.

TEXMEX IN ROPPONGI (6/15/97)

I just returned from meeting Masanori and Eriko. We had no trouble finding each other at Shinjuku station -- he was wearing a Gracie Jiujitsu hat and a "Submission Wrestling" (his dojo) shirt. Masanori is a powerfully built Japanese guy who spent three years in Houston as a high school/college student. His english is nearly perfect and even his demeanor seems American to me. His girlfriend Eriko was a little more shy, mostly because her english is not quite as good as his, although she has also lived in the U.S.

We first went to Akihabara, the "electronics city" area, which is jam- packed with stores selling to latest gizmos. They had HDTV, tiny camcorders and MD players, you name it. Unfortunately, I had nothing in particular I needed to buy, so we mostly just browsed. Poor Eriko had to bear with the non-stop discussion of submission locks, takedowns and training regimens that Masanori and I were engaged in.

After experiencing digital overload, we hopped a train across town to Roppongi. In case you don't know, Roppongi is the hippest part of Tokyo, and even on a Sunday night the place didn't disappoint. The "babe factor", as we refer to it, was extremely high. I'm surprised Eriko didn't punch Masanori for his terminal case of roving eye!

We ended up having dinner at a TexMex place right in the middle of Roppongi. Surprisingly, it was a pretty good approximation to real Mexican food, although quite a bit more expensive than in the states. Appropriately for Roppongi, we even had a gaijin (British?) waiter who spoke Japanese. At the restaurant I turned over to Masanori the Muay Thai shorts I had picked up for him in Thailand (they're pretty garish -- red white and blue with the Thai script sewn onto the front -- but both he and his girlfriend got a good laugh out of them), as well as the jiujitsu technique tapes I had been carrying around since leaving New Haven.

On Thursday I am supposed to visit Masanori's dojo. It sounds like a pretty hardcore place -- several of the guys he trains with have fought in NHB tournaments. Masanori has already told his sensei (Aso-sensei -- evidently famous in Japan) that I am coming, and was told I could train for free with them while I am in Japan. Let's just hope I don't get killed! :)

ECONOMICS 101 (6/17/97)

I thought I'd include some economic commentary here. There's nothing about babes or budo (martial arts), so some of you may be disappointed...

As most of you have heard, the cost of living is very high here. It is obvious that the exchange rate (currently Y115 = US $1) is nowhere near the appropriate level for purchasing power parity (PPP). Osamu estimates the correct exchange rate for PPP is closer to Y150-200 = US $1, and I would have to agree. This is based on simply looking at the prices of identical commodities in the U.S. and Japan and setting the prices equal. Of course, in Japan the distribution costs are higher than in the U.S., but it is hard to believe that that is a 50% effect on the final price. In the end I would guess that the Yen is at least 25% overvalued compared to PPP. (This is also consistent with what I observed in the Yen-Baht exchange rate. Simple commodities in Thailand seemed to be in price equilibrium with the U.S. but not with Japan.)

Why is the Yen kept artifically strong? The usual reason given is political -- nobody wants the trade imbalance to be any larger than it already is. To see how a properly valued Yen would be dangerous, just imagine what would happen if the price of all Japanese cars in the U.S. dropped by a significant fraction of 25% (the drop would be less than 25% since not all costs are denominated in Yen). I think Detroit would be hard-pressed to compete! Not being a currency trader, I am a little bit fuzzy as to how this situation is maintained. It seems that the central banks in question here could be held hostage to this policy, as the Bank of England was a few years ago (e.g. by Mr. Soros). However, I suppose part of the explanantion for the high Yen is just that Japan's chronic trade surplus leaves lots of U.S. dollars around that need to be converted to Yen, thus driving up the value of the Yen.

In terms of prospects for the future, Japan seems pretty strong in its traditional areas of manufacturing -- cars, consumer electronics, etc. (In these areas it seems their competition is likely to come from Korea or SE Asia and not from the U.S. or Europe.) However, they seem to be falling behind in computers, especially software. All the software I see here is American -- dominated by Microsoft. Even the high-end workstations used by the physicists are all American-made. Except for some supercomputers made by Fujitsu I have not heard of any Japanese competitors to high-end U.S. products such as those made by Sun, Silicon-Graphics or DEC (Alpha). The internet has not made a big impact here, and although everybody seems to have a (tiny!) cellular phone, nobody seems to have Email.

SUBMISSION ARTS WRESTLING (6/20/97)

Last night I visted Masanori's dojo in Asaka. It was a long haul for me -- almost 2 hours each way. I have a lot of respect for Masanori's dedication because he routinely also commutes quite a distance to get there after a long day's work. The dojo itself is relatively small -- I'd say the mat size is a little smaller than the one at Renzo Gracie's place in NYC, and much smaller than our wrestling room at Yale. There were about 20 guys there, all sizes ranging from lightweight (145lbs) to heavyweight (well over 200 lbs). I gather the turnout was high because some of these guys wanted to get a look at a BJJ (Brazilian Jiu Jitsu) -trained guy like myself, given that BJJ fighters have had so much success in NHB fighting both here and in the U.S.

After warming up, we did about 20 minutes of takedown drills. Their takedowns are pretty good, with emphasis on grappling before the takedown rather than shooting in on someone who is trying to kick or punch. Their style is submission WRESTLING, and so there is no striking allowed in their competitions (although several of the guys there last night had competed in NHB or Vale Tudo). This style difference means that they emphasize submission, rather than position (i.e. the mount and punch strategy favored in BJJ). Also, they don't seem to care so much about giving up their backs (just like in Judo or wrestling), because without punching the back mount is easier to defend.

After the stand-up work, we moved to ground technique. Aso sensei, a big powerful guy who reminds me of traditional judo senseis (Korean or Japanese) I have had in the U.S., wanted me to demonstrate some BJJ techniques for the class. This was obviously quite an honor for me given how advanced he and some of his students are. I showed some moves from the guard and also the knee-on-chest position with moves into various armlocks. I think a lot of it was familiar to them, but perhaps not used in quite the same ways. The main difference is that in our style we spend a lot of time drilling technique (newaza uchikomi's), whereas they don't really do rep after rep of a single technqiue. After this, Aso sensei and another big guy (he fights professionally in RINGS -- a shootfighting league in Japan) demonstrated lots of leglock techniques for (and on!) me. These guys are leglock wizards -- I was really impressed!

By this time I was already covered in sweat, although not winded. It is very humid at this time of year in Japan, and due to all of the travelling I have been doing my stamina is probably only 85%. The next stage in their practice is sparring -- and they do a lot of it. Normally they spar in 5 minute rounds, starting facing each other on their knees. Yesterday they actually shortened the time to 3 minutes so that more of their guys could get some time with me! (I hope all of this extra attention was not undeserved, since I am no Rickson Gracie by any stretch of the imagination.) I ended up sparring most of the guys in the club. They have a belt system, from white to black, with a black belt taking maybe 4-5 years to earn. I didn't have too much trouble with the guys below black belt, but the black belts were all very good. I was leglocked once and armlocked a couple of times, always by blackbelts. I did OK against them, sometimes getting the mount or back-mount, but clearly there were guys there who were much better than me (admittedly some of them were also heavier than me). By the end I was completely winded, and could barely keep up with the last few guys I fought (this is when I got armlocked, if I may make a small excuse). Finally, I had the honor of fighting Aso sensei, and he toyed with me like a big bear toys with a cub! It's frightening and humbling to have a 240lb guy who is a master of submissions laying on top of you and tapping you out in one way after another!

At the end we took a lot of pictures -- the whole club, me with Aso sensei, etc. Everybody there was really friendly, especially Aso sensei himself. Aso sensei gave Masanori and I free tickets and backstage passes (!!) to the upcoming RINGS event, which will feature two of Renzo's students -- Ricardo Morai ("the mutant" - 2 meters tall, 260 lbs) and Adilson Lima (BJJ black belt, 190 lbs) against two famous Russian Sambo fighters! I'll report on this after Saturday night!

PHONE CLUBS AND SCHOOLGIRLS (6/20/97)

Oh, I almost forgot to mention something. Those of you who read the infamous New York Times article a few months ago know that a recent, disturbing trend in Japan is for school girls (i.e. high school and even younger) to sell their services to older Japanese men in order to get money to buy designer goods like Gucci handbags. This is seen as an indication of the moral breakdown in Japanese youth, especially so since these girls do not lack for any material comfort -- the money they earn is spent on crazy luxury goods. The NYT article quoted some statistics gathered by a well-known Japanese sociologist (coincidentally here at TMU!) in which some sizeable fraction of the school girl population had some experience with this sort of thing (10% ?? I can't recall). Some of the connections are arranged through "phone clubs", in which the Japanese man calls some advertised number and is put in contact with the school girl. The numbers for these phone clubs are posted all over the place, and are even distributed printed on packets of free tissue paper (kleenex) which are given out almost everywhere. (I almost accepted such a packet in Akihabara before figuring out what it was. Akiko had one of them when we went to Kamakura!)

A possibly related phenomena is that school girls here have taken to wearing incredibly short skirts with their uniforms. By short I mean several inches shorter than anything you would ever see a cheerleader at a U.S. high school wearing. At Ikebukuru station I observed lots of older guys leering at very young (14 or 15 yr old?) girls that walked past. (Back in the U.S., I'm not saying that I wouldn't be tempted to look, but I certainly would be pretty embarassed about it!) While I was waiting for Masanori, I was sitting a few feet away from two girls, in their short school girl skirts, who were smoking cigarettes while alternately being approached by older (30+ yr old) men and chatting on their cell phone, which rang every few minutes. I didn't get to see what the girls ended up doing, but it did seem like a real-life example of what the NYT article was talking about.

PHYSICS REPORT (6/21/97)

Just so that my colleagues back home who are reading this don't get the wrong impression, I will include something here about my research activities and those of the group here. Some of this may be incomprehensible to those who are not theoretical physicists.

There are three particle theorists on the faculty here, not counting a fourth guy named Saito who is more mathematical and does string theory/exactly solveable models -- I haven't really interacted with him. The three are Minakata, Yasuda and Kitazawa. I have a fair amount of overlap in interests with all three of them. Kitazawa is the youngest and is currently working on supersymmetric models incorporating dynamical SUSY-breaking and compositeness. He is familiar with all the latest exact results in N=1 SUSY. Yasuda is currently working on neutrino oscillations, but has also followed the recent SUSY progress to some degree. Minakata has pretty wide interests. Currently he is thinking about DCC's and RHIC, so I had a couple of discussions with him about the simulations that my graduate student Jim Hormuzdiar is working on. In the past he even worked on SUSY monopole-multiplets, fractional charge and classical solutions, so he was interested in our results on the softly-broken Seiberg-Witten model.

I've given two seminars here so far -- one blackboard talk on Global Aspects of SUSY Breaking (my work with Myck) which went for 2 hours (!!), and another more formal seminar on our results on softly-broken N=1,2 SQCD and the theta angle (1:40 minutes!). The atmosphere here is extremely friendly and there is a good exchange of information at the seminars. Seminars here are usually given in Japanese, but they will often switch to English if there is even a single non-Japanese speaker in the audience. Sometimes I feel uncomfortable about this, because it makes it harder on everyone but me!

The graduate students in the group are very dedicated -- they are in their offices late at night almost every night, even on the weekends. Osamu tells me that the system here does not fund graduate students as well as ours in the U.S., so these guys have to be very motivated to pursue a PhD in physics. They also run two journal clubs here, with reports each week on recent papers. I am inspired by this and when Noriaki comes to Yale we may have to try something similar.

I've mostly been thinking about SUSY and lattice simulations, but have also gotten interested in an issue in astrophysics having to do with X-ray data and whether it is consistent with baryonic dark matter in clusters. I was inspired in this direction by a talk given by an X-ray astronomer in the department here. I've been talking to Minakata and an astrophysicist named Sasaki about this. Noriaki and I are also looking into spontaneous breaking of N=2 to N=1 SUSY.

I'll be giving two more seminars in July -- at Kyoto and KEK.

RINGS (6/22/97)

This entry is for die-hard fight fans. Please skip it if you don't know who Royce Gracie is or what the UFC is...

Last night I attended a Rings show as the guest of Aso sensei. The show turned out to be a little disappointing for several reasons which I will describe below. Basically, I'm not really a fan of Rings. The rules do not allow head punching on the ground, so the mat fighting tends to degenerate into a crazy kind of Sambo/submission leglock fest. The Japanese fans love it, and the Russian and Japanese fighters are really good at it, but to me it just looks nutty. Also, the fights are sometimes worked, but not always, so things are really ambiguous. The NHB fights are not worked, but they weren't too exciting either. On the other hand, the production was really good and the Japanese fans are really knowledgeable about the sport, as well as being very civil compared to UFC fans. The results were in the sports papers this morning, along with lots of photos!

OK, I'm going to describe three fights that took place. There were others, but they were either between uninteresting fighters, or were obviously worked, or both.

Morai vs Russian Karate fighter: (special NHB-rules fight) Morai was 6 inches taller than the Russian, but only about 25 lbs heavier (at least according to the program -- 115 kg vs 105 kg). The Russian wasn't trying to be competitive -- he just wanted to last the 20 minutes. In fact, the fight went to a draw because Morai couldn't finish the guy. The fight went like this: face off, Morai tackles, they grapple chest to chest (the Russian looked like a doll in Morai's grip), the Russian gives up his back but tries to use the ropes to stay up. Morai is clubbing the guy the whole time on the back of the head. Later they end up on the mat with the Russian in the turtle with Morai behind. Morai is so big he can't get his hooks in, so he just keeps bashing the guy. It goes on like this, very boring, until time runs out.

Lima vs Russian Sambo fighter: (NHB rules) The Russian guy is old and out of shape. Probably just looking for a hard-currency payday. But, he's reputedly a Sambo master, and very famous among the Japanese fans. Given this reputation, I was disappointed when, at the beginning of the fight, Lima throws out a leg-kick and slips to the mat. The Russian grabs his ankle, and we are all waiting to see some awesome leglock, but Lima manages to escape. (This actually happens twice -- the Russian is not exactly quick from what I can tell.) Lima eventually gets the guy in his guard, elevates him, and mounts. At about the 10:00 mark the Russian corner throws in the towel as Lima is starting to connect with some face punches.

Maurice Smith vs Yamamoto: (Rings rules) This fight was a complete work. It looked and smelled fake. I should have guessed that with a UFC appearance lined up Maurice wouldn't risk getting injured. Let's just say that when you read about Maurice losing this fight in the rumor or results pages, just ignore it! (By the way, if you hate Ken Shamrock for his jump to pro-wrestling, you should also be pissed at Maurice, because he's been coming to Rings for years and doing this kind of crap.)

After the show I went to dinner with some of the SAW guys, including the professional fighter (Tsurumaki-san) who has fought before in Rings. They were quite a fun bunch, especially after a few beers. I have to censor most of what was said...

BTW, it turns out that a "Back Stage Pass" here is a little different than back home. We had access to more of the building than people with ordinary tickets, but I wasn't able to go in the locker rooms or anything.

GJJ IN TOKYO (6/22/97)

This morning I worked out with Takamasa Watanabe's GJJ class. Watanabe is a Japanese guy who grew up in Brazil and trained at Barra Gracie. He is officially a brown belt, but the rumors are that he is really at the black belt level and only politics have kept him from being promoted (the Gracies don't want him opening a full-scale GJJ school in Japan). For those of you who don't know what GJJ (Gracie Jiujitsu -- also known as BJJ or Brazilian Jiujitsu) is, I'll just say that it takes over a decade to get a blackbelt in BJJ (as opposed to about 5 years in judo and even less in TKD/Karate), and there are only a handfull of Americans who have done so. Of the two dozen or so GJJ blackbelts in the U.S., almost all are Brazilian and only one or two have EVER been defeated in an NHB fight.

I attended the class as the guest of Toru Nishijima, another contact I made over the internet (like Masanori). Toru is a journalist, specializing in science coverage, but he does GJJ in his spare time. His homepage contains headlines from the latest Japanese combat sports magazines, and is located at: http://ac3.aimcom.co.jp~/westisle/ Toru is, like me, also a student of the history of judo, GJJ and related things.

The workout was lots of fun, although again I had to wear my gi (which I hate). The biggest surprise was that Enson Inoue (UFC 14) was there with some buddy who is a Japanese pro-wrestler! Enson is a really nice guy and thought it was pretty funny that we have a BJJ club at Yale. I also heard that he thinks Alger's elbow ligament was completely torn at UFC. Alger apparently knew the correct counter to juji gatame (put your weight on the guy and keep your head in), but at the last moment he apparently got scared and tried to pull his arm out, which is when it was injured.

Both Enson and the pro-wrestler actually participated in the practice, and I got to roll with both of them. Needless to say Enson (who is now a purple belt under the Machados) crushed me with no effort, but I actually did OK against the pro-wrestler. There were several good fighters among the Japanese guys there, although no big guys except Enson and his buddy. The GJJ guys were, as you might expect, more technical but less powerful than the SAW guys.

If I feel up to it on Friday morning I might show up to practice NHB with Enson and some (mostly foreign) guys at some dojo in Meguro. Apparently these guys are pretty big and pretty hardcore...

PASTA IN SHIBUYA (6/25/97)

I just returned from dinner in Shibuya with Akiko and her friend Ayumi. Ayumi lived in Seattle, WA for two years and so speaks English even better than Akiko. However, I was under the wrong impression and she is actually not another stewardess but works for the Tokyo office of an American company called General Instruments which makes communications and network equipment (I think especially cable TV stuff). Ayumi, like Akiko, is 25 and has ambitions that may not be realizable in a Japan where women are expected to be OL's (Office Ladies) and home-makers rather than managers and high-level executives.

We had dinner at a fancy Italian restaurant on one of the upper floors of a big shopping complex (department store?). The food was of mixed quality, which was disappointing given the Y5700 ($50 US) price we each paid. Other than the tiramisu I can't endorse any of the so-called Italian dishes. The bottle of cabernet sauvingon was Y4500 ($40) and not particularly good. (As Osamu would say "there's something rotten in the state of Denmark.." because the wine came to the table chilled rather than at room temperature. As we were leaving I noticed that this fancy restaurant keeps their wine collection in a large refrigeration unit(!!) rather than a wine cellar!) Actually I think I was the only one who was disappointed with the cuisine, but I suppose this is natural since the Italian food back home is apparently much better than what I have seen here. I didn't see any Italians in the restaurant or in the kitchen...

In any case, dinner was fun and we lingered in the restaurant until after 10 PM. I hadn't been in Shibuya since the last time I was in Japan (1993?) and it was great to watch the masses of young people hanging out. There were so many different fashion styles going on it was hard to keep track. It was a cool night, and rather pleasant to walk around with my two friends.

One funny thing: at dinner it came out that both Akiko and Ayumi are budding Christians (!!). Both are reading the bible in their spare time, and Ayumi actually occasionally attends services at a church near Yoyogi park. Is this a strange coincidence or is Christianity suddenly trendy in Tokyo for young women? (I'd hate to think that this is just another case of Japanese pursuing some Western thing just because they think it is cool.) Having spent my share of time as a kid at church and Sunday school, I was able to suggest a few important verses, like John 3:16.

RUMBLE IN THE DOJO: BRAZILIAN STYLE! (6/29/97)

I had another GJJ workout with Watanabe-sensei this morning. This time Enson Inoue (of UFC fame) wasn't there but a couple of big guys from New Zealand were there, and it was fun to roll with them. In addition to the usual stuff: drills, sparring, etc., we played a "game" that I had never heard of or seen before in GJJ. Basically, Watanabe-sensei divided the class into two groups of roughly equal size, and we had a rumble! The rules were, no punching or kicking, but all other submissions allowed. Apparently this game is commonly played at Barra Gracie in Brazil, sometimes with strikes allowed!

Since most 1-1 confrontations between trained GJJ fighters take some time to resolve, (a beginner can hold off an advanced guy for 30 seconds or a minute if he gets to the guard) the key to winning here is to gang up 2-1 on some poor guy, submit him, and then move to the next guy. In the first rumble, my team lost, and I had the pleasure of fighting one guy from the guard, while another guy leaned down from above my head and went for a two-fisted knuckle choke! I actually tapped from the wristlock the guy in my guard got on me, rather than the choke, but my throat is a little sore right now! In the second rumble, my team won, and I got some payback by holding one guy down from the side mount, while a teammate went for an achilles ankle lock. Since my guy was having trouble getting the ankle lock in, I just leaned down and put a wristlock on my distracted opponent, and he tapped.

The whole thing is pretty crazy -- it really does feel like a streetfight or melee with everybody running around like that. You have to learn to defend yourself from several guys at once. (Although he didn't, it would have been appropriate for Watanabe-sensei to have said "everybody protect yourselves at all times!") Actually at Caltech we used to have mass grappling confrontations between Page House (my house) and Fleming House, and this felt very similar, except nobody back then knew how to apply finishing holds.

SHINE IN SHIBUYA (7/1/97)

Last night I met Akiko in Shibuya for dinner and a movie. We met rather early, at 5:30 PM by the Koban (police station), and grabbed an early dinner before the movie. Shibuya was hopping as usual, with young stylin' Japanese crawling all over the place. We had dinner at an informal food complex (like a food court in the U.S., but with better food) in the same building as the movie theater. The clientele was pretty young (I would guess early 20's or even younger), and having a good time. Shibuya seems more relaxed and a little less jaded than Roppongi. It was definitely less expensive.

The movie we went to see was "Shine", which I had yet to catch in the U.S. despite all of its Academy Awards. The price was Y1800 (around US $15), which is about double what it is in the U.S. However, the theater was very nice and the seats extremely comfortable. The theater we went to shows only foreign/art films -- no Jurassic Park or Home Alone II here. Akiko had just flown in from Bangkok that morning, so I thought she'd be pretty tired. At dinner I offered to bet her one Yen that she'd fall asleep during the movie. Having had a nap and a strong cup of coffee, she was pretty confident, and so upped the ante to Y1000! I probably shouldn't have, but I accepted and ended up losing the bet, as the movie was too engaging for anyone to sleep through.

After the movie we walked around Shibuya and found an outdoor bar on a side street, nestled between dozens of "Love Hotels". Akiko was a little apprehensive about some of the smaller side streets, deeming them "dangerous" (they looked perfectly safe to me), but this one seemed OK to her as there was a fair amount of pedestrian traffic around. She also seemed a little embarassed about the proximity to all of the shady Love Hotels, but the pleasant atmosphere of the outdoor patio was enough to overcome this. The Japanese guys behind the bar were super-hipsters, some even sporting dreadlocks and rasta hats. I had a beer and Akiko drank a fuzzy navel while we watched the crowds of people walk by. Akiko claimed that this was the prime neighborhood for salarymen to pick up school girls, but I only spotted one couple that matched that description. I did see an older couple arrive in a cab and check into a Love Hotel. Being charitable, I thought perhaps they could be a married couple out for a thrill, but she insisted it was more likely they were having an affair.

PICTURES! (7/3/97)

Due to popular demand I have added some photographs to my travelogue. They are available at http://hsunext.physics.yale.edu/~hsu/pix/

There are links to the photos and to asia.txt (this file) from my homepage at http://hsunext.physics.yale.edu/~hsu/hsu.html

The contents of each .jpeg file are described in the file readme.txt in the /pix directory, copied below for your convenience.

GUIDE TO PICTURES:

With Masanori Okawa:

mo1.jpg - Masanori and I, in Akihabara (dig the pecs on MO!)

mo2.jpg - Eriko (MO's girlfriend) and I in Roppongi, with burritos

At the Submission Arts Wrestling (SAW) dojo:

d1.jpg - Me, after the workout (can you tell my neck hurts?)

d2.jpg - Tsurumaki-san, 95 kg SAW professional fighter!

With Akiko in Kamakura:

hsu1.jpg - the Big Buddha (Daibutsu) and I

hsu2.jpg - Akiko in a cave

hsu3.jpg - Akiko and I at a temple

hsu4.jpg - Akiko and I in the Kamakura hills

BUNKAMURA "CULTURAL VILLAGE" (7/6/97)

On Sunday evening I went with Akiko to an art exhibit in the Bunkamura building in Shibuya. Apparently Bunkamura means "cultural village". In addition to the usual stores and restaurants, this place has several art galleries, the movie theater where we saw "Shine", and a small museum. I detect a strong francophile influence here because the theater shows a lot of French movies, the museum cafe is called "Les Deux Magots" (after the famous place on the left bank where Hemingway and Sartre used to hang out) and the exhibit we saw focused on Pierre Bonnard, a French Impressionist. The exhibit was very nice, and had a pretty complete collection of Bonnard's work, from just before the turn of the century until the 1940's, when he died. Bonnard was known as an "Intimist" because many of his best works are intimate portraits of daily French life. (I'm sure none of you reading this really care, unless you were an art history major in college, but hey, this is MY diary.)

After the exhibit we had dinner in a small French Bistro about two blocks from Bunkamura. This was not without some trepidation on my part after the mediocre Italian meal we had a few weeks ago. However, this place (Bistro Hana, in case you're ever in Shibuya and crave nouveau French cuisine) had great food as well as great presentation. Even the wine was good. For a moment there I thought I was back in Manhattan...

Akiko will be flying to/from NYC this coming week, but this Friday I am scheduled to meet her and her best friend Tomomi (sp?), another ANA flight attendant, for dinner and (gulp) karaoke.

MORE PICTURES! (7/7/97)

I just scanned in some more pictures, this time from Ko Samui, Thailand.

They are available at http://hsunext.physics.yale.edu/~hsu/pix/

There are links to the photos and to asia.txt (this file) from my homepage at http://hsunext.physics.yale.edu/~hsu/hsu.html

Here is the description of the pictures: (also found in readme.txt)

th1.jpg - My friend AhWee and I at the world famous Go Internet Cafe

th2.jpg - Me, in front of my Bungalow on Chaweng Beach

th3.jpg - Sunset, Ko Samui

th4.jpg - Muay Thai training, Ko Samui (Note how young the kid is! He was awesome!)

DEAR FELIX (7/12/97)

Last night I came home on a late train from Shibuya. The train was crowded with people returning from their Friday night outings. A young girl wearing a blue ankle-length knit dress slumped down next to me, our shoulders touching due to the tightness of space. She was kind of pretty, and I looked on surreptitiously as she pulled a small red book out of her bag and started reading it. It was her diary, and it was written in English. Each page was in the form of a letter to her boyfriend "Felix", describing the days events, her feelings, and most of all (at least in the few pages I spied) expressing her unrequited longing for him. Apparently Felix is an Australian guy (older, I guess) with a wife, a kid, and a "beautiful Australian girlfriend" back home. But, apparently the guy gets around in Japan as well. In one of the letters the girl is urging Felix to work hard and earn lots of money so he can stay longer in Japan next time. But on another page she is outraged that he once confided that he "thought of me as just like any other girl. When I heard this I felt very, very sad."

(This last bit sounds like a classic case of failure to communicate bilingually. In my own experience, telling a non-native English speaking girl that you think she is "normal" can be misinterpreted as telling her that she is "ordinary" or "run of the mill". But I don't want to apologize for Felix. He sounded like a jerk in the dairy and I seriously contemplated telling the girl to "Dump Felix, he's a loser!")

As the train rolled on, the girl fell into a deep sleep. Sleeping on the Tokyo metro system is very common, but this girl fell into a DEEP sleep. Her head was more or less completely resting on my shoulder, and I'm sure onlookers thought she was my girlfriend or something! I didn't think too much about it, since it was actually pleasant to have her there, but after she slept through a couple of stops I started to get worried that maybe she had missed hers. Finally I decided to wake her up, and not knowing what to say in Japanese I ended up nudging her and asking "Are you OK?"

Of course, this ruined my Nihonjin disguise (usually everybody thinks I'm Japanese), and suddenly everyone around was looking at me kind of funny. (Don't worry, I'm almost used to it now.) The girl just nodded her head -- she was still groggy but now awake. If she had said one word to me I think I would have blurted out my warning about Felix, but she never did and we parted ways at the Minami-Ohsawa station.

Oh, by the way, I'm relating this little vignette only because my outing with Akiko in Shibuya was pretty boring. We caught "Trainspotting", had some Vietnamese food, wandered into a video arcade for a little while (amazing how fast you can blow Yen in those places), and then she had to go. She was heading to her parents' house to spend the night before attending a wedding the next day.

KYOTO AND GION FESTIVAL (7/15/97)

I'm now in Kyoto, historic former capital of Japan. I gave a seminar here in the physics department at Kyoto University, and am staying a few more days for the Gion Festival, which has been celebrated here each summer for over 1000 years. My hotel is near the old Imperial palace, which is quite impressive, although the inner part is closed except by special appointment. The campus of Kyoto University is surprisingly old and run-down given that it is one of the most famous in Japan, although I have heard the same about the University of Tokyo. It certainly stands in stark contrast to the sleek, modern TMU environment that I have become used to. Here none of the offices are even air conditioned(!) -- I was sweating up a storm by the end of my seminar.

Last night I went to see the floats of the Gion festival. This festival has its origins in the efforts of the emperor to placate the Gods and forestall the constant natural disasters (floods, epidemics) which used to occur in the summertime. The floats are huge wooden constructs on wheels which are pushed/pulled about in a big parade on July 17. Precious art works are displayed at the top of each float, as well as a small tree. Each float is also accompanied by musicians, dancers and other entertainers. Last night the floats were on display on the narrow, crowded streets of the old part of Kyoto, surrounded by temporary booths selling food, drinks and souvenirs. Many of the local people were wearing traditional summer kimonos and wooden shoes (geta).

The city of Kyoto is very charming, with uncountable temples and shrines crammed among the modern buildings.

SHINKANSEN (7/16/97)

I've just returned home (to TMU, that is) from Kyoto. Yesterday I spent the entire day and evening marching through temples, shrines, the Kyoto National Museum, the downtown shopping area (thank God for Maruzen, the chain of English language bookstores!), and the Gion festival area. I could tell things were hitting a fever pitch, as the number and density of people was even greater than the previous night. However, I was feeling a little burnt-out on cultural stuff (not to mention the horrible humidity), so I decided to return home today, missing the climactic parade at the end of the festival which takes place tomorrow. I know Osamu will be incredulous that I passed up the best day of the festival, but it was enough for me.

I took the Shinkansen (bullet train) to and from Kyoto, which was quite easy and convenient. The main thing I notice about the Shinkansen is that it is pretty much used by everybody and seems to be treated just as an extension of the regular JR train system. This is as opposed to the TGV (Tres Grand Vitesse) of France and El AVE of Spain, which are run like mini-airlines, with special stewardesses, carts of "duty-free" -type goods, etc. With the Shinkansen you just wait at the platform, hop on, find your seat, and then at the end you hop off. Much more casual. Overall I would rate the Shinkansen seats as more comfortable than the TGV (El AVE is identical), although the ride might have been a little less bumpy on the TGV.

I overheard the following amusing conversation between a thirty-something American couple while waiting for the Shinkansen in Kyoto. He was clearly an investment banker type, and she was very stylishly dressed and coiffed. (Imagine the typical NY power-couple.)

WIFE: When are we getting back?

HUSBAND: (looks at watch) Around 3 O'clock.

WIFE: Oh good, because Astroboy is on at 4. It'll be our last chance to watch it before we leave.

HUSBAND: Oh no, it's on again tomorrow morning. We can catch it before we check out.

(For those who don't know, Astroboy -- more correctly translated as "Atom Boy" from the Japanese -- is a cartoon series about the adventures of a super robot boy. It has become a cult favorite in the U.S. as well as in Japan.)

I felt like discreetly humming the Astroboy theme song: "Astro--boy bombs away, ..."

NIGHT OUT IN SHINBASHI (7/19/97)

Last night I met Masanori, his girlfriend Eriko, two guys from the SAW dojo (Shimamura-san and Tsurmaki-san, the latter being a professional fighter with RINGS experience), and four female co-workers (aged 23-29) of Eriko's in Shinbashi. The outing was a "set-up", arranged by Mo and Eriko. Eriko and her friends all work for the Recruit Co., a trendy company involved in business placement and recruitment activities both in Japan and internationally.

At first, Masanori and I played a little joke on Eriko's co-workers, who had never met either of us before. I pretended to be Eriko's boyfriend and Masanori pretended to be me, the American. I just kept my mouth shut, smiling and bowing a lot, and Masanori spoke only English. The deception worked perfectly until I was isolated and actually required to speak.

We met at a Korean barbeque place. The SAW guys have big appetites, and this place was ideal for them, being both all-you-can-eat and all-you-can- drink. The women were typically well-mannered Japanese, which means that they kept trying to serve the food to us without eating themselves. I ended up sitting next to a woman named Mayumi Kawakita, the only one who was comfortable speaking English (although they all understood it to some degree). I was having a great time, but Tsurumaki-san was a little nervous at first. His manners can be described as a little on the rough side, and once he gets going on the drinks he doesn't hold anything back. The women kept rotating the seating arrangement (except Mayumi, who kept sitting next to me as my interpreter :) ), and after a while it appeared that they were happier sitting with me than with Tsurumaki-san. He wasn't too pleased about this, and poor Masanori was working hard all night to keep him under control.

As is often the case in Japan, I, the gaijin (foreigner), got a lot of attention simply because of my novelty. All Japanese study English in school (although most do not necessarily develop good conversational skills), and once they get over their initial shyness many are eager to practice a little bit with a (non-threatening) gaijin. I guess that because I am also asian I am less threatening than the typical European.

After dinner we went to (what else?) a karaoke place. To make a long story short, songs were sung, alcohol was consumed, and a roll of film was shot in the ensuing hours. At around midnight, our time was up in the karaoke "box" and we had to make a rush for the train station. Since I live the furthest away, I was in potentially dire straits. It looked like I was going to be spending the night at Masanori's place (much to Eriko's consternation, I am sure), but at the last minute Mayumi and her roommate offered to take me in for the night. Since they live in Den-enChofu, which is on the way home for me, this was a much more convenient option for everyone involved. Of course the inebriated SAW-boys got a big kick out of my good fortune, getting to go home with two young women...

LOLICOM (7/19/97)

"LoliCom" is Japanglish (Japanese-English) for "Lolita Complex", and refers to a certain widespread fascination among Japanese men for young (i.e. school age) girls. The standard image here of the ideal Japanese woman is indeed girlish, cute and young. I have heard many Japanese men confess to being LoliCom to some degree. (Some have said this quite aggressively, after a few drinks!)

In my own case it's a little hard to tell the ages of Japanese women, and asian women in general. Let me describe a particular incident that put me on the edge of LoliCom. Almost every night of the week I have dinner with several of the other physicists in the restaurant of the International House (where I live), which is directly across from the science complex here at TMU. Of course, due to my inability to speak Japanese our conversations are always in English and because we assume none of the waitresses speak English we are sometimes "unmoderated" even in their presence. There is one particularly attractive waitress who always seems to be smiling at me, and one day as I was paying at the cash register she spoke to me in flawless English, introducing herself as "Tomo". I was a little taken aback, mainly because all this time (over a month!) I had assumed that she couldn't understand what I was saying.

Of course, I had to get to know her a little better, so later I asked her if she'd like to have coffee with me sometime. We ended up taking a walk around the TMU campus one night after the restaurant closed, buying a couple of cans of iced coffee from one of the vending machines. It turns out she attends the Tokyo campus of Temple University, where all classes are conducted in English. It also turned out, to my surprise, that she is all of 19 years old, and living with her parents in Minami-Ohsawa. Ah, to be young again...

WINDING DOWN (7/**/97)

Today is my birthday! I'm sad to say that I am now 31 years old. Fortunately, clean living has kept me healthy and vigorous even at this advanced age :)

Last night I went out with the other physicists to celebrate my and Prof. Minakata's birthdays (he is now 50!). Our outing was typically Japanese, first dinner at a local bar/restaurant (beer and sake all around), and then a trip to the local karaoke hotspot. I am getting bolder with my karaoke -- last night I actually attempted Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody". Nobody was seriously injured, so I suppose I did OK!

(I've posted a jpg file which is a snapshot from my birthday celebration, taken in the theory lounge at TMU. See bday.jpg in the pix folder...)

Unfortunately, my time in Japan is coming to an end. I leave a week from Monday (Aug. 4) for Hawaii. My two months here have gone by all too rapidly. I'm going to squeeze the following things into my last week here:

(1) Last BJJ practice with Watanabe-sensei

(2) Watch the Tournament of J '97 (Jiujitsu tournament)

(3) Trip to KEK (Japanese National High Energy Physics Lab) to give a seminar

(4) My mother's visit (I'm going to be showing her around for four days until Aug.4 when we both depart for Hawaii)

(5) Trip to Mt. Fuji with Osamu and my mother

(6) Farewell meetings with all of my friends...

Oh yeah, and I should probably get some work done too... :)

MORE JIUJITSU (7/28/97)

Yesterday was jiujitsu day for me. I got up at around 7:30 AM in order to take the train into Tokyo for a 9 AM BJJ practice with Watanabe sensei. Enson Inoue was there again and I was lucky enough to get paired off with him as my partner for the technique drills. (While Enson has about 25lbs on me I'm still bigger than almost everybody else in the class.) It was pretty funny working with him. We practiced a couple of moves that are good for tournament BJJ, but iffy or dangerous for NHB (No Holds Barred). As we were going through them, Enson kept muttering, things like "Man, this could really get you fucked up in a real fight!", or "Gee, that looks pretty hard to get. What if the other guy does X?"

Also attending practice were Masanori Okawa and another guy from the Submission Arts Wrestling (SAW) dojo. They're thinking of switching to the BJJ class. After practice we got some lunch, and then had a few hours to kill so we went back up to the dojo to work out some more! The BJJ class takes place in a public sports facility in Takadanobaba (central Tokyo). Most such facilities in Japan have large matted areas for karate, judo, etc. During the open mat hours, one often shares the space with karateka, judoka, aikidoka, kickboxers, etc. Today after lunch there were a bunch of shooto and submission arts guys (from another branch of Okawa's school) practicing their stuff. We spent some time going over BJJ-style technique with them.

Finally at around 3 PM we left for the Lumax Cup tournament (Tournament of J) which was held at Kamazawa (sp?) park, part of the old Olympic sports complex. It was another hot, humid day and Masanori and I were sweating almost immediately after getting out of the shower at the dojo. Unfortumately the sports facility wasn't airconditioned, so we had to tough it out all afternoon.

The fights at Tournament of J were pretty good. Sanae Kikuta defended his title handily, beating all three of his opponents by tapout (twice by leglock and once by juji-gatame). He was never in trouble and seemed to be at another level relative to his competition. I saw him without his gi on and the guy is pretty yoked (big) now -- he's apparently been lifting a lot recently. He was listed as 94 kg (pretty heavy for a guy who's only about 5''9), but he was relatively lean at under 10% bodyfat (my guesstimate). In a Japanese MA magazine article it was reported that his best bench press is 170 kg! He also seemed to have changed his style a little bit since last year, and now fights a bit more like a BJJ-guy, with more emphasis on position.

There were some exhibition fights as well. These were under Shooto rules, which are very close to NHB (only elbows are forbidden on the ground; you can still punch the head). I liked these fights better than the ones under Lumax rules. The fighters were on the small side, but pretty skilled. There seems to be a little misunderstanding in the U.S. about Shooto. Shooto is a fighting league here in Japan, but the style itself is a deliberate hybrid formed out of kickboxing and BJJ. Their guys look like BJJ fighters on the ground (albeit not at the blackbelt or elite level) and usually have better striking skills when standing up.

Murakami Kazunari, who has gotten a little fat, did an "exhibition" match with another guy from his dojo. This was pretty silly, kind of like a worked proresu (pro-wrestling) match, but poorly done. It was obvious that they weren't trying to hurt each other. (Kind of like the exhibition match between Satoru Sayama and Nishi two years ago.) Nishi didn't fight today, but served as a referee/judge.

The crowd was pretty interesting. The Japan NHB scene is pretty small and everybody seems to know everybody. Rumina Sato was there, as was Enson, and a bunch of more obscure fighters that I recognized from previous Lumax tournaments. There were a lot of guys who were obviously from different dojos around town -- Shooto, BJJ, Submission Arts, K'Z Factory etc. You can always tell the guys who train from the run-of-the-mill fans. One funny thing was that in addition to the numerous groups of guys, and the smaller number of boyfriend-girlfriend pairs, there were also solo groups of girls in the audience who seemed to be genuine jiujitsu fans. We were calling them "Kakutogi girls" (kakutogi means fighting arts in Japanese).

After the tournament we met Eriko (Masanori's girlfriend), Mayumi, her roommate (Yoyoi sp?) and her roommate's boyfriend (Goto-san) in Shibuya for dinner. I was exhausted after the long day, and had to endure another packed train ride back to Minami-Ohsawa.

KOENERGY KENKYUSHO ("HIGH ENERGY LABORATORY") (7/29/97)

I'm currently at KEK, the Japanese national high energy physics lab, about 60 km north of Tokyo. I gave a seminar here this afternoon and just returned from dinner with the other theorists. The last time I was here was several years ago (my first visit to Japan), when I attended a conference on CP violation at the laboratory.

The laboratory is very much like its cousins in the U.S. and Europe (SLAC, Fermilab, CERN, etc.). One interesting difference is that KEK is surrounded by other science labs in Tsukuba, the "science city" of Japan. On my way here on the bus I counted a half-dozen government labs, as well as an Intel research outpost. The theoretical group here is pretty large, with something like 20 postdocs and 10 permanent faculty. As usual, everyone is friendly, but it is much easier to converse with the older researchers who have spent some time in the U.S. Actually, I spent a long time talking physics and HEP gossip with Maio Li (U Chicago), who is also visiting from the states.

Tonight I will be staying at the KEK dormitory before heading to Narita to pick up my mother.

SEE YOU STATESIDE! (8/3/97)

Today is my last full day in Japan. Tomorrow I'll be making the trip out to Narita with my mother on our way to Hawaii. I don't have very definite plans for Hawaii -- I think I'll just relax and possibly do some BJJ at Egan Inoue's or Relson Gracie's dojo. I may also take a look around the University of Hawaii campus, in which case I'll be able to check my Email. Otherwise, I probably won't be in touch until around Aug. 12 when I return to east coast.

Thanks for reading this travelogue! This trip has been a great experience for me and I am grateful for all the new friends I've made in Thailand and Japan. Thanks for all your help and for all the pleasant memories!

HAWAII ADDENDUM -- BJJ IN HONOLULU (8/7/97)

Just a quick note from Waikiki. I worked out the last few days at Relson's and Egan Inoue's dojos. Both places had tough guys, although the rumors that the Torrance affiliated schools promote a little fast seem to be true of Relson's place. They seem to give out their blue belts after about a year of training, seemingly regardless of ability.

At Egan's place, everyone was a white belt except Egan, who wore a purple belt. (He just won the World Championships in the purple belt class in Rio, and beat several brown belt-level champs in the process, so he considers himself at least a brown belt now.) Some of these "white belts" were better than any of the blue belts that I sparred at Relson's. I got to spar Egan, and he worked me about as thoroughly as Enson. It's hard to tell who is better -- Enson is bigger, but Egan is probably a little more technical.